seattle

There are plenty of ways to go green and promote sustainable living in your home and community. Beyond simply rolling out the recycle bin to the curb and making eco-chic clutches out of Capri Sun pouches. Here’s a quick trip around the globe, looking at three sustainable cities on the rise and what they’re doing to be friendly to the earth.[read more]

neelsky/Shutterstock

While communities in the United States have always differed from one another, with some hubs of wealth and others hubs of working-class families, the economic distance from top to bottom today has never been larger. 'Winner' cities like New York or Seattle tend to become stronger, while 'loser' cities like Albuquerque lose even more ground.[read more]

The western world is getting fatter.  It’s hard to ignore the spiralling rates of obesity in developed countries such as the UK and US, where more than one in four of us is now clinically obese.  But perhaps even more alarming is the speed at which our children are becoming dangerously fat.  More than one-third of children...[read more]

An interesting little story in the China Daily a few days ago caught our attention.  It was about Seattle and Chongqing (whose name is written in Mandarin in the image in this posting).  These are sister cities.  You can read about the relationship between Seattle and Chongqing – which began in 1983 – here.But back to our...[read more]

“No matter the cost of gas we need to get to work and each minute shaved off the commute is a minute-golden and fat and glowing- added to our real lives, the life that begins after work, at home, in the bars and restaurants, with the children and the bills and the dog.” T. C. Boyle, The New York Times.My ideal self-narrative goes like...[read more]

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]

This is a piece I wrote to promote intersection repairs in my neighborhood in Seattle and to expose intersection repairs to a broader audience. Intersection repairs increases community building and can have an effect on neighborhood safety.[read more]

The growing interest in compact neighborhoods, walkability and all things connected to sustainable living has brought a new vision of urbanity. From a personal standpoint I am no longer looked at wide-eyed and with pity when I say I grew up in a city without a car, but with something closer to admiration. For example here in the Puget...[read more]

Density is not livability, and livability is more than shops and cafes. Livability is a complex issue. One man’s livability may be another man’s claustrophobia.[read more]

Photo by paukrus via Flickr

For talent migration, tolerance doesn't matter. The idea that London is a winner in the vote-with-feet competition because of its cosmopolitan disposition is amusing. No city is immune to parochial attitudes:But London in 2012, like most other global cities, is in significant flux, much less beholden to sepia-tinged notions of what it...[read more]

A growing trend in Seattle’s multi-family housing market is the construction of town-houses.  Whether loved or hated, town-houses have become more prevalent throughout Seattle’s neighborhoods in the last five to eight years, aiding the city in its important goal of increasing density within residential neighborhoods.  Many...[read more]

Do you ever wander your city and dream about restoring it's old parts? Then this beautiful piece by Chuck Wolfe is for you.[read more]