Sustainability

The greening of Toronto’s parking lots

In Atlanta, Design, Environment, Infrastructure, Sustainability, Toronto on 6 November 2007 with no comments

Atlanta could learn something from a pilot project for creating more efficient and appealing parking lots within Toronto. Spacing Toronto writes:
the City of Toronto is piloting new design guidelines for “greening” surface parking lots. The proposals include measures to address many of the major environmental problems, and in the process, they address some of the [...]

Why is Portland so hot?

In Livability, Media, Portland, Sustainability, Transportation on 5 November 2007 with no comments

The media is obsessed with Portland. Why? The city’s own Willamette Week is on it:
Yeah, we know Portland’s hot shit. But we wanted to prove it to the world. So we did a search of all things Portland on LexisNexis, a really powerful search engine that looks for content from newspapers, magazines, and anything news-related. [...]

Designing away climate change and fat people.

In Britain, Environment, Health, Planning, Sustainability on 1 November 2007 with no comments

Britain’s health secretary, Alan Johnson, proposes the “10 eco towns already being planned by the government should now be built and designed to confront the UK’s obesity crisis.”
“We have to look at ways of improving the built environment, doing more to help people make physical activity a normal part of everyday life.”
Mr Johnson is leading [...]

Grist: 15 Green Cities

In Curitiba, Environment, Innovation, Livability, Sustainability on 27 October 2007 with no comments

Grist highlights 15 green cities. This list seems to come out once a week, each time from a different source. I was happy to see Curitiba, Brazil, make this one.

Mapping carbon footprints

In Ecology, Geography, Mapping, Sustainability on 17 October 2007 with no comments

The Carbon Trust has created a surface map of CO2 emissions across the United Kingdom. There’s more discussion here.

10 principles for sustainable city governance

In Architecture, Design, Livability, Sustainability on 12 October 2007 with no comments

Danish think tank Mandag Morgen solicited ideas from 50 urban experts, resulting in their 10 Principles for Sustainable City Governance pamphlet. Most of the content focuses on expanding civic participation. Download the PDF from their website; it’s the hyperlinked text “Se figuren her” under the bold “Reteisse” heading.

The hidden costs of parking

In Innovation, Livability, New York, Planning, Sustainability, Transportation on 8 October 2007 with no comments

Salon neatly summarizes the inefficiencies of most urban parking systems:
“Parking appears free because its cost is widely dispersed in slightly higher prices for everything else,” explains Shoup. “Because we buy and use cars without thinking about the cost of parking, we congest traffic, waste fuel, and pollute the air more than we would if we [...]