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San Francisco

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    Guerilla Grafters make ornamental plants bear fruit

    Duck and cover, it's a drive-by fruiting! Guerilla Grafters stick fruit-bearing limbs onto San Francisco's ornamental trees, making city streets into food-producing mini-orchards. (Grafting has been standard practice with fruit trees since basically forever, so there's nothing Frankenfoody about this.) It's not technically legal — the city discourages planting fruit trees, because of worries that […]

    Jess Zimmerman Agriculture

  • Dr. Dirt: Street artist scrubs images into the urban landscape

    Photo: c/o MooseStreet artist Moose Benjamin Curtis was having some difficulty with the police. The officers had just arrested him for creating designs on a wall in South London. But it was complicated — as things often are when Moose is involved. You see, Moose doesn’t use spray paint or wallpaper paste — the usual […]

    Greg Hanscom Cities

  • Perception vs. reality in 'bike-friendly' San Francisco

    The city's four-year injunction on developing new bike infrastructure has finally been lifted, but will San Francisco be able to make up for lost time?

    Elly Blue Transportation

  • Critical List: Bachmann goes after Pawlenty on cap-and-trade; a bubble shield for wind turbines

    At last night's Republican debate, Michelle Bachmann tried to stake Tim Pawlenty on his support for cap-and-trade.

    The EPA wised up and banned DuPont from selling Imprelis, the herbicide that was killing trees.

    San Francisco could require businesses to let bikers bring their ride inside.

    Sarah Laskow Transportation

  • Three farms, one dinner [VIDEO]

    Join in on an after-hours dinner party with Samin Nosrat of Tartine Bakery showcasing the best local ingredients Bay Area farms have to offer.

    Daniel Klein Food

  • Top 10 greenest cities in North America

    It seems like we get a new list of greenest, most climate-change-prepared, most bike-friendly etc. cities every week or so. But we never really get tired of looking at these rankings, and checking them against each other to decide where we should fantasize about moving. Today, it's a list of the top greenest cities in North America from Siemens and the Economist Intelligence Unit. This ranking takes into account carbon emissions, land use, transportation, energy usage, buildings, water and air quality, waste, and environmental governance.

    Drumroll please for the top 10:

    Jess Zimmerman Cities

  • Half of the Bay Area's litter comes from fast food

    Fast food is already a lot like pollution -- it's bad for you, but it's more convenient than the alternative, so it's really really hard to get rid of. Also it shows up frequently on the sides of highways. Now, environmental nonprofit Clean Water Action has found that, at least in the San Francisco Bay area, these two dirty birds flock together. More than half of the litter in the four cities the group studied came from convenience foods at McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Starbucks, and 7-11.

    Jess Zimmerman Health

  • How to build a better playground

    This story was written by Shanti Menon. In her new book Asphalt to Ecosystems: Design Ideas for Schoolyard Transformation, Berkeley-based environmental planner Sharon Danks explores the ways in which landscape design, architecture, child development, and nutrition converge in the schoolyard. OnEarth sat down with Danks, whose firm, Bay Tree Designs, Inc, is helping redevelop some […]

    OnEarth Culture

  • The man who thinks Manhattan isn’t dense enough

    New York City may not be the best example of a place that hasn’t lived up to its potential for greater density.Photo: Randy von LiskiCross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council. New York County, which comprises all of Manhattan, is the densest county in America at 71,166 people per square mile. It is twice as […]

    Kaid Benfield Buildings