Urban Design

Solutions & sustainability – Jan 29

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-Oil Is Too Important To Burn In Cars
-Beyond rhetoric
-three paths to a low-car city
-Saving Sub-Sahara Africa a Drip at a Time
-How Can Haiti Be Sustainable?
-Straw Homes That Would Have Foiled the Wolf

Growing Good People Through Work, Study, and Community

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Just outside Asheville, North Carolina, bordered by the Craggy Mountains and located in the Swannanoa Valley on the banks of the Swannanoa River, Warren Wilson College students are busy moving the cows to their next pasture and cutting locally harvested lumber at the on-campus sawmill…

Peak Moment 160: A Young Couple Find Freedom in Simple Living

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Rather than follow the customary American dream, Tammy and Logan sold their home and car, and moved to a bikeable/walkable neighborhood in Sacramento, California. After reading Derrick Jensen’s writings, this couple used Your Money or Your Life as a means to get out of debt and, they feel, regain their lives and their future. While they recount the psychological challenges of facing a future of declining resources, the catalyst that continues to move them forward is a dream of living in an affordable tiny house within a supportive community).

Resilient Cities for Transition Times #1

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Hot from combined gatherings of Peak Oil, Climate, and new planning experts in Vancouver, October, this episode of Radio Eco-shock features California green guru Warren Karlenzig on post carbon cities and former Shell Exec now anti-corporate activist Anita Burke. This is the first of a series of speakers from “Gaining Ground/Resilient Cities, Urban Strategies for Transition Times” conference in Vancouver October 20-22nd, 2009.

The Next Decade’s Top Sustainability Trends

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The top ten sustainability stories of the past decade was my last post. What trends are likely the next ten years? One thing for sure, 2010 through 2019 will be one day looked at as 1.) the turning point for addressing climate change by using effective urban management strategies, or it will be remembered as 2.) the time when we collectively fumbled the Big Blue Ball.

Christiania: Copenhagen’s Funky Jewel of Sustainability

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A few years ago, when the Local Agenda-21 group for Copenhagen (Agenda 21 was the name of the sustainable development plan the UN launched at the Earth Summit in Rio) started to look at what kind of changes might be needed to place the city on a more sustainable path through the challenges of the coming century, they requested a guided tour of Christiania.

Top Ten Sustainability Stories of the Decade

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It’s the end of the decade 2000-2009, and there has been progress as well as potential disaster for sustainability. In chronological order, I’ve chosen these ten stories to show a range of relevant global and national issues and events on climate, business, government, media, design, technology, language and demographics.

Throwing our energy at impossible dreams…

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“as mankind proceeded to get bigger and bigger we silently crossed a threshold”

A radical in the Age of Denial

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It’s all about community. The age of cheap fossil fuels allowed us to forget that. But communities are making a comeback, and we’ll need strong ones if we’re to get through the years ahead with minimal human suffering. We’ll also need tremendous doses of compassion, creativity, and courage.

Review: The Ecotechnic Future by John Michael Greer

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John Michael Greer has officially established himself as an institution within the peak oil community. Truly one of the finest minds working on the predicament of modern-day industrial civilization, he is so well-read in so many fields that he regularly gains access to insights that utterly elude his contemporaries. For this he is treasured by a growing number of loyal readers—and, I suspect, hated by equally many fellow bloggers who wish that they could be half as good.