Smart Growth Around America

We noticed this new report from the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials, entitled “Primer on Transportation and Climate Change.” (H/T to David Crossley of the Gulf Coast Institute.) In it, they say some really terrific things about facing up to the realities of climate change while acknowledging we have to change our behavior [...]

Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein had his own version today of a James Kunstler column on our economic “readjustment” going on right now — just without JK’s colorful metaphors. Most of it is about all the “mirage economies” and the bubbles that were all very related to each other. But there was one interesting [...]

I know you’ve probably been reading the same stories ad nauseum over the last few weeks about the changes that many Americans are making in the face of 4 and 5 dollar gasoline. As the Department of Transportation noted in numbers released in the past week, driving was down in March 2008 over March of [...]

I noticed some numbers on oil prices that Ryan posted on The Bellows a few days ago, and thought that they were screaming out for some sort of graphical representation. Rather than spend a lot of time crafting some sort of polished graphic to illustrate the point, I resorted to the kind of design that [...]

I’m back from a weeklong vacation, so you probably already saw Paul Krugman’s wonderful column in the New York Times last week that was subsequently posted and emailed all over the place, but it’s worth posting for posterity.
In “Stranded in Suburbia,” Krugman muses on the differences in how high gas prices are devastating our economy [...]

Smart Growth America is looking for an IT professional to manage its current web assets and the rollout of new CRM and CMS systems.
Do you have experience designing and building and managing websites, managing small local networks? Would you be willing to do tech support grunt work for our small office while also managing the [...]

Gas prices are up. People are turning to transit in record numbers these days. But as you probably know, not everyone has access to a decent public transportation system, and many current systems are woefully underfunded or neglected, much like the rest of our national infrastructure.
The U.S. Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG) sent us [...]

I quickly mentioned the Capitol Hill policy briefing on Growing Cooler that was put on by the Urban Land Institute and the Environmental and Energy Study Institute a few weeks ago. SGA’s Geoff Anderson joined authors Steve Winkelman, Reid Ewing, and others in a discussion on where we live and how much we have to [...]

If once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, and thrice a trend, where are we now? More evidence continues to roll in that the high costs of fuel are pressing more and more Americans towards making lifestyle changes to reduce their consumption. Two stories over the weekend, one in the New York Times and [...]

SGA communications director David Goldberg appeared on KGO in the San Francisco Bay Area last night, discussing how America is fundamentally changing in light of rising gas prices — as well as a plethora of other factors and trends all converging at the same time.
People have been coming back in [to cities] for the last [...]

While we hope that Congress passes a global warming bill with a hard cap on emissions (cap-and-trade) to limit our overall emissions and incentivize even more reductions, people are beginning to realize that much of the power and leadership required to fight global warming will come at the state, regional, and local level.
Consider this story [...]

Gov. Glendening recently gave a keynote address at the EcoCity World Summit a few weeks ago in San Francisco. The EcoCity World Summit is one of the most exciting, innovative events in discussion solutions for making our towns and cities better, more sustainable places to live. The summit brings together the many leaders and innovators [...]

A few months ago, I was in Baltimore for a summit conducted by the Regional Plan Association on the Northeast Megaregion maintaining its economic competitiveness while addressing climate change. Rep. Earl Blumenauer had one bit of narrative that stuck with me about our nation’s history of rising to the challenge of infrastructure with visionary plans [...]

Colbert: “I have no oil dilemma. I go to the gas station, I pay money, they put gas in my car. What’s the dilemma?”
Kunstler: “You’re probably one of these people who thinks that the world has a creamy nougat center of oil, but it doesn’t.”

Video from Comedy Central.

How can we cut our emissions, fuel consumption, while also reducing congestion and providing more space for jobs and housing?
The US EPA’s smart growth office released a new study (5 mb pdf) examining the impact that good infill development can have on reducing transportation demand and lowering emissions. In some ways, this study picks up [...]

In this entry from Greater Greater Washington — one of my daily must-reads here about DC growth and urbanism issues — he digs up a 12-year-old op-ed from Russell Baker in the New York Times about the pain of rising gas prices. (Back when they were spiking over a dollar:)
Sure I’m mad about the price [...]

If you, like a majority of Americans, think that any proposal to suspend the gas tax is a bad idea — bad for the environment, bad for our infrastructure, bad for our dependence on foreign oil, and bad for our wallets— you’ll be interested to see an online petition that was sent to us today:
[...]

The losers: You, me, and infrastructure
A terrible idea that failed Bob Dole 12 years ago, gained second life as a recent John McCain economic proposal, and then became (perhaps surprisingly) a recent centerpiece of Hillary Clinton’s platform, is leading the daily news from the campaign trail as Americans feel tightening pressure from rising gas [...]

Walking in the ditch to Pleasant View Elementary School in Franklin, Wisconsin on an incomplete street, left, and a complete street that is safe and accessible for all users, right.

updated 5/3/08: Photo source of left photo added at bottom.
If you’ve been feeling pinched at the pump lately and tried cutting down on gas by walking [...]

Chart on housing prices against gas prices from the CEO’s for Cities report, Driven to the Brink (2001 recession shaded)

If you look back over the last two weeks at what we’ve been pointing to in the news and circulating on the blog, there was a clear trend emerging: Rising gas prices and escalating transportation [...]