Cities & Planning

George Cove patented solar energy technology in the early 1900s. Then, after a mysterious kidnapping, his business shut down.

We have launched the second volume in a new series of books opening up Low-tech Magazine’s archive by theme.

Excellent news for ratepayers, birds, bats, landscapes, and whales as offshore and onshore wind projects get scuttled

A Half Dozen Unforgettable Urbanism and Transit Tomes

This year's Australian national Dyson Award winner tells us more about the bolt-on REVR retrofit kit he's developing, that aims to convert ICE cars to practical, efficient hybrids for less than US$3,200, taking less than a day to install.

Adding light rail, rebuilding Memorial Stadium, and keeping tenants happy through it all is the challenge before Seattle Center. Walking around in Seattle Center and the neighborhood surrounding it, you quickly realize that one of the city’s largest pedestrian-only spaces has a lot of untapped potential. One morning in early October, I explored Seattle Center

Pueblo is a world-class model for the clean-energy economy envisioned in the Inflation Reduction Act. But its residents may not feel it.

In 2003, the Japanese municipality of Kamikatsu declared their intention to become a Zero-Waste Town. While true zero-waste is impossible, 20 years later the town has reached an impressive 80% recycling rate. (The national average in Japan is just 20%; in America, single digits.) Kamikatsu has achieved this rate

"We have to do something to prevent our planet from melting!" says everyone. Unfortunately, the "something" we're willing to do to save the planet doesn't include providing the average driver any kind of functioning and affordable alternative to exploding fossil fuels down the highway...

Published in 1922 using census data from 1919, this colorful map shows the historic manufacturing industries of NYC.

This image depicts one kind of neighborhood being considered for the proposed California Forever planned city development in eastern Solan...

“You gaslight yourself by being crazy.” - Judy Gemstone This week’s sequence of congressional slap fights scraped the edge of a devastating government shutdown and led to the ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The process has resulted in the single most predictable outcome: Democrats being blamed for Republican disarray. Congressional Democrats did not force

‘We invest in flood zones more than safe zones,' says the author of a report that finds building construction in such areas has jumped 122 percent.

A meeting of an obscure regional planning body got tense last week as elected officials sparred over the issue of expanding King County's urban growth boundary to encourage housing development and preservation of existing open space along the exurban fringe. The area of focus are near the cities of North Bend and Snoqualmie, an isolated patch

Advocates worry Sound Transit is tilting the scales in favor of the board's preferred alternatives of skipping Chinatown and Midtown and shifting Denny Station north. In August, the Sound Transit Board approved a $122 million disbursement to its consultant HNTB for an environmental study and engineering work for Ballard Link light rail. Sound Transit portrayed

The shipping container finally takes wing!

Bremerton is set to double its bike lanes, but will the City follow though to create a true network? Twelve watery miles due west of Seattle, Bremerton (population 44,000) is the cultural and employment hub of Greater Bremerton (pop. 180,000) and Kitsap County (pop. 280,000). The city’s largest employer, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard is basically

A revolutionary technology for renewable energy that will facilitate the generalization of the electric car, how zinc-ion batteries are revolutionizing energy storage in safety, sustainability, and efficiency.

[Image: The Heathen Gate at Carnuntum, outside Vienna; photo by Geoff Manaugh.] Last summer, a geophysicist at the University of Vienna named Immo Trinks proposed the creation of an EU-funded “Inte…

The Seattle Waterfront is set to get a big makeover and the scope of those upgrades got larger thanks to a $45 million gift from a group of local philanthropists led by Melinda French Gates and Mackenzie Scott -- two of the richest women on Earth. The infusion of cash has led to a public-private

A new solar desalination system takes in saltwater and heats it with natural sunlight. The system flushes out accumulated salt, so replacement parts aren’t needed often, meaning the system could potentially produce drinking water that is cheaper than tap water.

While you’ve heard plenty about big US agencies facing a “fiscal cliff,” some agencies are doing well and expanding their offerings as their staffing permits.  That includes Portland and Dallas, where we’ve been working, but here’s a similar story from a smaller agency in a beautiful place. Santa Cruz, just south of the San Francisco […]

What comes next when a "transformational" levy didn't transform Seattle streets? On a Monday morning in late August, Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) Director Greg Spotts started his workweek with a walking tour in West Seattle. That's a usual day for Spotts, who has made a point of regularly meeting with staff in the field

Strangely, it is very difficult to answer the question: "How many zones does Seattle have?" That alone suggests an uncomfortable answer. The Seattle Municipal Code lists 38 zones. These include 10 residential zones, 5 commercial zones, 4 downtown zones, and 5 (soon to be changed) industrial zones. There are also seven flavors of Seattle Mixed

Berlin-based climate research institute Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) has released a new study indicating that, in the last decade, the cost of solar power has dropped by 87 percent, and the cost of battery storage by 85 percent.

A battery built for satellites brings grid-scale storage down to Earth