Beyond the Climate Action Plan

Mar 2018

Sunnyvale is making good progress on their Climate Action Plan, but they want to do more. They want to be carbon-neutral says Mayor Glenn Hendricks. To help them, IDEO, the Palo Alto design company, ran a six hour meeting Saturday, March 3, to gather ideas. Applying the IDEO principles of determining a need with in-depth questioning, followed by rapid-fire brainstorming, a group of over 160 participants came up with some key questions in the format, “How might we …?”

With 20 tables of eight or more participants, we did not lack “How might we” questions.

Some wondered about conserving every drop of water, some said straws suck- what can we do about that, others wanted easier access to good information, or easier energy audits or incentives to use public transportation.

Our table wondered, “How might we make biking and walking in Sunnyvale safe, attractive, desirable, and cool?” Some thoughts- more bike events to make biking cool – city tours, bike riding birthday parties, and traffic-free zones on bike days. We also wanted contests. There’s nothing quite like a winning prize to attract some attention.

Sunnyvale will collect all of the good input, and later this year there will be a presentation to the city council with the very best of it.

We wish them success, and we will happily copy anything and everything they like and make it our own.

~ Gary Hedden