Climate Cities

Going, Going, Oregon

Oregon’s sweeping property-rights law upheld by state Supreme Court Will Oregon’s famously tough urban-growth boundaries be breached in favor of McMansions and office parks? Seems so. After an expedited review, the state’s Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Tuesday that a controversial 2004 property-rights ballot measure is legal. Measure 37 allows landowners seeking to develop their […]

Steve Frillmann, community-garden guru, answers questions

Steve Frillmann. With what environmental organization are you affiliated? I am the executive director of Green Guerillas, New York City’s oldest community-gardening group. What does your organization do? At Green Guerillas, we help people carry out their visions for what community gardens can be in a dense, vibrant urban area — urban farms, botanic gardens, […]

Book Your Guilt Trip Today!

British enviros curb flying to protest airplane emissions A growing number of British enviros are quitting or cutting back on air travel, resisting the siren song of low-fare, no-frills airlines. “I just realized that all my other efforts to be green — recycling, insulating the house, not driving a giant 4×4 — would be totally […]

The city has transformed itself into one of the nation’s most forward-thinking

I've always thought that if I had to move back to my home state of Tennessee, I'd kill myself live in Chattanooga. It used to be one of the most polluted cities in the country. I remember driving through it on the way to Atlanta -- it was nasty, dirty, bleak, and oh my god, the smell. A real shithole.

But in the last 20 or 30 years, the city has completely turned around, and now it's one of the most forward-thinking, progressive cities in the Southeast.

Sprol has a great piece on the transformation:

While most cities, nationally and globally, make an effort to reduce negative affects on the environment; few (if any) have attained the level of success enjoyed by Chattanooga. Here, industry is not the enemy, but instead has offered viable and effective solutions. Here, the citizen and the government official aren't at odds. Rather, they work together to creatively address the environmental challenges the city has faced.

Chattanooga has become one of the few cities designated as an EPA attainment city. This has been due, in large part, to combined efforts of Chattanooga citizens and city officials.

An inspiring read.

Tailpipe Spin

NASCAR plans switch to unleaded racing fuel Mechanics, crews, and NASCAR dads will be able to wheeze a little easier beginning in 2008 — that’s when the racing body plans to switch its cars and trucks from leaded to unleaded fuel. Though it’s exempt from the Clean Air Act’s unleaded requirement, NASCAR’s nonetheless been looking […]

Why greens should join forces with gardeners to face down the bull dozers in LA.

Even though I abandoned Brooklyn for the Appalachians, I'm no sentimental pastoralist. I'm a long-term disciple of the great urban theorist (and champion of cities) Jane Jacobs. Human history since the dawn of agriculture 10,000 years ago has been a history of cities. Cities are the future; as David Owen's superb article "Green Manhattan" (PDF) shows, they may be our only hope. The trick is to create agricultural systems within and just outside of cities, minimizing the ruinous effects of long-haul freight transit, slashing the fossil-fuel inputs embedded in food production, maximizing availability of fresh delicious food, and boosting local and even neighborhood economies.

Farmers' markets have been the most visible effort at creating sustainable urban food networks. Equally if not more important, although virtually invisible to well-heeled urban foodies who laudably support farmers' markets, inner-city gardening projects represent a vanguard in the effort to overthrow industrial food and reintroduce sustainably grown, delicious food to populations that were knocked off the land a generation or two ago.

There's been a lot of talk around here about whether or not humanity's future requires messing up Bobby Kennedy Jr.'s ocean view from "the Vineyard." (I say, the hell with him. Mess it up!) This story may be more important, though: An LA developer wants to bulldoze a 14-acre community garden, with 360 family plots, right in the middle of an industrial zone in South Central. The city should be paying these people to do what they're doing, for all the environmental and social benefits they're creating. At the very least, the city should buy the land back from the developer and make the garden permanent.

LA greens, and I know you're out there, get out and man the barricades with those brave gardeners.

Stockholm-ward Bound

Stockholm is second Euro capital to charge for driving into the city All the cool cities are doing it! (Wait, is Stockholm cool?) This week, Sweden’s capital began a trial run of a new system that will charge for the privilege of driving into the city, and officials have declared it a success so far. […]

Two new books on nature reveal three writers’ ways of seeing

“It was on Cape Cod during fall a few years back, after the century fell but before the towers did, that I began paying a series of visits to the writer John Hay.” With this opening line in The Prophet of Dry Hill, David Gessner sets the tone for a quest that is both personal […]

Enviros need to get social, says activist-turned-sociologist Marshall Ganz

Most of us can probably name a grandfather or great-aunt who was active in a chapter of a national association. My own uncle was a member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. Yet how many of us can say the same about ourselves? Marshall Ganz. Photo: Harvard University/Justin Ide. As voluntary associations fade […]

Small Wonder

Sales of some big SUVs drop by half It’s an early Christmahanukwanzakah present for the planet, and a chunk of coal in the stocking of Detroit’s Big Three automakers: The American love affair with huge SUVs seems finally to be on the wane. Really this time! Sales of once-hot vehicles like the Ford Explorer and […]