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Issues: Moving Beyond Oil

Metro area commuting data from Brookings: best and worst performers nationally

May 12, 2010

Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming

Tags:
brookings, commuting, metropolitanregions, publictransportation, smartercities, smartgrowth, transportation

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...

Walkability 101-B, or why it's good to be connected

May 11, 2010

Posted by Kaid Benfield in Green Enterprise , Health and the Environment , Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil

Tags:
community, connectivity, neighborhood, smartgrowth, streets, walkability

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)...

Walkability 101-A, by Roger Lewis

May 10, 2010

Posted by Kaid Benfield in Health and the Environment , Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil

Tags:
community, neighborhood, smartercities, smartgrowth, streets, transportation, walkability

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...

What will become of Pass Christian? The impact of the oil spill on community

May 3, 2010

Posted by Kaid Benfield in Curbing Pollution , Environmental Justice , Green Enterprise , Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil

Tags:
BP, community, fishing, gulfspill, historicpreservation, mississippi, neighborhood, newurbanism, oil, passchristian, smartgrowth, tourism, walmart

      “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...

Chicago's spiffy new bike station

April 21, 2010

Posted by Kaid Benfield in Green Enterprise , Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming

Tags:
bicycling, chicago, commuting, smartercities, smartgrowth, transportation

Thanks to Streetfilms and the National Association of City Transportation Officials, here is a neat video on a great new facility in Chicago's Millennium Park.  It provides all sorts of services to bike commuters, other cyclists, and tourists.  I really...

Has the automobile era jumped the shark?

April 14, 2010

Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming

Tags:
community, smartgrowth, transportation, vehiclemilestraveled, walkability

  Has the automobile era jumped the shark?  The Walkable and Livable Communities Institute thinks the answer just might be ‘yes.’  In an unsigned Facebook post (authored perhaps by walkability guru Dan Burden?), the Institute says: “I am ready to...

Poll finds overwhelming US support for improved public transportation – slideshow summary

April 7, 2010

Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming

Tags:
community, congestion, publictransportation, smartercities, smartgrowth, sustainability, transit

Here are just a few tidbits from a new national poll conducted by Transportation for America, Public Opinion Strategies, and Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz and Associates: An overwhelming majority (82%) of Americans believe the country would benefit from improved public...

What cities should do to become more sustainable and resilient (and it’s not what they are doing currently)

March 30, 2010

Posted by Kaid Benfield in Green Enterprise , Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming

Tags:
efficiency, energy, food, greenjobs, planning, resilience, revitalization, smartercities, smartgrowth, sustainablecommunities, water

Warren Karlenzig, founder and president of the consultancy Common Current, believes that many cities’ current sustainability efforts are misplaced.  In particular, he asks, “should efforts such as focusing on renewable energy and energy efficiency [to power buildings] deserve the highest...

Reflections from Eric Britton on how art, walkability, transportation, and shared experience nourish us

March 29, 2010

Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming

Tags:
chopin, publicspaces, smartgrowth, sustainability, transit, transportation, walkability

           Eric Britton, the founder of the New Mobility Agenda and editor of the World Streets online newspaper covering international sustainable transportation recently posted a really nice étude while, fittingly, listening to one of Chopin’s nocturnes.  Although we...

Hi, I’m Kaid, proud to be an 'avid cyclist'

March 26, 2010

Posted by Kaid Benfield in Health and the Environment , Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil

Tags:
bicycling, community, fitness, smartgrowth, transportation

  Amazingly, there are some well-meaning transportation advocates who would like the phrase “avid cyclist” banned from the lexicon.  Their argument goes something like, “this phrase marginalizes all who bicycle and causes people in policy positions to discount cycling as...

A "complete street," circa 1906

March 25, 2010

Posted by Kaid Benfield in Health and the Environment , Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil

Tags:
community, completestreets, neighborhood, sanfrancisco, smartgrowth, transit, transportation, walkability

As a member of the Complete Streets Coalition, NRDC believes that streets should be for everyone: walkers, cyclists, drivers, transit users, merchants, offices, even nature.  Streets comprise the most important public spaces in our communities, and as such they should...

Most important analysis of land use you'll see all year: CNT proves benefits of smart growth nationwide

March 24, 2010

Posted by Kaid Benfield in Green Enterprise , Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming

Tags:
affordablehousing, CNT, community, driving, locationefficiency, neighborhood, smartercities, smartgrowth, sprawl, transportationcosts

The Chicago-based Center for Neighborhood Technology today dramatically expanded its “location efficiency” mapping and analysis to 337 metropolitan areas across the country.  This impressive resource details the housing and transportation costs associated with specific neighborhoods, along with neighborhood-based, per-capita driving...

We will take transit if it meets our needs (IOW, don’t fall for “the fundamental attribution error”)

March 18, 2010

Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming

Tags:
community, markettransformation, smartercities, smartgrowth, transit, transportation

  Here’s an insight from relating human behavioral science to transportation:  people who use a particular form of transportation such as driving or taking transit sometimes misunderstand the motives of those that use a different mode.  We generally have a...

Rave on, Jim Kunstler

March 10, 2010

Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil

Tags:
architecture, community, kunstler, neighborhood, peakoil, placemaking, smartercities, smartgrowth, sprawl

James Howard Kunstler is not a man given to understatement.  He makes Al Gore seem subtle.  Heck, he almost makes Al Sharpton seem subtle, but that’s a closer call. No, Kunstler is more the kind of guy who wants you...

Zoning reform, libertarianism, and the nature of community

February 26, 2010

Posted by Kaid Benfield in Green Enterprise , Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming

Tags:
anchorage, community, formbasedcodes, markettransformation, mixeduse, smartercities, smartgrowth, walkability, zoning

  The city planners of Anchorage, Alaska, are attempting to bring that city’s land-use regulations into the 21st century.  In particular, they are proposing a variation on form-based zoning that would encourage mixed uses, orientation of development to the street,...

Kaid Benfield
Kaid Benfield
Director, Smart Growth Program
Washington, DC
Co-founder, LEED for Neighborhood Development rating system; co-founder, Smart Growth America coalition; author, Once There...
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