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Imagine that you’re a makeup artist or a production manager on a Marvel movie. You’re working long hours and barely have time to shop for groceries or get in any exercise, let alone do yardwork or socialize. But what if your house was a pleasant 10-minute stroll from the studio, during which you passed a craft beer bar and outdoor concert stage? You’re too tired when you get home to think about grocery shopping, but that’s OK, because the delivery robot has just rolled up in front of your house with your weekly order.That’s the almost-too-utopian promise of Trilith, the...

Rattled residents of a South Boston luxury condominium complex where authorities say two people were murdered before an armed suspect was wounded in a shootout with police say they’re struggling to understand how so much violence could have unfolded in their upscale residential building. “It’s shocking for a building as nice as this,” said Amanda Ellis, 24, who has lived in the building since it opened in 2009. “It’s a really nice community. There are a lot of families and shared community spaces — it’s just shocking that this happened right above us.” Harly Hutker, 23, an architect whose parents...

:SNIP A. Introduction The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under the auspices of the Office of Research and Development (ORD), National Center for Environmental Research (NCER), invites submissions to the 8th Annual P3-People, Prosperity & the Planet-Awards: A National Student Design Competition for Sustainability. P3 focuses on scientific projects and engineering designs that address the three components of sustainability: people, prosperity and the planet. The P3 Program is intended to support science-based projects and designs developed by interdisciplinary student teams that benefit people by improving their quality of life, promote prosperity by developing local economies, and protect the planet...

From CNS News: In a video interview this week, White House Office of Science and Technology Director John P. Holdren told CNSNews.com that he would use the “free market economy” to implement the “massive campaign” he advocated along with Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich to “de-develop the United States.” In his role as President Barack Obama’s top science and technology adviser, Holdren deals with issues ranging from global warming to health care. “A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States,” Holdren wrote along with Paul and Anne H....

Given the increased importance of biofuels and the new linkages between agricultural and energy markets, increased cereal yields, if achieved, may not necessarily continue to lead to lower cereal prices. Because the world energy market is so much larger than the world grain market, grain prices may be determined by oil prices in the energy market as opposed to being determined by grain supply.Thus, higher priced energy means more hungry people. Yes, it really is that simple. But not so simple, unfortunately, that people like celebrity lion-impersonator Jeremy Irons can understand it. Up above, you’ll see a video he made...

For most of the 20th century, San Antonians saw southern Bexar County as the place where sewage paused, but people didn't, on the way to the coast. The band south of the city was, and for the most part still is, a rugged, sparsely populated area of ranches and oil fields, with a scattering of small communities along the Medina and San Antonio rivers. The area's image, however, was shaped by Mitchell Lake. It had been prized as a duck habitat for centuries, but in 1901 the city bought it for use as a sewage dump, then after 1930 as...

In-town living. Live-work-play. Mixed income. The buzzwords of soft-core urbanism are everywhere these days in this eternally optimistic city, used in real estate advertisements and mayoral boasts to lure money from the suburbs and to keep young people from leaving. Loft apartments roll onto the market every week, the public housing authority is a nationally recognized pioneer in redevelopment and the newest shopping plaza has one Target and three Starbucks outlets. But although gentrification has expanded the city's tax base and weeded out blight, it has had an unintended effect on Atlanta, long a lure to African-Americans and a symbol...

I read this article as a heads up for folks on the gulf coast. It doesn't say much but doesn't have to. All folks have to do is go to the New Urbanism Website http://www.newurbanism.org/pages/416429/index.htm. I have been to one of these Charettes and they are loaded with Government controls on individual property. A critique of the Smart Code which is the term used for New Urbanism can be found here http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~pgordon/urbanism.html The problem here in Gulfport MS is that the elected officials(most of which are new) are too inexperienced to see the long range problems it poses for the...

Last year was another instrumental year in the advance of world government. While most commentators will concentrate on popularized events, many will not discuss the latest steps taken to cement the final touches to a world governmental structure, that has been in the making for the last 150 years or so. In order to understand the importance of 2005's global achievements in the march towards global governance, which is the integration of the world's peoples, countries, and philosophies, we must briefly visit the past. Let us recount the 1913 birth of the U.S. tax code. Over the past 92 years,...

WASHINGTON — Talk about stirring a state, and perhaps a nation, to rein in sprawl and ease congestion. Last Monday, the newly-elected centrist Democrat Timothy M. Kaine marched into the General Assembly and told lawmakers that his first priority as Virginia’s governor is giving local leaders the authority to block new housing and business construction if roads cannot handle the increased traffic. What’s most important is not just what Mr. Kaine proposed, but where these Smart Growth ideas could take effect. Virginia lies right next to Washington. From one end of Pennsylvania Avenue to the other, politicians in search of...

