earth day

Placemaking Leadership Council

Placemaking is a tangible, accessible way for people to participate. Everyone has the right to live in a great place. More importantly, everyone has the right to contribute to making the place where they already live great.[read more]

Thanks to Jenna Bromberg on this Earth Day, 2012! [read more]

Celebrated a thousand different ways, Earth Day always boils down to optimism and opportunity. It’s a day when people collectively say, “we can fix this”—whether the problem is as global as climate change or as local as a trash-strewn parking lot. It’s a day to tout environmental accomplishments, and an opportunity to educate people...[read more]

    Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment.  For more posts, see his blog's home page.    Link to original post[read more]

Somehow Americans manage to turn every holiday—from Christmas to Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, the 4th of July, Veterans Day, Memorial Day, so-called President’s Day and the rest —into a shopping opportunity. Perversely, this is now happening to Earth Day, as companies try to persuade us that we can  shop...[read more]

As I write this, I am attending the annual conference of the American Planning Association, where I was invited to speak.  We are in New Orleans, one of the world’s most welcoming and culturally rich cities, the horrors of Katrina and limitations of longtime poverty notwithstanding.  It is also a city rich with historic,...[read more]

On Earth Day, Mayor Bloomberg announced sweeping new green building regulations for New York City.  The proposed regulations would:  mandate energy audits in buildings larger than 50,000 square feet once every decade and require retrofits that are deemed cost effective, which is defined as a five-year payback period...[read more]

What a week. Never have we heard so many say so much (and so little) about greenness. We conclude that our consumer culture has been pretty nearly completely greenwashed. On TV we observe a young couple selecting a 4,000 square foot suburban house (with garage space for multiple vehicles) that has “so many green features.” Energy rated...[read more]

The International Code Council, the non-profit organization which develops and maintains the International Building Code, announced on Earth Day that they were creating a new "green" commercial building code which would be in line with the ICC's other building code products.  ICC codes are "consensus" based codes, so the...[read more]

Celebrating Earth Day and the honorary date of Max Gladwell’s birth. First, we want to thank everyone across the Max Gladwell network for their warm wishes. Today is Earth Day, a global celebration of the environmental ethos. Not coincidentally, it is also Max Gladwell’s symbolic (some might say spiritual) birthday. As most hopefully...[read more]

For my Energy and Capital column this week, I celebrate Earth Day by finding many reasons for optimism in the wave of green initiatives sweeping the nation, but also find a market still staggering under the weight of a broken financial system. Macro Musings on Earth Day and Green Energy The Market Still Follows the Financials By Chris...[read more]

Today is Earth Day 2009, and I would like to salute a few friends and fellow travelers whose names are far from well-known but whose dedicated, behind-the-scenes work on behalf of our planet deserves to be recognized.   I'll put it this way:  if you know two or more of these folks, chances are that you are also doing some...[read more]