Urban Living in California

Traveler invited HotelChatter senior editor Juliana Shallcross to share her favorite San Francisco hotels in September’s cover story, “Classic San Francisco.”  Juliana revealed some gems, including the Hotel Vitale, which she describes as a “small but elegant 199-room property on the Embarcadero, the city’s traditional waterfront.” When booking, she says, request a room overlooking the water. “The Bay Bridge views are great. And there are free yoga classes, too.”

Another reason to like the Vitale: It belongs to the Joie de Vivre hotel group, which aims to donate a minimum of $200 per guest room per year to community organizations. Hotel Vitale’s philanthropic partner is the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, whose members and volunteers build trails, restore wetlands, propagate and plant thousands of native species, study hawk migration, and bring 15,000 schoolchildren to the Parks each year for educational programs. Hotel guests can help by donating one dollar of their total bill to Joie de Vivre’s “You Can Make a Difference” program.

One more plus: The Hotel Vitale is located within walking distance of a wide variety of public transportation, including BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), the historic waterfront trolleys, ferries to the North and East Bay, cable cars and Muni (San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency).

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Bill Links Funding For Development To Lower Emissions

California lawmakers passed a bill aimed at cutting carbon-dioxide emissions by rewarding cities and counties that prevent urban sprawl and improve public transportation. The bill’s proponents and transportation experts say it is the first measure in the nation to link government transportation funding with urban planning and CO2-reduction goals. Senate Bill 375 contends that cutting back on driving is as critical in the fight against global warming as producing cleaner fuels and more-efficient vehicles. Transportation experts say they expect the bill to become a model for state and national policy makers. Read the rest of this entry »

This San Francisco Green Map introduces you to the area’s many environmental education resources by pulling them together and creating a graphic portrait of the region’s green reality. It connects current and future San Franciscans and visitors with the local urban environment in a bold and visual manner. Many San Francisco and Northern California residents are unaware of the multitude of projects aimed at increasing sustainability taking place in our own region. The area has proven itself to be the birthplace for an amazing diversity of vital and essential sustainability institutions and movements and is truly a hotbed of green activity. It also has a natural world of epic proportions. With so much going on, it is difficult to find one single location to learn about all these special spots. The San Francisco Green Map/North California Green Access provides a single information resource for the myriad local environmental initiatives, educational programs, issues, services, and institutions in the City and Northern California, helping you reconceptualize the entire regions’ rich environmental resources in a broader, collective context.

{ find out more at SFGreenMap.org }