Green Options

Today Alex Bogusky, Chairman of Crispin Porter + Bogusky is set to speak at SXSW on the topic of bike sharing. CPB is one of the three founding partners of B-cycle, a concept which has been quietly gaining support in cities around the U.S. and which has been launched, under another company, to a degree of success in Paris. The question is, can it succeed here?

New “secondary” forests are emerging in Latin America, Asia and other tropical regions rapidly as land that was once farmed is abandoned as people move into the cities.

In fact, it is estimated that for every acre of rainforest that is cut down, 50 acres of forest is revitalized areas that were once farmed, logged, or destroyed by natural disasters.

Jaime Lerner is obsessed with cities. Specifically, he is obsessed with improving their sustainability through urban planning.

[Curitiba, where Jaime Lerner served three terms as mayor. Creative Commons photo by Felipe Freeze]

He transformed the city of Curitiba, Brazil while he was mayor there and now helps urban planners across the world build and improve cities.

The motorcar has undoubtedly been one of mankind’s most useful inventions to date, a fact which is evidenced by our continuing love affair with our four wheeled friends. They represent some of the largest investments we ever make, we spend hours talking about them, we spend small fortunes maintaining them, we cherish them, we love them.

But our affair with the car has blinded us to some of the obvious drawbacks, such as its lack of compatibility with urban life which leaves our cities clogged by semi stationary vehicles with fuming engines and fuming drivers.

Detroit tops the list of most miserable cities in the U.S., according to a new compilation by Forbes. The conclusions are based on traffic, Superfund-site data, crime, weather, income tax rates and unemployment. The list also includes Stockton, California; Flint, Michigan; New York City; and Philadelphia.

Photo courtesy of Gyre via Wikimedia Commons.

Cities and their even larger, fast-growing siblings — megacities (more than 10 million people) and hypercities (more than 20 million people) — aren’t just products of human civilization that dramatically affect their surrounding ecosystems. They’ve emerged as unique ecosystems in their own [...]

Mayors from the planet’s largest cities gathered in New York last week to discuss how global warming is impacting their cities now, how it may in the future, and what immediate action needs to be taken to slow it.

The “C40 Large Cities Climate Summit” has partnered with the Clinton Climate Initiative to tackle climate change now, rather than waiting for action from national governments. At the Summit, mayors shared best practices,

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