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  • Take Two Tickets to the City and Call Me in the Morning

    Suburban sprawl is bad for your health Not only is suburban sprawl bad for the environment — encouraging car use and overly large, energy-inefficient homes, paving paradise to put up a parking lot, etc. — but it’s bad for the folks who live there as well, according to a new study to be published in […]

    Grist staff Cities

  • If I Were Dictator … Oh, Wait, I Am!

    China establishes its first-ever fuel-efficiency standards for cars Attempting to combat its growing dependence on oil imports, China is set to establish fuel-efficiency standards for cars, SUVs, and vans for the first time. The standards are identical to those in a draft circulated last November, about which the auto industry strenuously complained, claiming they were […]

    Grist staff Cities

  • When You Wish Upon a Car

    Car-Free Day: A good idea, but not without its difficulties Yesterday was Car-Free Day. Couldn’t you tell? Some 1,500 municipalities, the vast majority in Europe, participated, but the idea hasn’t really caught on in the U.S., outside of a few scattered cities. Reading the European news does not give one great hope that it ever […]

    Grist staff Cities

  • Umbra on whether to leave the engine running

    Dear Umbra, I have a question that has been nagging me for a while, and I would really like to have it answered once and for all. You see, I deliver pizzas for a living right now, and so I make many frequent stops and starts at people’s houses during a shift. I always turn […]

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  • The Wicked Switch

    Automakers Rapped for Pollution From Mercury Switches With recent revelations that just about all freshwater fish in the U.S. are contaminated with mercury, concern over the heavy-metal pollutant has regulators carefully examining every source. The fourth largest, as it happens, is automobiles, specifically the mercury switches in auto lights and brakes. Last year a record […]

    Grist staff Cities

  • Sunflower Power

    Scientists Create Hydrogen Fuel from Sunflower Oil British scientists have discovered a way to power cars with sunflower oil. While biodiesel cars that directly burn cooking oil are fairly common, researcher Valerie Dupont and her colleagues have something else in mind, as they reported this week at an American Chemical Society conference. They’ve figured out […]

    Grist staff Cities

  • The Problem, My Friend, Is Blowin’ in the Wind

    Blowing Desert Dust Is Growing Environmental Problem Dust blowing up from the Sahara Desert has increased tenfold in the last 50 years and represents a growing environmental threat, warned Oxford geography professor Andrew Goudie today. And SUVs are at least partly to blame. The replacement of camels with four-wheel-drive vehicles such as Toyota Land Cruisers […]

    Grist staff Cities

  • Mort Utility Vehicles

    SUV Occupants More Likely to Die in Accidents You surely already know that SUVs pollute the air, contribute to global warming, boost demand for oil, and shackle our security and economic fate to volatile, politically regressive Middle Eastern states. You might even know that SUVs raise the total number of traffic fatalities and squash drivers […]

    Grist staff Cities

  • Just Yabba Dabba Do It

    Suzy Becker Cities

  • Ken You Dig It?

    London Mayor Considers Expanding Downtown Congestion Charging London Mayor Ken Livingstone boasts that the year-old, eight-square-mile pay zone in the center of the city — where motorists are charged $9.40 to enter between 7:00 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. on weekdays — has worked to reduce congestion and increase the use of public transportation. He promises […]

    Grist staff Cities