Climate Buildings

Mexico City’s ‘earthscraper’ would be a 1,000-foot underground building

BNKR Arquitectura wants to build a pyramid that penetrates nearly 1000 feet into the earth below Mexico City's largest and most historic public square. Its upper floors will be illuminated through a glass ceiling that will replace the paving stones of the current square, and its deepest reaches will receive daylight piped in from fiber-optic […]

Putting the wilderness back in our cities

Neil Chambers’ new book, Urban Green: Architecture for the Future, is a study in imprecision. Ankle deep and a mile wide, the book reads like a half-baked primer in green design and conservation science. It could have used another year or two in the oven. It’s too bad. At the heart of this book — […]

Universities try to out-green each other in bid for NYC science campus

New York City is fielding proposals from universities to build a new science and technology campus on Roosevelt Island, and the competition is showing how desirable green buildings are becoming. The two front-runners, Cornell and Stanford, are falling over themselves to offer all manner of green features in their plans: acres of solar panels, geothermal […]

‘I will rather invest in cycle tracks than freeways,’ says Danish politician

Denmark is going to be the best cycling country in the world. Cycling leads to better public health, a cleaner urban environment, and helps us reach our climatic goals. So I will rather invest in cycle tracks than freeways!

So sayeth Margrethe Vestager, the new Danish minister of the economy and the interior. Vestager wants to increase the share of trips taken by bicycle 50 percent in 10 years, with at least half of those trips representing a replacement of a car with a bike.

People love smart cities, as long as you don't call them smart cities

The vast majority of Americans — almost 80 percent — are totally on board with living somewhere that's close to jobs and schools, where the environment is clean and you don't have to spend much money on gas. They just don't want to live in places that are "sustainable" or involve "smart growth," because that […]

How Central Park cools the entire planet

Like all urban parks, Central Park cools New York City through evaporation. That is, its plant life and ponds give off moisture, which takes heat energy with it. It's as if the park sweats.

Until recently, though, we didn’t know whether green spaces cool the planet as a whole.

Critical List: EPA’s greenhouse report comes in for criticism; motorcycles are gross

The EPA and its inspector general disagree over what qualifies as a "scientific assessment." The EPA has concluded that greenhouse gases are dangerous; the IG now says that the assessment didn’t go through sufficient peer review. This is actually about the review of the relevant “technical support document,” not about the scientific findings, but tell that to Republicans.

The DOE gave a $737 million loan guarantee to a solar-tower project in Nevada, which had better the hell not fail now.

Motorcycles are more fuel efficient, but their tailpipe emissions contain nasty stuff.

Red means stop, except for bikers in Kansas

Under a new Kansas law cooked up by bikers and motorcyclists, two-wheelers are allowed to run red lights.

Better bus lines follow worker bees

If cities want to get people to ride public transit, they need to ditch downtown routes and take them where the jobs are.

Blogs put bikes on a path to world domination

The revolution won't be televised. Instead, we'll turn to the grassroots bicycle media to see the bright future of the sport take shape.