Green Apple Talk #2: The Urban Environment

A discussion exploring the connection between urban planning, architecture, and contemporary design. How can we make our buildings, transportation and cities better for both the environment and people? What decisions can people make in the urban environment that can have a positive impact, both now and into the future? Featuring Buzz Poole, editor of Green Design, Alex Marshall, author of Beneath the Metropolis: The Secret Lives of Cities, and urban planner and blogger Shin-Pei Tsay. Moderated by best-selling author Bryan Keefer.

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Historical Photos of St. Louis Capture the Great Violence of “Urban Renewal”

By Angie Schmitt |
Some of these images, dug up by Alex Ihnen at NextSTL, almost look like a war zone. Buildings exploding. Entire city blocks reduced to ghost towns. Families out on curbs, carrying all their belongings in suitcases. It wasn’t a war, though — it was mid-century St. Louis. Perhaps no other American city more enthusiastically embraced the development strategy known as “urban renewal,” a euphemism […]
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The Value of “Good Enough Urbanism”

By Angie Schmitt |
In the urbanist blogosphere, there’s a lot of discussion about “getting density right” — the art and science of designing good urban space and codifying those qualities in zoning. Today at Strong Towns blog, Andrew Burleson has something interesting to add. Burleson says many of our cities have been so profoundly weakened that, short of […]
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NACTO Urban Street Design Guide Sets Out to Change the DNA of Our Cities

By Tanya Snyder |
In a direct challenge to the long-standing authority of state DOTs to determine how transportation infrastructure gets designed, the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) yesterday launched its Urban Street Design Guide. NACTO’s Urban Bikeway Design Guide has already empowered cities around the country to embrace protected bike lanes and other innovative designs that […]
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Study Links Quality Urbanism to Happiness :)

By Angie Schmitt |
Finally, a scientific explanation for the feeling of depression I get from suburban environments dominated by Applebee’s, OfficeMax and eight-lane thoroughfares. According to a new study published in Urban Affairs Review, urban design can have a measurable effect on how people feel. Researchers at the University of West Virginia and the University of South Carolina […]
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Bad Street Design Kills People

By Angie Schmitt |
Traffic fatalities are on the rise up again, with an increase of 8.1 percent in the first half of 2015, according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. As is their practice, NHTSA officials are attributing the problem to driver (or passenger) error — drunk driving, speeding, failure to wear seatbelts — but did promise “new initiatives to protect vulnerable road users such […]
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The Greenwashing of Sprawl

By Angie Schmitt |
Twenty-eight miles southeast of Cleveland, there is a development that bills itself as “Ohio’s FIRST Green Certified Residential Community.” According to the developer, The Lakes of Orange “offers a rare, one-of-kind opportunity to build and live in a green and sustainable environment.” “Reserve your place in eco-history today,” its website implores. “We are accepting lot […]