Grist | Topics | 23 Results

RESULTS		Results 1 – 23 of 23
Headline	Author	Published	Section
The Missing Links Public transit ridership is up, but no one's talking about a better system	Ryan Avent	06 Jun 2008	Grist Feature
But how long will they wait for infrastructure improvements? Photo: Sharat Ganapati One year ago, as America prepared for the traditional summer-driving crush, op-ed pages nationwide fretted over a disturbing trend. Only a decade earlier, oil had plumbed depths near $10 per barrel, and dirt-cheap gas had allowed us to roll over the nation's blacktop in vehicles of monster-truck ...
Topics: green living, placemaking, politics, public transportation, sprawl, urban planning (all these topics)

Urban Legends Smart(ish) Cities series ends, sustainability efforts march on	Lisa Selin Davis	16 May 2008	Grist Feature
By now, you may have forgotten that Portland was ever crowned the Miss Universe of Sustainability, and have started packing up your bicycles and solar panels for the big move to Syracuse or Tampa. OK, maybe you're not thinking of uprooting yourself and your family. More likely, you're evaluating your own city to figure out what green things it's got going for it, where it lags behind, ...
Topics: environmental justice, green building, placemaking, Smartish Cities, special series, sprawl, urban planning (all these topics)

Outer Limits Sprawling Atlanta seeks new routes to the future	Robert DiGiacomo	14 May 2008	Grist Feature
The City in the Forest hopes to get back to its roots. Despite its reputation as a city of wall-to-wall subdivisions, office complexes, and shopping centers, Atlanta's not a complete stranger to matters of green. At the time of its mid-19th century founding, in the woods at the end of a railroad line, it was called the "City in the Forest." And in the early 20th century, the city created the 1 ...
Topics: Georgia, green building, placemaking, Smartish Cities, special series, sprawl, urban planning (all these topics)

Dry, Dry Again How three Southwestern cities are changing		13 May 2008	Grist Feature
For more on Southwest cities see our full feature on sustainability initiatives underway in Phoenix. Scan any list of "green U.S. cities" for winners from the Southwest, and you'll find a geographical void. Sure, a liberal-leaning place like Austin or Santa Fe or Boulder might sneak onto the list, but in general, there's a dearth of entries from this sun-drenched region. And that's troubling, as Southwest cities tend ...
Topics: green building, Nevada, New Mexico, placemaking, Smartish Cities, special series, sprawl, Texas, urban planning (all these topics)

What's a Sustainable City, Anyway? Green-city ranking group SustainLane explains its methodology	James Elsen	12 May 2008	Grist Feature
With a chart-topping 26,000 people per square mile, New York City has to be smart. Photo: Tom Twigg How smart is your city? Take our quiz to find out. Back in 2004, the news emerged that two-thirds of the world's population might be living in cities by 2030. At SustainLane, we got curious about what cities were doing to handle that growth, and we began taking a closer look ...
Topics: green building, placemaking, public lands, public transportation, Smartish Cities, special series, sprawl, urban planning (all these topics)

Smart(ish) Cities A Grist special series on unexpected urban progress		12 May 2008	Grist Feature
Hear the phrase "smart growth" or "green city," and chances are you'll think of one place: Portland, Ore. That progressive pocket of the Northwest has become synonymous with sustainability, landing atop many a list and capturing more than a few hearts and minds along the way. Not far behind, other stars of the Northwest and Northeast vie for the top spot -- places like Seattle, Vancouver, Boston ...
Topics: green building, green living, placemaking, Smartish Cities, special series, sprawl, urban planning (all these topics)

Moving on out There are limits to the positive environmental change we can expect from high gas prices	Ryan Avent	22 Jan 2008	Gristmill
You can scarcely pick up a paper or turn on the television these days without hearing the word recession. Leading economic indicators have wiggled in different directions over the past few months, but the general trend appears to be negative. The conventional wisdom points toward an economic downturn of some kind during 2008, and businesses in all sorts of consumer markets are bracing for the inevitable tightening of purse strings. A funny thing happened on the way tow ...
Topics: consumerism, economy, energy, gas prices, oil, placemaking, sprawl, urban planning (all these topics)

