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RESULTS		Results 151 – 175 of 1220
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Headline	Author	Published	Section
Zipcar merges with Flexcar, effs it all up Has the east coast car-sharing company screwed up the west coast car-sharing company?	David Roberts	29 Feb 2008	Gristmill
Late last year, the country's two major car-sharing companies, west-coast Flexcar and its larger east-coast cousin Zipcar, merged and became, um, Zipcar. Flexcar fans were concerned about the effects of the merger. Sadly, Flexcar fangirl Erica Barnett reports that they were decidedly negative: more expensive, fewer cars, less friendly service, etc. Zipcar, what hath thou wrought? Any Gristians have car-sharing experiences to share?
Topics: public transportation, placemaking, cars, business (all these topics)

They Put the Greenpeace and others protest Heathrow Airport expansion		29 Feb 2008	News
"Row" in "Heathrow" Greenpeace and others protest Heathrow Airport expansion Posted at 11:38 AM on 29 Feb 2008 Greenpeace and other eco-activists have been protesting mightily against a planned third runway for London's Heathrow Airport, which would demolish the nearby town of Sipson and, say activists, be completely counter to Britain's ambitious carbon-cutting goals. The airport-expansion plan has brought significant opposition from both politicians and residen ...
Topics: air travel, climate, England, grassroots activism, Greenpeace, London, news, placemaking, politics (all these topics)

Progressive energy policy in Bayou City? Carl Pope talks market failures with energy execs at Houston energy conference	Josh Dorner	28 Feb 2008	Gristmill
Today's second panel -- Carl's, on 'conservation and the environment' -- opened with remarks from Houston Mayor Bill White. Despite my earlier comments about the road-crazy Bayou City, Mayor White laid out some items from what appears to be a truly progressive energy agenda for Houston, including making it an international leader in green buildings. Some of his more interesting comments came when White told the story of being one of the staffers that helped ...
Topics: energy, placemaking, green building, Texas (all these topics)

The greenest neighborhood? Sustainable, carbon-neutral community built in Oregon	Joseph Romm	27 Feb 2008	Gristmill
Last week the Center for American Progress began a series called 'It's Easy Being Green,' meant to recognize the steps communities, individuals, and organizations are taking to transform our country's energy use. Last week's column featured a new kind of neighborhood: Pringle Creek Community in Salem, Ore., named the 2007 Green Land Development of the Year by the National Association of Home Builders, may be the greenest neighborhood in the country. It uses 35 sust ...
Topics: green building, Oregon, placemaking (all these topics)

Governors drink the Kool-Aid State govs embrace the range of 'alternative fuels,' from nukes to clean coal to biofuels	Tom Philpott	27 Feb 2008	Gristmill
The National Governors Association has linked up with 'a team of Wal-Mart energy experts' to 'green the capitols.'That's fantastic -- and I'm sure it will draw well-deserved huzzahs in certain green circles. (It's touching to see Wal-Mart giving back some of what it has been siphoning off in state taxes!) But read a little deeper into the press release, and you see what the National Governors Association means by 'green.' Turns out that when it comes to energy, the go ...
Topics: energy, placemaking, politics, public transportation, state politics, Wal-Mart (all these topics)

No country for thirsty men In North Carolina's Triangle, a severe drought has leaders stumped	Tom Philpott	26 Feb 2008	Gristmill
North Carolina's Triangle -- Durham, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh -- counts as the state's economic, educational, and political engine. It's also very quickly running out of water, parched by a severe drought.Are the area's leaders doing anything constructive to respond to the situation? So far, the signs aren't encouraging. I've been following the story in the excellent daily Raleigh News & Observer. On Monday, the N&O reported that Raleigh has exactly one agreemen ...
Topics: North Carolina, placemaking, severe weather, water crisis (all these topics)

Licensed to Ride Percentage of 16-year-olds licensed to drive has dropped		25 Feb 2008	News
Posted at 4:52 PM on 25 Feb 2008 The percentage of 16-year-olds with a U.S. driver's license has decreased sharply in the last decade, from 43.8 percent in 1998 to 29.8 percent in 2006. Rising insurance costs, expensive driver education, and an increase in indoor pastimes are more likely to be driving the trend than environmental awareness -- and sure, most yoots still get around in four-wheeled transportation, chaffeured ...
Topics: cars, green living, news, parenting, placemaking (all these topics)

Sing a song of sustainable cities Curitiba's Jaime Lerner on why the car is like your mother-in-law	JMG	25 Feb 2008	Gristmill

Topics: cars, placemaking (all these topics)

