Rethinking the Economy

James Surowiecki has a great piece in the New Yorker on how the media talks about homeowners vs. corporations walking away from their debts.
We normally say that a company “went bankrupt,” implying that it had no choice. But when, recently, American Airlines filed for bankruptcy, it did so deliberately. The airline had four [...]

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A biblical Jubilee for clearing or reducing some mortgage debt? That’s the kind of radical idea you’d expect in a magazine like the Nation. But as William Greider points out in a recent Nation, more and more folks squarely in the middle are coming to the conclusion that if we don’t start radically [...]

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If streets are gridlocked, how can mass transit work? Human Transit, a.k.a. Jarrett Walker, explains:
A few years ago I had a memorable ride on the Ventura Blvd Metro Rapid from Warner Center to Sherman Oaks. The service flowed smoothly through Tarzana and Encino but then got stuck in two miles of gridlock leading [...]

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Great little video by Streetfilms about the transformation of New York City’s streets so they become both more bike and pedestrian friendly — and create some great new urban spaces in the process.

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If you want help save the planet, you should green your house or buy a green car, right? Not so fast, says an EPA study (via Planetizen).
No factor has a bigger impact than going from conventional suburban to transit-oriented design. Making that change alone results in a 50 percent reduction in energy [...]

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The movement to create “livable communities” – communities where you don’t have to own a car to get around – is pretty white. But there’s no reason it has to be. DCStreetsBlog ’s Tanya Snyder sums up a new study by the Centers For Disease Control:
The CDC asked people how “street-scale urban design policies” [...]

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Once upon a time, people living in cities had a remarkable amount of freedom to do what they wanted. If they wanted to butcher pigs in your apartment and drop the unused remains out the window onto the sidewalk, they could. If they owned a horse they used to get around, the horse could poop [...]

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For seniors looking for an alternative to nursing homes, a fresh new take on the “granny flat”: MedCottage.
it’s basically a mini mobile home that rents for about $2,000 a month. You park one in the backyard, hook it up to your water and electricity, and it becomes a free-standing spare room for [...]

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On the heels of San Francisco’s new parking meters that automatically adjust parking rates based on up-to-the-minute market supply & demand, Tyler Cowen wrote a nice NYT piece on the problems with the fact that here in the US of A, Big Government regulations mandate that real estate developers create lots [...]

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This week, the Livable Communities Act, designed to help support and coordinate efforts to encourage walkable development and other smart growth initiatives — passed the Senate Banking Committee, one small but important step on the way to passage. According to DC Streets Blog, seniors are a driving force behind the bill:
Some of the [...]

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