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| Headline |
Author |
Published |
Section |
Pictures of the world's dirtiest cities
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David Roberts |
18 May 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Ew. |
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| Topics: air pollution, green living, placemaking (all these topics) |
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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 ... |
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| Topics: green living, placemaking, Portland, public transportation, Seattle, Vancouver (all these topics) |
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Metrofarming in the NYT
Coming to a city near you? |
Erik Hoffner |
11 May 2007 |
Gristmill |
| The New York Times ran a story this week on a grassroots effort that aims to demonstrate the potential for growing food in our cities. NY Sun Works' Center for Sustainable Engineering has a sustainable energy and hydroponics project floating on a barge in the Hudson River, and it's causing a minor buzz ... Their goal is to get Big Apple rooftops under full production: they claim there is enough rooftop space in the five boroughs to grow vegetables for the entire city ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, food, green living, New York City, placemaking, urban planning (all these topics) |
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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 ... |
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| Topics: cars, green living, placemaking, Seattle, urban planning (all these topics) |
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Medal to the pedal
People-powered transit makes you happy |
Clark Williams-Derry |
08 May 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Transportation uber-geek Todd Litman looked at studies of people's satisfaction with their commutes (PDF). The results: transit isn't all that popular, compared with a car commute: The leftmost bar represents a car-only commute; you can see that it gets higher satisfaction ratings (the green part) and lower dissatisfaction (the orange) than both transit and car+transit commutes, which are the next two bars. (Despite the popularity of park-and-rides, ther ... |
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| Topics: cars, green living, placemaking, public transportation (all these topics) |
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People know how to get out of cars
It's like riding a bike ... |
David Roberts |
07 May 2007 |
Gristmill |
| What happens when a major urban freeway burns down? Chaos, right? Gridlock! Except not: Traffic congestion was down Monday and Tuesday. The amount of time drivers were stuck in traffic moving slower than 60 mph was down 8 percent around the entire Bay Area, according to Caltrans data. Congestion on Oakland freeways, meanwhile, was down by more than 50 percent, the data showed. ... BART ridership, meanwhile, spiked dramatically, hitting an all-time record on Tu ... |
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| Topics: cars, green living, placemaking, public transportation (all these topics) |
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WSJ on bike living in Europe
Excellent writing |
David Roberts |
07 May 2007 |
Gristmill |
| About eleventy-hundred people have written to draw my attention to an article in the Wall Street Journal about bike living in the Netherlands and Denmark. It's worthy of the attention -- it's rare to see biking taken so seriously and written about with such an eye for detail and color, at least in a U.S. paper. Hats off to Nancy Keates. I think WSJ free access ends after a week, so I'll post a big chunk of good excerpts below the fold. People bike while pregnant ... |
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| Topics: bikes, Denmark, green living, Netherlands, placemaking (all these topics) |
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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 ... |
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| Topics: cars, green living, placemaking, Seattle, urban planning (all these topics) |
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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 ... |
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| Topics: cars, climate, green living, placemaking, urban planning (all these topics) |
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The eco-chamber
An interview with Julia Russell of the Eco-Home Network |
Kate Sheppard |
30 Apr 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Gristmill commenter Lo Fleming posted a good Q&A with Julia Russell of the Eco-Home Network recently over on her blog. Check it out. |
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| Topics: green building, green living, placemaking (all these topics) |
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A refreshing change of pace: sensible policy
Imagine: charging polluters to encourage the others! |
JMG |
29 Apr 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Sam Smith, publisher of the estimable e-letter The Progressive Review, is perhaps the ultimate pragmatic environmentalist, with a sharp eye for what works and a sharper ability to deflate the pompous and overly-self-loving. He is often the sole commenter picking up on policy proposals and practices that a less parochial media less obsessed with infotainment would be interested in -- such as the success of congestion charges in London's central district, implemented by Mayor 'Re ... |
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| Topics: cars, climate, green living, greenhouse-gas emissions, London, placemaking, public transportation, United Kingdom (all these topics) |
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When will people on bikes be treated as well as smokers?
