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walk score
New housing forecast mostly good for walkable communities
The housing price recovery has begun, says a new report from The Demand Institute, a think tank recently launched by Nielson and The Conference Board to track consumer demand. Among the findings that are promising for more sustainable development patterns, the strongest segment of the market “comprises populous urban or semi...[read more]
America's best cities for public transportation
Which are the best US cities for those who need or prefer to use public transportation? New York, San Francisco, Boston, Washington, and Philadelphia – in that order – according to the terrific organization Walk Score, whose range of services offered to the public just keeps getting better and better.Today, Walk Score is...[read more]
A High-Tech Corporate Giant Strengthens a Walkable, Transit-Accessible Neighborhood
Despite being all-in with blogging and social media, I’ll confess to some ambivalence toward electronic media that displace bricks-and-mortar retail experiences. Whether it’s Apple’s iTunes dealing the final death blow to music stores or Amazon’s retail ubiquity finishing off bookstores, I find myself wondering whether it’s all worth it.[read more]
Best US Cities for Living Car-Free? None of the Above, Really
Earlier this week, a story began making the rounds about the ten best metro areas in which to live without a car. The winners include some of the usual suspects: San Francisco, Portland, New York City, Honolulu, Seattle, San Jose (?), Denver, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, and Boston. The original article was...[read more]
Walk Score is Pure Genius
The popular online neighborhood-rating tool Walk Score is pure genius. It takes a simple (if also sometimes hard to measure accurately) concept – proximity to conveniences within walking distance – and turns it into a measure that can be rated on a 100-point scale. My house gets a “very walkable” 75; my downtown...[read more]
Walk Score incorporates transit, real estate industry takes note
Walk Score keeps getting better, and it was already very good. With assistance from the Rockefeller Foundation, the locational rating system has now incorporated transit service data from 40 metro regions into its service, so that its maps reflect this key measure of urbanity. In the past, this had been one of the few...[read more]
Smarter Transportation: 10 Social Media Tools to Navigate Your City
There’s no question that social media has brought us a lot closer by allowing anyone to communicate in virtual settings with people all over the world. But social media tools are also helping us to hack the way we interact with the real world. From figuring out the best route to get from point A to point B to helping people...[read more]
Sustainable Cities Collective
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“I agree I think that the nature of human interaction and involvement depends on the nature of the actual facility itself. Getting people in and around fossil fuel burning power plants is seen as a security risk, but that still leaves many components of our infrastructure that could benefit from being noticed (and that citizens could benefit from noticing). I think of examples like John ...”
“I thinks it's provocative. In Florida, we were given tours of muncipal water treatment facilities as children, less so access to energy facilities. There is a cogeneration facility at MIT that sits comfortably in the urban context, as thousands pass by daily. But I'm always concerned that critical systems and humans should not mix for the most part. Educational programs may make the same point ...”