Jul 20, 08
From The Book
Cities: Introduction
We live on an urban planet. For the first time in history, a majority of us live in cities. How we grow those cities, how we build neighborhoods, how we provide housing, how we choose to get around, how well we incorporate nature into the places we live - these are the challenges that will largely determine our future.
And with millions and millions of people moving every year from the countryside to the city, all of these difficulties seem even more insurmountable. Appearances, however, can be deceiving. For, along with the boom in urbanization, we're seeing a boom in urban innovation. Simply put, we're getting better at building better cities.
image from ed burtynsky
Aviation X Prize
A couple years ago, I wrote a piece Why We Need An X Prize for Eco-Friendly Air Travel, encouraging a competitive approach towards innovating a way to slash air travel emissions: Air travel presents one of the stickiest problems we...
Reader Report From the World Cities Summit
By Zufan* Editor's Note: We encourage "Reader Reports" -- submissions from members of Worldchanging's global audience who volunteer to write up their notes from conferences, workshops and other worldchanging happenings they participate in. If you'd like to contribute your...
Bike, Meet the City. City, This is the Bike.
By Mary Catherine O’Connor What will bike-friendly cities look like ten years from now? As citizens around the world raise the demand for human-powered transportation infrastructure, major cities are starting to re-imagine their car-centric transportation models. Are more American...
Walk Score: Every Big-City Neighborhood in America
40 cities, 2,058 neighboords, and one Walk Score to rule them all. By Eric De Place It's here! The biggest 40 cities in America ranked by their walkability. Plus, every single neighborhood in those cities -- all 2,508 of them...
San Francisco Goes Wireless and Real-Time to Reduce Traffic
Check your smartphone to find a parking meter. By Adam Stein When I last wrote about San Francisco’s innovative plan to reduce congestion through market-based pricing of parking spots, I assumed some of the more futuristic features of the system...
Crunching Some Numbers on Paris Bike-Sharing Program
Bike-sharing offers modest emissions reductions, and no reason to complain. By Adam Stein On the first anniversary of Vélib, the Times dishes up some stats on Paris’ popular bike-sharing program: * Riders took 27.5 million trips in the first year...
A Prophetic Approach to Energy Efficiency
by Eric de Place Taking a three-day weekend for the planet. From the Beehive State, a gratifying way to reduce energy use (and carbon emissions): taking Fridays off. And it's mandatory. In part to deal with rising gas prices, Utah's republican...
Does the Water-Powered Car Really Work?
Yes, but the water has to come from unicorn tears. By Adam Stein Unsurprisingly, inevitably, rising gas prices have brought increased interest in the water-powered car. Is there really a simple technology that can dramatically boost the efficiency of conventional...
Permapave and Green Infrastructure
We've written before about porous pavement, and the role it could play in helping to green our storm water infrastructure. Now Blaine tells us about a new one, Permapave: Permapave attempts to address the storm water problem at the source...
Resilient Community
I think pretty highly of John Robb. I don't always agree with him -- and sometimes I think he's way off base -- but I think he's really grappling with the new realities of violence, conflict and system instability in...
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