japan posts, articles, and infographics | Sustainable Cities Collective

Japan's Green Renewal? After the Disaster's UN Tour

March 7, 2012 by Warren Karlenzig
with 112 views

I've returned from a sobering United Nations-led tour of six tsunami-damaged communities and two radiation-impacted cities in Northern Japan. The obvious conclusion: the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident is forcing Japan to go green, including the launch of a new renewable energy national feed-in tariff that starts in July. ... [read more]

California’s Population Problem?

January 31, 2012 by Patrick Lydon
with 194 views

Is reducing the population really the solution to solving the California's multiple crises? Patrick Lydon takes a look. [read more]

Government Inquiry: Why Rail Costs So Much in Sydney

December 12, 2011 by Sustaining Sydney
with 79 views

Photo by USACEpublicaffairs On 6 December, the New South Wales Parliament held its second day of hearings for an inquiry into the cost of rail construction in Sydney. The inquiry was called because of a general perception that rail costing is too high here compared to other cities in Australia and around the world.... [read more]

Local Talent: How Cities Can Survive Demographic Outflow

November 15, 2011 by Jim Russell
with 94 views

Imagine a train wreck in slow motion. Really slow motion, stretched out over half of a century. That is the best way to describe the plight of the Rust Belt. City-regions deny the inevitable. Steel will come back, some day. Blame NAFTA. Bust the unions. Scapegoats and silver bullets abound. People develop, not places:Unlike an earthquake... [read more]

Japanese Architecture Takes Green Roofs to a Whole New Level – Literally

October 19, 2011 by This Big City
with 298 views

This post is written by Claire Baylis at Green Futures. If you require a little inspiration of the green roof kind, stop ogling the neighbour’s sedum-topped shed and start Google Earthing the ACROS building in Fukuoka, Japan, instead. While the ‘elegant urban façade’ of the building’s northern face has a formal entrance opening out... [read more]

Recession, or Demographics?

August 22, 2011 by Jim Russell
with 195 views

Financial Times is worried about the Japanization of the West. The article is about two decades of sluggish (if any) economic growth and too much debt. The laundry list of problems:Andrew Milligan, head of global strategy at Standard Life Investments in Edinburgh, points to eight characteristics he feels contributed to Japan’s inexorable... [read more]

Trains On Your Schedule

July 1, 2011 by Next American City
with 82 views

Getting around in cities all over the world has remained relatively the same over the last half a century: we get picked up by buses or subway cars and, after a few stops and the inevitable delay, we disembark and step onto well-stamped concrete or pavement. The evolution of public transportation -outside of the meteoric rise of information technology- has been a boring, straight line, but the systems themselves, those systems cannot be reduced to linear conclusions. [read more]

Electric Car Infrastructure Developments Highlight Potential for EVs in the America

April 22, 2011 by ECPA Urban Planning
with 295 views

A ChargePoint(R) EV charging station in Oregon (Image Credit: WikiMedia Commons User M.O. Stevens)On Wednesday, the first quick-charging station for electric vehicles Latin America opened in Santiago, Chile, the Wall Street Journal reported. The station, which can charge electric cars to 80% capacity in 30 minutes, is housed in one of... [read more]

Saving electricity in a hurry

April 8, 2011 by Rodrigo Herrera Vegas
with 187 views

This is the title under which a book was released by the International Energy Agency and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in 2005. The book describes why temporary shortages of electricity supplies occur even in the wealthiest countries with the most sophisticated electricity networks. Most shortages are... [read more]

A Country Divided: Japan's Electric Bottleneck

March 26, 2011 by David Levinson
with 86 views

From NPR Blackouts That Could Continue For Years ... The problem is these rolling blackouts could continue for many months -- even years. "This is a real problem for those factories which need uninterrupted supplies," says professor Tatsuo Hatta, president of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. He says the... [read more]

Learning from Japan

March 15, 2011 by Warren Karlenzig
with 99 views

Hourly Japan 's tragedy grows almost beyond comprehension. (3/16 Update: The head of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission said this afternoon that releases of radiation at Fukushima have been "extremely high" and that "could impact the ability to take corrective measures.") There is universal empathy over the pain and suffering being... [read more]

Commuters Rely on Bicycles in Aftermath of Japan’s Earthquake

March 14, 2011 by TheCityFix - produced by EMBARQ
with 878 views

A bicycle serves as a convenient, affordable and reliable method of transportation in the aftermath of Japan's tragic earthquake. Photo via Associated Press. In the outcome of Japan’s 8.9-magnitude earthquake and consequent tsunami, commuters relied on bicycles for quick and reliable transportation. Damaged roads remained in gridlock,... [read more]