Articles by David Roberts

Breaking dog condom news!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- Bloomington, IN - August 3, 2005 -- Dog Condoms, Inc. is announcing a voluntary recall of its Dog Condoms® canine prophylactics, due to an unacceptable failure rate reported during preliminary release in test markets. Use of these recalled condoms may result in unwanted canine pregnancies. Additionally, meat-scented Dog Condoms® may present a choking hazard, especially for smaller dogs.

You can read the rest here.

Update [2006-3-15 14:18:22 by David Roberts]: This is, of course, fake. Sigh.

Me and Barack

This Saturday, I will be meeting Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). I've been told I get exactly five minutes of his time. That's enough time for about, um, one question (actually, the way I talk, I'm lucky if I get the question itself out in five minutes).

One question.

What should it be?

Casinos and high-rises battle trolleys and bike lanes for the Gulf Coast future

The bossman draws my attention to a story in the NYT that rather tragically illustrates the struggle over new urbanism I mentioned in the post below. Really, really interesting stuff.

There's probably no place in the U.S. where new urbanism has a better shot at taking hold than the Gulf Coast. By getting wiped out, many of the towns and cities along the coast have a chance to start over -- to reimagine what their communities can be. Lots of people seem to have the right idea:

Gov. Haley Barbour's rebuilding commission and many small-town officials advocate a planning approach known as New Urbanism, which supports pedestrian friendly, historically themed developments where people of mixed incomes share the same neighborhoods and are closely linked by public transportation. Given a rare chance to redesign their landscapes, many residents and officials want to see towns designed around trolley cars, pedestrian walkways and open spaces.

And of course, lots of people seem to have the wrong idea:

But critics here mock New Urbanism as being impractical and ignorant of the preference of most Americans for privacy over community, and as creating towns that often look like film sets rather than real communities.

What do "real communities" look like?

"Biloxi is going to be high-rises and condos," said Duncan McKenzie, president of the Chamber of Commerce and a vice president of the Isle of Capri casino. "People refer to what happened here as a tragic opportunity." Even before the storm, casinos were Biloxi's second-largest industry after the military, employing 15,000 people and generating $19.2 million in taxes.

Why isn’t there more new urbanism?

It is conventional wisdom in enviro circles that a big part of a green future is green cities, and a big part of green cities is dense, mixed-use development, wherein people interact with their neighbors, walk or bike to amenities, and generally have a much smaller environmental footprint than suburbanites. In other words: new urbanism.

Supporters of new urbanism face a daunting challenge, though: namely, the apparently overwhelming preference of Americans for sprawling, single-use suburbs. If dense, mixed-use urban communities are so great, how come there just aren't that many? How come nobody seems to want to live in them?

There are two basic schools of thought on this question.