I’ll make this short. I am very cranky this afternoon, and I admit it. The lead from the AP wire, a few minutes ago: “Consumers are saving more than they’re spending, and that has investors worried.” What?!?!
Okay, so what, really, is the point of our economy? A rising GDP is the whole game? After a long [...]
Archive for the ‘The next city: energy’ Category
What Does Growth Really Mean?
Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: food, The next city: mobility, The next city: urbanism, The next city: water, tagged GDP, Growth, The next city, urbanism on June 26, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Getting Off the Grids III – Local Utility
Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: food, The next city: infrastructure, Urban design, tagged City block, infrastructure, Oregon, Salem, The next city, urbanism on June 16, 2009 | 3 Comments »
I have speculated here repeatedly about taking a single existing urban block off the grids. I have come to believe that the scale of a single city block may be the most affordable, and rational, way to retool existing urban neighborhood infrastructures: power, heat, water, gardens, all in the alley. And now it turns out that I am way, [...]
A Little and a Lot
Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: food, The next city: mobility, The next city: urbanism, The next city: water, tagged cities, energy, food, mobility, scale, urbanism, water on June 9, 2009 | 4 Comments »
The largest city on earth – Tokyo. Image by Altus.
I have often found myself reflecting here on matters of scale – of blocks and streets, of cities and neighborhoods. Recently I have found myself thinking about the relationship between the really, really big, and the fairly tiny. Let me explain.
We lead our daily lives in familiar, [...]
Getting Off the Grids, Part II
Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: infrastructure, The next city: urbanism, The next city: water, tagged infrastructure, Off the grid, Urban design, urbanism on June 3, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
In April (April 12th, to be exact) I wrote a piece that explored how to find a way to disconnect from all the infrastructure grids in a context of existing urban (and historic) rowhouses. I concluded that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for a single rowhouse to wiggle free of all the connections: sewer, water, [...]
Speed of Light
Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: mobility, The next city: urbanism, tagged Edison, Ford, lighting, Menlo Park, mobility, Sprague, urbanism, Westinghouse, White City on April 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Edison’s first lamp, by Robert Farrow.
I am not a luddite, but I do have a very healthy skepticism about technology representing our salvation. In the past 10 generations, we have succeeded in making an enormous mess, thanks to technology, a mess of such proportions that we are only now beginning to understand what we have done, and [...]
Getting Off the Grids
Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: infrastructure, The next city: urbanism, The next city: water, tagged district CHP, infrastructure, Off the grid, The next city, urbanism on April 12, 2009 | 4 Comments »
I want to talk about scale and size in our urban infrastructure, but it will take me a few minutes. Stick with me.
I started off last week continuing to think about the grid, or grids, that make cities work. Kind of.
Actually, our cities don’t really work very well at all, and their grids are pretty [...]
Cities, Scale and Economics
Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: food, The next city: infrastructure, The next city: mobility, The next city: urbanism, The next city: water, tagged billions, high speed rail, scale, urbanism on April 3, 2009 | 3 Comments »
We hear every day now about the staggering sums of money being thrown at this and that sinking sector of our nation’s economy. It’s hard to understand the scale of all of this. I am just now starting to figure out what a toxic asset is, and I am struggling to grasp what $700 billion dollars means. Or $50 [...]
American Urbanism: Shovel-ready
Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: food, The next city: mobility, The next city: urbanism, The next city: water, Vernacular urbanism, tagged American urbanism, Microurbanism, Office of Urban Policy, shovel-ready, urbanism, Vernacular urbanism on January 16, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Image from flickr.
“Once we accept that our cities will not be like the cities of the past, it will become possible to see what they might become.” Witold Rybczynski, City Life.
When he wrote those words in 1995, Rybczynski was actually “glimpsing the urban future,” and seeing it as a low-density and low-rise city, amorphous and sprawling, completely [...]
The Paradox of Thrift
Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: food, The next city: infrastructure, The next city: urbanism, tagged Keynes, Paradox of Thrift, regionalism, The next city, urbanism on December 28, 2008 | 2 Comments »
The North Sea. Photo by Captain Tim.
Spend? Save? It turns out that economist John Maynard Keynes came up with a name for the quandary I am in about saving, spending, and an economy we are watching slip beneath the waves faster than a melting glacier. He called it the Paradox of Thrift.
The Paradox goes like this: [...]
Some Thoughts for the New Plumber-In-Chief
Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: food, The next city: infrastructure, The next city: mobility, The next city: urbanism, The next city: water, tagged energy, food policy, infrastructure, mobility, Obama infrastructure plan, plumber-in-chief, The next city, urbanism, water on December 17, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Announced just over a week ago, your new infrastructure fund is now gone, Mr. President. It’s all been spent already, several times over, by politicians, constructors, lobbyists, trade associations. Get your staff to try googling “Obama infrastructure plan,” and up pop hundreds of thousands of web sites, and nearly every newspaper, magazine, financial analyst, and [...]
Categories
November 2009 M T W T F S S « Oct 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 A Motto for the Next City
"We stand here confronted by insurmountable opportunity." PogoA Working Definition
A sustainable city is one that finds the means (forms, shapes, structures and activities) to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.The Shock of the New…
"But an architect intent on being different may in the end prove as troubling as an over-imaginative pilot or doctor." Alain de BottonHow to Make the Right Choice
"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." Aldo LeopoldComplications
"There is always an easy solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong." H. L. MenckenA New Chapter Begins
Welcome. We have embarked on a journey of exploration, a journey with many destinations. We invite you to join us: these pages will provide a time and place for us to share our discoveries, and for you to share your thoughts. Onward!-
Flickr Photos
More Photos Blogroll
- Alameda old house history
- Archnewsnow
- Brookings Institution
- Car Free City, USA
- Eat Local
- Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn
- Emergent Urbanism
- Highwaterline
- Issues, culture, urbanism
- Micro-urbanism in Seattle
- Neighborhood Walkability
- On the Way
- Peak Oil. Global Warming. Viridian Solutions.
- Plotting the City
- Sustainable Cities Collective
- Sustainable Cities Network
- Taking a Line for a Walk
- The 100 Mile Diet: Local Eating
- The Earth Policy institute
- The Worldwatch Institute
- Toward Civility
- urbanlab
- WordPress.com
- WordPress.org
- World Changing
Pages
Archives
Meta
