Technology

Yes, you read it here first, driving can save fuel. Well, not just any sort of driving- Road trains, autonomous vehicles, and all manner of driver assist options will soon make commutes somewhat more efficient, and certainly less exhausting.[read more]

Our health is closely linked to the wellbeing of the natural resources we draw on day-to-day: the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat… It’s no big surprise, then, that lifestyle choices that are good for the environment are often good for our health, too. Commuting by bike or on foot will cut carbon, local air pollution...[read more]

  This great little video, produced by ITDP Mexico, simplifies and explains induced travel demaind about as well as I've ever seen.  Fast moving and fun.  Props to Streetsblog for tweeting it:  Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment.  For more posts, see his...[read more]

It’s said that technology is “making the world smaller,” and while that may be true, the world’s cities are growing at an astonishing rate.By the year 2050, nearly 75% of the world’s population will reside in urban areas, and trends show that staggering population growth will impact cities on a global scale. The most significant of this...[read more]

I find the emergence of the short, highly accessible video - on sites such as YouTube and Vimeo - to be one of the great developments in communications and social media over the last decade. Here are some of my favorites.[read more]

When you look up at the night sky, what do you see? If you’re reading this post from a city, chances are you don’t see very much. Whereas more than half of the UK enjoyed truly dark sky in the 1950s, only 10% do today. And it’s a similar situation across the urbanised world. The culprit? Light pollution from poorly designed and excessive...[read more]

Australia, like pretty much every other country, is facing some pressing sustainability issues. Check out how they're using new technologies to make their buildings greener![read more]

Topographic map from "Old Moscow Inventory 2011." A group of students from the Moscow Architectural Institute recently completed an "inventory" of the Russian capital using public data and Google Earth. They focused primarily on the territory beyond the historic center, explaining that it makes up 90.4 percent of Moscow's area and...[read more]

photo by d4yw41k3rYou may not realize it, but the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transit District has an effective monopoly* on travel to San Francisco from Marin.  If you take transit, of course, you’re using GGT, but if even if you drive you have a toll to pay.  This gives the district enormous market power to influence the...[read more]

Every city has at least a few streets where you won’t feel completely safe from crime. This might be due to several factors, such as the time of day, who you’re with or the reputation of the area. Research has shown that ‘fear of crime’ affects urban walkability, but now a new project has shown that the reverse may also be true...[read more]

When you think of Open Data, you might imagine hackers secretly scratching around on computer systems, finding government data to release to the world. Certainly many advocates of open data are civic activists concerned about government accountability, but most gather data that is publicly available.They tend to focus on things like how...[read more]

It’s like your front room, but with pigeons and no chance of fighting over the remote. Welcome to the new world of telly-dominated public spaces.Waiting for the gift of sound and vision. Picture by PaulShBig screens have been popping up all over the UK recently. With the sound off, they’re rather like those screens you see while you’re...[read more]