Latest Articles
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Getting the Mormons on board with mixed use
As former planning director for Salt Lake City, and as an artist wanting to create live/work spaces for other artists, Stephen Goldsmith has played a key role in bringing mixed-use development to the downtown core of his city. He now teaches at the University of Utah’s College of Architecture and Planning. He also founded the […]
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Salt Lake mixes sacred space and sustainability
An artist’s rendering of City Creek CenterPhoto courtesy of City CreekSalt Lake City is the world headquarters for the fastest growing church in America, and the influence of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is everywhere. The six gray spires of the Salt Lake Temple rise above the city. A gleaming granite convention […]
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Fruit and veggies as you’ve never seen them before
The Inside Insides blog has posted animated MRI scans of fruits and vegetables such as corn, durian, bananas, mushrooms, and broccoli. The results are beautiful in an otherworldly way and strangely hypnotic — spiraling Fibonacci series of seeds and ghostly vacancies. Here’s a still from the corn animation — click through to see the whirling […]
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Imminent UN vote on the right to water
On July 28, after years of grassroots pressure, the United Nations’ General Assembly will consider and debate a resolution supporting the right to “safe and clean drinking water and sanitation”. Maude Barlow, former Senior Advisor on Water to the President of the United Nations General Assembly described the denial of access to clean water as […]
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Chefs and parents plot a lunch revolution at one D.C. public school
A group of chefs and parents plan to turn Tyler Elementary’s kitchen-cum-makeshift-office into a place to cook actual food.(Ed Bruske photos) A group of prominent Washington, D.C.-area restaurant chefs has volunteered to introduce a novel concept in school-food service to one Capitol Hill elementary school: collaborating with parents to take over kitchen operations on a nonprofit basis, […]
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Home Star teeters on the edge
Remember Home Star, the killer bill that would incentivize thousands of home energy retrofits across the country, reduce energy bills for struggling homeowners, put some of America’s hardest hit trades back to work, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions? The one backed by a coalition of more than 1,700 organizations including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce […]
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How to make energy programs work better (for free!)
I’ve written before (more than once) that energy reformers should pay more attention to behavior. Instead there is an almost universal obsession with technology and economic cost, narrowly construed. If you think of people as rational interest maximizers, as per reigning economic folk theory, price is all that matters. You want to change behavior, you […]
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BP photoshops clean-up command center picture
From Iranian missile tests to George W. Bush campaign ads, using Photoshop to make yourself look better is anything but innovative. Even more so because if you cut corners (literally and figuratively), you’ll probably get caught and wish you could photoshop yourself out of an awkward PR situation. BP is already in a bad enough […]
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Bike branding moves from urban chic to mainstream
Fast Company‘s design blog reports on some inspiring advertising: Americans are riding bikes more than ever, yet cycling is still held up as some sort of cultish hobby relegated to aggro dudes with messenger bags who live and die by their fixed gears. So maybe it’s time for a new image, yeah? Colle+McVoy, a Minneapolis […]
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Solar startups take a shine to Portland
Portland, the new hub of solar power in the U.S.?Photo courtesy of Keith SkeltonBack in the 1980s and ’90s, the region surrounding Portland was dubbed the Silicon Forest for the cluster of computer chip companies that had flocked to Oregon to set up shop. Now those old-growth tech companies are giving way to a new […]