Bike racks in rain, smokers under cover |
JMG |
25 Apr 2007 |
Gristmill |
| I am pissed. I just learned that my county would rather provide shelter from the weather for its employees who smoke (and drive up healthcare costs) than let those citizen-terrorists on bikes park out of the rain near the county building.So I have to go to the county building today after a lunch meeting. Rather than drive, I hop on my bike and dodge traffic and the shards of cars swept into the so-called "bike lanes." I get to the county building and it's starting to r ... |
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| Topics: bikes, green living, placemaking, travel (all these topics) |
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Wondertoys and change avoidance
The seductive lure of toys that promise solutions without change |
JMG |
24 Apr 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Reading about the sunken tidal turbines -- which seem interesting -- I got an overwhelming feeling of "here we go again." Why is it that people who know that "eat the foods you love and lose weight without exercise!" is hokum can't resist spending hours and hours hyping and being hyped about technotoys that promise "abundant low-cost clean energy that lets you lose carbon without reducing consumption!" I'm an engineer. I like engineers. But most ... |
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| Topics: environmental movement, green living, placemaking (all these topics) |
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Meeting notes
The lost art of conversation |
biodiversivist |
21 Apr 2007 |
Gristmill |
| I passed a big rabble of bikers on my way to downtown Seattle yesterday evening. Several complimented my bike as I passed. There were a couple of talls in the mix. I assumed it was another Critical Mass ride, but maybe not. Sure looked like fun. I need to participate in one of those someday. I periodically attend a monthly gathering of Seattle atheists. There are always new faces, and they pick a different restaurant every month for variety's sake. We chatted about t ... |
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| Topics: bikes, cars, electric vehicles, green living, hybrids, placemaking, Prius, religion and spirituality (all these topics) |
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Tunnels everywhere!
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John McGrath |
20 Apr 2007 |
Gristmill |
| First a train tunnel between Africa and Europe, now the Russians want to build the long-dreamt-of tunnel between Russia and Alaska. The tunnel would theoretically carry natural gas, oil, electricity, and fiber-optic wires. The more and better tunnels we have for rail, the more competitive rail will be with less efficient transport systems like air travel. This is better for energy efficiency and therefore the environment. This project still has a lot of problems - ... |
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| Topics: Alaska, green living, placemaking, Russia, travel (all these topics) |
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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 ... |
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| Topics: cars, Chicago, energy, green living, placemaking, Portland, renewable energy, San Francisco, Seattle (all these topics) |
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On efficiency
There's more room than you think |
Gar Lipow |
17 Apr 2007 |
Gristmill |
| (Part of the No Sweat Solutions series.) As almost everyone who studies the subject concludes, one key to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions is efficiency. Renewable sources generally provide energy at a slightly higher market price than fossil fuels. Oh, there are exceptions: passive solar heating, wind electricity, biofuel from waste. But overall, if we get all our energy from low-emitting sources, we will spend more overall per BTU. If we can use those BTUs efficient ... |
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| Topics: energy, energy efficiency, green living, placemaking (all these topics) |
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Conservatives for rail transit
Um, overseas |
David Roberts |
17 Apr 2007 |
Gristmill |
| 'As part of efforts to shed its image of closeness to the motoring lobby, the party wants the government to commit immediately to key rail expansion projects ...' That's the conservative party. The dawn of hope and sanity? Yes. In the U.K. |
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| Topics: cars, green living, placemaking, politics, United Kingdom (all these topics) |
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Billie Joe spends a green day rebuilding New Orleans
With Habitat for Humanity |
Sarah van Schagen |
16 Apr 2007 |
Gristmill |
| In a recent collaboration with U2 on "The Saints Are Coming," Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day sang about a house in New Orleans. But he spent this weekend hammering soffit onto one, as a volunteer with Habitat for Humanity. Armstrong brought along some friends and his fam to help with the project as well, and they've been blogging about the experience on the Green Day fansite. On a semi-but-not-really-related note, Green Day is continuing to work wit ... |
