Planning Pool

Photo by Flickr user Landschaft

One of the great things about being a student is having the luxury of coming up with really fun ideas. Last semester, some classmates and I worked on a re-imagining of a Vancouver neighborhood around the Britannia Community Center (here’s a link to the project / sorry for the Flashtastrophe). One feature that we put into our design was the idea of a tool library.

Basically, a tool library is like a book library, except that rather than borrowing books, people can borrow ladders, lawn mowers, power tools, circular saws and other tools that people only use infrequently. Our group placed the hypothetical tool library in a light-industrial warehouse and paired it with a “Maker Shed” and … Continue Reading

CEOs for Cities just released a study showing that homes located close to shops, schools, churches, offices, libraries, parks, and restaurants are worth more than similar homes in less-walkable neighborhoods.

The report, “Walking the Walk: How Walkability Raises Housing Values in U.S. Cities” by Joseph Cortright, analyzed data from 94,000 real estate transactions in 15 major markets. Cortright found that in 13 of the 15 markets, higher levels of walkability, as measured by Walk Score, correlated to higher home values.

For all of the attention paid to our inefficient cities and the need for higher building standards, the elephant in the room is how to retrofit the housing stock that we already have.  It’s not a sexy task, but the truth is that building new domiciles for everyone, or even most people, is way out of the question.  

When lobbying for the recently adopted American economic stimulus package, President Barack Obama hit the media circuit touting the stimulative effects of home-weatherization.  Though hardly inspirational (John Stewart had a field-day with the mundane soundbites), Obama hit on an important need, especially in North American suburbs.

Tom Zeller, editor of the New York Times’ Green Inc. blog, recently began a video series documenting the weatherization of his Colorado home.  His project is likely to be replicated millions of times over … Continue Reading