Climate Buildings

Obscure-but-awesome energy law getting shivved by natural gas lobby

George W. Bush signed a law requiring that new federal buildings gradually eliminate consumption of fossil-fuel energy by 2030. Now the natural gas industry is trying to kill the rule.

Meatpacking plant turns into net-zero-energy vertical farm

Soon, a former meatpacking plant in Chicago will replace carcasses and rendering vats with bakers and brewers and fish farmers and mushroom growers. The Plant (ho ho, a double meaning!) is gathering together a bunch of food-makers to create a self-sustaining system in the 93,500-square-foot abandoned space. As Fast Company reports, a former meatpacking plant […]

Ad men illegally hack down trees for billboards

Watch one episode of Mad Men and you’ll see just how shady the advertising biz can be. But apparently the red-headed stepchildren of the advertising industry — outdoor billboard companies — are taking douchebaggery to new lows. An investigative report from Fair Warning details how billboard agencies illegally chop down trees to ensure that potential viewers […]

4 out of 5 top transit cities are on the East Coast

Walk Score put together a list of the country’s top transit cities, based on the company’s transit scores for more 1 million locations in the largest 25 cities with open public transit data. (Lack of data meant Atlanta and Phoenix were left out.) And, surprisingly, four out of the top five are on the East […]

Romney, once an anti-sprawl crusader, created model for Obama ‘smart growth’ program

As governor of Massachusetts, Romney fought sprawl and promoted density -- another set of issues on which he looks to be seriously out of sync with the Tea Party and the GOP base.

287 coastal energy facilities at risk from sea-level rise

Sea levels are rising, which means that there’s a greater risk of floods that reach well over the high tide mark. By 2030, the risk that coastal floods will go four feet or more over high tide will have doubled, Climate Central reports. And in that zone lie 287 energy facilities — power plants, natural […]

Charming video explains where traffic comes from and how to fix it

Millennials love cities because they provide the one thing their boomer parents couldn’t give them

Why is Gen Y migrating to the cities? Because millennials are craving the things they didn’t get in their suburban upbringings, like connectedness and adventure.

Detroit residents are turning the city into suburbs

Detroit is undergoing a remarkable process of un-building, its residents literally transforming its denser neighborhoods into sparse suburbs.

Kate Zidar: A sewershed grows in Brooklyn

Salvaging a notoriously polluted urban creek takes nerds of steel.