Climate Cities
All Stories
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Urban farms don’t make money — so what?
City Slicker Farms in West Oakland does more than just grow food for the local residents.(Bonnie Powell photo)Over on Earth Island Journal, Sena Christian has an excellent, rigorously reported article about the tough economics of urban farming. She focuses on some of the more famous city farms of the Bay Area, where EIJ is based […]
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10 ways cities and towns can kick the offshore-oil habit
With the Gulf oil spill continuing unabated, powering a 21st century economy on a 19th century fossil fuel looks less and less smart by the day. Luckily, we’ve got other options. I described the most promising steps the federal government could take toward reducing oil use in transportation systems last week. But local governments don’t […]
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Hidden health costs of transportation
Photo: BikePortland$142 billion in obesity-related health care costs and lost wages due to illness. As much as $80 billion in health care costs and premature death caused by air pollution from traffic. A whopping $180 billion from traffic crashes – lost wages, health care costs, property damage, travel delay, legal costs, pain and suffering … […]
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Parking lots to parks: Designing livable cities
Can you spot the public transportation in Tel Aviv’s car-centric city?Photo: david55king via FlickrAs I was being driven through Tel Aviv from my hotel to a conference center in 1998, I could not help but note the overwhelming presence of cars and parking lots. It was obvious that Tel Aviv, expanding from a small settlement […]
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Reclaiming the streets
Cars promise mobility, and in a largely rural setting they provide it. But in an urbanizing world, where more than half of us live in cities, there is an inherent conflict between the automobile and the city. After a point, as their numbers multiply, automobiles provide not mobility but immobility, as well as increased air […]
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David Brooks to old folks: cities are better now
David Brooks writes about the ’60s and ’70s crime wave that scared a generation of Americans–or a generation of white, mobile Americans–away from urban living: [P]eople in all classes lived in fear. “Mugging was nothing unusual. Everybody got mugged,” [John] Podhoretz writes. A serial killer nicknamed Charlie Chop-Off menaced the Upper West Side, emasculating little […]
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Living Buildings, Living Cities, and $125,000 up for grabs
$125,000 to play SimCity? Sort of. A new contest from the Cascadia Region Green Building Council is offering serious cash for the best visual renderings of an existing city transformed into a place that’s sustainable. Like, really sustainable. The Living City Design Competition is calling for: Photo-realistic three-dimensional modeling and renderings (a napkin sketch won’t […]
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Dmitry Orlov on why the U.S. is headed toward Soviet-style collapse
Dmitry Orlov“Really, there’s no one at the helm now,” Dmitry Orlov says nonchalantly. We are talking about the economic crisis and the way that the destructive system of our economy operates without anyone really leading it. It’s a perfect statement from a man who has traded in his house and car to live on a […]
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Away from the oil spill, signs of local progress
The Gulf oil spill story is too big to ignore right now. It’s a massive, toxic indictment of our dependency on fuels that fill our atmosphere with heat-trapping pollutants even when everything goes right. But there are other stories too big to ignore, including the story of people finding creative ways to escape the death […]
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14 buildings compete to be the Biggest Loser (of energy waste)
The EPA draws inspiration from The Biggest Loser in a new competition that pits 14 buildings against each other to see which can trim its energy usage the most. The National Building Competition is explicitly modeled after the weight-loss reality TV show, spotlighting structures that include a 23-story Manhattan office building, a San Diego Marriott […]
