cities

Seeing cities as the environmental solution, not the problem

The best way to save wilderness is through strong, compact, beautiful communities that are more urban and do not encroach on places of natural value.

Trade your house for a pet dinosaur

T-rex courtesy of Ryan North

Here's what the new post-crash barter economy looks like: People are trading housing for dinosaur services.

From Vancouver Craigslist:

Do you own more than one property? Do you have so many rental homes with no mortgage payments, yet you still feel unfulfilled? Tired of your illegal tenants whining that there are rats in the walls? Have you always wanted your own dinosaur? Now is your chance my friend.

PhillyTreeMap: Crowdsourcing the urban forest

PhillyTreeMap, an open-source mapping system, helps Philadelphia keep track of an urban treasure -- its trees.

A pop-up urban experiment: The BMW Guggenheim Lab

On Houston Street in New York, the BMW Guggenheim Lab hopes to incubate ideas and solutions for the modern urban world. What will come of it?

Swedish mining company could move an entire town to get at valuable iron ore

The town of Kiruna, Sweden, is very cold, very close to that awesome ice hotel, and very much on top of a valuable lode of iron ore. The Swedish state-owned mining company, LKAB, wants to get at the ore by fracturing that portion of the ground, which wouldn't be so great for the people who live on it. Solution: Make the people live somewhere else. A large portion of the city is being entirely relocated so that mining companies can get in underneath.

Bank of America is now paying to tear down foreclosed homes

Bank of America is paying for the demolition of some foreclosures in Cleveland, Chicago, and Detroit. Could this help these cities to find new life?

New site shows how far public transportation will take you

Mapnificent lets you see how far you can get on public transportation in a set amont of time, in more than 60 metro areas worldwide. (Above: 15 minutes on bus and rail in Chicago.) It's a new way of visualizing how easy it is to navigate a city without a car. You can use it to check out places where you might want to live or visit, to get an idea of how far transportation will get you and how much of your day it might take up to get where you need to go.

Here's what 15 minutes looks like in a few more cities:

The end of Borders and the importance of 'third places' in the city

The liquidation of Borders bookstores in cities raises the question of how to preserve the social value of spaces that are now prime real estate.

How smart growth in cities saves wilderness [VIDEO]

The relationship between smart urban development and rural conservation is a mutually beneficial one.