Cities & Planning

Living in an urban environment for most of my life has certainly impacted the way I look at cars. Carbon emissions aside, I accept that there is a need for them sometimes, even in a city. But in my…

Playgrounds at about 300 schools have been renovated, benefiting students but also addressing the climate crisis

A handy tool to help make your case when whining about a biannual time change, following earlier explorations of the geography of DST effects. Protip: go to landscape mode if you're looking at this on a phone. Measuring if—and how much—DST sucks for you While my earlier map was interesting to explore, it leaves too much room for interpretation. You don't have time for that. Your life is too awful because of a lost hour, or a gained one. You need fast FACTS. So for this map I made up a score to prove that yo

Daylight Saving Time Gripe Assistant Tool: For this map I made up a score to prove that you're right (or wrong) about Daylight Saving Time ruining everything. It's the total number of days with both sunrise and sunset times that satisfy your preferences, minus a penalty for sunrise and sunset times that are too late or early, respectively.

Public transport maps are easy to take for granted but surprisingly difficult to master; conveying a mass of data in one simple design is no easy task. Veteran graphic designer and transit map enthusiast Cameron Booth runs through the dos and don'ts of effective map design.

The first cases of Heartland virus disease were identified in Missouri in 2009. Since then, clusters of cases have been linked to the lone star tick.

Policymakers and homeowners are scrambling to manage so-called 'wildland-urban interface' to mitigate the threat.

Some residents are experiencing a new kind of distress in response to flooding, air pollution and other ecological events linked to climate change.

If your office is where you live now, would you live in your old office?

One of the myriad issues with hydrogen as a clean energy source is infrastructure, as it's very expensive to move around and store an extremely explosive gas..

In 1970, a violent storm uncovered a Makah village that was buried by a mudslide more than 300 years earlier. A newly re-opened museum tells the fascinating story of the ancient site.

I dug crime databases in 16 European countries and came to some surprising conclusions.

The economic power of many U.S. metros is equivalent to other nations around the globe. Source: smartcitiesdive.com Perhaps because I’m fr...

The first ten years of this century Dutch public libraries moved their focus from collections to connections. Building makerspaces within libraries has been a central part of this change.

Big Clive, has a YouTube channel where he opens up electronic products (often dodgy ones that make fraudulent health claims) and explains what makes them work (or don’t work). In this video, …

Great, detailed story on Japan’s effort to revitalize its rail network in the mid-20th Century, from S.Y. Lee’s Substack. It’s a great example of how crucial it is for governments…

“New Olympia was, at best, half-birthed.”

A managed retreat researchers responds to Brenda Cooper’s “Out of Ash.”

Smithsonian shares how mapping technology cuts through the canopy to identify ruins in the Amazon. So the team conducted airborne lidar mapping of six different areas, ranging in size from about 4 …

In Star Wars, the Skywalker family are introduced as "moisture farmers." On their desert planet, they somehow pull water out of the sky using towering metal structures, which sounds more sci-fi than placing buckets under in-window air conditioners. Researchers at UT Austin have developed a material that can actually

It opens its "petals" and follows the sun, like a sunflower

A single kilogram of this gel, made from cellulose and a food additive called konjac gum, can pull 3.4 gallons of drinking water daily from the driest desert air, say Researchers at the University …

Barcelona set up 163 climate shelters to help residents stay cool in the scorching summer months.

Contractors on the project include Matt Mead of U.S.-based hempcrete construction firm Hempitecture and Ross Grier, Bellingham Bay Builders. The hemp hurd supply for the project was provided from Dun Agro, Holland while Wolf Jordan & Associates, Belgium, is supplying additive for the hempcrete mix.

Hempcrete / Hemp+lime is a biocomposite thermal mass wall system that lends to high performing, energy efficient, vapor permeable, breathable homes. If you're seeking the most sustainable thermal envelope building solution, whether you're a contractor or architect, look no further than hempcrete.

Hempcrete for USA home builders and renovators.