St. Louis is taking sustainability to the streets – literally. In a test program, the city redesigned the streetscape of six blocks on South Grand Boulevard. The redevelopment of the street is to create a more sustainable community – results benefitting the social, economy, and environmental character. The updates include: fewer lanes and shorter crosswalk [...]
Sustainable Housing And Recreation Space Of The Future
There have been a flood of sustainable building and city concepts in recent years – brought on by increasing concern and sensitivity for the environment as well as respect for environmental form. These new concepts set the stage for new living standards and ways of life. From organic forms to lush gardens, the future looks [...]
The Green Case For Cities
Updating our homes, businesses, and cities using new sustainable elements and features is certainly a step in the right direction. But as Witold Rybczynski points out, the real change that is needed is a lifestyle change. He points out that while the LEED certification process certainly ensures certain qualities of a building are “green,” it’s [...]
Urban Is Good
The New Yorker staff writer David Owen has recently published a book that extols that positive points to living in a dense urban city. In Green Metropolis, Owen comments on the facts that many of the major urban centers like Manhattan and Hong Kong are actually far greener than less dense locations. This primarily relates [...]
Federal Officials Praise Green Impact Zone In KC’s Urban Core
The green economy bug has hit Kansas City, and the federal government is taking note. The city has established a 150-block area as a Green Impact Zone. What exactly does this mean? This area will be the focus for home weatherization on a massive scale, bus rapid transit and more sustainable energy approaches. Already Kansas [...]
Communes Of The Green Generation
The hippy, eco-conscious communes of the 60s may be in the past, but the efforts have not passed away. With the green revolution that is sweeping around the globe, new sustainability-focused villages and towns are popping up. These aren’t the communes of old though, these new establishments are being set up by even the most [...]
Green At City Scale
As green building moves further and further into the mainstream, Portland is taking the concept to the next phase. The Oregon city is developing an “eco-district” policy which acknowledges the fact that buildings do not act as islands unto themselves. The policy is intended to help promote the pooling of resources within districts in order [...]
Valuable Disposables
It really does pay to recycle. That’s what the city of Corpus Cristi wants to let its citizens understand. RecycleBank is currently working with the Texas city to implement a reward program starting in August 2010. With the new program, residents will be given larger recycling bins that will require no separation of items and [...]
New Willamette Bridge To Span Cyclist-Pedestrian Chasm
Bridge travel may soon become that much safer for bikers and walkers thanks to a new bridge that is in the planning stages in Portland, Oregon. The automobile-free bridge is for a new light rail connection between the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and the South Waterfront area. As part of the bridge design, [...]
Laneway Housing Bylaw Passed
Housing will now be even more attainable in Vancouver thanks to the new housing bylaw that will permits secondary housing units. This type of housing, in-law or garden cottages, is common throughout the US but is catching on now in Canada. By permitting this form of housing, homeowners may convert unused portions of their property/home [...]
