Grist | Topics | 11 Results

RESULTS		Results 1 – 11 of 11
Headline	Author	Published	Section
All close together now A post-petroleum American dream	Jon Rynn	13 Mar 2008	Gristmill
'This craziness is not sustainable,' concludes The New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert, and he's talking about the economy, not the environment. He continues: Without an educated and empowered work force, without sustained investment in the infrastructure and technologies that foster long-term employment, and without a system of taxation that can actually pay for the services provided by government, the American dream as we know it will expire. And without pet ...
Topics: agriculture, cars, energy, placemaking, public transportation, urban planning (all these topics)

Driving in circles A fun traffic simulator and lessons learned	Clark Williams-Derry	11 Mar 2008	Gristmill
Via Brad Plumer: a traffic jam in in a bottle. To me, it's pretty remarkable how closely the real-world experiment above matches up with this java-based computer traffic simulator. Warning: if you click the last link, and you're at all geeky, prepare to lose your afternoon! A few years back I wasted hour after hour playing with the java settings, and watching "traffic" jams materialize and melt -- just like in real life. My favorite quirk: fo ...
Topics: cars, urban planning (all these topics)

No joke Land-use policy is not a laughing matter	Ryan Avent	14 Jan 2008	Gristmill
It was just a fleeting moment amid the hours of presidential debate that have taken place through this longest of election cycles, but it nonetheless warmed my heart. No-longer-a-candidate Bill Richardson, in response to a question on climate policy, said of the fight against climate change: It's going to take a transportation policy that doesn't just build more highways. We have to have commuter rail, light rail, open spaces. We've got to have land-use policies where ...
Topics: politics, urban planning, sprawl, cars, public transportation (all these topics)

Slow your city Like they do it in Italy	Tom Philpott	08 Oct 2007	Gristmill
From Der Spiegel:It's not easy to be punctual for a meeting with Stefano Cimicchi. Parking places are hard to come by in Orvieto, even if cars are still legal. Cars in the city center stick out like a sore thumb among strolling pedestrians, who move to the sides of the streets with studied slowness. After a couple of twisty laps though the narrow medieval alleyways of the old town center, you might find a parking place on the edge of the small Umbrian town -- and pay ha ...
Topics: cars, green living, placemaking, urban planning (all these topics)

Congestion pricing saves more than it costs Bloomberg’s law: Environment equals economic growth	Grist	28 Jul 2007	Gristmill
This guest essay comes from Steven Cohen and Jacob Victor. Steven Cohen is executive director of Columbia University's Earth Institute and director of its Master of Public Administration Program in Environmental Science and Policy at the School of International and Public Affairs. Jacob Victor is an intern at Columbia's Earth Institute. After overcoming numerous obstacles in Albany, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's controversial congestion-pricing plan finally appear ...
Topics: cars, green living, New York, New York City, placemaking, politics, public transportation, urban planning (all these topics)

Alternatives to auto-mobility Necessary	David Roberts	23 Jul 2007	Gristmill
This op-ed from Rick Cole, city manager of Ventura, Calif., will be music to the ears of all you Gristians: The feel-good stage of California's leadership on global warming is unsustainable. Kudos to the pop stars with their calls to switch lightbulbs and unplug cellphone chargers when not in use. But we can't pretend that we will actually reduce 2020 greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels without tackling our region's embedded patterns of auto dependence and subur ...
Topics: cars, climate, green building, placemaking, sprawl, urban planning (all these topics)

Social engineering, Soviet style There's more to freedom than free parking	Eric de Place	08 May 2007	Gristmill
I keep seeing the phrase "social engineering" used to describe policies that don't kowtow to the car. See, for example, this inexplicable subhead about a third of the way through this Seattle newspaper story. Not only is this usage annoying, it's exactly backward (as others have noted before me). First, let's look first at specifics. The paper reports that the city will put parking meters on some formerly-free spots in a rapidly urbanizing district near do ...
Topics: cars, green living, placemaking, Seattle, urban planning (all these topics)

Putting a price on congestion Realizing that freeways are not free	Eric de Place	03 May 2007	Gristmill
Every once in a while there's a truth that everybody knows, but that no one will acknowledge. And when someone finally says it aloud, it sounds shocking. Like this: ... what we're doing now isn't working. Not for drivers, taxpayers or the environment. We can't tax and build our way out of this. That's Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat in his column this week, talking about what most people in Seattle already know: the area's freeway system is flat broke an ...
Topics: cars, green living, placemaking, Seattle, urban planning (all these topics)

Another refreshing change: Taming the auto Cities find that people like not being killed by cars!	JMG	02 May 2007	Gristmill
Good story in the Christian Science Monitor about places that are taking steps (albeit tiny, tiny baby steps) to take back some of the public space given over to cars and letting people use it: The auto's demotion at Golden Gate Park follows dozens of similar moves in at least 20 American cities in the past three years. It's a trend that is gaining ground rapidly in the US, say urban planners. New York is proposing to shut down perimeter roads of Central Park and Brookly ...
Topics: cars, climate, green living, placemaking, urban planning (all these topics)

A modest proposal: Treat bikers as human What would we do if bikers' lives were worth as much as auto convenience?	JMG	12 Apr 2007	Gristmill
Great idea for a new law: Spouses and children of all traffic engineers must travel on the streets planned by their loved ones using a bike at least 50 percent of the time. What would happen then? Probably this.
Topics: bikes, cars, placemaking, urban planning (all these topics)

What a green wants: An index-card manifesto (first draft) A positive environmental program that can (almost) fit on an index card	David Roberts	17 Feb 2006	Gristmill
Without further ado, here's the first draft of my index-card manifesto. It turned out to be two index-card manifestos, with five points each: one for stuff I consider immediately urgent, and a second for what I consider longer-term goals. Feedback is welcome -- nay, requested. (I'll discuss the whole project more in a subsequent post.) WHAT A GREEN WANTS: IMMEDIATE PRIORITIES Energy efficiency: Proven techniques can get the same amount of work with 50% of the oil. ...
Topics: agriculture, cars, electricity grid, energy, environmental movement, green living, messaging, placemaking, renewable energy, urban planning (all these topics)

Stories About: cars AND urban planning