Simulating a Simulacra- China does Orange County
posted by BuddhaInABucket on May 9, 2008 - 37 comments

New York City is the greenest city in America. Eighty-two per cent of Manhattan residents travel to work by public transit, by bicycle, or on foot. That's ten times the rate for Americans in general, and eight times the rate for residents of Los Angeles County. New York City is more populous than all but eleven states; if it were granted statehood, it would rank 51st in per-capita energy use.... But this is not necessarily something people want to hear: In a conversation with a Sierra Club representative involved in Challenge to Sprawl, I said that the organization's anti-sprawl suggestions and the modified streetscapes in the slide show shared many significant features with Manhattan-whose most salient characteristics include wide sidewalks, narrow streets, mixed uses, densely packed buildings, and an extensive network of subways and buses. The representative hesitated, then said that I was essentially correct, although he would prefer that the program not be described in such terms, since emulating New York City would not be considered an appealing goal by most of the people whom the Sierra Club is trying to persuade
posted by storybored on Apr 6, 2008 - 61 comments

When Wild Coyotes in San Francisco Attack (previously).
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot on Jul 16, 2007 - 27 comments

Wild coyotes roam San Francisco.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot on Jun 6, 2007 - 60 comments

The Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly was thought to be extinct in 1982, after its primary (and federally protected) habitat was (allegedly) destroyed by the City of Ranchos Palos Verdes. But in 1994, butterfly enthusiasts discovered that it had apparently survived LA's best efforts to destroy it. It even spawned a PC app (that anyone can download) aimed at tracking insect populations. These days, it's doing better.
posted by hifiparasol on Apr 3, 2007 - 4 comments

The National Automobile Slum: I propose that we now identify the human ecology of America precisely for what it really has become: the national automobile slum.-- James Howard Kunstler “Can America Survive Suburbia?”
posted by lonefrontranger on Mar 20, 2007 - 45 comments

The Radical Christian Right Is Built on Suburban Despair by the ubiquitous Chris Hedges. Previously.
posted by HerArchitectLover on Jan 26, 2007 - 109 comments

Indianapolis is getting a Whole Foods Market. Great, right? Whole Foods Market is a recognized leader in the ecologically friendly organic foods business and includes in its "Core Values" Wise Environmental Practices & Community Citizenship. The location where this new market will be built will require the leveling of 17 acres of wooded land adjacent to a 50 year old residential neighborhood of 350 homes. This wooded area is one of the last homes for wild animals in the area. Oh yeah, nobody that lives in the area wants it built either. So much for core values.
posted by internal on Jan 24, 2006 - 172 comments

Transit in Detroit details an urban planner's initiative to cut the costs of the city's traffic congestion-relieving highway expansion by proposing a transit system combining light rail and bus-rapid-transit. [More Inside]
posted by gregb1007 on Nov 25, 2005 - 15 comments

Boom! A master planned community. Boom! A big-box mall! Our Sprawling, Supersize Utopia. This article, by New York Times columnist David Brooks, takes a look at exploding suburbs and exurban migration. This migration is nothing new, author Joel Garreau wrote extensively about it in his 1991 book Edge Cities. The phenomonon really took off after World War II, during the period of post war prosperity, and is best represented by this famous postwar American suburb. A veritable army of "suburban sprawl critics" has emerged over the years including Jane Jacobs and James Howard Knunstler plus many others including some who are predicting the immenent demise of suburbs because of oil depletion. For Brooks the critics of suburbs "just regurgitate the same critiques decade after decade, regardless of the suburban reality flowering around them" but you can't dismiss what the architect Paolo Soleri says about American society that "we have a society that is moving very rapidly to the super-, super-, super-consumptive."
posted by thedailygrowl on Apr 30, 2004 - 28 comments

Got Sprawl? This story from Maine’s Portland Press Herald about a rich widow “from away” (as we say) who wants to build a high-end subdivision on her land in scenic Falmouth against objections from the Town Council -- which is citing her property as the most valuable undeveloped tract in the town -- illustrates on a very human level (complete with affluent in-family spats) what rural towns in New England and the rest of the country feel is at stake in their fight against unplanned development. (more inside)
posted by damn yankee on Mar 9, 2003 - 34 comments

Sprawl-induced aberrant driving behavior is a theory proposed by University of Ottawa geography professor Barry Wellar. Suburban roads, built for speed, encourage aggressive driving and bad habits that drivers can sort of get away with in the suburbs, but that carry over to other areas. So that's why it always seems that they're trying to run me off the sidewalk.
posted by mcwetboy on Aug 29, 2002 - 11 comments

The Weekly Standard: Patio Man and the Sprawl People
There he is atop the uppermost tier of his multi-level backyard patio/outdoor recreation area posed like an admiral on the deck of his destroyer. In his mind's eye he can see himself coolly flipping the garlic and pepper T-bones on the front acreage of his new grill while carefully testing the citrus-tarragon trout filets that sizzle fragrantly in the rear. On the lawn below he can see his kids, Haley and Cody, frolicking on the weedless community lawn that is mowed twice weekly by the people who run Monument Crowne Preserve, his townhome community.
More inside...
posted by gen on Aug 6, 2002 - 65 comments

Sprawl is Good Defense "It's a pretty good rule of military thumb that the greater the concentration of value, the more attractive the target... To keep things safe, you need to spread things out." The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian should begin moving their collections out of NYC and Washington,D.C. Now. Talented, intelligent people and people with irreplaceable skills should go next. Re-locate to the Great Plains.
posted by Faze on Dec 14, 2001 - 11 comments