Growing cooler Can urban planners save the earth?	Eric de Place	31 Oct 2007	Gristmill
A couple of weeks ago I was in Vancouver, B.C., at a conference where it seemed like everyone was talking about a new book called Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change. Reviewing dozens of empirical studies, the book's central argument is that urban form is inextricably linked to climate. Low-density sprawl has been a principal contributor to North American climate emissions. And by the same token, smart compact development -- the k ...
Topics: climate, climate change mitigation, placemaking, sprawl, urban planning (all these topics)

This urban life Even the greenest suburbs can't touch low urban emission rates	Ryan Avent	21 Oct 2007	Gristmill
Last Sunday, the Washington Post published a piece by Joel Kotkin and Ali Modarres which sought to debunk the ideas that dense urban areas are greener than their suburban counterparts and that encouraging dense growth might play a significant role in reducing America's carbon output. The piece was wrong or misleading on practically every point, to the extent that any complete response would take up far more time and space than I have available. Some of the authors' most e ...
Topics: climate, greenhouse-gas emissions, placemaking, sprawl, urban planning (all these topics)

Sprawl and global warming Land-use and development decisions are crucial in the fight against climate change, says new report	David Roberts	22 Sep 2007	Gristmill
Living closer to where you work will do more to fight climate change than buying a Prius and living in the 'burbs. We'll never beat climate change until we change the way we structure our communities. That is the conclusion of a new report out from the Urban Land Institute: The report, "Growing Cooler: Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change," analyzed scores of academic studies and concluded that compact development -- mixing housing and busin ...
Topics: climate, climate change mitigation, placemaking, sprawl, urban planning (all these topics)

Walk It Off Land-use decisions a key factor in emissions reduction, says analysis		21 Sep 2007	News
Posted at 12:36 PM on 21 Sep 2007 How to reduce U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions? Building compact, mixed-use neighborhoods would be just as effective as much-touted policies like boosting fuel economy, cleaning up power plants, and building green, says a new analysis from the Urban Land Institute. The U.S. population is expected to grow 23 percent by 2030; under the sprawl-encouraging status quo, driving is expected ...
Topics: climate, climate change mitigation, greenhouse-gas emissions, news, placemaking, sprawl, urban planning (all these topics)

Condos do not have agency Does anyone choose to live in a condo?	Eric de Place	21 Sep 2007	Gristmill
One of the curiosities of language is that our usage can sometimes inadvertently reveal our underlying beliefs. Consider how condos are often described as if they are conscious actors who perform actions, such as 'packing people together.' One example comes from the Seattle P-I: 'Now, condominiums are building upward, packing people into to what used to be inexpensive property.' According to this way of writing, it's the condos, not the owners, that have what we philo ...
Topics: placemaking, sprawl, urban planning (all these topics)

Piquing interest How does the Home Interest Mortgage Deduction affect sprawl?	Clark Williams-Derry	31 Jul 2007	Gristmill
Now that the housing market is tanking, is it a good time to talk about the absurdity of the Home Interest Mortgage Deduction? I mean, it's truly crummy social policy. The biggest benefits go to the people in the highest tax brackets, own expensive homes, and earn enough income that they can itemize their deductions. So in essence, the HIMD is a ginormous housing subsidy for the well-off -- and one that dwarfs all of the housing subsidies to lower-income ...
Topics: placemaking, sprawl, 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)

Visualizing density Images of dense development	Eric de Place	02 Jun 2007	Gristmill
Just wanted to point out a great website, 'Visualizing Density,' a product of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (LILP). I'm not feeling like my usual prolix self today, so I'll let them do the talking: Sprawl is bad. Density is good. Americans need to stop spreading out and live closer together. Well ... that's the theory, anyway. But, as anyone who has tried to build compact development recently will tell you, if there's one thing Americans hate more than sprawl ...
Topics: placemaking, sprawl, urban planning (all these topics)

Banner day for B.C. Lots of good stuff north of the border	Clark Williams-Derry	25 May 2007	Gristmill
The Vancouver Sun has the scoop. First, the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, just released a draft "eco-density" plan that sounds, at least to my ears, like exactly the right way to deal with the city's expected population increase: curbing sprawl by concentrating new housing in compact, transit-friendly neighborhoods: Vancouver should put high-density housing next to its major parks and along every one of its major streets, suggests the first d ...
Topics: Canada, placemaking, public transportation, sprawl, urban planning, Vancouver (all these topics)

