Grist | Topics | 15 Results

RESULTS		Results 1 – 15 of 15
Headline	Author	Published	Section
Portland: Trail Blazers Portland, Ore., tops sustainable-cities ranking		22 Sep 2008	News
Posted at 5:11 PM on 22 Sep 2008 For the fourth year in a row, Portland, Ore., has been named the most sustainable of the 50 largest U.S. cities. The rankings by green org SustainLane, which take 16 economic and quality-of-life factors into consideration, "reveal which cities are increasingly self-sufficient, prepared for the unexpected, and taking steps toward preserving and enhancing their quality of life," says ...
Topics: Chicago, lists, news, placemaking, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, urban planning (all these topics)

Driven to extinction How transportation wonks can make your city rank	Eric de Place	16 Jul 2008	Gristmill
Here's an interesting ranking. For each major U.S. city, the list-happy editors at Men's Health calculated the negative effects of driving. They aggregated scores on transit ridership, air pollution, fuel consumption, and driving miles. (Presumably, the data are for metropolitan areas, not city limits.) Northwest cities do exceptionally well: Seattle ranks number one, Portland ranks third, and Spokane is eighth. Men's Health doesn't appear to include a methodo ...
Topics: placemaking, Portland, public transportation, Seattle, urban planning (all these topics)

Green power empowerment Events in Seattle and Portland sure to inspire	Erik Hoffner	28 Feb 2008	Gristmill
Renewable energy installations in remote communities of developing nations encourage indigenous and rural communities to stay put and keep their traditions alive. With remarkably small power systems, these underserved villages can store vaccines in a refrigerator, pump water, light a clinic at night, or contact the outside world. One of the key grassroots groups doing this work is Green Empowerment, which approaches all of their projects in Central/South America a ...
Topics: energy, Portland, renewable energy, Seattle (all these topics)

15 Green Cities		19 Jul 2007	Main Dish
These metropolises aren't literally the greenest places on earth -- they're not necessarily dense with foliage, for one, and some still have a long way to go down the path to sustainability. But all of the cities on this list deserve recognition for making impressive strides toward eco-friendliness, helping their many millions of residents live better, greener lives. If your favorite green city didn't make the list, tell us why it deserves recognition in the comment ...
Topics: Chicago, lists, London, placemaking, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, urban planning, Vancouver (all these topics)

More of what bike-friendly looks like Blue lanes, cage locks, and cyclibraries	Alan Durning	31 May 2007	Gristmill
Separate bikeways are the lead actors in bike-friendly cities, but many supporting actors complete the cast: bikes on transit facilities, good traffic law enforcement, even bike 'lifts' on steep hills. Three more worth mentioning are blue lanes, parking cages, and cyclibraries. Blue lanes. (Photo courtesy of Jayson Antonoff, International Sustainable Solutions.) My youngest son often bikes to drama rehearsals. It's about three miles from our home in Seattle, ...
Topics: bikes, green living, placemaking, Portland, Seattle (all these topics)

What "bike friendly" looks like Is your town?	Alan Durning	19 May 2007	Gristmill
What if cities had no sidewalks and everyone walked on the road? Or, for urban recreation, they walked on a few scenic trails? What if the occasional street had a three-foot-wide 'walking lane' painted on the asphalt, between the moving cars and the parked ones? Well, for starters, no one would walk much. A hardy few might brave the streets, but most would stop at 'walk?! in traffic?!' Fortunately, this car-head vision is fiction for most pedestrians, but it's not ...
Topics: bikes, green living, placemaking, Portland, Seattle, urban planning, Vancouver (all these topics)

Is the SkyTrain the limit? Making public transit work	Clark Williams-Derry	15 May 2007	Gristmill
Greater Vancouver leads the Northwest in transit ridership, with somewhere between two and three times as many annual bus and train rides per person as Portland and Seattle. So the obvious question: How come? Why does Vancouver do so much better in transit statistics than its southern neighbors?If you're from Seattle, the "obvious" answer might seem to be Vancouver's SkyTrain light rail system, which carries about 66 million passengers each year. Se ...
Topics: green living, placemaking, Portland, public transportation, Seattle, Vancouver (all these topics)

