Climate Cities
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The whopper of a conference starts today
This year’s Greenbuild Expo kicks off today, and I’m … not there. But I will be later this week! It looks to be both inspiring and overwhelming — check out the official program for an eye-blurring good time. In advance of the event, the U.S. Green Building Council put out the word that it expects […]
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To save themselves, the Big Three should become ‘transportmakers’
Irony of ironies, the one set of products that could save GM is the one that GM destroyed — the electric trolley systems of America. According to the well-known research of Bradford Snell, GM killed the electric trolley, because in 1922 they decided that the only way to increase car sales was to eliminate the […]
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Why bail out the car companies when they bailed out on us?
I have a new Salon article, “Is Detroit worth saving?” It is built around this piece, but I have expanded on the sad story of the Big Three Medium Two walking away from the development of hybrid gas-electric vehicles in the 1990s. I’ve been asked why I think they gave up on hybrids. The answer, […]
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Tolls reduce congestion, but they price people off the roadway
Brilliant. That’s the word that kept crossing my mind as I read this clearly written report [PDF] about the Puget Sound Regional Council’s study on using road tolls to fight congestion. The study found that a well-designed, comprehensive system of congestion-busting tolls could make a major dent in traffic backups in the Puget Sound. It […]
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Placemaking in the Cabinet
Excellent news: “White House to Establish Office of Urban Policy.”
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How design must change in a warming, oil-scarce world
This week I was able to attend a conference on urban planning hosted by the Penn Institute for Urban Research and the Rockefeller Foundation. Fifty years ago, the same entities had put together another urban conference, at which gathered names like Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford, intellectuals who shaped the design world’s thinking about cities […]
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Nation asks, won’t you choo-choo me home?
“There is an appetite for city-to-city rail. Why should we be different than any other country in the world? You go to Europe and you can’t get an airplane to a city less than 200 miles away.” — Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, commenting on rising national interest in passenger rail
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Scots give Donald Trump go-ahead to build giant golf course
The Scottish government has given Donald Trump the go-ahead to build two golf courses, a five-star hotel, and 500 luxury homes on an untouched stretch of Scotland’s coast. The development plans were originally nixed by the local council over concerns that the project will be, um, detrimental to fragile sand dunes and rare wildlife.
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NYC cabs don’t have to bump up fuel efficiency, judge rules
New York City cab drivers will not be forced to go green, as a federal judge on Friday smacked down a municipal plan to make all new taxis achieve at least 30 miles per gallon by 2012. U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty ruled that fuel-economy standards should be up to the feds, not cities.
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U.K. secretary: Economic downturn will not delay measures that could speed economy
“In order to stimulate Britain’s economic growth and support our position as a leading world economy it is essential that we make the right long-term investments in our transport infrastructure and that we plan for future growth, in a way which is consistent with reducing greenhouse gas emissions overall.” — U.K. Transport Secretary Geoff […]
