lizzzyyy100

Anytime the topic of green energy comes up, Republicans think Solyndra and Democrats think jobs. The Republicans think of a failed government intervention that cost the taxpayers money and the Democrats think of flourishing new industries making solar panels. Solar farm on a wind farm: Philippines  Both really should think about climate change and how to reduce carbon emissions. The urgency of that is driven home month after month of news that confirm the worst predictions of climate researchers regarding the negative effects of global warming, namely in terms of sea-level rising, storms, shifts in precipitation, polar ice melts and impacts on flora and fauna. How can green energy reduce carbon emissions, or more specifically, how does a post carbon energy system look like? What works and what doesn't? The answers are far from obvious. Most assume that a large part of the reduction has to come from electrical energy production which according to EPA contributes with 30% the largest...

President Obama held an passionate speech for international collaboration at the United Nations this week. He called for trade and coordination instead of building walls, tariffs and trade barriers. Anti TTIP demonstration Berlin “The acceleration of travel and technology and telecommunications — together with a global economy that depends on a global supply chain — makes it self-defeating ultimately for those who seek to reverse this progress. [...]“Today, a nation ringed by walls would only imprison itself. ... I want to suggest to you today that we must go forward, and not backward.[....]  too often, those trumpeting the benefits of globalization have ignored inequality within and among nations; have ignored the enduring appeal of ethnic and sectarian identities; have left international institutions ill-equipped, underfunded, under-resourced, in order to handle transnational challenges."    (President Obama at the UN) Obama about globalization at the United Nations As ...

When a Berkeley economist with a PhD  asserts in a new paper that sprawl is the best way of generating affordable housing and uses a litany of graphs to prove that single family development is not only the domain of suburbia but also of all American cities and Columbia PhD urban planner Richard Florida writes a rebuttal in CityLab, the sparring should be quite interesting, especially since Florida, the 2004 inventor of the term creative class   a theory that predicted the current  migration of millennials to cities, used CityLab for years to tell us how suburbs are out and cities are where innovation and everthing else happens. Issi Romem, the economist, is the less well known, but just like Florida, he presides over his own research outlet called BuildZoom. Sprawl Alas, in spite of Issi Romem's contention that cities have to choose between  expansive or expensive , Florida has little to offer in the way of a rebuttal. Romem published his paper Wednesday, the Wa...

The population of older people in our country is now becoming so large that strategies  of improving existing homes, of incorporating universally useful features in new  homes, of building thoughtful new communities, and of retooling existing neighborhoods  must be broadly integrated into our community building strategies at the local  level across the United States.   (Henry Cisneros, former HUD Secretary,  Independent for Life ) As a baby boomer I am used to a marketplace that cares what I want. Now those darn Millennials (my own kids) have taken over as the largest cohort and dictate the market. Cities are competing to get them. What about the boomers? Even though there is a lot of talk about aging boomers, as their numbers begin to diminish the products out there seem to pay less and less attention attention to what they need. America’s older population is in the midst of unprecedented growth. With the aging of the large baby-boom generation...

From subways to Bus Overhaul Overhaul of existing bus transit networks appears to be the latest straw cities grasp for to match their dwindling resources with a growing insight that better transit is a must-have for future prosperity.  Type “bus overhaul” into the Google search box and a whole bunch of cities and transit agencies pop up who have considered one. The most recent addition to the bandwagon:  Austin, Texas . Vancouver in Canada decided to do it and our neighbor DC is no exception. Houston's neighbor Dallas wants to do it, too, but piecemeal and over ten years. In New York City activists were the ones calling for a complete overhaul.  Convoluted bus lines such as this from WMATA are often a reason to look for simpler ways of serving the public Corresponding with the ever smaller pool of money available, transit improvements in most larger cities have become  more modest over the last few decades: Real subway (metro) or an expansion of existing subway has...