Majora Carter on TED.com

If you haven't seen it already, take a look at Majora Carter's speech on www.ted.com. Her informative, passionate speech on Greening the Ghetto is up at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/majora_carter_s_tale_of_urban_renewal.html. While you're at it, take a look at Malcolm Gladwell's speech on TED.

Green World-Mundo Verde Symposium

This past Friday I moderated a panel at Symposium on the greening of architecture, put together by the US GBC, HACIA, Instituto Cervantes and Sao Paulo-Illinois Partners. The agenda is at www.haciaworks.org. Tried to look at the growing green collar jobs movement and how it affects the world of Latino architects, developers and other construction people in Chicago. Thanks to Ald. Manny Flores for sharing his vision for a sustainable city as well as to Paige Finnegan of LEED Council, Aurelio Zarzosa-Ramirez and Lourdex Gonzalez of Primera Construction for all sharing interesting perspectives.

Lightbulbs, Trucks and "Playbills" - Broadway Begins to Go Green

Nice little piece on NY's Broadway theater district beginning to go green. Fighting climate change will take the cumulative effect of many small actions... See it here at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/theater/26gree.html?_r=1

Finally A Candidate That Talks About Cities

Some of us have long hoped for a Presidential candidate that would actually talk about the challenges facing cities. It just doesn't happen, even though the majority of Americans have lived in cities for some time now. Barack Obama addressed the U.S. Conference of Mayors in June of this year. He refers to cities as the backbone of regional development, and talks about appointing a White House staff person to focus on urban policy. See a video of his comments here:http://usmayors.org/76thAnnualMeeting/videolink.asp?video=satluncheon/01palmer.

Chicago + BRT

Chicago has a great opportunity before it: The city stands to draw in $153 million in federal money to establish Bus Rapid Transit routes on 4 key corridors. If done right - and this is the key - this could be the beginning of great things. At less than 1/100th the cost of extending subway lines, BRT has helped increase bus usage in cities worldwide, often speeding up bus lines and drawing in new riders who leave cars behind. Definitions of BRT vary, but plans usually include: bus-dedicated lanes, curbside fare collection, (sometimes) stations available only to passengers who've paid, (sometimes) double or triple extended buses, etc. BRT projects are often branded with catchy names (the Speedy One, Viva, etc) to stand out from what are perceived as slow, clunky bus systems. Curitiba, Brazil, is the granddaddy of BRT but many cities like L.A. and Bogota are putting effective systems into place.

Will Chicago go with a pure enough BRT plan to make a big enough dent in travel times and really make a splash? If the CTA sticks with curbside stations (rather than creating a median), allows cash-paying passengers to pay on board, starts out with relatively short dedicated lanes that then mix with normal traffic, and only gives a first stab at peak hours... will the dividends pay off? That and a large investment in TSP raise doubts. But there's a committed team putting the plan together and they're now starting to roll out community meetings and are open to suggestions...

To see the presentation that CTA has put together on the corridors it will focus on initially - Halsted, 79th, Jeffery, Chicago - go here.

Friedman on a Green Bailout

Let's look at the opportunity in the financial bailout: See it not just as survival but as the path to a 'thriving' future. See Thomas Friedman's piece here.

The Ins and Outs of Deconstruction

The New York Times has a piece by Jon Mooallem exploring the challenges and economics of painstaking 'deconstruction' - versus demolition - of homes. Focuses on Cleveland, where the city and the Cleveland Foundation are leading pilot projects exploring the economics of deconstruction. Challenges? One informal study showed that pulling nails can take up to 1/3 of the labor involved. Interesting factoids:
* 250,000 homes are demolished in the U.S. annually
* This 'liberates' some 1.2 billion board feet of reusable lumber alone
* Remodeling generates 1.5 times the debris every year as demolishing homes does
* The U.S. generates 160 million tons of demo and construction debris each year, 60 percent of which is landfilled
* As few as 300 homes in the entire U.S. were fully deconstructed last year
* On average, it can take a day to demolish a home and several weeks to deconstruct it
* However, the added cost can be more than recuperated when owners donate salvageable material to one of the more than 900 nonprofit, secondhand building-supply stores nationally (deducting the value from taxes)

See the full story at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/magazine/28house-t.html?scp=1&sq=deconstruction&st=cse