Keith Schneider | ModeShift

Defending Lake Michigan Dunes

by Keith SchneiderAugust 1, 2007August 2, 20074

Â While visiting last month in New Buffalo, aÂ summering village along Lake Michigan’s southeastern coast, I learned that realtors and developers were preparing a campaign to significantly weaken or entirely repeal theÂ 31-year-old state law that protects Michigan’s magnificent fresh water sand dunes.Â The reason: the law was deemed to be an affront to “property rights” and an impediment to the development of some of the most compellingÂ maritime geography on the planet. Earlier this year, while researching …

Flip: Interactively Documenting Factory Farms

by Keith SchneiderJuly 31, 2007August 1, 20073

Â Among the priority hazards of joining capital and technology the way we doÂ in the 21st CenturyÂ is that it can blow upÂ the ordinary and familiar — a farm, for instance — into shapes and sizes that are extraordinary. That is what’s happening in Michigan and in many other states in animal agriculture. American meat, poultry, and milk, increasingly, are produced on immenseÂ sites that have come to be known as “factory farms.”Â For those who haven’t followed …

Flip: Building Permits, Mapped, At Your Desk Top

by Keith SchneiderJuly 24, 20070

The New York Times, my favorite newspaper,Â today published on its Web site a very useful and remarkably up to date online interactive map and directory of building permits issued byÂ New York City.Â The building permit feature is a collaboration between New York City, the Times, and Google and represents another vivid display of the Internet’s capacity to store, organize, andÂ disseminate useful land use and economc data in a way never possible previously. I can imagine all …

In Cleveland, The Girl With Kaleidoscope Eyes

by Keith SchneiderJuly 23, 2007July 23, 20072

Â CLEVELAND — I.M. Pei’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, aÂ masterpiece of glass and steelÂ onÂ Lake Erie, Â isÂ a great pyramidÂ playbox forÂ peopleÂ who love the music, the messages that changed the world, andÂ theÂ men and womenÂ of my generation who, unlike nearly all of us, Â lived as far out on on the creativeÂ edge as it is possible to be.Â A lot of the very bestÂ didn’t dwell there long.Â This weekend I visited the Hall for the first time andÂ came away …

Banning Coal Power Plants in Ontario; Promoting Them in Michigan

by Keith SchneiderJuly 18, 2007November 18, 20075

Â The Canadian province of Ontario,Â which lies across Lake Huron from Michigan, and is home to about the same number of people (10.3 million there, 10 million here), has supported one of the planet’sÂ active conversations on the ties between a strong economy and a clean environment.Â Much of the dialogue centers of global climate change and the province’s coal-fired power plants, one of which, the Nanticoke plant on Lake Erie, is among the largest on the …

Blissfest: Things Michigan Does Well

by Keith SchneiderJuly 16, 2007January 31, 20131

Â BLISS TOWNSHIP — There are a few things that Michigan still does very well.Â Its three big universities — Michigan, Michigan State,Â Wayne State –Â and network of smaller public colleges and universities, are terrific. Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, and Traverse City compare with anyplace in America as great places to live and do business. And we have Blissfest, theÂ affirming, heartening folk/blues/acoustic music festivalÂ founded in 1981, andÂ ever since has held the second weekend in July, on a …

While Lansing Sputters and Fumes, Grand Rapids Excels

by Keith SchneiderJuly 12, 2007July 18, 20074

Â There still isn’t much to be happy about when it comes to the political conversation in Lansing, our state capital.Â Though she won more than 50 counties in the 2006 election, more than any Democrat running for any state office in Michigan history –Â she also delivered a Democratic-led Â House;Â Republicans hold the state Senate by a slim majority –Â Michigan’s governor hasn’t done anything with her influence. Politics is a full contact body sport.Â Ms. Granholm, …

Green Neighborhood Grant Act in Illinois

by Keith SchneiderJuly 2, 2007October 31, 20073

Illinois, our neighbor to the west, has been doing a lot of things right of late for its residents, environment, and economy. It makes a Michigan resident a bit jealous.Â The Center for Neighborhood Technology and Bethel New Life, for example, convinced the Chicago Transit Authority to rebuild rather than tear down the elevated Green Line in the 1990s,Â helping to promote the revival of the city’s West Side. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley turned a tree-planting campaign …

Low Great Lake

by Keith SchneiderJune 28, 2007June 28, 20073

It’s an odd sight to venture to the shores of Lake Superior in Michigan’s upper peninsula and see dry dirt where there used to be water. Lake Superior, which holds 14 percent more water than the four other Great Lakes combined, is 18 inches below normal, lower than it’s been since 1926. We’re sort of used to low lake levels out here in the upper Midwest. Not long ago Lake Michigan was so low that …

Two Conversations on Energy in America; and Everything Else

by Keith SchneiderJune 27, 20072

You may have missed this little note out of Wall Street last week but many of the renewable and alternative energy funds are doing very well. The New Alternatives fund is up nearly 37 percent the last 12 months and 20 percent so far this year. The Guinness Atkinson fund is up 17 percent and 27 percent while the Wilder Hill funds, which launched last fall, are each up about 11 percent this year. By …