suburbs
-
The drugstore chains that ate America’s suburbs [VIDEO]
What is the fabric of the modern American community? Well, a big part of it consists of an endless parade of chain drugstores selling the kind of stuff chain drugstores sell (including booze!). That’s the landscape that Chris Weagel shows us from his hometown of St. Clair Shores, Mich. It is also a landscape that […]
-
Does sprawl development drive away talented professional people?
Troy, Michigan: can this place be saved?Photo: Wayne Senville, Planning Commissioners JournalThere’s a great discussion going on at the indispensable blog about the industrial Midwest, RustWire.com. It was prompted by their posting last week of a letter from Andrew Basile, Jr., the CEO of a legal firm with offices in Troy, Mich., entitled “Why our […]
-
Edward Glaeser: Tea Party-style libertarianism could be good for our cities
Cities: Land of the free, home of the brave.Photo: Thomas HawkWhen I talked with economist Edward Glaeser last month about his new book Triumph of the City, he touched briefly on the idea that Tea Party activists, rather than being natural adversaries of city-dwellers, are actually natural allies — if only unwittingly. Here’s what he […]
-
James Howard Kunstler: The old American dream is a nightmare
Photo: Charlie SamuelsThe Great Depression gave rise to hobos and Hoovervilles. The Roaring Nineties brought us what New York Times columnist David Brooks termed “bobos in paradise.” Now our current round of layoffs and foreclosures has unceremoniously transferred millions of folks from the “affluent” to the “afflicted” category, exiling them from Brooks’s mythical exurban Eden. […]
-
Hit by cars, pedestrians are ticketed in hospital [VIDEO]
Imagine that you get hit by a car when you’re trying to cross a busy road in a place where you can’t even see the nearest crosswalk. You’re airlifted to a hospital for treatment of your injuries. And before you leave, you get a traffic ticket. Yes, that really happened. You can hear people talk […]
-
Peter Calthorpe on why urbanism is the cheapest, smartest way to fight climate change
Peter Calthorpe.Cities may be the trendy topic du jour, but Peter Calthorpe has been talking about the benefits of urbanism since the 1970s. In 1993, he was one of the founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism, an influential national organization that promotes walkable, mixed-use, transit-rich development. Now Calthorpe has come out with a […]
-
New evidence cities rule and suburbs drool
Suck it, Thoreau: Looks like big cities are the way to go if you’re looking to lower your environmental impact. According to a new study published in the journal Environment and Urbanization, carbon emissions in cities are lower than in the car-dependent burbs. Okay, so you’ll still come out ahead if you live in an […]
-
Residents of award-winning transit-oriented development say no to transit
Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council. Photo: thecourtyard So much for the widely-touted concept of “transit-ready” development. The residents of an acclaimed New Urbanist village built around planned light rail (or bus rapid transit) stops have decided that they don’t actually want the transit their community was designed for. So let’s be more careful […]
-
A talk with economist Edward Glaeser: Why America needs to love its cities more
Edward Glaeser.“If ideas are the currency of our age, then building the right homes for those ideas will determine our collective fate.” That’s what Harvard economist and New York Times columnist Edward Glaeser writes in his new book, Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier. And […]