Smart Growth Around America

You may have seen oilman T. Boone Pickens around lately.
If not, then you haven’t turned on your television, radio, or opened a newspaper in the last few weeks. He’s been touting his new Pickens Plan nonstop to nearly any outlet that will listen, taking out full-page ads in newspapers from coast to coast and even [...]

Almost overnight, it has become the most pressing issue in the minds of most Americans. CNN’s most popular topic this week? “Fueling America.” Gas prices are now competing with Iraq, the economy at large, and even Angelina Jolie for primacy in the national consciousness. If you’re interested in the numbers, do check out Google Trends. [...]

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 [...]

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.

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:
[...]

Author James Howard Kunstler looks at the trends we’ve been discussing for the last week — home prices in suburbs with long commutes depreciating — as well as some that we haven’t talked much about, like escalating food prices and the debilitating effect that high fuel prices are having on airline and retail industries, and [...]

The situation: Bridges are falling down, traffic congestion is worsening, gains in fuel efficiency are reducing gas tax revenues, worthwhile transit projects are sitting on the shelf, and the Highway Trust Fund — funded by the 18.5 cents a gallon gas tax that is already inadequate for funding transportation investments — is about to run [...]

In two separate blog posts, U.S. News and World Report writer Marianne Lavelle crunches some of the numbers on the effect gas prices will have on the latest economic stimulus package that President Bush recently approved. (Part I, Part II) Based on projected increases in gas and other petroleum-related energy prices, Lavelle finds that as [...]

BusinessWeek published a special report on Green Design and Innovation this week, and one of their top stories highlights the core message of Growing Cooler: meeting the demand for the walkable neighborhoods and cities that result in less driving is one of the best solutions for reducing emissions.
Alex Steffen reworked his longer essay that appeared [...]

After nearly two years of study and debate, the Congressionally mandated, bipartisan commission charged with predicting our nation’s transportation future emerged last week with it’s collective hair on fire, screaming that our driver-less SUV of a federal policy is headed for a cliff. To which the news media responded with a collective yawn, except for [...]

After just a 20 minute turn from #335, Hiawatha #338 heads back to Chicago with a heavy load of passengers. Photo by David Johnson and NARP

After losing money for the better part of the decade — even with generous government subsidies and protection — airlines returned to profitability over the last couple of years, but [...]