Public investment: the counterargument Geek humor	Gar Lipow	22 Feb 2008	Gristmill
Volker Weber provides a strong counterargument to my posts favoring public investment (very funny, if you are a certain kind of geek):
Topics: placemaking, public transportation (all these topics)

It Takes a Village Protests arise over British government's		22 Feb 2008	News
"eco-town" plans Posted at 10:00 AM on 22 Feb 2008 The British government is preparing a shortlist of sites for high-density, carbon-neutral eco-towns, but is coming under consistent protest from villagers who don't want 'em nearby. Many residents living near the proposed sites have concerns that, eco or not, new development will take over agricultural land, increase traffic, and burden local infrastructure. Says Mark Sulliva ...
Topics: England, news, placemaking, urban planning (all these topics)

Deep thought of the day	David Roberts	21 Feb 2008	Gristmill
As rising energy prices and better urban planning push the affluent back to city centers, the poor and working class will be pushed out to the suburbs. Soon, we'll see blight, crime, the drug trade, and other social pathologies where we have been accustomed to seeing the American Dream. 'Inner city' and 'outer suburb' will flip their cultural connotations. It will be confusing.
Topics: placemaking, urban planning (all these topics)

Hour Town Cities worldwide will turn off lights for Earth Hour		20 Feb 2008	News
Posted at 1:27 PM on 20 Feb 2008 Mark your calendar for March 29, when cities around the world will switch off non-critical lights at 8:00 p.m. for an awareness-raising Earth Hour. At present, 24 cities -- with a total population of some 30 million people -- plan to participate in the energy-saving symbolism, from Toronto to Tel Aviv, Bangkok to Brisbane, Canberra to Copenhagen, and first Earth Hour participant Sydney to copycat eve ...
Topics: energy, grassroots activism, news, placemaking (all these topics)

Let buildings heat and cool themselves How to kill coal in 10 years	Jon Rynn	20 Feb 2008	Gristmill
We know that coal is the enemy of the human race, what with carbon emissions, deadly air pollution, and unsafe and destructive mining practices. The supply of coal is becoming more problematic as well: recently, a Wall Street Journal article described a 'coal-price surge,' and Richard Heinberg has warned that coal may peak much sooner than most people expect. So what's to like? Not much. But since coal-fired plants provide almost half of our electricity, we can't ge ...
Topics: coal, energy, energy at home, energy efficiency, green building, placemaking, renewable energy, urban planning (all these topics)

Lance Armstrong: more bike commuters, please A breathless appraisal of Lance's new bicycle mecca and mission	Adam Stein	16 Feb 2008	Gristmill
Lance Armstrong will soon unveil his 18,000-square-foot Austin-based bike shop, Mellow Johnny's (named after the Tour de France's yellow jersey -- or 'maillot jaune'). The goal of the shop is to promote bike culture and bike commuting: 'This city is exploding downtown. Are all these people in high rises going to drive everywhere? We have to promote (bike) commuting...'Showers and a locker room will allow commuters who don't have facilities at their offices to ride down ...
Topics: bikes, celebrity, green living, placemaking, Texas (all these topics)

The hills What would you build on the land near the iconic Hollywood sign?	Sarah van Schagen	13 Feb 2008	Gristmill
Get out your checkbooks, folks: The mountaintop property located just above the "H" in the iconic "Hollywood" sign is now for sale. The asking price? A sweet $22 million. Two years ago, Los Angeles officials and conservationists tried to purchase the land atop the 1,820-foot Cahuenga Peak to create a city park, but were unable to raise the funds. No matter what is constructed there -- homes, additional words (I see an advertising opportuni ...
Topics: green space, Los Angeles, placemaking, public lands (all these topics)

Our Kind of Guy Engineer plans to sell compressed-air car in India within a year		13 Feb 2008	News
Posted at 4:44 PM on 13 Feb 2008 Could folks in India be driving a car that runs on compressed air within a year? French engineer Guy Negre says it will be so. Tata Motors has backed his invention: a five-seater called the OneCAT, which would produce no emissions and cost around $5,000. "The first buyers [of the car] will be people who care about the environment," says Negre, who hopes that investors arou ...
Topics: business, cars, India, news, placemaking (all these topics)

Not-so-dirty dancing NYC nightclub groovin' to a green tune	Sarah van Schagen	12 Feb 2008	Gristmill
Dirty dancing is so 2007. An NYC hot spot aiming for LEED certification could become the first eco-club in the U.S., W Magazine reports:Jon B., owner of Manhattan nightclubs Home and Guest House, plans to open Greenhouse -- the first eco club in the U.S. -- in time to make it New York Fashion Week's buzziest hot spot. In the three-story space on 10th Avenue, LED lights replace standard bulbs, the toilets are programmed to use less water, furniture is covered wi ...
Topics: green building, green living, New York City, placemaking (all these topics)

