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Archive for June, 2011

Increasing Public Transport Use with Smart Campaigns

Posted in Climate Change, Sustainable Transportation on 06/30/2011 | Leave a Comment »

Marketing efforts by public transportation systems are vastly outspent by those of the major automobile companies, which spend billions each year to attract new customers, says EMBARQ, a transportation think tank. In a new report, the group says worldwide advertising and marketing efforts among the automobile sector as a whole total $21 billion. General Motors alone spent $3.2 [...]

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How to Do It: Create a Plan to Transform Red Fields into Green Fields

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Policy and Regulation, Real Estate Development, Smart Growth, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization on 06/29/2011 | 1 Comment »

Los Angeles has beaches and mountains, but the City of Angels is not known for its parks and public spaces. Granted, there are several large open spaces on the outskirts of the city – typically in those places that were too steep or flood-prone for development, and there are a number of small and mid-sized [...]

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Designing a Built Environment Resilient to Climate Change

Posted in Climate Change, Green Buildings, Green Roofs, Landscape Architecture, Policy and Regulation, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization, Water Management on 06/28/2011 | 1 Comment »

Buildings, landscapes, infrastructure, and even entire cities can be designed to be more resilient to climate, environmental, and population changes, argued a high-profile panel at the American Institute of Architects (AIA) D.C.’s Design D.C. conference. Green technologies and practices have come a long way. Smart policymakers and designers are now applying these tools, figuring out ways to leverage existing systems to [...]

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Robert Ivy on the Future of Architecture

Posted in Climate Change, Environment, Green Buildings, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization on 06/22/2011 | 4 Comments »

At a meeting of the D.C. Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), Robert Ivy, the new CEO of the national organization and former editor of Architectural Record, said architects are already expanding their offerings beyond traditional building design to “supplemental services.” Eventually, architects may even become “creative consultants” to a wide range of industries, [...]

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Bus Shelter in Philly Gets a Mini-Green Roof

Posted in Ecosystem Services, Green Roofs, Landscape Architecture, Sustainable Transportation, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization, Water Management on 06/22/2011 | Leave a Comment »

A new demonstration project by the Philadelphia Department of Water shows that a green roof can pop up in the unlikeliest places, even on top of a bus shelter. While the 60-square-foot mini-green roof captures just a few gallons of water a day, it’s located at a key junction at 15th and Market streets, one of the city’s [...]

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Legacy of the Cold War: Germany’s Green Belt

Posted in Ecosystem Restoration, Environment, Forests, Wildlife on 06/22/2011 | Leave a Comment »

After the split between West and East Germany, Communist planners in the east worked out a 870-mile border fence that moved from the Baltic Sea through Bavaria. On the East German side, the actual border control system started 5 kilometers from the real border, writes Christian Schwagerl, a Der Spiegel writer, in Yale Environment 360. There needed to be room for a ”first line [...]

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Interview with Congresswoman Donna Edwards

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Policy and Regulation, Sustainable Design, Water Management on 06/17/2011 | 1 Comment »

Congresswoman Donna Edwards represents the 4th Congressional District of Maryland. We’ve all heard in the news how flooding has ravaged southern communities. However, there’s been little discussion of how green infrastructure could help mitigate the impact of natural storms. What is your case for using green infrastructure to address flooding? The case is straightforward. We [...]

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Solving the Real Estate Crisis with Parks

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Policy and Regulation, Public Spaces, Real Estate Development, Urban Revitalization on 06/16/2011 | 3 Comments »

Mike Messner, the investment fund manager, is the primary force behind the budding “Red fields to Green fields” movement, which has been picked up by more than 10 major cities in the U.S. The basic idea is to transform toxic real estate into parks, elevating nearby property values, and turning a downward spiral of economic [...]

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The Power of NASA’s Landsat

Posted in Ecosystem Restoration, Environment, Forests, Technology on 06/15/2011 | 1 Comment »

Why should the U.S. continue to invest $2 billion a year in earth monitoring satellites? According to speakers at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies and its Alliance for Earth Observations, real-time environmental data collected from NASA’s Landsat is crucial to managing climate change and other natural disasters such as the ones that happened in Japan and Haiti over the course of the year. Space-based environmental [...]

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Nigel Peake: “The Land Is Made from Many Small Parts”

Posted in Land Art on 06/15/2011 | 1 Comment »

Nigel Peake, a multi-talented watercolor artist and architect, has created a new book, In the Wilds, which documents his close examination of the Irish countryside. In his introduction, Peake writes that the “land is made from many small parts. The hills, flats, and valleys made up of colors and shapes.” On top of these natural shapes are [...]

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