Championing the
Changemakers

Closing off streets to cars to create pedestrian malls doesn’t always work.

Land Use Digest, published by the Urban Land Institute, reported in its May 1996 issue that Chicago is joining such cities as Eugene, Little Rock, and Norfolk in reverting pedestrian malls back into regular streets. Merchants have complained in these cities that... Read more

The Natural House Catalog: Everything You Need to Create an Environmentally Friendly Home, by David Pearson. Simon & Schuster, 1996. Paperback, 286 pages, $23.

The Natural House Book uses a similar format—beautiful, high-quality photos and clear, concise text—... Read more

... Read more

An innovative section of highway near Los Angeles with “congestion pricing” is considered successful after six months of operation, and it could be the wave of things to come. The July issue of

Planning described a 10-mile segment of Route 91 with two lanes in either direction, known as FasTrak, in which tolls vary from $0.25 during the... Read more

The City of Santa Monica, California, has hired a team of local and international designers, researchers, and engineers to draft Sustainable Development Guidelines for new buildings. This effort grew out of Santa Monica’s Sustainable City Program and out of controversy over the redevelopment of the... Read more

Rural by Design: Maintaining Small Town Character by Randall Arendt. Planners Press, American Planning Association, Chicago, IL, 1994. Hardcover, 460 pages, $86.

This hefty volume is a detailed and comprehensive guide to land-use planning in rural America. In clear language with excellent examples and... Read more

This is a great tale, but I don’t believe it. The article [

Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 10-11] implies that insulation and airsealing dropped 30 tons (106 kW) of peak load from this 17,000 ft2 (1,600 m2) building. Nor do I believe the peak load of only 20 tons (70 kW) for this building. Indiana has hot... Read more

In a unique effort, a native-plant nursery, landscape architect, and Habitat for Humanity affiliate have teamed up to salvage native plants and use them for landscaping low-income houses. For a year-and-a-half, Roy Beaty and his Willowell Nursery in Tigard, Oregon, have specialized in native plants, and beginning last... Read more

On-site photovoltaic panels supply much of the electricity, heating loads are met in part with... Read more

The Austin, Texas, 5th Annual Green Builder Conference will host the award ceremony of the Green Built Birdhouse Competition. The grand prize is two round-trip airline tickets to Europe. The contest is sponsored by the Conference, Austin’s AIA chapter, and Dynamic Reprographics. Conference attendance is required for entry into the contest (see... Read more

An adobe house under construction in a Lakota Sioux community in South Dakota, with assistance from the Yestermorrow Design-Build School. Material for these adobe... Read more

The United States took a surprisingly strong position on cutting greenhouse gas emissions this summer at the Second Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP2) in Geneva. On 17 July, Undersecretary of State Timothy Wirth announced that the U.S. will seek an amendment to the existing treaty to create “binding”... Read more

At the Fourth Congress for the New Urbanism, held this past May in Charleston, South Carolina, more than 200 participants signed a charter that defines, for the first time, exactly what new urbanism is. The charter was developed in part to dispel criticism that new urbanism is really just a mild form of suburban... Read more

The new Georgia Institute of Technology Aquatic Center has 2,800 solar modules generating 344.5 peak kilowatts (kW) of electricity. One section of the array, with an output of 4.5 kW, is comprised of Solarex’s new 240-watt alternating-current (AC)... Read more

First prize in the Van Alen Institute’s competition for a design for reuse of New York Harbor’s Governors Island was awarded to University of Pennsylvania graduate student Peter Hau for his plan to transform the Island into a regenerative garden. Entitled: “Open Narratives: Reconfiguring the Air, Land and Waters,” Hau’s proposal includes plants... Read more

With recent restrictions on logging in some publicly owned forests in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S., the pressure on forests in Canada’s British Columbia (B.C.) is increasing. A broad array of environmental groups is increasingly vocal about the fate of B.C.’s temperate rainforests, and coalitions... Read more

The country’s first commuter bike station has opened in Long Beach, California, according to the Urban Land Institute’s June 1996

Land Use Digest. The Bike Station, modeled after similar facilities in Japan and the Netherlands, provides secure parking for 150 bicycles, along with bike rentals, repairs, and accessories. It is located in... Read more

was a finalist in

Utne Reader’s 8th Annual Alternative Press Awards this year. While we were not a winner, we were pleased to be recognized in the “Service” category.