by Corby Kummer | Atlantic Monthly | March 2010

(IMAGE CREDIT: ELI MEIR KAPLAN)

BUY MY FOOD at Walmart? No thanks. Until recently, I had been to exactly one Walmart in my life, at the insistence of a friend I was visiting in Natchez, Mississippi, about 10 years ago. It was one of the sights, she said. Up and down the aisles we went, properly impressed by the endless rows and endless abundance. Not the produce section. I saw rows of prepackaged, plastic-trapped fruits and vegetables. I would never think of shopping there.

Not even if I could get environmentally correct food. Walmart’s move into organics was then getting under way, but it just seemed cynical—a way to grab market share while driving small stores and farmers out of business. Then, last year, the market for organic milk started to go down along with the economy, and dairy farmers in Vermont and other states, who had made big investments in organic certification, began losing contracts and selling their farms. A guaranteed large buyer of organic milk began to look more attractive. And friends started telling me I needed to look seriously at Walmart’s efforts to sell sustainably raised food.

Read on: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201003/walmart-local-produce

A new housing development in Lathrop in 2006. One in eight houses in the town are now in some stage of foreclosure. (Photo by Jim Wilson/The New York Times)

Dirty flags advertise rock-bottom discounts on empty starter mansions. On the ground, foreclosure signs are tagged with gang graffiti. Empty lots are untended, cratered with mud puddles from the winter storms that have hammered California’s San Joaquin Valley.

Nobody is home in the cities of the future.

Read on: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/slumburbia/?th&emc=th

Cisco's Wim Elfrink and developer Stan Gale plan to standardize many elements of New Songdo (rendering above) in other cities. (Photograph by James Whitlow Delano)

The world is bracing for an influx of billions of new urbanites in the coming decades, and tech companies are rushing to build new green cities to house them. Are these companies creating a smarter metropolis — or just making money?

Stan Gale is exultant. The chairman of Gale International yanks off his tie, hitches up his pants, and mops the sweat and floppy hair from his brow. He’s beaming like a proud new papa, sprung from the waiting room and handing out cigars to whoever happens by. Beckoning me to follow, he saunters across eight lanes of traffic toward his baby, delivered prematurely days before.

Read on: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/142/the-new-new-urbanism.html

by John Bentley Mays | The Globe And Mail | January 22, 2010

Fritz Haeg in his LA dome residence/headquarters

For millions of Americans and Canadians, the front lawn is a sacred place. It symbolizes home ownership quite as forcefully as the house itself does. Kept vividly green and neatly clipped throughout the summer months, the open space between front door and street expresses for all to see the pride and care of its owners. Most importantly, it advertises a dream of prosperity and stability.

But the lawn has its enemies. One of them – a gentle, thoughtful foe, indeed – is Los Angeles architect Fritz Haeg, who was in Toronto yesterday to speak at the World Without Oil symposium held at the Design Exchange in conjunction with the Interior Design Show. (The trade fair continues through Sunday at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.) For the past five years, Mr. Haeg has been teaming up with museums in several regions of the United States, and in London, to transfigure carefully selected front lawns into kitchen gardens. The results of this gesture have been written up admiringly in Time Magazine and The New York Times, and numerous design magazines in the United States, Europe and the Far East.

Read on: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/way-out-front-changing-lawns-to-gardens-to-save-the-world/article1439096/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+TheGlobeAndMail-Front+(The+Globe+and+Mail+-+Latest+News)&utm_content=Google+Reader

Library of Congress/Dorothea Lange - A famous Dust Bowl image of "Migrant Mother"

We’re less mobile and more place-bound, and it’s not just the recession that’s slowing restless America’s nomadic habits. This is good news for Seattle, the environment, and mossbacks.

by Knute Berger | Crosscut | January 20, 2010

Developers love predicting that growth isunstoppable and inevitable, but the Great Recession is showing how untrue this really is. Some previously booming areas of the country are now declining in population, especially the Sun Belt and parts of the West. More people are now moving out of Florida, Nevada and California than are moving in. The huge growth in recent decades was driven not by their inherent desirability but by bad banking and loan practices that artificially goosed development and made growth a business in and of itself. Americans were encouraged to be on the move because their mobility was exploitable by banks, builders and Wall Street.

