sustainable development posts, articles, and infographics

ProMetro: How The Shanghai Manual Will Accelerate Megacity Sustainability

October 26, 2011 by Amelia Timbers
with 404 views

Welcome to ProMetro! ProMetro is Sustainable Cities' new podcast series where we interview members of our esteemed Advisory Board on current cities and urban issues-- SCC's version of 'Fireside Chats'.The first of these talks is with board member Warren Karlenzig, founder and president of CommonCurrent, a consulting firm that works... [read more]

Beyond Sprawl: Creating Self-Contained Neighborhoods

January 5, 2011 by Next American City
with 991 views

A rendering of Dockside, in British Columbia Credit: Busby, Perkins + WillLook at many large North American cities and you see a sea of suburban houses. Sprawl has become the norm. But it is costly, damages the environment and affects quality of life. A new generation of planners and architects is beginning to look at sustainable, human-... [read more]

London 2012 Olympics: Missing an Opportunity for Truly Sustainable Development

June 29, 2010 by This Big City
with 1,162 views

This is an abridged version of a post originally written for The Global Urbanist and published June 22nd. For a more in-depth analysis, read the full version here. Throughout London there is talk of ‘regeneration’ - a buzz-word spun by building firms and government organisations attempting to persuade local communities that their area... [read more]

Chief: Go Green

June 23, 2010 by Rich Maltzman
with 824 views

According to today’s Portsmouth Herald, in an article by Rich Beuchesne headlined “Chief: Go Green”, Chief Almir Narayamoga Surui, of the Surui tribe indigenous to the Amazon Rain Forest, is on a high tech quest to help stop climate change and global warming by protecting the rain forest. “A green economy, we believe, can bring... [read more]

A Green Party Voice in Westminster

May 14, 2010 by Ceri Margerison
with 276 views

The Green Party recently won its first set in Westminster when Caroline Lucas, Green Party MEP for the South East was elected with a majority of just over 1200 votes in the Brighton Pavilion constituency. Ms Lucas highlighted her party’s policy priorities in a recent press release, which included “responding to climate change with a... [read more]

LEED for Neighborhood Development formally launches to promote smart, sustainable land use

April 29, 2010 by Kaid Benfield
with 655 views

The country’s first comprehensive system for defining, measuring, and certifying smart growth is now fully open for business. Today, the three founding partners of LEED for Neighborhood Development – NRDC, the Congress for the New Urbanism, and the US Green Building Council – are announcing the national launch of the program at... [read more]

LA’s Eco-Village: a venture in intentional community and sustainability

April 27, 2010 by Kaid Benfield
with 844 views

Los Angeles’s Eco-Village is a two-block, 11-acre community dedicated to intentional, ‘whole-systems’ sustainable living in the heart of the city. Its area eccompasses about 500 residents in the city’s East Hollywood and Koreatown special planning districts. From what one can see on the... [read more]

A Missed Opportunity in Bangalore's NeoTown

March 18, 2010 by Will Gorman
with 1,785 views

With a booming economy and population, Bangalore suffers from high air pollution and a lack of clean drinking water. So, why did Andy Fisher Workshop (AFW) design NeoTown with no green roofs? Who knows? As reported in World Architecture News, NeoTown is supposed to be, "...a blueprint for future sustainable developments by Patel... [read more]

What makes Cleveland a Next American City?

March 16, 2010 by Marc Lefkowitz
with 290 views

It was an honor to write about Cleveland’s growing land-based, self-help economy in “Cleveland’s Comeback: ReImagining the city from the ground up,” a feature in the spring issue of Next American City, a national magazine. The experience confirmed for me that Cleveland is truly on the vanguard, at least in the Rust Belt, for tweaking... [read more]

City and River Pt. II: TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!

March 4, 2010 by Andrew Faulkner
with 365 views

This is Part II of a series advocating for the reconnection of Saint Louis and the Mississippi River. I have already examined the importance of the Mississippi River to the identity of the City of Saint Louis. But why is this historical identity important? Identity is important because it is the one inducement Saint Louis currently... [read more]

Small House Movement in the News

February 25, 2010 by Jared Volpe
with 406 views

The Small House Movement is in the news again. KXAN recently featured a story about “Tiny houses (that) stress reuse and energy efficiency.” Will recession and foreclosures in the news, even the mainstream media is starting to ask: “what if the homeowners had bought small houses instead?” Granted, they would have had to make do... [read more]

Denver’s Living City Block green model

February 24, 2010 by Neil Takemoto
with 682 views

If a cell is defined as the smallest structural and functional unit of an organism, if a building were an organism, its rooms would probably be its cells (‘cellula’ is Latin for a small room). For a city though, it may be more helpful to associate cells with its blocks, fitting perhaps since a cell is often described as the building... [read more]