Placemaking

News on green building, urban planning, public transportation, and community

NEXT STEPS

Walking: A simple focus for the Smart Growth movement 3
Posted 8 Feb 2010 12:04 PM by Jonathan Hiskes
Sure, walkable neighborhoods help the climate, public health, and public safety. But people at last week's Smart Growth conference talked about how they simply liked being in places that were built to the scale of people, not autos. Read More
Energizing smart energy behavior

Never mind what people believe—how can we change what they do? A chat with Robert Cialdini 8
Posted 12 Jan 2010 5:12 PM by David Roberts
When it comes to energy, policymakers are often confronted with human behavior that seems irrational, unpredictable, or unmanageable. Advocates for energy efficiency in particular are plagued by the gap between what it would make sense for people to do and what they actually do. Dr. Robert Cialdini explains what social psychology can teach us about energy use. Read More
It takes a (wired) village

How cities can foster demand for electric cars 18
Posted 28 Dec 2009 4:28 PM by Ben Holland
In two Colorado cities -- Denver and Boulder -- officials are taking steps to encourage the transition to electric vehicles. Read More

More Placemaking

what it looks like

Smart Growth even makes snowstorms better 1
Posted 9 Feb 2010 2:43 PM By Jonathan Hiskes
Mixed land use is a tenet of Smart Growth development that has a lot of virtues. But the name is boring and not very descriptive. Here’s Matt Yglesias describing what it’s like to live in a mixed-use D.C. neighborhood. Read More
Distribute This

The little solar that could 10
Posted 5 Feb 2010 3:09 PM By Todd Woody
When utility companies can buy distributed solar electricity for what they would have paid for fossil, say hello to the milestone that changes the math and changes the future. For parts of California, that milestone is in the rearview mirror. Read More
(IS IT REALLY SO) SMART GROWTH?

My whiz-bang light rail is your pain in the asphalt 4
Posted 4 Feb 2010 11:14 AM By Jonathan Hiskes
Seattle's new light rail chugs along at a modest speed and stops frequently; some find that annoying, but it's what local activists and environmental-justice advocates asked for. It's a reminder that low-carbon development in cities isn’t always equally beneficial to all communities. Read More
grow job

The jobs are in the trees 3
Posted 3 Feb 2010 10:54 AM By Glenn Hurowitz
As Congress and the White House considering spending scarce dollars to jump-start employment, they'll need the biggest jobs bang for the buck. The biggest and least recognized jobs generator of all? Investing in forest restoration and sustainable management. Go figure. Read More
Bottoms up

Large-scale distributed energy is here: Recurrent Energy signs 50MW power purchase agreement 6
Posted 2 Feb 2010 9:50 AM By David Roberts
This morning, Recurrent Energy will announce that it has signed a power purchase agreement with Southern California Edison (SCE) for 50MW of solar. This might not seem like a big deal -- California utilities seem to sign solar agreements every week these days -- but there's something special about this one. Recurrent's power will not come from a single large-scale solar power plant out in the desert but from three small-scale solar PV projects, one 6MW and two 22MW installations in Kern and San Bernadino… Read More
Invested interests

One step ahead of the carbon cops 3
Posted 1 Feb 2010 2:33 PM By Terry Tamminen
Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ruled that publicly-held companies must disclose their exposure to potential losses from climate change, including carbon emissions that are the subject of growing regulation in the U.S. (and already highly regulated in Europe). Reaction has been both partisan and predictable, but make no mistake -- the carbon cops are coming and the SEC is simply pointing out how to stay one step ahead of them. Read More
Knockin' the suburbs

Cities vs. suburbs: The next big green battle? 90
Posted 29 Jan 2010 2:13 PM By Jonathan Hiskes
Big Picture Guy Alex Steffen argues that cities vs. suburbs is the political conflict that will define the next decade, and that urbanists are better off seeing this as a battle than as a messaging problem. Read More
Keep up the PACE

How innovative financing is changing energy in America 6
Posted 27 Jan 2010 12:37 AM By Cisco DeVries
Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE, has taken off like wildfire since the concept was first introduced in Berkeley, Calif. in October '07. PACE allows private property owners to pay for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects through an addition to their property tax bill, overcoming the high upfront costs that prevent most property owners from investing in such retrofits. PACE financing has the capacity to be transformative: property owners realize immediate savings on their utility… Read More
My city of ruins

Cities get rebuilt more often than you think 4
Posted 22 Jan 2010 10:36 AM By Jonathan Hiskes
U.S. cities might seem mostly permanent, but there are constant opportunities for smarter rebuilding and redesigning. Read More
The investor game of chicken

Who will make the first move toward a clean energy future? 3
Posted 20 Jan 2010 11:28 AM By Terry Tamminen
Last week several hundred investors huddled together at the U.N. with government officials and non-profit groups to discuss one thing -- carbon. They heard from U.S. climate change negotiator Todd Stern, international political royalty, and a host of economic prognosticators about topics including the recent talks in Copenhagen, potential Congressional action, and whether new clean tech would set us free from our fossil fuel addiction. And what was the take-away? That everyone expects someone else… Read More
No carbon credit

Why America’s greenest mayor got no love 2
Posted 19 Jan 2010 4:16 PM By Jonathan Hiskes
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels got cities across the U.S. to draft climate plans when no one else was doing it. Here are some theories about why that didn't save his job. Read More
A Twenty-Something Riffs on GreenBuild

Dispatches from the Phoenix Green Building Conference
Posted 15 Jan 2010 10:06 AM By Auden Schendler
Recently, an interior designer and massage therapist named Becky Anderson helped me certify an Aspen Skiing Company building (Sam's Restaurant) to LEED Gold. As a reward for her remarkable work, we sent her to the U.S. Green Building Council's enormous, happening-like, and increasingly burning-man scale annual conference, which took place in Phoenix this fall and attracted some 40,000 people into the teeth of a depression. Read More
Taking distributed energy seriously 39
Posted 13 Jan 2010 5:35 PM By David Roberts
India, Italy, Brazil can fill America’s blanks
Posted 12 Jan 2010 3:35 PM By Terry Tamminen
Top 10 worst Christmas gifts
Posted 22 Dec 2009 8:25 AM By Ken Ward
Dark winter days at the JP Green House 3
Posted 21 Dec 2009 4:35 AM By Andrée Zaleska
5 fab bike solutions seen on the streets of Copenhagen
Posted 15 Dec 2009 7:15 PM
Retrofitting for energy efficiency and new jobs
Posted 15 Dec 2009 6:53 PM
Vindication edition: Obama declares insulation “sexy”
Posted 15 Dec 2009 10:28 AM By Katharine Wroth
Vindication edition: Obama declares insulation “sexy”
Posted 15 Dec 2009 10:27 AM By Katharine Wroth
Could AlertMe be the Apple of energy efficiency?
Posted 14 Dec 2009 5:03 PM By Todd Woody
Amy Bauman is greening the construction industry, one steel I-beam at a time 1
Posted 10 Dec 2009 7:48 AM By Katharine Wroth