Posted by Kaid Benfield in Environmental Justice , Green Enterprise , Living Sustainably
My friend David Dixon, and his Boston-based architecture firm, Goody Clancy, has been doing some fabulous smart growth work, and I’m here to give them a well-deserved pat on the back for it. I mention this because I’m off...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably , The Media and the Environment
Robert Rauschenberg was my favorite artist, certainly my favorite of those that have been well known. I paid a small – well, actually, not so small – fortune for a signed screenprint of his LA Uncovered #7, image above, which...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Curbing Pollution , Green Enterprise , Living Sustainably , Solving Global Warming
After so many wonky posts in a row, this time I'm going to lighten up with one of those fun internet quizzes that I can do more or less all day when I have something I want to procrastinate. This...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Curbing Pollution , Living Sustainably , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
When faced with a situation where rapid growth is occurring, such as I discussed yesterday, the best thing to do environmentally is to manage and shape it so that a good quality of life is maintained with the least environmental harm. This...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably , The Media and the Environment , U.S. Law and Policy
The housing market may be in a slump right now - in part because we've been building too much sprawl - but over the next 25 years or so the US is going to experience rapid population growth, and the...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Curbing Pollution , Health and the Environment , Living Sustainably
The federal Environmental Protection Agency has released important new research detailing the benefits of smart growth on transportation emissions and air quality. In particular, the report reviews the effects on traffic and pollution that would occur if new growth and land development...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Health and the Environment , Living Sustainably
The balance of healthy-vs.-unhealthy food options near your home has a major impact on your health risk, according to a new report released this week by PolicyLink, UCLA's Center for Health Policy Research, and the California Center for Public Health...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Curbing Pollution , Environmental Justice , Green Enterprise , Health and the Environment , Living Sustainably , Solving Global Warming
Last week my longtime NRDC colleague Eric Goldstein posted a blog entry highlighting five laudable environmental sites (green apples) and five awful ones (bad apples). Eric got it right as usual. I am particularly a fan of his because, like...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Green Enterprise , Health and the Environment , Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
The American Institute of Architects has announced their annual “Top Ten Green Projects,” as chosen by the Institute’s Committee on the Environment (affectionately known as “COTE”). Now I have to say that I personally like and am impressed by just...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Curbing Pollution , Living Sustainably
Chris Jordan thinks big, and he wants us to think big, too. He makes large-scale fine art photographs of American mass consumption, the losses from Hurricane Katrina, and more. Have you ever wondered what the number of plastic drink bottles...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Please forgive the lame title reference to a 40-year-old (!) Joni Mitchell song, but my creative juices are running a little low today. Fortunately, they weren't running low AT ALL for the guy who made this video. I could try...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
If you live in an average-sized household, and your household drives 20,000 miles or fewer per year, you are probably paying too much for automobile insurance. If, on the other hand, your household is driving more than 22,000 miles per...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably
I'm on a roll, thinking about how home prices interact with location. The evidence is just ever more clear that smart growth locations deliver more value to the homeowner or homebuyer than we may have previously understood. As I posted...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably
National Public Radio's Morning Edition has joined the chorus of observers who are finding that sprawl locations may be suffering disproportionately from the turmoil in the nation's housing market:"Morning Edition, April 21, 2008 · Median home prices across the nation...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably
In previous entries, I’ve pointed to work by serious academics suggesting that, because of the mortgage crisis and other more structural changes in the housing market, sprawl locations are at more risk of decline than closer-in, more accessible locations. The smart-growth...
