Climate Cities

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  • Towns invest in smarter streets … in Mississippi

    Two Mississippi towns want better options than auto-only streets, and now they’ve made it official. The towns of Tupelo (pop. 36,223) and Hernando (pop. 6,812) each passed Complete Streets legislation that ensures roads will be built and maintained for walkers, cyclists, and other forms of transportation—along with drivers. Yesterday St. Louis citizens voted to fund […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Cities

  • Understanding the allure of ‘drill baby drill’

    President Obama’s decision to expand offshore drilling leases seems to affirm the power that the “drill baby drill” battle cry holds in the American energy conversation. Turns out a short, simple, much-repeated slogan holds more currency than detailed policy arguments from clean-energy advocates. I want to tease out a connection between “drill baby drill” and […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Cities

  • New homes are cropping up in cities, not suburbs

    Today in conventional wisdom–busting news, we learn that grimy old cities are attracting more residential construction than the bright suburban frontier. Urban redevelopment is outpacing fringe sprawl by a solid margin, according to a new EPA study of the nation’s 50 largest metro areas. It’s a “fundamental shift in the real estate market,” says the […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Cities

  • Carbon neutral caution

    There’s been a lot of ambitious talk lately about carbon neutrality. It’s exciting stuff, but it’s worth pausing to consider just how huge that challenge is. And what, precisely, does it mean? Zero emissions, or lots of offsets?  I thought it was interesting to take a look at the climate action plan from the city […]

    Eric de Place Cities

  • We all know how bad it can be. How good can it be?

    A few reader comments worth highlighting from this story on envisioning a sustainable future: davefinnigan: We need a film, 2 hours in length, with a plot and story line, that shows the world in 2050 if we do what we know we should to solve environmental problems. Who could produce that? George Lucas, James Cameron? […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Cities

  • Your street is fat

    These California designers and their imaginations. Steve Price shows people what their towns might look like if they were rebuilt along Smart Growth principles. At Narrow Streets: Los Angeles, David Yoon takes comically overbuilt streets in L.A. and Photoshops them down to a human scale. Here’s his reinvention of Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park: On […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Cities

  • Demolishing density in Detroit

    Photo: Fast Company So it’s come to this: Unable to provide basic services for all of his constituents, Detroit mayor Dave Bing is drafting plans starve his city down to a manageable size. Using proprietary data and a survey released by Data Driven Detroit, Bing and his staff will pick “winners and losers” amongst the […]

    Fast Company Cities

  • Digital designer shows what future towns could look like

    [vodpod id=Video.16106617&w=425&h=350&fv=] Honolulu, HawaiiIllustrations courtesy Urban Advantage Imagine some ugly, underused street in your town, marked by drab buildings, wide streets, and forbidding expanses of parking lot. If you have to go here at all, chances are you’d prefer to drive. Now imagine it remade into a place where you’d actually want to walk or […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Cities

  • What Berkeley can teach us about taking clean energy programs to scale

    Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs, which allow private property owners to finance energy-efficiency and renewable-energy projects via their property taxes, has been taking off around the country. These programs are designed to spur private improvements to reduce our nation’s energy consumption, create green jobs, and lower energy bills. The first PACE program was announced […]

    Mimi Frusha Cities

  • Talking Vancouver and successful urbanism on the radio

    Photo courtesy BinoCanada via FlickrThere’s only so much to say about the Olympics and climate change. If you’re going to have the games, you’re going to have a lot of air-travel emissions (which account for more than half the climate impact of the Vancouver games). The city of Vancouver, on the other hand, presents a […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Cities