Lists A couple	David Roberts	18 Apr 2007	Gristmill
Here are two lists, for those of you into that kind of thing: First, Sustainlane -- which seems to produce a list every few weeks, no? -- has a list of the Top Ten Cities for Renewable Energy. That's the cities that provide citizens with the most green power. They are: 1. Oakland, CA 2. Sacramento/SF/San Jose, CA (tie) 3. Portland, OR 4. Boston, MA 5. San Diego, CA 6. Austin, TX 7. Los Angeles, CA 8. Minneapolis, MN 9. Seattle, WA 10. Chicago, IL Oaklan ...
Topics: cars, Chicago, energy, green living, placemaking, Portland, renewable energy, San Francisco, Seattle (all these topics)

A minister, a congressman, and a student activist walk into a climate rally Don't forget to Step It Up tomorrow	Clark Williams-Derry	13 Apr 2007	Gristmill
This was posted by my colleague Madeline Ostrander at our mothership blog, but I thought it belonged on Gristmill as well. What do Washington Congressional Rep. Jay Inslee, the AFL-CIO, a car-sharing company, and a radio DJ have in common? What about swimmers doing a polar bear dip in the Willamette River, a Unitarian Church, and Portland Commissioner Eric Sten? They and thousands of others are, for the first time in history, united on climate change. Foun ...
Topics: environmental movement, grassroots activism, politics, Portland, Seattle (all these topics)

Earth Day Network's Urban Environment Report Congrats to Fargo!	David Roberts	09 Mar 2007	Gristmill
Seattle is in 7th heaven. The Earth Day Network has issued its Urban Environment Report, which "scores the current environmental performance of 72 of our nation's cities based on over 200 indicators, taking into account those populations which may have greater sensitivity or susceptibility to environmental, health, and social problems." The big winner overall? Well isn't it obvious? Fargo, North Dakota, of course! Here's the overall top ten: ...
Topics: Portland, Seattle (all these topics)

Can cities meet Kyoto targets? Report casts doubt	Eric de Place	11 Jan 2007	Gristmill
A new report questions whether the 358 U.S. cities that pledged to meet Kyoto's targets will be successful. That's a fine question, but it's perhaps easy to misconstrue as an implicit criticism that the promises were meaningless.There is every reason to think that the cities can meet the targets. (And, heck, the pledge is only 18 months old!) Portland, in fact, is already well on its way. What the report should serve to highlight is this:Reducing emissions requires a r ...
Topics: Portland, Seattle (all these topics)

Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair San Francisco named most sustainable city; Houston least		08 Jun 2005	Daily Grist
Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair San Francisco named most sustainable city; Houston least San Francisco, Portland, Ore., Berkeley, Calif., and Seattle took the top four spots in a new ranking of 25 U.S. cities based on sustainability practices. Bay Area green group SustainLane created the list after scrutinizing the metropolises based on 12 criteria, ...
Topics: California, news, Oregon, placemaking, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Texas, Washington (all these topics)

Cities Slicker Seattle, other U.S. cities to hammer out their own Kyoto-like reductions		18 Feb 2005	Daily Grist
Cities Slicker Seattle, other U.S. cities to hammer out their own Kyoto-like reductions The Kyoto Protocol has arrived, and though the Bush administration has opted out, others in the U.S. are not so climate oblivious. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels announced Wednesday he's leading an effort to get major U.S. cities to agree to Kyoto-like reductions of their greenhouse-gas emissions, to show the feds that " ...
Topics: climate, news, Portland, Seattle, Washington (all these topics)

Ecotopia on the Hudson Lessons in environmentally friendly living from New York City	Alan Thein Durning	19 Aug 2003	Soapbox
In 1975, Ernest Callenbach published a slim book called Ecotopia, in which the Northwest secedes from the United States and establishes itself as an ecological paradise. The text became a counterculture classic, and the term "Ecotopia" entered the lexicon, embodying the American tendency to think of the continent's forested far coast as a land of recycling bins and spo ...
Topics: New York, New York City, Northwest, placemaking, Portland, Seattle (all these topics)

Flexing Their Muscles		01 Oct 2001	Daily Grist
Flexing Their Muscles The car-sharing company Flexcar is planning to expand beyond its Northwest roots and enter the Washington, D.C., market this fall, where it will compete with Boston-based Zipcar. Both companies work to reduce the number of cars on the road by enticing customers to share vehicles and avoid the hassles of car ownership. Customers pa ...
Topics: business, green living, Massachusetts, placemaking, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington DC (all these topics)

Stories About: Portland AND Seattle