Nine Technology Tools for Localizing the Food System
It seems that to purchase locally-produced foods, one must go to the nearest farm stand or visit the local farmers’ market. It may seem that the big-box grocery store is an embedded part of modern life, technology increasingly is empowering the buying and selling of local foods on an larger-than-ever scale.[read more]
Getting Animated about Transit Oriented Development in Mexico [VIDEO]
ITDP Mexico’s “Mejores Calles, Mejores Ciudades” (Better Streets, Better Cities) video advocates the implementation of TOD strategies across the country. This impetus is greater given it responds to the demographic trends of the country: 77% of Mexico’s citizens live in cities.[read more]
New E-Waste Recycling Marketplace Keeps Materials Out of Developing World
You just upgraded the office’s computers, and have a bunch of towers and monitors that you’d like to recycle. It’s tempting to get online and go with the cheapest e-waste recycling service you can find, right? But unless you’re diligent, you don’t know what they’ll do with that e-waste once they pick it up.[read more]
Recent Infographics
A Comparative Approach to Transportation in Paris, Lyon, and Marseille, France
The creation of the Paris, Lyon, and Marseille metropolises is at the center of the current territorial reform. While the transformation of their institutional organizations was subject to a sudden acceleration, the construction of an idea, and then a metropolitan project reveals ancient and complex dynamics.[read more]
Safer Cities for the Asian Century
With the next few decades expected to witness Asia’s swift rise in economic and political influence, the eyes of the world have focused on Asian cities as the engines of this growth. The Asian Development Bank Transport Forum 2014 highlighted the need for safe, sustainable transport in the Asian Century.[read more]
Why Don't Sustainable Technologies Automatically Lead To More Sustainable Lives?
A new study has found that people use domestic energy-saving systems in unexpected ways – often cancelling out any savings. it's not the first to do so, raising the question: how can we encourage people to lead more sustainable lives? I'm wondering whether it is to do with our beliefs. What do you think?[read more]
Lessons Learned from Limiting My Water Use: You Don't Waste What You Don't Have
I’m still thinking about my 4 Liters Challenge from a few weeks ago – it’s amazing how much we take a resource like water for granted! While a number of things I learned stand out, I constantly come back to turning on the water without even thinking about it – I had to catch myself a number of times.[read more]
Mellon Square: A Modern Masterpiece
Recently restored to much ado through a six-year process, Mellon Square in Pittsburgh was the first Modernist space in the nation built over a subterranean parking garage. Considered a precursor to today’s green roof movement, Mellon Square is a showcase for urban revitalization through historic preservation.[read more]
Who'd Have Thought an Insurance Company Could Write a Manifesto on Managing Sustainable Cities?
"We believe sustainability is fundamentally about risk management", says one insurance company. And it's not alone.[read more]
Learning From the 'White City'
It’s not the White City that would likely come to mind first, i.e., the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Rather, it’s a white canvas tent colony that appeared 20 years later and about 1,000 miles to the southwest, near the railroad depot (now a ghost town) of Ludlow, Colorado.[read more]
Klyde Warren Park Wins Open Space Award
Klyde Warren Park in Dallas won the Urban Land Institute’s 2014 Open Space Award, which recognizes “public spaces that have socially and economically enriched and revitalized their communities.” Completed in 2012, the 5-acre park is a green roof, decking over the sunken Woodall Rogers Freeway.[read more]
Halifax Turns its Library into the City's Living Room
As libraries struggle to stay relevant against the instant allure of e-readers, Google, Netflix and online music streaming, Halifax is taking a big step in making them cool again. The city is currently transforming its Halifax Central Public Library into a community hub for the digital age.[read more]
Five Farms Pushing the Boundaries of Indoor Agriculture
Indoor farms are the new and innovative way to grow greens. Modern indoor farms are quite large and filled with state-of-the-art technologies – they aren’t the tiny greenhouses of yesteryear. We’ve rounded up five indoor farms to give you a taste of what the most innovative growing organizations are producing.[read more]
Comparing Taxis to Ride Sharing Services
I recently woke up to a post from venture capitalist Fred Wilson talking about the cost of loyalty when it comes to local transportation markets. It was a cost comparison between regular city taxis and ride sharing services such as a UberX, Lyft, and Sidecar in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York.[read more]
Traffic Fatalities Kill More than Disease in Brazil
If you are afraid of being killed by a thug on the street, do not worry. Well, not quite. Data shows that you may be more likely to die in traffic accidents than by murder or cancer in Brazil. Traffic fatalities are an epidemic, claiming the lives of 1.24 million people per year.[read more]
Cities Should Provide Children with More Opportunities for Play to Counter Health, Social Problems
An appeal has been made for cities to make more space for children to play in order not just to counter the many health, learning and social problems that are due to today's kids playing less than people's generations, but to make cities themselves more attractive and safe places for young families to move to.[read more]
Without More Than a Vision, the People Perish
Setting visions for cities can be challenging. The Welsh Government has risen to that challenge with its regeneration program. Here’s its vision statement: "Everybody in Wales should live in well-connected vibrant, viable and sustainable communities with a strong local economy and good quality of life."[read more]
Congratulations, Your City Is Dying!
In general, a declining population translates into a dying place. For a place (city or nation-state), dying can also refer to the aging of the overall population. If everyone is too old to work, then who will pay for the health care? Save the wildcard of migration, more deaths than births is an existential threat.[read more]
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“Not just in Dublin but Down Under too mate! It would be great to see more people take their rollerblades and bikes out of storage and really using more green methods to get around. Maybe not so feasible when you're rushing to work and lacking time, but at least on the weekends. It would be a good idea to teach people how to make the most of public transport and green alternative transports so ...”
“I am presently involved as a citizen in the examination hearing of the Birmingham (UK) Development Plan and it is quite obvious that city planners as well as the hoard of developers at the hearing have very little understanding of sustainable development. In the main it is business as usual dressed up as sustainable development with virtually no attention being given to what is truly sustainable ...”