Posts Tagged ‘sprawl’
Fat-tastic! Can Small Thinking Solve Our Super-Sized Problems?
According to a new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — more commonly known for crunching global budget and employment numbers — the United States is on track to be 75% obese by 2020. 3 out of every 4. And if you check with researchers at Johns Hopkins University, they’ll tell you…
Read MoreThe Suburbs: Arcade Fire, Childhood Memory, and the Future of Growth
I’m in my 40s. I grew up in the suburbs. It was awesome. And then it wasn’t. Never before and, perhaps, never again will there be as efficient and reliable a machine for manufacturing idealized childhood memories. The suburbs of the 60s and 70s, maybe even the 80s, were like some sort of paradise.
Read MoreBrave New Codes Reach Tipping Point: When, Where, Why?
A year ago, Apple’s sales of its iPhone and iPod Touch eclipsed 40 million units, confirming their potential to fundamentally retool our future opportunities and patterns of daily life. Today, a year later, form-based codes hit a similar milestone, with similar implications, as over 330 cities and towns around the world — representing over 40…
Read MoreBack to the Farm (And to the Bunker)
Just when reporters were beginning to buy into the hopefulness of “sprawl repair” and “ag is the new golf,” Andres Duany trips them up with visions of the dark side. Or at least the really hard side, as in the hard work ahead if we’re to reverse the direction of 20th century excesses. “Our wealth…
Read More18th New Urbanist Congress: Best Ever?
What’s constitutes “best ever” depends on the takeaways, right? And when it comes to conferences, we could be talking takeaways that aren’t products of the event itself. Like maybe you got a job or connected with a soul mate. Let’s call that the upside of unintended consequences.
Read MoreHeaven Help Us: Ambitious Project Both Reaffirms, Tests Faith in Sustainable Future
I was a post-Vatican II, suburban Catholic. For anyone of shared experience, that typically meant attending a church that was designed and built to serve the rapidly growing, happy motoring suburban leisure class. Equal parts woody earth tones and ample parking, it was a transient testament to our nation’s awkward adolescence: a monolithic UFO of…
Read More“Just Building Sprawl” is Over, But How?
When President Obama declared, before an audience in Ft. Myers, Florida, on Feb. 10, an end to “just building sprawl forever” (fast-forward to around 58:58 for the money quote), it may have signaled a change of venue in the battle over how the stimulus package is interpreted and applied. Up until Obama left Washington for…
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