Bossman Chip forwarded me an interesting piece from the Michigan Land Use Institute: "Could Smart Growth Tip the Next Presidential Election?" Having read through it, the headline seems rather, uh, optimistic. But there's some interesting stuff about the role smart-growth proposals played in the victory of Tim Kaine (D) in the Virginia governor's race, and the general lay of the political land in fast-growing exurbs: The basic electoral math is simple. The last two presidential elections were decided in the fastest growing counties of a select group of states, including Virginia, Florida, Colorado, North Carolina, and Ohio. In 2004, half...

The Las Vegas Valley is about to become home to a master-planned community reminiscent of a time before World War II. Grading is scheduled to start in Henderson this month on Inspirada, a community offering dense, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods interconnected with narrow streets, village squares, parks and open space. The venture will be one of the nation's largest "new urbanism" communities, spread across nearly 2,000 acres and featuring 11,500 residences. Focus Property Group, the master developer for a partnership of seven home builders, bought the site in a June 2004 federal auction for $557 million, double the appraised value. The site...

Mississippi government officials are asking prominent New Urbanist city planners for help in rebuilding their communities following the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina. The results will obviously differ from one community to another, but one thing is certain: New Urbanism will not be good for Mississippi. Why bring in the New Urbanists? “We got (new urbanists) because they were good task leaders in getting large groups of people together, not for new urbanism. These (local) people don't need anybody to come and tell them how to do their jobs.” So says Jim Barksdale, the former Netscape CEO appointed by Mississippi...

Hundreds of towns and cities across Europe begin a week of events designed to persuade people to choose forms of transport other than cars. More than 900 towns and cities in Europe will be taking part in the annual European Mobility Week event. The high point of the event, the fourth of its kind, will be "no-car days" when towns and cities bar all non-emergency vehicles from the streets. The EU says the theme of this year's event is called Clever Commuting. Cars may have set mankind free but cities across the developed and developing world now groan under their...

Expanding inclusionary housing to small landowners is "dumb growth" for everyone "As night follows day, every clever government intervention will invite multiple private responses, which are certain to undo whatever good might come about." - Richard Epstein, Markets Under Siege, 2005. Capitulating to affordable housing advocates, the City of Pasadena, California, is about to be one of the first cities to expand its inclusionary housing ordinance to small properties where only 5 to 9 units of new apartment housing can be built. Apparently, public officials and housing advocates do not realize that expanding the inclusionary housing law will produce no...

Conservatives and New Urbanism Steven Greenhut, the President of the Congress for New Urbanism John Norquist (former mayor of Milwaukee and author of a thoughtful book), and I will be among the speakers on the “Conservatives and Urbanism” panel of the 13th Annual Meeting of the Congress for the New Urbanism, at the Pasadena Convention Center, June 9-12. Our panel is Friday morning, June 10. Greenhut will argue that new urbanism is too close to regulatory-happy Smart Growth to satisfy conservatives’ insistence on liberty. Norquist will argue that conservatives should approve of New Urbanism’s desire to break up current zoning...

It's long been an irony that the same American who gushes over a delightful corner patisserie in the 16th arrondissement buys into a subdivision that is the antithesis of Parisian street life. There are no corner bakeries in the gently curving streets of suburbia, for an Old World clutter of transit, shops and residences is precisely what's been designed out of the suburban landscape. Does the irony lie in our rote desire for a suburban home, or in the fact we've had so few choices? Many of us would love to live in an urban neighborhood rich with transit and...

For nearly 60 years, Americans have eagerly traded their Main Streets, front porches and walkable old neighborhoods for lookalike suburban homes, multi-car garages and colossal freeway shopping centers with acres of parking. Now, arguing that the nation lost its aesthetic soul in the process, a small cadre of experts is mounting an attack on the rules that govern today's development and drive what's commonly called "sprawl." They're proposing one of growth's most curious reforms in decades: new "smart codes" to restore an era when less regulated builders created countless towns and cities such as Santa Barbara and Charleston, S.C., all...

City Council sends apple orchard development back to committee The "character of a neighborhood" would either be boosted or blasted by a proposal to put 49 new homes on an apple orchard in the upper Rattlesnake Valley, speakers told the Missoula City Council. Supporters and protesters of the Applegrove subdivision spoke for more than two hours Monday night about how it would affect the valley. The council is considering a complete package of street designs, lot sizes and annexation of the county island into the city limits. It took no vote Monday, sending the matter back to committee for more...