Affordable and Green: Net-Zero House in Washington DC
EMPOWERHOUSE is a community-based approach to sustainable urban development showcasing the design of two affordable, energy-efficient solar powered homes and a neighborhood learning garden for...
View ArticleBioMilano: Italian Eco-Vision Grows 26-Storey Vertical Forest
Bosco Verticale or Vertical Forest, the first phase of BioMilano, a re-envisioning of Milan, Italy, with an eye toward ecological urbanism, integrating tree and skyscraper, city and wild.
View ArticleLos Angeles River Revitalization: A City Rediscovers its Flow
The LA River, an over-engineered concrete "water-freeway," is undergoing a long-term greening and revitalization. A 32-mile greenbelt, developed through numerous projects, promises to improve the...
View ArticleOrange County Toll Road to Nowhere Denied Permits
Orange County's Toll Road Agency is pushing the first segment of a previously rejected road extension that will have significant and irreversible environmental and economic impacts. According to the...
View ArticleAustria: Energy-Efficient Office Tower Rises Over the Danube
Tall buildings tend to use massive amounts of energy with big carbon footprints. One new Viennese project featured in Passive House Plus shows that high rise doesn’t have to mean high environmental...
View ArticleDetroit Future: Landscape Urbanism, Antidote to Industrial Blight
For the last 40 years, Detroiters have fled the once-majestic downtown core for the bucolic image of sprawling suburbia. Now an urban revival in the name of "Detroit Future City," complete with...
View ArticleLA River: An Urban Ecosystem Makeover in Transition
After seven years of study, federal officials have recommended a $453-million plan that would restore an 11-mile stretch of the Los Angeles River but leave much of its banks steep and hard to reach....
View ArticleSongdo, South Korea: Utopian City of Big Data and Urban “Sustainability”
The idea of the "utopian" community began in 1516 with Sir Thomas More's fictional perfected society to present-day attempts to build the most sustainable urban ecosystem. With the case of Songdo...
View ArticleCopehangen’s Sustainability Vision: Carbon Neutral, Climate-Adapted
Global warming poses a real threat to cities but planners in the Danish capital are taking visionary steps to ensure its resilience – and success – as far ahead as 2100. The city approved a plan for...
View ArticleSprawl vs. Open Space: “Rio Santiago” Again Threatens Orange
Jack Eidt writes on the dangers of proposing mixed use development far from urban amenities and alternative transportation. The real estate industry in Orange County, California and beyond, has...
View ArticleGreening Detroit: Positive Change Moves Slow and Fast
On one hand, Detroit turns the water off for communities challenged by its legacy of disinvestment and neglect. Yet, with urban farming, electric streetcars, neighborhood reinvention, Mayor Mike...
View ArticleGreen Urbanism: Balancing Environmental Justice with Gentrification
Is it possible for urban planners to make places more attractive and healthy, without then making them more expensive? Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow investigates recent research into the ongoing debate about...
View ArticleSustainable Vertical Urbanism: The Future of Cities?
"Vertical City," a complete ecosystem in the sky that you never have to leave, accommodates population growth and protects the planet, but may have significant drawbacks for the people who call it home...
View ArticleLaguna Beach “Ranch” Hotel Renovation Violates Coastal Rules
The California Coastal Commission failed to enforce the Coastal Act and did not require a Laguna hotel renovation to address destruction of affordable rooms and environmental habitat as well as finish...
View ArticleStarchitects and Spectacle: Sustainability Solutions Needed
Architecture must move on from an addiction to spectacle and fad, adrift in a sea of meaningless forms, leaving serious design and sustainability problems unresolved, says Peter Buchanan. But to do...
View ArticleL.A. River Must Transform as Watershed, Transportation Corridor
Takeaways from a recent Green Festival Expo discussion on the Los Angeles River Revitalization include that the job of planning for water resiliency belongs to all of us, not Frank Gehry regardless of...
View ArticlePower, Influence, and Obfuscation: A Plan to Game the California Coastal Act
Why did Coastal Commissioners dump popular Executive Director Charles Lester in a closed session at their February meeting in Morro Bay? It is part of a plan by well connected lobbyists and lawyers...
View ArticleReform California’s Environmental Quality Act? Not Now.
The California Environmental Quality Act, protector of resources and communities through consideration of implications of proposed projects, is under attack. Representatives from industry and real...
View ArticleJerry Brown’s Regulatory Capture at the CA Coastal Commission
Jerry Brown, once known as governor Moonbeam who signed into law the California Coastal Commission, now can be seen as the man behind handing it over to developers. Governor Brown must fire his four...
View ArticlePreserve Newport Banning Ranch as Sacred Archaeological Site Genga
Newport Beach's Banning Ranch, the site of a proposed mega commercial and residential development, is an extraordinary archaeological site. Once the site where an ancient Native American coastal...
View ArticlePruitt Igoe Myth: The Death of 20th Century US City
Destroyed in a dramatic and highly-publicized implosion, the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex has become a widespread symbol of failure among architects, politicians and policy makers. A 2012...
View ArticleUsing Regenerative Design to Revitalize Newport Banning Ranch
Facing a major Coastal Commission decision this week, Newport Banning Ranch developers should adopt staff's recommendation that all environmentally sensitive habitat should be protected and could be...
View ArticleHow Cities Can Build Affordable Housing
Alan Durning lays out how many cities have succeeded in building affordable housing with some lessons from unexpected places. Yet constrained housing markets come about from economics, environment, and...
View ArticleIannis Xenakis and the Notion of a Cosmic Utopia
Iannis Xenakis, the Greek-French experimental composer and protege designer for the famous architect Le Corbusier, advanced theories of the vertical "Cosmic" city as the only sustainable way forward....
View ArticleDefensible Space: My Wildfire-Appropriate Retrofit Journey – Part I
As the Western U.S. continues with massive wind-driven, high-intensity wildfires that often turn deadly, Naomi Pitcairn recommends retrofitting homes on the Wildland Urban Interface for fire-resistant...
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