Nov 21, 09
Search Results
Your search for URBAN DESIGN AND PLANNING returned 99 items:
Result pages: 1 2 3 10 >>
"Building Cities Shouldn't be a Partisan Issue"
by Sarah Goodyear Over the weekend, we came across an article from the Isthmus of Madison, Wisconsin, reporting on a conservative scaremongering campaign against a commuter rail proposal. It quotes a leader in the Wisconsin Republican Party painting transit-oriented development as a red menace: "This has been done before," Dane County Republican Party spokesman Bill Richardson said on a Madison radio show. "The Soviet Union and in East Berlin and all those places. They built these ... very...
Smart, Cheap Stormwater Fixes
By Lisa Stiffler Stormwater -- the rainwater that streams off roofs, parking lots, roads, and yards, carrying with it toxic pollutants -- poses a costly, intractable problem for governments and businesses. In Washington, efforts to control stormwater have cost its cities hundreds of millions of dollars. The problem with stormwater comes from its massive volume, which floods homes and blasts through streams, flushing salmon eggs, gravel, and everything else out to sea. And it comes from the...
Car-free cities: an idea with legs
Car-free neighbourhoods are no unrealistic utopia – they exist all over Europe by Steve Melia A quarter of households in Britain – more in the larger cities, and a majority in some inner cities – live without a car. Imagine how quality of life would improve for cyclists and everyone else if traffic were removed from areas where people could practically choose to live without cars. Does this sound unrealistic, utopian? Did you know many European cities are already doing it?Vauban in...
Wanted: Smart Workers for Smart Grid
Promise of a smart grid depend on trained workers. Early this week, President Obama gave a speech touting the $3.4 billion in grants the federal government has awarded to local companies, utilities and cities working to improve the country’s aging and outmoded electric energy grid. The awards will support “smart grid” technology that enables easier and more effective transmission of electricity from one region to another. One of the recipients is Pacific Northwest Generating...
Bringing Farms to the Heartland — of Suburbia
Image Caption: In St. Louis, some farming goes on right next to the airport by Sarah Goodyear Today on the Streetsblog Network, St. Louis Urban Workshop looks at the concept of "agriburbia" -- a way to bring some meaningful food production to suburban sprawl: [It's] basically the integration of agri-business and suburban development. The idea is introduced in three ways: introducing food gardens into yards of less than one acre, utilizing land awaiting the next economic boom...
Greenest Place in the U.S.? It's Not Where You Think.
By David Owen Green rankings in the U.S. don’t tell the full story about the places where the human footprint is lightest. If you really want the best environmental model, you need to look at the nation’s biggest — and greenest — metropolis: New York City. In 2007, Forbes picked Vermont as the greenest state, a choice consistent with conventional thinking about low-impact living. Vermont has an abundance of trees, farms, backyard compost heaps, and environmentally aware citizens,...
Suburbanization meets the Crises of Climate Change, Peaking Resources and the Great Recession
by Warren Karlenzig The unchecked trend of US exurbanization was one of the major factors setting off the beginning of the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, according to a new research paper published by the Post Carbon Institute investigating the relationship of sprawled, completely car-dependent communities to real estate risk as well as to climate change and ecosystems. Besides the inherent threats to climate change and dwindling resources, exurban development during the past...
Mobility as a Basic Human Right
by Sarah Goodyear Advocates of sustainable transportation are sometimes charged with elitism and criticized for being out of touch with the mainstream of America. A new exhibit of photographs showing in Los Angeles, "Without a Car in the World: 100 Car-Less Angelenos Tell Stories of Living in LA," graphically makes the point that the people who have the most to gain from effective public transportation and complete streets are hardly the elite. Stephen Box, author of the...
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Public Spaces
By Sarah Goodyear Today on the Streetsblog Network, Portlandize is talking about freedom -- the freedom to move about your community without fear, the liberty to make use of public spaces as a human being, not as the operator of a motor vehicle. It's a post that gets to the heart of the issues we talk about on our blogs every day of the week: [M]any cities have taken space that was the domain of people, just people, and have pushed them out of it, unless they are in automobiles... [M]uch...
Donald Shoup on San Francisco’s Groundbreaking Parking Meter Study
by Matthew Roth If you're interested in the power of parking policy to reduce congestion and make streets more livable, the most exciting place to be right now is San Francisco. For the past year and a half, the city has pursued an innovative slate of policies designed to manage parking supply wisely and deftly, thanks in part to a federal grant from the Urban Partnership program -- the same pot of money that New York City could have accessed if Albany had passed congestion pricing last...
Get good news for a change.
worldchanging was founded on the idea that real solutions already exist for building the future we want. it's just a matter of grabbing hold and getting moving.
About Worldchanging
Have an idea or know about a great new tool or solution? We want to know about it!
Suggest a Story
Submission Guidelines
Design:
Matt Chapman
Logo Design:
Egg
Hosting, Development, and Technical Management:
