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Urban transportation strategies
Stuart Ramsey: Oil, That Is
Stuart Ramsey, Global Public Media
Transportation engineer and planner for the City of Burnaby, Stuart Ramsey, gives a presentation to the National Resource Council Canada’s Institute for Fuel Cell Innovation. Ramsey focuses on urban transportation strategies for addressing the challenges of peak oil and climate change. These are issues that will require changes, on an unprecedented scale, to how we produce and consume energy.
Stuart Ramsey is a transportation engineer and planner for the City of Burnaby. He has 20 years of experience, spanning all major modes of transportation. Stuart’s experience is primarily in long-range transportation planning and modelling, but also encompasses transportation demand management, cycling, and transit. He researched energy issues in order to write the first “peak oil” report to be received by any government in Canada.
Click here for the presentation PDF (2MB).
(3 Feb 2007, but just posted)
Experts: Huge homes are out of style
Dina ElBoghdady, The Washington Post
The “Supersize Me” era of home building might be coming to an end after a three-decade run.
The size of the average new home swelled by about 50 percent from 1973 to 2006, but this trend toward expansion will probably be ending in the next decade, according to an elite panel of 135 builders, architects and designers surveyed by the National Association of Home Builders recently.
In a report released this month, these residential-construction experts said the downsizing tendencies of aging baby boomers, soaring home prices in much of the country and a fundamental change in consumer tastes will dampen future demand for ever-larger homes.
“People kept getting more and more and more space but felt dissatisfied because the space was not filling a void,” said Sarah Susanka, co-author of “The Not So Big House.”
“The moreness they were looking for had nothing to do with size” but rather with the craving for more intimate spaces they could use in more practical ways.
(27 Feb 2007)
Green Acres Is the Place for Many
ABC News
An Urban Exodus to the Countryside Is the Latest Real Estate Trend
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Chaotic and fast-paced, city life can wear you down and wear you out. From coast to coast, people are swapping their concrete jungles for greener pastures.
In what’s been called the “Green Acres” effect, Americans are fleeing the cities for the country in record numbers. Eighteen of the 25 largest metropolises saw more people leave than move in, according to a Census Bureau report released in 2006.
From 2000 to 2004, the three largest American cities – New York, Los Angeles and Chicago – lost the most residents.
(4 March 2007)
Grow your own home: ‘Fab tree hab’
Chris Lackner, CanWest via Vancouver Sun
Abode sprouts from a few seeds, is good for the planet
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Humanity can ease the burden it places on the environment by growing “living, breathing” homes, according to a team of researchers that has created the blueprint for an organic, two-storey “tree house.”
If the team of engineers and architects has its way, future habitat construction will require a green thumb and some time rather than skills with a saw or a hammer.
The Fab Tree Hab is an all-green concept home that will grow from “a few seedlings into a two-storey, water-recycling, energy-efficient abode,” according to researchers, largely from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They expect it will take a minimum of five years for one of their homes to grow, depending on the surrounding climate.
(8 March 2007)
Conservationist uses wine bottles to build energy-saving house
ABC News (Australia)
A house in Western Australia’s south-west is being built entirely from recycled wine bottles.
Around 13,500 wine bottles will be used in the walls of the house, which owner Peter Little says will save energy.
He says by filling the bottles with water, the entire building will be insulated.
Mr Little has spent 30 years developing environmentally-friendly building methods and he says this one has potential for Australia’s hotter regions.
“Water is probably, I think one of the miracle building materials of this century which nobody is using,” he said.
“From our point of view it can store more energy, heat or cool than any material we know.”
(9 March 2007)
Contributor David Bell writes:
Great idea to reuse of resources. I’ll drink to that.
