Climate Cities

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  • Is public transportation scary for women?

    This article is part of a collaboration with Planetizen, the web’s leading resource for the urban planning, design, and development community. Transit agencies are failing to bring women into the planning process, according to a new report from the Mineta Transportation Institute. I talked with UCLA’s Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, author of the study, about what she […]

    Tim Halbur Cities

  • Want to green the Olympics? Stop moving them around

    Photo courtesy BinoCanada via FlickrFor all the efforts to minimize the impact of the Olympics, one big solution never gets taken seriously. So much of the environmental and financial cost of the games comes from cities trying to build facilities that suit both a massive, two-week influx of athletes and spectators and also the long-term […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Cities

  • The 10 greenest and brownest things about Vancouver

    Courtesy Ecstaticist via FlickrAll eyes are on are Vancouver this month — not just on the Olympics, but on the city itself.  Is the world’s biggest athletic circus making the city a better place to live in the long term?  A worse one?  Or is it just putting the global spotlight on strengths and weaknesses […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Cities

  • Smart Growth even makes snowstorms better

    Mixed land use is a tenet of Smart Growth development that has a lot of virtues. But the name is boring and not very descriptive. Here’s Matt Yglesias describing what it’s like to live in a mixed-use D.C. neighborhood: The building where I live turns out to be a really good place to pass a […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Cities

  • The little solar that could

    I spotted a rare critter on the streets of San Francisco this week — a smiling, optimistic businessperson. Then again, Ron Kenedi is in the solar panel business.  “The big news as I see it is the demand — demand keeps growing everywhere,” says Kenedi, vice president of Sharp Solar, the renewable energy arm of […]

    Todd Woody Cities

  • Freeway in LA…for bikes?

    Advocates in famously car-centric Los Angeles are advocating for a new freeway system.  For bikes. The weather is great, the streets are gridlocked, and the city is flat-ish.  No brainer.

    Adam Browning Cities

  • Cities get rebuilt more often than you think

    When I hear folks like Alex Steffen talk about “remaking cities,” my gut reaction is that U.S. cities seem mostly permanent, like they’re already built and we’re stuck with them. (Quick reminder: The world’s cities cause 75 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions, according to several measures.) But then there’s this new slideshow at Slate, […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Cities

  • On neighbors & the speed of plasterers

    On the wall of many offices of the Fund for Public Interest Research, a spinoff outfit of the state PIRGs which dominates the market for progressive door-to-door and telephone canvasses, there is a framed piece of paper in which I take inordinate pride. It is a blurry copy of a thirty year old mimeographed crew […]

    Ken Ward Cities

  • Dispatches from the Phoenix Green Building Conference

    Recently, an interior designer and massage therapist named Becky Anderson helped me certify an Aspen Skiing Company building (Sam’s Restaurant) to LEED Gold. As a reward for her remarkable work, we sent her to the U.S. Green Building Council’s enormous, happening-like, and increasingly burning-man scale annual conference, which took place in Phoenix this fall and […]

    Auden Schendler Cities

  • How cities can foster demand for electric cars

    When Tesla Motors opened its new showroom in Boulder, it did so in style. Hosting an invitation-only party, the automaker brought out a lively group of local politicians, environmentalists and entrepreneurs for a night of martinis, music and test-drives of the Tesla Roadster. A Tesla Roadster on display at the electric vehicle maker’s new store […]

    Ben Holland Cities