built environment
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Good neighborhoods have lots of intersections
It’s a little counterintuitive, but it turns out that having lots of intersections is really important for neighborhood walkability and transit use. A new study on Travel and the Built Environment by planning scholars Reid Ewing and Robert Cervero finds that “intersection density” is the single most important measurement for understanding what keeps folks out […]
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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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Whether bikers should wait at red lights and more on transportation ethics
Biking around a fascinating city, pondering urban landscapes and human welfare, shaking fists at cabs in a goofy sort of way — what’s not to like? Streetsfilms talks transportation ethics with New York Times Magazine “The Ethicist” writer Randy Cohen while riding around NYC. He unpacks the ethics of riding through red lights and “salmoning” […]
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Eco-bricks made from pee take number one
This kid is pissing all over a good idea.Clav via Creative CommonsSometimes it feels like climate change has us all up against a brick wall. Then some innovator pisses all over those fears by cooking up a formula for eco-bricks that don’t need cooking — thus, saving millions of tons of CO2 each year. And […]
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White flight and the urban-suburban switcheroo
Suburban ChicagoCourtesy Scorpians and Centaurs via FlickrThe idea of racially diverse American cities ringed by mostly white suburbs is essentially flip-flopping, according to the Brookings Institution’s big new demographic report, “The State of Metropolitan America.” The report draws on 2002-2008 census data to find that young, educated whites are moving into cities in record numbers. […]
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Rock the house [VIDEO]
People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, so does that mean that people who live in stone houses shouldn’t throw glass? Guess we should ask Antón García-Abril and Ensamble Studio, who, according to Treehugger, have built La Trufa, or truffle, a small holiday house that looks like a big rock on the north […]
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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 […]
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Los Angeles without traffic—in pictures
Courtesy Tom BakerToday in happy urban eye candy (previous installations here and here), photographer Tom Baker gives us a look at what some Los Angeles thoroughfares would look like without traffic. Point being, L.A.’s built environment is one manner of placemaking — one that uses a lot of cement, takes up a lot of space, […]
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TED talk on building a greener house
Robotics engineer Catherine Mohr is tired of enviros “long on moral authority and short on data.” She’s got a smart TED talk clip about the greenest options for (a) wiping up a yogurt spill and (b) building a house. The point in each case is that the best option is often not what you’d expect. […]
