Climate Cities
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KQED takes a look at California’s high-speed rail ballot measure
Great look at California’s Proposition 1A: The mind-boggling myopia it takes to call something like this an “extravagance” mystifies me. When did we get so hinky about investing in our future? I will bet anyone $100 right now that ridership on this train, if it is built, exceeds the most optimistic assessments. I’ll bet another […]
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And they’re super bad
Seoul is planning 129 miles of bike paths in the next four years. “We will make sure that bicycles will compete with vehicles for commuting in Seoul,” says mayor Oh Se-Hoon. Sweet.
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Green group catalogs world’s 10 worst pollution problems
The world’s worst pollution problems kill millions of people each year and sicken hundreds of millions of others, mostly in developing countries, according to a new report from green group Blacksmith Institute. For the past few years, the group has ranked the world’s top 10 most-polluted sites in order to focus global attention and fuel […]
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Town forests gaining popularity
Living in Switzerland after college, I was amazed by the way communities both revered and used the landscape. Every facet of efficiency was enthusiastically explored, small farms abounded (growing grains on plots as small as an acre or less), and mountain trails were thick with orchids, green woodpeckers, and bell-toting cows. But my favorite thing […]
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EPA not great at regulating stormwater pollution, says report
Stormwater pollution from cities and suburbs is fouling the nation’s waterways, and the U.S. EPA is failing to do much about it, says a new National Academy of Sciences report commissioned by the EPA itself. Rain and melted snow run along paved surfaces — which show up more and more frequently these days — picking […]
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The Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s HQ is green and gorgeous
Todd and I arrived early at our first D.C.-area appointment, so we wandered down a path leading out of the parking lot (where our Prius was in a “hybrid only” priority spot) and, to our delight, ended up on a sandy beach along the Chesapeake Bay. Shedding our shoes and any stress we might have […]
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Chicago’s City Hall is growing green
This is a guest post from my travel partner, Todd Dwyer, head blogger for Dell’s ReGeneration.org. —– Even as Sarah and I ran frantically down LaSalle Street in downtown Chicago in a desperate attempt to make it to our appointment with the Mayor’s office in time, it was apparent that there was something different about […]
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Houston joins Los Angeles in having ‘severe’ smog problem
Houston has received the dubious honor of becoming the second U.S. city to have a “severe” smog problem, as classified by the U.S. EPA. Los Angeles is its partner in grime. The downgrade from a “moderate” to “severe” smog problem gives Texas’ largest city nine extra years to meet federal air-quality standards. Both Houston and […]
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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!
