An urban sustainability, green building, and alternative transportation community

The British Psychological Society published an interesting article the other day on what your choice of social networking says about your personality. Here’s the good stuff: People who used Facebook mostly for socialising tended to score more highly... [read more]

February 7, 2012

'The power of the post-industrial city'

by Kaid Benfield
with 19 views

In this illuminating TED talk, Don Carter of Carnegie Mellon University places the future of Pittsburgh and other post-industrial cities in the context of global environmental trends and concerns. He makes the point that, like many so-... [read more]

Eight Achievable Steps for Creating Cities fit for Cycling

February 6, 2012 by This Big City
with 249 views

Something incredible happened last week in the UK. A Murdoch-owned newspaper embarked on a groundbreaking campaign with the potential to save lives and encourage the development of sustainable cities. You heard me right. Phone-hacking may have... [read more]

How Sprawl Impacts Emergency Medical Services Delivery and Traffic Fatalities

February 6, 2012 by Thomas Lambert
with 186 views

Do you know how long it would take for an Emergency Medical Services (EMS) vehicle to reach your home in an emergency? Or to your workplace if there was an emergency there? For most people, the answers to these questions are probably... [read more]

Successful city spaces: unexposed places

February 6, 2012 by Mark K Ames
with 118 views

For as long as they have existed our cities have been defined by their varied public spaces; places of commerce, places of politics and places of authority. Our streets were markets and informal communication networks - places of... [read more]

How to Entice Car Owners to Switch to Public Transit

February 5, 2012 by Bob Leonard
with 275 views

Years ago, general wisdom held that transit systems must bring people into a city’s central business district. The idea was to create a corridor from home to job. But the idea and the systems remained long after jobs left the city center. The... [read more]

The Freeway Congestion Paradox

February 4, 2012 by Chris Bradford
with 140 views

I've gotten some pushback on my claim that adding two congestion-priced lanes to MoPac will increase capacity more than adding two free lanes. This is the Freeway Congestion Paradox: Chen and Varaiya, in their article entitled "The Freeway... [read more]

Four Pioneering Examples of Sustainable Refurbishment from Around the World

February 7, 2012 by This Big City
with 66 views

Least recognisable - The Hespeler Library, Cambridge, Canada The Hespeler Library was originally built in 1922 at a cost of $14,500, funded by the Carnegie Foundation. Kongats Architects won a 2010 Zerofootprint Re-Skinning Award for its work, which aimed to showcase the old building while giving it a... [read more]

New cities rise all over Chengdu

February 6, 2012 by Adam Mayer
with 32 views

The sound of new development roars all over Chengdu. One area that is particularly on the uptick is the southeast, just outside the 2nd Ring Road. Not long ago a heavy industrial zone, several former factory sites were cleared to make way for new high-density residential, retail and office development. Today the area is a gigantic... [read more]

The North American Urban Agriculture Experience

February 6, 2012 by Aafrin Kidwai
with 169 views

In a country where, in some places, a burger barely costs a dollar while a bag of baby carrots is priced nearly thrice as much, there’s plenty of work to be done to make healthy foods affordable – and accessible. There is no denying that food insecurity (of which cheap and nutritionally inadequate junk food is a major manifestation) is a... [read more]

Rice Ducks. Getting Creative in a Rural Economy.

February 6, 2012 by Dan Taylor
with 163 views

I love innovations that are simple, few are simpler than this one! I recently finished working on a Local Economic Development initiative in the Philippines and I learned about this fascinating practice called “Integrated Rice Duck Farming” IRDF for growing organic rice. The essence of the process is to harness the symbiotic... [read more]

Fix It First Transportation Policy

February 6, 2012 by David Levinson
with 33 views

Ken Orski writes: Why Pleas to Increase Infrastructure Funding Fall on Deaf Ears Letting the nation’s roads and bridges deteriorate may worsen traffic congestion and add to our commuting woes, but when water and sewer systems begin to fail our very civilization is at risk. That is the message of a recent story in The Washington Post... [read more]

What does the new economy mean for the shape of communities?

February 6, 2012 by Kaid Benfield
with 201 views

About a year ago, several of us attended a meeting in Washington at which a prominent smart growth leader was showing a presentation on “the business case for smart growth.” Much of it was based on the need for everyday, face-to-face business communication within companies and the need for dense environments to facilitate... [read more]

Cube Houses in Rotterdam

February 6, 2012 by the polis blog
with 80 views

The cube houses are designed around inner courtyards to create a sense of community, or a village within a city.The Kubuswoningen, or cube houses, in Rotterdam were designed by Piet Blom in the mid-1980s. Their distinctive shape — a cube tilted 45 degrees, resting on a hexagonal pylon — stands out along the city's old harbor. Each... [read more]

Capitalism, Interdependence and the Urbanization of Latin America

February 3, 2012 by This Big City
with 61 views

Urban growth is a worldwide phenomenon which can been linked directly to the growth of capitalism. Latin America, as we currently know it, was formed by capitalist countries, and is the most urbanized region in the world. Yet this process of urbanization, whilst attributable at least in part to its relationship with capitalism, is also... [read more]

Vienna, Austria Ranked As the Smartest City

February 3, 2012 by TheCityFix - produced by EMBARQ
with 295 views

We previously wrote about the most livable cities in the world and the most innovative solutions to make cities more livable. Now we bring you the smartest cities in the world, courtesy of Boyd Cohen of Co.EXIST. [read more]

14 Days and Counting . . .

February 3, 2012 by Robert Kirkman
with 40 views

I have been continuing to read Wendy Brown's book, Surviving the Apocalypse in the Suburbs, though sporadically. My train commute really isn't all that long, and I've had many, many other things to read in the mean time.I have small addition to my review-in-progress of the book, which merges with the theme from my last post: skepticism.... [read more]

Performance-Based Energy Code Does Not Eliminate Threat of Preemption

February 2, 2012 by Shari Shapiro
with 29 views

Yesterday, I posted that the District of New Mexico had issued a decision on the remaining open issues in the AHRI v. City of Albuquerque case. In the 1970's, the Federal government enacted minimum efficiency standards for certain HVAC equipment, which have been updated periodically since. In 2007, the... [read more]

From Events in the Gents to Pop Up People

February 2, 2012 by julian dobson
with 29 views

You can imagine how people reacted. The idea of 'events in the gents' doesn't really bear thinking about.Yet the anarchic enthusiasm of a bunch of people in Hackney to bring their local high street back to life says something about the way people care about their communities - even to the point of breaking into a boarded-up public toilet... [read more]

more +