Cities & Planning

// A Brief History of a Dysfunctional Relationship When I was writing Straphanger, I had a conversation with a New York Times editor who expressed her skepticism that anyone would be interested in a book about trains, bicycles, and transit. "You're never going to get Americans out of their cars," was

The cost of specialized farm equipment is one of the biggest barriers for small-scale and beginning farmers. Cooperatives are springing up around the nation to help bridge the gap.

Outside of Charleston, South Carolina, in the picturesque marshes of the Kiawah River, sits more than 100 acres of working farmland. Seasonal crops rotate

Source:  curbed.com (Janna Morton) Let’s talk about the nation’s housing affordability crisis. I recently downloaded some 2023 third qua...

Seattle is in a pickle with its streetcars, especially the near-empty ones in SLU. Could a free municipal Uber service be an answer? Bellevue is trying it.

Cities today are mostly rooms in (home/office/store) units in buildings separated by roads. Besides roads, cities provide city services like power, water, sewage, and telecom. Buildings channel these services to units and add more like lights, air/heat, security, and elevators. Units are managed by particular orgs, who may add further local services like receptionists and IT, while people and small groups have their own rooms, over which they have some discretion.

Earth’s acoustic environment has been profoundly altered by noise, but it’s not too late to change course.

The Green Point Knife Truck is carrying on the craft of mobile knife sharpening for restaurants and home cooks alike

The ThingsCon report The State of Responsible IoT is an annual collection of essays by experts from the ThingsCon community. With the Riot Report 2018 we want to investigate the current state of…

This story was originally published by Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action. In the more than a decade since Alabama regulators allowed a landfill to take in tons of waste from coal-burning power plants around the U.S., neighbors in the majority-Black community of Uniontown frequently complain of thick air […]

Coast redwoods draw visitors from around the world to California. But the trees are also found all over Washington, if you know where to look.

It’s a sobering, if not surprising, assessment of a project talked about for more than a decade by an array of City Councils and mayoral administrations.

Transit conveys culture as its conveys passengers. The former Russian capital provides some lessons on how the Seattle region could do better. Seattle has begun constructing a major light rail system with Link, defining the contours of its urban development for generations. Every mile of track laid and station opened speaks to the region’s values.

A scene from the game Cities: VR. Source:  vrscout.com   (Note: First, Happy New Year. Here's my first post of 2024. It's long, it's introsp...

Misunderstanding the size of an acre, floor area ratio, and the area of a circle ruins many conversations about the basic shape of where you live.

Planners’ preference for urban density should not supersede Americans’ preferences for suburban or exurban living.

Seattle's infrastructure is not at all prepared for what will become normal: extreme weather events.

Researchers are working with communities in Puerto Rico to build more sustainable systems in the face of ongoing challenges.

The yearlong pilot could be the first step in creating a residential-storage virtual power plant larger than any in North America.

Landfills are a major contributor to the overheating of our planet, but a new study shows how we can change that.

High-voltage power lines in the United States will soon be monitored by “magic balls” from Norway.

This is Randal O’Toole . I’ll use him as a representative for the dominant philosophy that guides North American land use and transportation policy. Mr. O’Toole is an advocate of car ownership. His logic is simple. If you have a car you have automatic access to a wide variety of geographic employme

The Community Economic Revitalization Board (CERB) was formed in 1982 to respond to local economic development in Washington communities. CERB provides funding to local governments and federally-recognized tribes for public infrastructure which supports private business growth and expansion. Eligible projects include domestic and industrial water, storm water, wastewater, public buildings, telecommunications, and port facilities.

Internet for All in Washington The Washington State Broadband Office is leading a state planning process to develop a Five-Year Action Plan and a State Digital Equity Plan. These two plans will establish eligibility for federal funding to deliver significant investments for expanding broadband access and to help close the digital divide in Washington. The Internet for All in Washington initiative will create strategies to ensure reliable, high-speed Internet across the…

This enables public entities, including not-for-profit, community-owned public utility districts to provide retail broadband service to end-users

Holiday merrymaking should involve more whimsy, less rigmarole, and less price gouging. Seattle still hasn't cracked the code to create a true Christmas market that doesn't feel as if it was designed by the Grinch: cordoned off from the rest of city, hard to reach, the vibes are off, and the wares are expensive. The

Last Christmas, the U.S. narrowly averted an energy disaster that would have decimated New York City and killed thousands

Wild Card Destination du Jour: Southern Indiana's Failed Utopia - Don't Be A Tourist - Messy Nessy Chic

A repeal initiative blaming the state's climate law for higher gas prices could wind up on the ballot in November.