Op-Ed: Vancouver Shows Carshare’s Success Depends on Great Transit - The Urbanist
# While Seattle has cycled through carshare startups, Vancouver's Evo carshare program has grown into a big success, aided by strong transit and less competition from ridehailing in British Columbia.
Op-Ed: Optimize Sound Transit, Split System into Urban and Regional Lines - The Urbanist
# As Sound Transit builds the largest light rail expansion in the country, splitting the system into urban and suburban lines could unlock its full potential and queue up logical extensions.
How an American Radical Reinvented Back-Yard Gardening
Ruth Stout didn’t plow, dig, water, or weed—and now her “no-work” method is everywhere. But behind her secret to the perfect plot lay other secrets and other plots.
iNaturalist is a social network for naturalists! Record your observations of plants and animals,
share them with friends and researchers, and learn about the natural world.
A Peek Inside France's TGV M, the Modular Train Setting a New Standard for High-Speed Rail
(This post may have already landed in your inbox. I've made some updates, and welcomed some new arrivals from Substack, so I'm sending out a new version. I've tried to make sure it's not
We’ve all seen the ads. Some offer “free” solar panels. Others promise nearly free energy if you just purchase a solar — well, solar system doesn’t sound right —…
Food and Country: trailblazing food writer Ruth Reichl reaches across political and social divides to report on the country's broken food system and the innovators risking everything to transform it.
US Rural Intercity Transit: The County Line Problem — Human Transit
In the US, public transit is often organized at the county level, so the service ends where the county does. There are countless situations like this, where two significant cities are 20-80 miles apart with a county line separating them: If transit is provided by county-level agencies, the service in this situation […]
Op-Ed: Why Your City Needs a Tool Library - The Urbanist
# Nearly a dozen tool libraries are operating in the Puget Sound region and Kirkland is aiming to join the club. Here's what tool libraries add to communities.
YIMBYism is an American legal tradition. Here’s how to revive it. - Niskanen Center
When “YIMBYs” first appeared on the scene, it appeared to many as though they had come out of the blue. But it turns out YIMBYism is part of a long American tradition.
Competing With $1/Gallon Gas—The Strange Non-Economics Of EV Charging
People want to run EV charging stations as a business, but could you sell gasoline for $4/gallon if almost everybody has a $1/gallon filling station at home?
It appears that gray and neutral tones on houses are a sign of gentrification in cities. To demonstrate, for the Washington Post, Marissa Lang and John Harden analyzed D.C. house images from Google…
Council Committee Greenlights SoDo Housing Proposal Despite Strong Port Opposition - The Urbanist
# The 3-2 vote in committee sets up a final decision later this month, but the Port of Seattle is suggesting they may take legal action against the move.
In some cities, a large percentage of the population has access to public transit, whereas in others, access is limited. Aniket Kali and Jeff Allen mapped rail transit on population density and the…
A project in Mass. tests a future for gas utilities without fossil fuels | WBUR News
Eversource is building the country's first gas utility-led networked geothermal system in Framingham. Environmentalists hope it can be a model for other gas utilities to wean themselves off of fossil fuels.
District Heat Pump Systems Save Money And Gas Utilities
Ground-source heat pump systems are one of the most efficient ways to do climate control, but digging the wells can be prohibitively expensive for the individual citizen. What if you could do it at…
African cities' evolution: Complex systems analysis unveils hidden rules of urban growth
From the perspective of complex systems, a new study reveals the universality, specificity, and explanatory power of underlying rules governing urban system evolution. The paper is authored by an international ...
Reimagining Prediction Markets for Civic Economies
This week, there are two new models to reflect: Grok-3 and Claude 3.7. And much more from the news. And thinking about prediction markets for value relation flows.
NEMA Releases Standard For Vehicle-to-Grid Applications
Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) has been hailed as one of the greatest advantages of electrifying transportation, but has so far remained mostly in the lab. Hoping to move things forward, the National Electr…