online green city guide created by a community of passionate members dedicated to living a sustainable lifestyle. Ecovian city guides are a comprehensive sources of regional green living information, covering topics such as where to find organic & local food (CSA programs, farmers markets, organic restaurants, grocery stores, etc.), natural clothing & baby stores, eco-friendly cleaning services, solar system installers, and many other green resources & local businesses. City guides also provide an up to date calendar of upcoming green & environmental lectures, talks, and events, and a community discussion group where the latest regional environmental news & policy issues are posted and discussed.
a site about eco-friendly living. Laurel and Kate are dedicated to bringing green living to your home through useful tips, resources, and reviews. You will want to visit everyday for green ideas on your clothing, home, personal care, and everything in between.
Sightline Institute is a not-for-profit research and communication center--a think tank--based in Seattle. Founded in 1993 by Alan Durning, Sightline's mission is to bring about sustainability, a healthy, lasting prosperity grounded in place. Our focus is Cascadia, or the Pacific Northwest.
It's a slow-motion revolution, but it's happening. Since 1993, we've equipped northwesterners with the research and tools they need to make progress on a range of solutions, from creating a regional market-based system for slashing global warming pollution to banning toxic chemicals that have shown up in our food and our bodies to defeating ruinous land-use ballot measures across the Northwest in 2006 and 2007.
I've recently been walking a lot. I have a city bus line that passes directly in front of my house, another one a half block away, and yet another one a couple blocks away. The buses have good connections to other bus and train lines and it's real convenient to walk over to the bus, take the bus, and walk around. It occurred to me while walking to ponder what makes a city walkable or not, and what can be done to advocate for cities to be more walkable.
A walkable city encourages positive changes like less pollution, and healthier people. Unfortunately the U.S. cities I'm familiar with have layout and construction that interfere with walkability. And, hey, looking around me I see a lot of people who drive everywhere and think that walking a mile is an impossibly long distance. I believe a large part of why a 1 mile walk is thought impossibly long is due to unwalkability.
For example roads (especially high traffic roads) cut neighborhoods and presents a walkability barrier. A pedestrian having to cross a high traffic road is in a risk from the traffic (at worst) or simply delayed waiting to cross the road, and while it's not insurmountable it is a barrier that degrades the walking experience.
While I was wondering I had a great brainstorming of a website which would crowdsource a walkability score. It would utilize a mapping service (like Google Maps) and ask people to put in walkability observations. Perhaps the collected data could be used to lobby governments for increased walkability.
Fortunately this exact service already exists. Whew, I don't have to implement it. Walk Score is this service. "We help you find a walkable place to live by calculating a Walk Score for any address."
Back to the Future: Walkable Urbanism gives an interesting explanation of how walkability used to be how our cities were organized, and it was the car based transportation in suburbia that made cities unwalkable.
Walkable Neighborhoods goes over their picture of what makes a place walkable. They have an interesting side by side comparison of the feasible walking radius for a one-mile walk based on different city designs. A city designed in a grid pattern is more walkable than the modern suburban design involving lots of quiet culdesacs.
Complete the Streets is an advocacy website meant to encourage that are designed and operated to enable safe access for all users. Pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and bus riders of all ages and abilities are able to safely move along and across a complete street. HOW TO GET TO COMPLETE STREETS is an overview of the process.
What's Walkable? is research and ideas on walkable neighborhoods.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian-friendly - In urban design, walkability is the measure of the overall walking conditions in an area. The definition for walkability is: "The extent to which the built environment is friendly to the presence of people living, shopping, visiting, enjoying or spending time in an area". Factors affecting walkability include, but are not limited to: land use mix; street connectivity; residential density (residential units per area of residential use); "transparency" which includes amount of glass in windows and doors, as well as orientation and proximity of homes and buildings to watch over the street; plenty of places to go to near the majority of homes; placemaking, street designs that work for people, not just cars and retail floor area ratio. Major infrastructural factors include access to mass transit, presence and quality walkways, buffers to moving traffic (planter strips, on-street parking or bike lanes) and pedestrian crossings, aesthetics, nearby local destinations, air quality, shade or sun in appropriate seasons, street furniture, traffic volume and speed. and wind conditions. One of the best ways to quickly determine how walkable a block, corridor or neighborhood is is to count the number of people walking, lingering and enjoying a space. The diversity of people, and especially the presence of children, seniors and people with disabilities, denotes the quality, competeness and wholesomeness of a walkable space.
walkinginfo.org is another advocacy site aiming to improve walkability. It has information covering the basics and solutions of implementing walkability improvements.
An online community of people who believe a little innovation can make a big difference to combat climate change. The site offers tools to help you measure your current carbon footprint and create tailored goals to reduce it. You can track your goals over time and see the effect in your own personal ‘Carbon Timeline’.
A search engine and directory for green services, products and information. Green Search. Green Directory: Search the green web! Support the environment. Think green. Be Green. Greengamma.com
A new way of thinking about real estate. It is the process of taking everyday real estate problems and breaking them apart and looking at them from different vantage points and then reassembling them to form new, creative solutions. Seeks to provide new and innovative ways of looking at real estate projects and strives to better understand and promote the relationship between the built environment and the natural world.
Unconventional Logic is a real estate consulting company that provides creative solutions for everyday real estate projects.
Services: Financial and Feasibility Analysis / Entitlements / Due Diligence / Project Management / Market Analysis / Sustainable Development / Corporate Green Real Estate Strategy / LEED Management / Sale Leasebacks / Green Leasing / Alternative Energy Assessments / Real Estate M & A Analysis / DQI Services