LEED score and seven years ago Abe Lincoln's summer home goes green	Sarah van Schagen	12 Feb 2008	Gristmill
Does this building look LEED certified to you? Well, look again. This is part of Abe Lincoln's summer home complex near Washington, D.C., and after a seven-year restoration, it's the first-ever historic monument to receive the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The National Trust for Historic Preservation rehabilitated the historic building in a way that minimized adverse environmental ...
Topics: green building, placemaking, Washington DC (all these topics)

City limits A poet takes the measure of Portland -- on foot	Kit Stolz	11 Feb 2008	Gristmill
Starting early this century, poet and professor David Oates set out to walk the boundary line that Oregon drew around the city of Portland decades ago to concentrate its development and discourage sprawl. What is today called 'the New Urbanism' is not new in Portland: it's been part of the political process since l973. As Oates writes in a forward to a book he recently published about his adopted state's experiment in urban utopianism: We hope to grow in, and in som ...
Topics: books, placemaking, Portland (all these topics)

A climate for old men Spearheading transit for livable cities at 93	Charles Komanoff	11 Feb 2008	Gristmill
I recently ended 100 days without Grist. And wouldn't you know, the title of the first post I saw, 'No climate for old men,' spoke directly to the reason I was away. No, I wasn't with the McCain campaign. Rather, I was immersed in a project, spearheaded by a really old man, that could become a terrific tool for beating back the climate crisis. That man is 93-year-old Ted Kheel, legendary New York labor-lawyer-turned-environmentalist. His project is a study o ...
Topics: climate, energy, placemaking, public transportation (all these topics)

Monday link dump A little of this, a little of that	David Roberts	11 Feb 2008	Gristmill
This week I am, officially anyway, on vacation, spending a week in a condo at the bottom of Mt. Hood, snowboarding by day, soaking in the hot tub by night. Yes: sweet. I will nonetheless be posting occasionally, because, well, I just don't know how to quit you. Before I go I want to clear out all the stuff that's been building up in my browser for, oh, months now. So a link dump it is, and away we go! This post on Dot Earth about sustainable cities reminded me that I ...
Topics: climate, energy, placemaking (all these topics)

Maxed out We've borrowed more than we can afford to borrow, sprawled more than we can afford to sprawl	Ryan Avent	11 Feb 2008	Gristmill
There are a lot of moving parts involved in the current, sputtering condition of the economy, which can't yet be declared a recession but may well become one. I'll summarize as best I can. Very cheap credit led to a housing upturn, which became a boom, which became, in many parts of the country, a speculative bubble. The cheap credit was the result of a number of factors, including lax monetary police at the Federal Reserve, but of high importance were the huge foreign ex ...
Topics: economy, energy, placemaking (all these topics)

The terrorists have won Reflections on death by SUV	Charles Komanoff	08 Feb 2008	Gristmill
It was just a matter of time before a World Trade Center survivor became a victim of a different sort of terrorism: death by automobile. It finally happened last month, in lower Manhattan, when a speeding sport utility vehicle struck and killed a woman who had fled the Twin Towers on 9/11. Florence Cioffi was leaving a dinner celebrating her upcoming 60th birthday when a Mercedes-Benz SUV slammed into her on Water Street at 60 miles an hour, according to a Manhat ...
Topics: cars, New York City, placemaking (all these topics)

Urban Legends Cities run into roadblocks in attempts to reduce CO2		08 Feb 2008	News
Posted at 8:21 AM on 08 Feb 2008 Announcing an ambitious plan to reduce a city's greenhouse gases is the easy part; when it comes to putting goals into action, local officials tend to run up against significant roadblocks. To take just a few examples: The subprime mortgage crisis has left taxpayers across the country unable to fund efficiency-minded proposals. Across the country, homeowners' associations have vetoed plans for ho ...
Topics: climate, climate change mitigation, greenhouse-gas emissions, local politics, news, placemaking, politics, urban planning (all these topics)

Car-Hip Enterprise Enterprise and other rental companies move into car-share market		07 Feb 2008	News
Posted at 9:22 AM on 07 Feb 2008 Enterprise Rent-a-Car is zooming ahead with a car-sharing program � la the successful Zipcar. The Enterprise venture, called WeCar, started on the campus of St. Louis's Washington University last month, but will kick off in urban style in the city downtown next week. WeCar will begin with nine Toyota Prius hybrids and will target employees who commute without a car to work and th ...
Topics: cars, news, placemaking (all these topics)

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