At the Frontlines of the Global Transition
More on that train race out west that I wrote about earlier this month. Metro, the transit agency in Phoenix, is asking the state for $1.7 billion to accelerate construction on the 57-mile light rail system that is being built, and to add more than 20 new miles to the system by 2027. This according to the Arizona Republic. That’s the very same strategy that Salt Lake City voters approved in November when they raised the sales …
This third installment of Flip looks at how two artists view the geography of urban and suburban place in America. Both come from Flakphoto, another of the terrifically creative places to view digital photography. Photographer Terry Evans looks at Chicago in this site, which deploys interactive motion graphics in an easily navigable format. The next example is how Jeff Brouws looks at sprawl. His is a sort of inspired cynicism. Very cool stuff. If you find …
Tonight Al Gore could win an Academy Award for “An Inconvenient Truth.” Later this year he could also win the Nobel Prize for Peace. And if he lost 50 pounds and jumped into the 2008 presidential race, he could win that, too. Ever since he published “Earth in The Balance,” his 1992 best-seller, Gore’s two issues have been global climate change and himself. The first, global climate change, is drawing the nation inexorably to logical choices about energy, …
  The American Prospect, one of the important forums of progressive thought, published a special section last month on “Emerald Cities.” “The environmental movement and the movement for a new urbanism come together in a quest for cities that are both affordable and sustainable,” write the editors. “With more sensible land use and transportation strategies, and better use of scarce subsidy dollars, America could provide more livable cities with lower energy costs, as well as …
 It took me a long time, too long in fact, to get a grip on this blog thing. Time constraints. Fear of not being able to commit. Uncertainty about audience. Distrust of the forum. Like, dude, what was I waiting for? Turns out this is the deal for writers. More to the point, it’s the deal for any public interest minded soul intent on making a difference, wherever they are. Reason. The Internet is a …
Seven years ago New Yorker magazine writer Malcolm Gladwell published The Tipping Point, which explored the mix of episodic and serendipitous stages that turn a good idea into a cultural event. Gladwell’s book is as useful for explaining the genetics of a modern sensation as Alvin Toffler’s The Third Wave was in the 1980s for understanding the economic and cultural consequences of rapid change. Both books are essential reading for grasping how global climate change has …
“The stuff that matters, especially when it comes to the environment, is not the big flashy stuff,” explained Keith Bartholomew, a lawyer who teaches planning at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. “It’s the small actions. Environmental damage is an accumulation of 1,000 cuts. So repairing it means applying 1,000 Band-Aids. Each one is important. It’s the many small Band-Aids that matter. Real relevance is the cumulative effect.” I interviewed Keith last week for …
This is the second weekly installment of Flip, Modeshift’s exploration of the best examples of online tools to build connections between people and places. I’ve got several for you to see. Spend some time with these. They’re all terrific. The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington in Seattle produced this interactive production to explore several ancient settlements in Puget Sound. The production mixes text, audio, video, and motion graphics. The Museum …
 SALT LAKE CITY – Matt Leighninger published an interesting piece this week on Tompaine.com about how local governments are finding new ways to get things done, particularly across jurisdictional boundaries. “Local leaders are recruiting large, diverse numbers of people and involving them in small, deliberative groups, big action forums and ongoing structures like neighborhood councils,” Leighninger wrote. Leighninger’s “deliberative groups” are the same thing as “convening groups,” my term for describing the new alliances of …
Not long before she died earlier this month Molly Ivins, the great Texas political columnist, noted that the conventional American news media had an odd business strategy: Giving customers less and less of an ever duller and out of touch product. Newspaper readership has been declining since its peak in 1992. Now, instead of individual papers going out of business, entire chains are biting it. Almost a year ago Knight Ridder, which had squeezed the intellectual energy out of Pulitzer Prize winners in …