Climate Cities

Cycles and cents: One city sets out to prove that bikes are good for business

Known as a car-addicted city, Long Beach, Calif., creates the nation’s first “bike-friendly” business districts, and it seems to be working.

Weird new all-electric cars debut at Detroit Auto Show

Volkswagen E-Bugster

Hitting the "on" button on this car (because in the future, all cars will be started the same way you start up a laptop) makes the interior flash blue like you've just stepped into a light cycle from TRON. Check the video, below, for the full effect.

Forget about San Francisco: Second-tier towns are where the action is

In down-and-out cities like Oakland, St. Louis, and Knoxville, there's more freedom to do your thing, and a hunger for fresh energy and ideas.

David Bowie riding the subway

The Thin White Duke turned 65 (I KNOW) yesterday, and Flavorwire has put together a slideshow of him doing normal stuff, just to prove he can. Here he is making use of public transportation, even though he could totally summon a shimmering gargoyle to fly him to wherever he's going. Going car-free: It's cool! David […]

Mosstika’s living graffiti is amazing

Street art isn't just gang tags -- it can revitalize and beautify urban spaces, increase community identity, and even be a form of nonviolent protest. The work of Edina Tokodi kind of does all of those, plus it's about as green as graffiti can be: Tokodi's studio Mosstika makes street art from living moss.

Ladies, here’s your new tough biker chick mascot

Have you been looking for a new role model for mixing biker-chick toughness with button-boots style? If you have, comics genius Kate Beaton has you covered, and if you haven't, now you know why you should have been. This badass velocipedestrienne (no, seriously, velocipedestrienne) is based on a 19th-century cartoon about "The Awful Effects of […]

Take off your pants and hop on transit

D.C. is having its annual No Pants Metro Ride this Sunday, to raise awareness of … public transit? Indecency laws? People's bottoms? (Actually, according to the Facebook page, they're just trying to raise awareness of how funny it is when 400 people are not wearing pants, but let's go with "public transit.") This will easily […]

The only defense of electric cars you really need

Maggie Koerth-Baker is one of the most responsible energy journalists on the planet, in part because she writes for the blog of all blogs, BoingBoing, which has never felt the need to cloak its writers' opinions in trumped-up objectivity and false balance. So it was refreshing to see her refute the latest turd lobbed over the wall by the internet's favorite tabloid, Gawker Media: "You Are Not Alone. America Hates Electric Cars.”

Fixies to the people! Building a business on no-frills bikes

Here's the formula: Take a bike, boil it down to the basics -- frame, wheels, pedals, seat, handlebars. Offer it online, cheap. Then stand back and watch people snatch them up.

The city, stripped down: How ruin porn can help rebuild the Rust Belt

Photo: BB and HHThis essay originally appeared in Rustwire. Living in the Rust Belt, one becomes accustomed to things that many people would find shocking. Examples: Not long ago, I saw the façade of an abandoned building fall out of itself on fire and into the street. Firemen and neighbors gathered around to look. Nobody […]