“If you are reading this,” offers social critic and New Urbanist James Howard Kunstler about halfway through his 16th book, “then you may be doing it in the smoldering ruins of modernity.” Writing in the winter of 2011-12, Kunstler observed that the global financial system “stood in nearly complete disarray.” The author worried that the seismic economic spasms occurring then might just bring everything crashing down by the book’s publication date. Such pronouncements, even if not truly meant to be literal, practically guarantee Kunstler’s dismissal as an alarmist doomsayer—an unfair tag given that the ultimate value of his message can’t...
- 10/2/2012
- Pastemagazine.com
About-face: Former Bp refining chief Cynthia Warner, now president of Sapphire Energy, decided "it was better to create the key to the future than to nurse along the dying past." | Photograph by Noah Webb
Biorefinery, 2018: Sapphire Energy plans to produce renewable "green crude" from algae grown in open pools in the New Mexico desert. | Courtesy of Sapphire Energy
How a high-ranking veteran of Bp was won over by the potential of pond scum.
Cynthia Warner was in Morocco on April 20 celebrating International Earth Day, when a friend emailed her with the news: An explosion at a Bp oil well off the Louisiana coast had killed 11 men and ruptured a pipeline almost a mile underwater, sending waves of crude into the Gulf of Mexico. "My first thoughts were for the people who died and the men there witnessing it and the horror of all that," she says. "My heart sank.
Biorefinery, 2018: Sapphire Energy plans to produce renewable "green crude" from algae grown in open pools in the New Mexico desert. | Courtesy of Sapphire Energy
How a high-ranking veteran of Bp was won over by the potential of pond scum.
Cynthia Warner was in Morocco on April 20 celebrating International Earth Day, when a friend emailed her with the news: An explosion at a Bp oil well off the Louisiana coast had killed 11 men and ruptured a pipeline almost a mile underwater, sending waves of crude into the Gulf of Mexico. "My first thoughts were for the people who died and the men there witnessing it and the horror of all that," she says. "My heart sank.
- 6/18/2010
- by Anya Kamenetz
- Fast Company
Is the mall dead? And if so, is it permanently dead? That question hung in the air on the last day of the annual Congress for the New Urbanism. "We have too much retail," said Francis Scire, a senior leasing executive at Simon Property Group, the nation's largest mall owner. "I think the mall's sick, and hopefully on the way to recovery with some adaptation."
A similar event taking place in Las Vegas a day later--the semi-annual meeting of the International Council of Shopping Centers, the world's largest gathering of mall developers--offered a far healthier outlook. The number of malls in this country actually grew last year, to 104,990 shopping centers with 7.2 billion square feet of retail space, according to a study released this week by Icsc. Malls comprise nearly half of all retail, and retail, in turn, is the largest segment ($2.98 trillion) of a commercial real estate market in the process of melting down.
A similar event taking place in Las Vegas a day later--the semi-annual meeting of the International Council of Shopping Centers, the world's largest gathering of mall developers--offered a far healthier outlook. The number of malls in this country actually grew last year, to 104,990 shopping centers with 7.2 billion square feet of retail space, according to a study released this week by Icsc. Malls comprise nearly half of all retail, and retail, in turn, is the largest segment ($2.98 trillion) of a commercial real estate market in the process of melting down.
- 5/26/2010
- by Greg Lindsay
- Fast Company
Has the New Urbanism outlived its original purpose? The movement's charismatic founder, Andrés Duany, seems to think so.
Last week's 18th annual Congress for the New Urbanism in Atlanta should have been an unalloyed triumph for Duany and his fellow travelers. Their planning tools for reforming and retrofitting sprawl with denser communities was formally adopted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recognized the role of the urban landscape in public health policy. But Duany appeared deeply suspicious of his own movement's success, repeatedly excoriating the government as a "nanny state" and telling Fast Company "New Urbanism has been so successful that it has a lot of dinosaur DNA. The honchos are on board -- you've seen them here. They want us to join them. Do we want to run among the dinosaurs, or among the mammals? I want to be is among the mammals.
Last week's 18th annual Congress for the New Urbanism in Atlanta should have been an unalloyed triumph for Duany and his fellow travelers. Their planning tools for reforming and retrofitting sprawl with denser communities was formally adopted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recognized the role of the urban landscape in public health policy. But Duany appeared deeply suspicious of his own movement's success, repeatedly excoriating the government as a "nanny state" and telling Fast Company "New Urbanism has been so successful that it has a lot of dinosaur DNA. The honchos are on board -- you've seen them here. They want us to join them. Do we want to run among the dinosaurs, or among the mammals? I want to be is among the mammals.
- 5/24/2010
- by Greg Lindsay
- Fast Company
It's a given among Peak Oilers and New Urbanists alike that the imminent and permanent return of high oil prices will send convulsions through the suburban American landscape. But it's one thing when professional Jeremiahs like James Howard Kunstler preach this to the converted week after week, and something else when the Urban Land Institute and PricewaterhouseCoopers advise commercial real estate investors to "shy away from fringe places in the exurbs and places with long car commutes or where getting a quart of milk takes a 15-minute drive." Oil shocks will do what urban planners can't seem to and the government won't (through sharply higher gas taxes or putting a price on carbon): force people to live at greater densities.
In books like $20 Per Gallon and Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller--both published last year, in the wake of 2008's real estate bubble-burst--the end...
In books like $20 Per Gallon and Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller--both published last year, in the wake of 2008's real estate bubble-burst--the end...
- 3/16/2010
- by Greg Lindsay
- Fast Company
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