Madrid, May I? Spanish activists up in arms over unchecked urbanization		07 May 2007	Daily Grist
Madrid, May I? Spanish activists up in arms over unchecked urbanization This weekend, thousands of protesters took to the streets of Spain to voice their fury over ... rampant urbanization. Yes, it's true, residents of la piel de toro have had it with the bull. A building boom that started in the 1960s is overrunning rural areas and coastal cities, say observers, and corrupt politicians are only too eager ...
Topics: news, placemaking, Spain, sprawl, urban planning (all these topics)

Urbanism and the environment Can we live with skyscraper farms?	John McGrath	23 Apr 2007	Gristmill
I find ideas like this stimulating, if only because it shows some creativity: skyscraper farms. Basically, the idea is to build multi-story enclosed greenhouses near the cities where most food is consumed, thus reducing the acreage required to grow the crops and the energy needed to transport them. Some of the work done by Columbia University suggests the 'vertical farm' could produce at least twice as much energy as it consumes from burning the biomass was ...
Topics: placemaking, sprawl, urban planning (all these topics)

What's wrong with sprawl Ten things	David Roberts	02 Apr 2007	Gristmill
I doubt we have many sprawl-lovers in the audience, but just in case you need the comprehensive case against sprawl in one convenient location, check out 'Ten Things Wrong with Sprawl' by James M. McElfish, Jr., director of the Sustainable Use of Land Program at the Environmental Law Institute. Here are the ten things, in highly condensed form: Sprawl development contributes to a loss of support for public facilities and public amenities. Sprawl undermines ...
Topics: placemaking, sprawl, urban planning (all these topics)

Sprawl bribery is beating smart growth	David Roberts	24 Jul 2006	Gristmill
The following is a guest essay from Joel S. Hirschhorn, author of Sprawl Kills: How Blandburbs Steal Your Time, Health and Money. He can be reached through sprawlkills.com. ----- When the small town of Warrenton in sprawl-rich northern Virginia received an offer of $22 million in cash from Centex Homes, one of the nation's largest developers and home builders, one reaction of concerned parties was, OK, sounds like an environmentally acceptable plan for near ...
Topics: placemaking, sprawl, urban planning (all these topics)

Street Smarts An interview with smart-growth expert and author Anthony Flint	David Roberts	07 Jul 2006	Main Dish
Few debates in the U.S. are more emotionally charged than the one over sprawl -- the exodus, since World War II, of America's middle class from cities to far-flung residential areas. Environmentalists, small farmers, and social-justice activists deplore sprawl for its unhealthy effects on land and communities. Suburbanites bristle at the attacks on their personal choices -- the desire for sa ...
Topics: interview, placemaking, sprawl, urban planning (all these topics)

Suburbia, oil, and preferences Why can't we change our oil-sucking land-use preferences?	David Roberts	06 Jun 2005	Gristmill
The other day I expressed disappointment at Kevin Drum's fifth peak oil post -- the one where he lays out his recommendations for oil policy. In my inimitably oblique and unfocused way, I was simply trying to say that I wish he'd been more imaginative. If nothing else, peak oil is going to be a major inflection point in our collective history. It's a sharp turn in the road, and we can't see clearly around the bend. The stakes are huge, and call for a commensurate ...
Topics: energy, oil, placemaking, sprawl, urban planning (all these topics)

Sprawl and The Body Politic Jesse Ventura wants to ride light rail	Erik Ness	18 Jun 1999	Main Dish
PR professionals the world over must be scratching their heads at the sudden surge of interest in sprawl. The topic has all the sex appeal of a zoning meeting or a traffic jam -- being about zoning meetings and traffic jams -- and its number-one spokesperson is V. (as in vanilla) P. Al Gore. The planet almost tilts as the viewing public reaches en masse for their remotes, surfing for something more entert ...
Topics: Minnesota, placemaking, politics, public transportation, sprawl, state politics, urban planning (all these topics)

Stories About: sprawl AND urban planning AND placemaking