Climate Cities
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Who will bail out the McMansion developers?
If you think the economic downturn is bad for you, try being a developer of sprawly McMansion exurbs. Those dudes have it rough! Don’t miss this hilarious story from Kaid Benfield, director of NRDC’s smart growth program. So developer Gladstone Homes builds this development outside Chicago, in Plainfield, Ill., called Chatham Square, filled with McMansions […]
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Bus rapid transit in Paris
Here’s a video from Streetblogs about Mobilien, the excellent bus rapid transit (BRT) system in Paris that launched in 2004: In implementing the system, Paris eliminated a great deal of street parking. Quel horror!
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Vegas may serve as hopeful proving ground
This is a guest post by my travel partner, Todd Dwyer, head blogger for Dell’s ReGeneration.org. —– When you think of Las Vegas, a lot of things may come to mind, but sustainability probably isn’t one of them. The city is the fastest growing in the United States, and has built its reputation […]
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50 most sustainable cities
SustainLane’s annual ranking of the sustainability of America’s 50 largest cities is out. Grist is happy to be located in No. 3 overall, No. 2 in knowledge base, No. 2 in energy and climate change, No. 2 in green economy, and No. 3 in city innovation. There’s no margin in being No. 1 — draws […]
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Portland, Ore., tops sustainable-cities ranking
For the fourth year in a row, Portland, Ore., has been named the most sustainable of the 50 largest U.S. cities. The rankings by green org SustainLane, which take 16 economic and quality-of-life factors into consideration, “reveal which cities are increasingly self-sufficient, prepared for the unexpected, and taking steps toward preserving and enhancing their quality […]
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Severe erosion caused by Hurricane Ike may make many homes illegal
Hundreds of beach houses on the gulf coast of Texas may soon be declared illegal and seized under a state law that prohibits houses from being built (or remaining) between a beach’s high and low tide marks. Hurricane Ike’s 12-foot storm surge and 100-mile-per-hour winds severely eroded many Texas beaches and redrew the tide lines […]
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L.A. train collision dismays new riders
Speaking of trains, the horrific train wreck in L.A. last Friday came as ridership on the region’s rail network was on the rise, The New York Times reports. Los Angeles has long been known for its car-choked freeways. But after gas prices in California rose to more than $4.50 a gallon over the last several […]
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Permit me to ignore building codes
I know everyone’s in the throes of the Obama-McCain frenzy, but allow me to divert your attention to a minor ballot initiative in Oregon: Measure 63. Oh it’s fascinating, I assure you. Measure 63 is the last whimpering gasp of the property rights measures that originated in Oregon. Times change. It was just a few […]
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Let’s hear it for floor area ratio
There’s an interesting exchange going on between Kevin Drum and Matthew Yglesias regarding the reasons that some communities may or may not be walkable. It seems that the Woodbridge section of Irvine, where Kevin Drum lives, is quite walkable, but hardly anyone does it. Yglesias seems to feel that if an area is made fairly […]
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White roofs could help keep climate change at bay
This whole climate-change debacle could be significantly slowed down if the world’s 100 largest cities thing installed white roofs and more-reflective pavement, says a new study to be published in the journal Climatic Change. It may sound like greenwhitewashing, but physicist Hashem Akbari crunches the numbers: By bouncing heat away from the Earth, a 1,000-square-foot […]
