Los Angeles
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Your street is fat
These California designers and their imaginations. Steve Price shows people what their towns might look like if they were rebuilt along Smart Growth principles. At Narrow Streets: Los Angeles, David Yoon takes comically overbuilt streets in L.A. and Photoshops them down to a human scale. Here’s his reinvention of Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park: On […]
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Freeway in LA…for bikes?
Advocates in famously car-centric Los Angeles are advocating for a new freeway system. For bikes. The weather is great, the streets are gridlocked, and the city is flat-ish. No brainer.
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LADWP asks public for input on solar plans
When it comes to sustainability, Los Angeles has its work cut out for it. Sure, they are world leaders in recycling … if you count dialogue. Or plot lines. But it is going to take awhile for the famously car-centric city to develop climate-friendly transit, and the utility is the dirtiest in the state. So […]
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The 15 most sustainable U.S. cities
Seattle is the most sustainable big city in the nation, according to a list compiled by Smarter Cities, an NRDC project that looks at the progress American cities are making toward going green. Not surprisingly, San Francisco and Portland are the runners-up. Using data from the EPA and the U.S. Census Bureau, as well as […]
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The Informal Economy: Michael Jackson Edition
This article is part of a collaboration with Planetizen, the web’s leading resource for the urban planning, design, and development community. I couldn’t resist. I knew it was going to be a madhouse in downtown L.A. for Michael Jackson’s memorial service, but I had to go see what it was like — not because […]
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Fighting for the right to grow food in L.A.
South Central Farm activist Kati Lopez with armload of fresh corn leaves.Black Valley FilmsJust how much trouble can one community garden start? For starters, three years of court proceedings, two eviction notices, one assault charge, countless allegations of corruption, and $16 million worth of fundraising. Even with all the legal crap, the gardeners still had […]
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Failing grades issued for air quality in Seattle, other major cities
Photo: Peter Davis via FlickrIf Seattle were an 8th grader, she’d probably be grounded right now. And considering the poor scores the city received on its air quality report card (an F for ozone pollution and a C for particulates), it might not be a bad idea if we all stay inside for a while. […]
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For eSolar, clean energy starts with computing power
An overhead view of eSolar’s Sierra solar array, located in Southern California (Photo courtesy e-Solar) I’m sitting in the back of a black Lincoln Continental with eSolar CEO Bill Gross on the downward glide into Antelope Valley, a sun-blasted stretch of semi-suburbanized desert northeast of Los Angeles. We’re on our way to take a […]
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Drinking water: Toilet to tap — get used to it!
In the future, your drinking water is going to be recycled from your toilet — believe it. As the population grows and global warming drives desertification and the loss of the inland glaciers (see here), fresh water will become increasingly in short supply. As the AFP reported recently: Surging population growth, climate change, reckless irrigation […]
