Uses a power-of-suggestion trick that worked on me. Your mileage may vary.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
The size of the problem
Sometimes people ask me why we need to add innovative technologies such as Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) to our urban transit networks.
The usual argument goes something like, transit ridership is up! If we just add more buses and build more light rail, we'll be able to solve our transportation problem.
In particular, the hackles tend to go up over cost -- PRT is expensive, so it will take resources away from transit. As though PRT would not be transit.
The usual argument goes something like, transit ridership is up! If we just add more buses and build more light rail, we'll be able to solve our transportation problem.
In particular, the hackles tend to go up over cost -- PRT is expensive, so it will take resources away from transit. As though PRT would not be transit.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
"Building the world's cleanest city"
CNNMoney covers the Masdar zero-waste city project, and the involvement by a major U.S. contractor (March 7, 2008).
Read more
By Marc Gunther, senior writer
(Fortune) -- Halfway around the world, a zero-carbon, zero-waste, automobile-free city known as Masdar is rising from a 2.3-square mile plot of desert in Abu Dhabi.
If all goes according to plan, Masdar - financed with $15 billion in oil money - will become a showcase for smart urban planning, green building, renewable energy, sustainable materials and advanced recycling.
"There is nothing like it in the world," says Masdar CEO Sultan Al Jaber, without exaggeration. "Masdar has a simple promise - to be the world's center for future energy solutions." Should this grand experiment work, Abu Dhabi will profit from the clean energy economy of tomorrow, just as it profits from $100-a-barrel oil today.
To get from here to there, Abu Dhabi will tap into the vision of London architects Foster and Partners and the skills of a big U.S. engineering firm called CH2M Hill.
(Fortune) -- Halfway around the world, a zero-carbon, zero-waste, automobile-free city known as Masdar is rising from a 2.3-square mile plot of desert in Abu Dhabi.
If all goes according to plan, Masdar - financed with $15 billion in oil money - will become a showcase for smart urban planning, green building, renewable energy, sustainable materials and advanced recycling.
"There is nothing like it in the world," says Masdar CEO Sultan Al Jaber, without exaggeration. "Masdar has a simple promise - to be the world's center for future energy solutions." Should this grand experiment work, Abu Dhabi will profit from the clean energy economy of tomorrow, just as it profits from $100-a-barrel oil today.
To get from here to there, Abu Dhabi will tap into the vision of London architects Foster and Partners and the skills of a big U.S. engineering firm called CH2M Hill.
Read more
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Artist imitates life
Last year at my primary blog I made up a joke about George W. Bush wanting to make artificial ice floes for polar bears out of garbage -- a transparent excuse to dump American garbage in the oceans.
Now it seems some people think fake ice habitat for bears is a good idea. Seattle artist Susan Robb has gotten a lot of publicity for her work on the idea.
No word on what the bears will eat after the seals learn to stay away from the Hummer-shaped platforms, or how the bears will get back to land when it's time to hibernate. Nice out of the box thinking, though
Now it seems some people think fake ice habitat for bears is a good idea. Seattle artist Susan Robb has gotten a lot of publicity for her work on the idea.
No word on what the bears will eat after the seals learn to stay away from the Hummer-shaped platforms, or how the bears will get back to land when it's time to hibernate. Nice out of the box thinking, though
Friday, March 7, 2008
Pacific Ocean: Rare white Orca seen off Aleutians
This is pretty cool:
(AP) - The white killer whale spotted in Alaska's Aleutian Islands sent researchers and the ship's crew scrambling for their cameras.
The nearly mythic creature was real after all.
"I had heard about this whale, but we had never been able to find it," said Holly Fearnbach, a research biologist with the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle who photographed the rarity. "It was quite neat to find it."
The whale was spotted last month while scientists aboard the Oscar Dyson, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research ship, were conducting an acoustic survey of pollock near Steller sea lion haulout sites.
It had been spotted once in the Aleutians years ago but had eluded researchers since... More
Monday, March 3, 2008
Does Smart Growth have to look like this?
On Architecture: The townhouse scourge
A rash of identical homes weakens the city's individuality
Seattle has the townhouse pox. A rash of trite, stale and clumsy faux-Craftsman eightplexes is ripping through the city's neighborhoods, bleeding vitality and visual interest out of the streetscapes.
Some at least offer the virtue of low price -- or relatively "low" in the pathology of Seattle's real estate market -- but we're trading short-term affordability for long-haul blight.
Architects and neighborhood advocates are worrying aloud. "People are going to get turned off to density by equating it to all these bad examples," says John DeForest, who founded the Northwest chapter of the Congress of Residential Architects. "There's an urgent need to put more good alternatives out there."
Former city councilman and architect Peter Steinbrueck goes straight to the projects' typical worst feature, the driveway or "auto court" that bisects the eightplexes to provide access to garages and, frequently, main entrances as well. "Who wants to look into these narrow, dark, paved-over spaces?" Steinbrueck asks. "They're like tenements, and it doesn't even matter whether they dress them up with this faux-Craftsman crap."
The auto courts are decidedly dreary and barren, but the problems don't end there...
More
A rash of identical homes weakens the city's individuality
Seattle has the townhouse pox. A rash of trite, stale and clumsy faux-Craftsman eightplexes is ripping through the city's neighborhoods, bleeding vitality and visual interest out of the streetscapes.
Some at least offer the virtue of low price -- or relatively "low" in the pathology of Seattle's real estate market -- but we're trading short-term affordability for long-haul blight.
Architects and neighborhood advocates are worrying aloud. "People are going to get turned off to density by equating it to all these bad examples," says John DeForest, who founded the Northwest chapter of the Congress of Residential Architects. "There's an urgent need to put more good alternatives out there."
Former city councilman and architect Peter Steinbrueck goes straight to the projects' typical worst feature, the driveway or "auto court" that bisects the eightplexes to provide access to garages and, frequently, main entrances as well. "Who wants to look into these narrow, dark, paved-over spaces?" Steinbrueck asks. "They're like tenements, and it doesn't even matter whether they dress them up with this faux-Craftsman crap."
The auto courts are decidedly dreary and barren, but the problems don't end there...
More
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