Archive for End of Cheap Oil
June 8, 2009 · Filed under Architecture, End of Cheap Oil, Heritage, Housing
Much like every big city, Toronto has an aging array of Post WW-II high rise apartment buildings. When they were built in the 1960’s they were considered the height of modernity and dense urban design, but now as they are close to reaching the end of their intended lifespan, they are hugely inefficient and lack the qualities that make a sustainable, viable, urban community. There are no markets or grocery stores, inadequate public transportation, and little retail or local jobs. Rather than tear the towers down to start anew, the Mayor and City of Toronto want to use this vast resource of buildings and revitalize the city to become a more sustainable, walkable, greener community.
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Popularity: 14% [?]
May 26, 2009 · Filed under Economics, End of Cheap Oil, Planning, Traffic, Transit
Just last summer, oil was surging toward $150 a barrel and gas prices were hitting $4 a gallon. The recession brought those prices crashing down, and today it may seem like high oil prices are one of the few economic problems that we don’t have to worry about.
But Canadian economist Jeff Rubin says what we saw last summer was a glimpse of our future.
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Popularity: 18% [?]
May 25, 2009 · Filed under Density, End of Cheap Oil, Multi-Level Urbanism, Urban Agriculture
An angry Mother Nature and increasing urbanization have led Columbia’s Dickson Despommier to urge agriculturalists to consider tilling high-rises.
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Popularity: 15% [?]
May 22, 2009 · Filed under Active Transportation, Cycling, End of Cheap Oil, Great Streets, Parking, Pedestrians, Public Life, Public Space, Traffic, Transit
Janette Sadik-Khan, the city’s Transportation commissioner, manages to be equal parts Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses. As she prepares to close swaths of Broadway to cars next week, she is igniting a peculiar new culture war—over the role of the automobile in New York.
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Popularity: 35% [?]
May 7, 2009 · Filed under Active Transportation, Cycling, End of Cheap Oil
The Cyclist’s Manifesto: The Case for Riding on Two Wheels Instead of Four has a title that may evoke images of some earnest treatise, a dry rant. Oh, but it is nothing of the sort. It’s the inverse opposite. A wonderfully whimsical exploration of America’s transport choices. A rollicking account of how those decisions were made (and why people elsewhere travelled in other directions) and what all that means for the future of getting from A to B. Central to Robert Hurst’s story is the hugely significant influence the humble bicycle has had on personal transport. For as he points out, with all seriousness, “We almost had camels.”
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Popularity: 8% [?]
April 7, 2009 · Filed under End of Cheap Oil, Investment, Pollution, Traffic, Transit, Urbanization
After four decades of false starts, Mr. Chan, a 67-year-old engineer, is supervising an army of workers operating 60 gargantuan tunneling machines beneath this metropolis in southeastern China. They are building one of the world’s largest and most advanced subway systems.
The question is whether the burrowing machines can outrace China’s growing love affair with the automobile — car sales have soared ninefold since 2000. Or are a hundred Los Angeleses destined to bloom?
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Popularity: 20% [?]
February 21, 2009 · Filed under Density, EcoCities, End of Cheap Oil, Suburbs
To save the planet, build more skyscrapers—especially in California.
On a pleasant April day in 1844, Henry David Thoreau—the patron saint of American environmentalism—went for a walk along the Concord River in Massachusetts. With a friend, he built a fire in a pine stump near Fair Haven Pond, apparently to cook a chowder. Unfortunately, there hadn’t been much rain lately, the fire soon spread to the surrounding grass, and in the end, over 300 acres of prime woodland burned. Thoreau steadily denied any wrongdoing. “I have set fire to the forest, but I have done no wrong therein, and now it is as if the lightning had done it,” he later wrote. The other residents of Concord were less forgiving, taking a reasonably dim view of even inadvertent arson. “It is to be hoped that this unfortunate result of sheer carelessness, will be borne in mind by those who may visit the woods in future for recreation,” the Concord Freeman opined.
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Popularity: 11% [?]
February 18, 2009 · Filed under Climate Change, End of Cheap Oil, Health
For millennia, doomsayers have been predicting the end of the world as we know it. These days, theory dovetails with fact: oil is disappearing. Should we be listening?
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Popularity: 10% [?]
February 9, 2009 · Filed under End of Cheap Oil, Highways, Infrastructure, Investment, Traffic, Transit
Urban transportation: What are we going to do about it? Fewer cars? More mass transit? More bikes? Fuel taxes?
It’s tempting to try solving transportation problems with more transportation. The sight of rush hour traffic jams in cities, or the experience of riding an overcrowded bus or train, suggest the need for increased transit capacity. As a short term solution, that may indeed be the best remedy. In the long run, however, it’s more like supplementing a junk food diet with a few healthy snacks.
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Popularity: 27% [?]
January 17, 2009 · Filed under End of Cheap Oil, Suburbs
There has been a lot written lately about the coming demise of America’s suburbs. The general thesis is that without cheap fuels for cars, lawnmowers and heating, suburban living will become untenable.
People will be forced to abandon their homes and make their way to cities, small towns or rural communities where they can survive without gasoline. There is, of course, another side to this coin.
I will be the among the first to grant that suburbia is a creature of cheap energy, particularly gasoline, and unless there are some radical changes in the way we power our homes, feed and clothe ourselves and move about, there will be great difficulties ahead. There are two major problems that need to be solved in order to keep the widely scattered housing of suburbia habitable without cheap energy — transportation and excessive residential consumption of energy.
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Popularity: 7% [?]
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