i have a "greenie" cousin that recently moved from austin to dc. a black conservative that truly supports dubya (tell me how THAT happened), she supports all the articles i've read citing austin as pretty damn progressive.

i guess mainly in terms of green buildings, and they have a lot of artsy architects that are embracing green tech, either b/c they truly believe the ideology or they want to cater to all the cool neohippies with large amounts of disposable income. i've been watching hgtv a lot lately (cuz i wanna build a house in the next couple of years) and there are a surprising # of shows dealing with green building practices, at least mentioning it when feasible. i think this is a great start, since most people spend quite a lot of time in buildings and it's a big psychological draw to reside or work in an environmentally-friendly building. again, a lot easier than attempting to restructure the whole transportation infrastructure, something that took what...the better part of 50 years to develop.

housing is very easy to transform in a short amount of time, and people build or remodel all the time. integrating green ideas into a new or existing home doesn't necessarily mean fighting city hall or the governor's decrees (sometimes, but not all). so yeah, i think there are small pockets of hope in an otherwise 'dirty' state.

www.anacostiaws.org
www.earthfirstjournal.org/