ecological issues
« Previous EntriesMetro mania
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009Tens of thousands of people stood in line for hours yesterday to experience the new rapid transit line in Vancouver. Such excitement has not greeted new transit options before, which got me thinking about the relationship between metro lines, a city, and its residents.
Unlike two previous routes, which primarily link suburban residential areas to downtown, […]
Lesson from India on affordable housing
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009In dynamic, popular urban cores there is a constant dilemma about housing affordability. Because more people want to live in an area than there are homes, rents and sale prices can be high.
One solution is to demand a certain number of rental units or non-market units for sale when developers build out a new area […]
Special civic advocates for walking? cycling?
Sunday, May 10th, 2009Cities need to offer residents and businesses a variety of transportation options to maximize livability. Only facilitating automobile travel makes for a polluted, congested, and concrete-freeway-based environment. Only facilitating bikes or walking in 21st century life and you hamper citizens’ ability to go any distance or carry very much while doing it. As recently […]
Mega city pollution and swine flu
Sunday, April 26th, 2009The outbreak of “swine flu” in North America is puzzling epidemiologists. For many young Mexican adults, it’s proving to be a severe illness that may have killed 86 people, primarily in Mexico City. Meanwhile those in the US and Canada who have confirmed cases are generally only showing signs of a mild respiratory illness or […]
Enough doomsday talk, focus on livability
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009Almost everyday in the newspaper or the blogosphere some group attempts to make headlines forecasting what we could call “eco-doom” for cities. Whether the prediction is rising sea levels, fires, plagues of locusts (or killer bees) the result is misplaced attention.
Here’s an example via Planetizen: Sea Levels are Rising: It’s Time to Decide Which Cities […]
Urban Chickens or Pigs Anyone?
Wednesday, March 11th, 2009It looks like barnyard animals could be making an urban comeback in North America.
The Toronto Star summarized a Dutch firm’s idea of farming pigs vertically, in multi-storey buildings. Apparently it’s more ecologically responsible:
Proposed by the Dutch architectural firm MVRDV, the argument is that it’s more efficient to raise swine in highrise farms than on the […]
Edmonton: Where Oil and Sustainability Meet?
Friday, February 6th, 2009Edmonton is an intriguing place. It sits next to the world’s 2nd largest oil reserves and the economy is dominated directly and indirectly by the oil extraction industry. Yet, it has also been ranked the most sustainable large city in Canada by Corporate Knights Magazine:
With the lowest unemployment rate of all cities [below 4% ] […]
Transit should be an essential service
Friday, January 16th, 2009A transit strike has afflicted Ottawa — Canada’s capital city — for over five weeks. Ottawa usually has a fairly good transit system, relied on by many people who have chosen not to have a car (or a second family vehicle) as well as those who cannot afford one.
People who have made the ecologically and/or […]
Not the time for short term thinking
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009Many smart business leaders and investment managers are taking advantage of the economic slow down to stop, think, and put into place the foundations for the next 5 to 10 year business cycle — and even thinking much further ahead than that.
Unfortunately, it seems that many city governments, and those at other levels that impact […]
Energy-efficiency: haven’t we done this before?
Friday, September 12th, 2008Roof-top solar-powered hot water heaters, architecture appropriate to the local climate and using more natural air and light, are among the ideas being put forth as “new” green initiatives. Many ideas being discussed here as novel, sound familiar either in North America or around the world.
In Greece a decade ago, I remember towns where almost […]