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| Topics: celebrity, green living, music, placemaking (all these topics) |
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The Prius snob strikes back
Prius consumes more energy in lifetime than Cherokee |
biodiversivist |
12 Feb 2007 |
Gristmill |
| I thought this article hit a little too close for comfort. If you really want to call yourself an environmentalist, do what my sister-in-law did: Buy a small Toyota hatchback and put 5,000 miles a year on it for two decades.Then there was this interesting article in the Economist discussing the future of diesel cars in America: The dirty little secret about hybrids is that their batteries and extensive use of aluminium parts make them costly to build in energy terms ... |
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| Topics: cars, green living, hybrids, placemaking, Prius (all these topics) |
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Green Manhattan redux
Is it greener after all? |
David Roberts |
08 Feb 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Tyler Cowen disputes the frequent assertion that Manhattanites have the smallest environmental footprints around. He says: Praising Manhattan is a bit like looking only at the roof of a car and concluding it doesn't burn much gas. Manhattan supports its density only by being surrounded by a broader load of crud. ... If you think the big problem is humans grabbing more and more space, you might prefer to tax suburbs and subsidize cities. If you think the ... |
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| Topics: ecological footprint, green living, New York City, placemaking, population (all these topics) |
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IPCC got you down? Here are 11 things you can do
You, yes you, can act to fight climate change |
Kate Sheppard |
02 Feb 2007 |
Gristmill |
| If the wacky weather we've been having, the suffering of endearing creatures, the possible cancellation of this year's Polar Bear Club swims, or the catastrophic melting of Arctic ice has you hot and bothered, you're not alone. Though it's easy to cower in your basement wearing your duct tape bodysuit and motorcycle helmet feel defeated, here are 10 small things, and one really big thing, you can do to change the changin' climate for the better: Sharing is caring ... |
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| Topics: climate, energy, green living, placemaking (all these topics) |
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Still the Sam
Sam Pratt, activist featured in Two Square Miles, answers readers' questions |
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01 Dec 2006 |
InterActivist |
| What is your advice to an internally pissed-off and externally timid young person who is interested in community organizing? -- Brittany Hopkins, Newark, N.J. Community organizer Sam Pratt. If you're timid, start by talking with people one-on-one or in small groups. Practice makes less imperfect, I always say. My advice to anyone interested in any non-standard career path (such as community ... |
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| Topics: green living, InterActivist, interview, placemaking (all these topics) |
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Pratt's Creatures
Sam Pratt, activist featured in Two Square Miles, answers Grist's questions |
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27 Nov 2006 |
InterActivist |
| Sam Pratt. What work do you do? I advise citizens' groups and campaigns on how to win against the odds, and I'm working on a manual of strategy and tactics for underdogs. When neighbors work closely together in a smart and structured way, there is no such thing as a "done deal" -- no matter what any politician or developer tells you. From 1999 to 2005, pretty much every waking mome ... |
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| Topics: green living, InterActivist, interview, placemaking (all these topics) |
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Lexus Nexus
A dispatch from an eco-showroom evening full of luxurious goods |
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16 Nov 2006 |
Dispatches |
| Emily Gertz is an environmental journalist based in Brooklyn, N.Y., who has contributed to Grist, Plenty, WorldChanging, and other independent publications, and blogs at OneAtlantic.net. Thursday, 16 Nov 2006 New York, N.Y. I want to believe. I want to believe that we can create an ecologically sustainable and socio-economically just future for the billions of biologically distinct individuals who comprise humanity ... |
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| Topics: Dispatches, fashion, green living, greening biz operations, greenish companies, placemaking (all these topics) |
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