But the Great American Slowdown is a bigger trend. A new Brookings Institution study finds that domestic migration is at post-war lows and has been steadily sliding for the last half century. In the 1950s and ’60s, 20 percent of Americans changed homes every year. In the boom 1990s, it was 16 percent. But in the last two years, it’s dropped to just over 12 percent. Americans are becoming more place-bound. It’s partly due to an aging population, and higher rates of homeownership. But the current downturn has speeded the trend having “cemented” many people in place, says the Washington Post. You can’t sell a home, buy a home, or find a job, so make the best of where you are.

Read on: http://crosscut.com/2010/01/20/mossback/19512/

Hands-on approach: Maker Culture.

By Pia Bahile, Curtis File and Kevin Young |  TheTyee.ca | Today (as good as any day)

[Editor's note: The Tyee is proud to co-publish with Rabble.ca a multi-part, multi-media investigation of Maker Culture -- the do-it-yourself movement fast evolving in North America and beyond. In this first episode, the authors, who are Canadian student journalists, explain what Maker Culture is and look back on their journey as writers and unwitting makers. And they give you a small taste of what you can expect here on The Tyee on Fridays to come.]

What is a Maker?

In Austin, Texas Cathy Wu is making jewelry out of dried fruit. In London, Ontario Brian Frank is educating himself in digital media. John Hammel, in St. Jacob’s, Ontario, owns the last handmade corn broom plant in Canada. In the U.S. Rustbelt ordinary citizens are dropping by a community college to use laser cutters and 3D printers. And in homes all over the world, people are connecting to the Internet to discover galaxies or unfold the secrets of Alzheimer’s and Parkison’s Disease. What do they all have in common? They’re all part of the same movement: Maker Culture.

Read on: http://thetyee.ca/Life/2010/01/15/MeetYourMakers/

Full series here: http://thetyee.ca/Series/2010/01/15/MakerCultureSeries/

It is possible to improve the lives of the poor, the middle class and the well off, by addressing one big problem.

It turns out that reducing economic inequality can reduce a whole range of social problems, from teenage pregnancy and youth violence, to heart disease and depression.

The authors of a new book say the world’s rich countries have benefited about as much as they can from economic growth. Improvement in the quality of life now hinges on increasing economic equality.

Read on: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/jerrylarge/2010787375_jdl14.html?syndication=rss

In Playa Junquillal, Costa Rica, so-called leatherback boys carry newly hatched turtles in baskets to the ocean, where the freed turtles make a dash for the water. Photo Credit: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

PLAYA GRANDE, Costa Rica — This resort town was long known forLeatherback Sea Turtle National Park, nightly turtle beach tours and even a sea turtle museum. So Kaja Michelson, a Swedish tourist, arrived with high expectations. “Of course we’re hoping to see turtles — that is part of the appeal,” she said.

But haphazard development, in tandem with warmer temperatures and rising seas that many scientists link to global warming, have vastly diminished the Pacific turtle population.

Read on: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/science/earth/14turtles.html

LEAH BETH WARD | YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC | December 13, 2009

ELLENSBURG – Gary Nystedt was brainstorming with a group of colleagues at a solar energy conference a few years ago when the idea hit him.

What if Ellensburg put up solar panels in a park and invited residents to invest in the system? As a return on their investment in clean energy, residents would get a credit on their electric bill.

JACKIE JOHNSTON/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE Gary Nystedt, Ellenburg’s resource manager, talks about the city’s new solar project. East of the Cascade Range, utilities are seeing potential in sunshine and enlisting residents’ help to buy solar panels.

Nystedt, resource manager for the city of Ellensburg — which owns the local electric and gas utilities — enlisted the support of his boss. The City Council in turn got behind the effort.

With help from the Bonneville Environmental Foundation and Washington State University’s Northwest Solar Center, Ellensburg launched in 2006 what is believed to be the first “community solar park” in the country, putting the already progressive municipal utility on the leading edge of getting power to the people.

Read on: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/992122.html

Hospital cleaners play a vital role, the study found

It claims bankers are a drain on the country because of the damage they caused to the global economy.

Read on: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8410489.stm