Posted by Kaid Benfield in Environmental Justice , Health and the Environment , Living Sustainably
Thanks to Daniel and his thoughtful blog Discovering Urbanism for highlighting an innovative program designed to help residents of urban “food deserts” - neighborhoods without nearby access to supermarkets - obtain fresh, healthy food more conveniently. The program also helps...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Environmental Justice , Green Enterprise , Living Sustainably
Last week I had the pleasure of attending a Washington, DC benefit party for the documentary-in-progress, The Rebirth of Over-the-Rhine. The film is about the restoration of the historic Cincinnati neighborhood of the same name, and the event...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Yesterday the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program released its signature report, The State of Metropolitan America. The study is a comprehensive examination of a range of data indicators on America’s 100 largest metro regions. According to the project’s website, the...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Green Enterprise , Health and the Environment , Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil
The degree to which our streets connect with each other has a major impact on how our communities feel and function, and a major effect also on their walkability. Generally speaking, the more connections (more frequent intersections, smaller block sizes)...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Health and the Environment , Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil
Washington Post columnist and architect Roger Lewis has published a terrific, concise summary of why we should do more to promote walking as a transportation mode and what a community needs to become more walkable. I hope that policy advocates...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Green Enterprise , Health and the Environment , Living Sustainably
Peter Harnik knows more about city parks than anyone else I know. And he has now put much of what he knows into a handy new book, Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities (Island Press, 2010). I was...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Green Enterprise , Health and the Environment , Living Sustainably
For some time, I have been intrigued by Atlanta as a city that contains both some of America's worst-case, most godawful sprawl and some of its most encouraging examples of smart growth. On the sprawl side, the grasp of metro Atlanta grew from...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Green Enterprise , Living Sustainably
Speaking of giving to the street, that’s exactly what DC’s New York Avenue Sculpture Project is doing, right under my office window, in the median of the street where NRDC’s Washington offices are located. The project comprises, for now,...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Green Enterprise , Health and the Environment , Living Sustainably
Our streets (including sidewalks, street trees, fixtures and so forth) are our most important public spaces. Whether we experience them on foot, driving along, or simply through a window, streets form the places where we most often experience that...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Curbing Pollution , Environmental Justice , Green Enterprise , Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil
“You’ve probably had your last really good Pass Christian oyster for a while,” Captain Louis Skrmetta of Ship Island Excursions told the (South Mississippi) SunHerald. “We’re looking at financial ruin from this. We’ve pretty much realized that...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Green Enterprise , Living Sustainably
The country’s first comprehensive system for defining, measuring, and certifying smart growth is now fully open for business. Today, the three founding partners of LEED for Neighborhood Development – NRDC, the Congress for the New Urbanism, and the US Green...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Green Enterprise , Living Sustainably
The American Institute of Architects has announced its top ten green projects for 2010. Sponsored by AIA’s Committee on the Environment, the award winners are each worthy of citation for excellence in internal design, in most cases reducing their...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Green Enterprise , Living Sustainably
Los Angeles’s Eco-Village is a two-block, 11-acre community dedicated to intentional, ‘whole-systems’ sustainable living in the heart of the city. Its area eccompasses about 500 residents in the city’s East Hollywood and Koreatown special planning districts. From what one can...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Curbing Pollution , Green Enterprise , Living Sustainably
The housing market is trending ever more dramatically toward smart growth. A look at recent home sales data in the Washington, DC metro area shows how. In particular, the May 2010 issue of Washingtonian magazine focuses heavily on the region's real estate. ...
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Green Enterprise , Living Sustainably
The Urbanophile, Aaron Renn, has an interesting new post about how American suburbs, particularly inner-ring suburbs, are being revitalized by immigrant populations. His focus is on his home region of Indianapolis, but the photos he presents and the stories he...
