Climate Cities
All Stories
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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.
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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.”
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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.
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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 […]
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Barbie gets a bike, and knees to ride it with
Barbie’s finally got an awesome set of wheels to go with that solar-powered dream house. The good folks at the One Speed Go blog in Phoenix recently tipped us off to the Barbie Glam Bike, a sparkly pink beach cruiser with matching fenders and chain guard. What’s more remarkable, though, is the accompanying doll, who sports […]
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10 bicycling myths debunked
These gents are putting the lie to myth No. 4 in a big way.Photo: Donna RutherfordHere at Grist, we are all about accuracy. So when it comes to bicycling, the pastime that can solve all of America’s most pressing problems (well, most of them — see, accuracy!), we’re like heat-seeking missiles in search of myths […]
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Bikestravaganza: Grist’s top bike stories of 2011
Photo: John Monoogian IIII spent the day yesterday digging through 18 — count ’em, 18 — pages of search results in a quest to find Grist’s Overarching Narrative of the Bike in 2011. I laughed. I cried. I almost blew tea on my laptop. Then I biked home on streets that were blissfully bereft of […]
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New York City to test electric taxis
Within a few months, it will be possible to step out onto a New York City street corner and hail a Nissan Leaf. The city's starting a pilot program to see how the cars fare as taxis, and exploring the possibility of an all-electric fleet. But EV enthusiasts shouldn't get too excited yet. Nor should […]
