Grist | Topics | 146 Results

RESULTS		Results 126 – 146 of 146
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Headline	Author	Published	Section
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)

Integrated urbanism in Dongtan Building the world's largest eco-city	Chris Schults	27 Apr 2007	Gristmill
The May 2007 issue of Wired Magazine has a piece about the development of the world's largest eco-city, Dongtan, underway on the outskirts of Shanghai (as we reported in May of last year). The article focuses on Alejandro Gutierrez and his team from Arup (project info here). Recommended reading.
Topics: China, urban planning, placemaking (all these topics)

Brit's Eye View: Sustainable development turns 20 Happy birthday!	Peter Madden	26 Apr 2007	Gristmill
Peter Madden, chief executive of Forum for the Future, writes a monthly column for Gristmill on sustainability in the U.K. and Europe. "Sustainable development" is 20 years old this week. On April 27, 1987, after four years of deliberation, the World Commission on Environment and Development released its report. The inquiry -- also known as the Brundtland Commission -- was led by the prime minister of Norway, Gro Harlem Brundtland. I was at university ...
Topics: climate, climate change mitigation, placemaking, United Kingdom, urban planning (all these topics)

Giuliani v. Bloomberg Who's the biggest fattest liberal?	David Roberts	23 Apr 2007	Gristmill
Over at National Review, Deroy Murdock is eager to assure his fellow right-wingers that Rudolph Giuliani is no liberal! What's his evidence? Why, when he was mayor Giuliani doused the city with toxic insecticide! He built dirty power plants in poor parts of town! He privatized the management of Central Park! No liberal would ever do that stuff, right? Meanwhile, current NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg just unveiled a visionary plan to make NYC the 'the first environme ...
Topics: elections, New York City, placemaking, politics, 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: sprawl, urban planning, placemaking (all these topics)

The Gothman Prophecies New York City mayor unveils ambitious sustainability plans		23 Apr 2007	Daily Grist
The Gothman Prophecies New York City mayor unveils ambitious sustainability plans New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg used Earth Day to announce plans to make his burg bloom. The comprehensive "PlaNYC" outlines 127 green dreams, including a congestion charge for lower Manhattan that would -- like programs in London and Singapore -- see drivers cough up a fee for entering the city at ...
Topics: local politics, New York, news, 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)

Green Knoxville? Weird but true	David Roberts	11 Apr 2007	Gristmill
Another blog that's recently become required reading for me: Mode Shift, a blog on urban sustainability from Keith Schneider, founder of the Michigan Land Use Institute. Yesterday brought a somewhat surprising post on big plans afoot to make Knoxville, Tenn. (among other places) a model of sustainable, healthy living. Y'all may or may not know that I was born in Knoxville, and went to college close to there, and I'm here to tell you that it's the last place I would ev ...
Topics: placemaking, Tennessee, urban planning, websites (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)

Sonoma Mountain Village Green urban development, in just 12 years!	David Roberts	26 Mar 2007	Gristmill
If you can ignore the egregious lede -- did green building really come from hippies? -- there's much to celebrate in this article on Sonoma Mountain Village, 'a community of about 2,000 homes and businesses, centered around a town square, using the latest principles of sustainability, green technology and new urbanism.' It'll be about 175 acres, done in about 12 years, and muy verde: To make the plan work, Codding [Enterprises] spent $7.5 million to create the large ...
Topics: placemaking, urban planning (all these topics)

Greg Nickels and global warming This climate hero may be more of a Forrest Gump	David Roberts	06 Nov 2006	Gristmill
I've been waiting for someone to write this article. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels is rightfully lauded for kicking off the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, which now has 326 mayors committed to helping their cities meet Kyoto emissions targets. It's a BFD, and Nickels will earn a small place in history for it. Still. It's always been my sense that the initiative was cooked up by clever and persuasive staffers in the mayor's office, and that Nickels was, in For ...
Topics: climate, energy, placemaking, politics, Seattle, urban planning (all these topics)

The Green Expo at Highpoint Seattle's -- possibly the country's -- coolest new neighborhood	David Roberts	19 Sep 2006	Gristmill
This past Sunday, I went out to the Highpoint neighborhood in West Seattle to attend the Green Living Expo. Highpoint is extraordinary (check out this map of the master plan). When it's completed (about a third is finished at this point), it will be the largest interurban redevelopment in the country. I won't get into all the details -- check out the website -- but here's the short summary: The community will be mixed-use, mixed-income, and mixed-ethnicity. They're ...
Topics: green living, placemaking, Seattle, urban planning (all these topics)

More on Gore's speech The most noteworthy features	David Roberts	18 Sep 2006	Gristmill
Just to follow up a bit on Amanda's post, it seems to me that there are three particularly newsworthy features of Gore's speech: A "carbon freeze"? I've never even heard of that. But if we took it seriously -- if we really halted, immediately, the growth of our collective GHG emissions -- it would functionally amount to huge cuts. Those new coal-fired power plants in Texas would certainly be off the table. In fact, the coal industry would be forced to sh ...
Topics: Al Gore, climate change adaptation, politics, 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)

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)

Chattanooga The city has transformed itself into one of the nation's most forward-thinking	David Roberts	20 Jan 2006	Gristmill
I've always thought that if I had to move back to my home state of Tennessee, I'd kill myself live in Chattanooga. It used to be one of the most polluted cities in the country. I remember driving through it on the way to Atlanta -- it was nasty, dirty, bleak, and oh my god, the smell. A real shithole. But in the last 20 or 30 years, the city has completely turned around, and now it's one of the most forward-thinking, progressive cities in the Southeast ...
Topics: placemaking, Tennessee, urban planning (all these topics)

Want to tackle global warming? Start with heart disease. The best thing greens can do is convince the public that eco-friendly lifestyles are healthier	David Roberts	01 Oct 2005	Gristmill
Cardiovascular disease is the No. 1 cause of death in the U.S. and most European countries. In the latest issue of Newsweek there's a story about it called "Designing Heart-Healthy Communities." Here's how it starts: Forecasting heart disease is becoming an ever-finer art, as researchers learn more about the risk factors. But here's a predictor you may not have heard about: street address. In a study published last year, scientists at the RAND Corp. scored ...
Topics: green living, health, innovation, 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)

White Flight, Green Fright? The Intermountain West becomes a California suburb	Richard Manning, Writers on the Range	17 May 1999	Main Dish
By Richard Manning and Writers on the Range 17 May 1999 One does not expect enlightenment from a barber shop conversation, but there it was. I'd always had hunches about the nature of demographic change in Western mountain towns, nasty hunches, hunches counter to the conventional wisdom that immigration was motivated by the newcomers' love of the land, so the newcomers would become allies in environmental struggles. ...
Topics: California, Montana, placemaking, urban planning (all these topics)

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