Climate Cities

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  • Steve Frillmann, community-garden guru, answers questions

    Steve Frillmann. With what environmental organization are you affiliated? I am the executive director of Green Guerillas, New York City’s oldest community-gardening group. What does your organization do? At Green […]

    Grist staff Cities

  • Book Your Guilt Trip Today!

    British enviros curb flying to protest airplane emissions A growing number of British enviros are quitting or cutting back on air travel, resisting the siren song of low-fare, no-frills airlines. […]

    Grist staff Cities

  • The city has transformed itself into one of the nation’s most forward-thinking

    I've always thought that if I had to move back to my home state of Tennessee, I'd kill myself live in Chattanooga. It used to be one of the most polluted cities in the country. I remember driving through it on the way to Atlanta -- it was nasty, dirty, bleak, and oh my god, the smell. A real shithole.

    But in the last 20 or 30 years, the city has completely turned around, and now it's one of the most forward-thinking, progressive cities in the Southeast.

    Sprol has a great piece on the transformation:

    While most cities, nationally and globally, make an effort to reduce negative affects on the environment; few (if any) have attained the level of success enjoyed by Chattanooga. Here, industry is not the enemy, but instead has offered viable and effective solutions. Here, the citizen and the government official aren't at odds. Rather, they work together to creatively address the environmental challenges the city has faced.

    Chattanooga has become one of the few cities designated as an EPA attainment city. This has been due, in large part, to combined efforts of Chattanooga citizens and city officials.

    An inspiring read.

    David Roberts Cities

  • Tailpipe Spin

    NASCAR plans switch to unleaded racing fuel Mechanics, crews, and NASCAR dads will be able to wheeze a little easier beginning in 2008 — that’s when the racing body plans […]

    Grist staff Cities

  • Why greens should join forces with gardeners to face down the bull dozers in LA.

    Even though I abandoned Brooklyn for the Appalachians, I'm no sentimental pastoralist. I'm a long-term disciple of the great urban theorist (and champion of cities) Jane Jacobs. Human history since the dawn of agriculture 10,000 years ago has been a history of cities. Cities are the future; as David Owen's superb article "Green Manhattan" (PDF) shows, they may be our only hope. The trick is to create agricultural systems within and just outside of cities, minimizing the ruinous effects of long-haul freight transit, slashing the fossil-fuel inputs embedded in food production, maximizing availability of fresh delicious food, and boosting local and even neighborhood economies.

    Farmers' markets have been the most visible effort at creating sustainable urban food networks. Equally if not more important, although virtually invisible to well-heeled urban foodies who laudably support farmers' markets, inner-city gardening projects represent a vanguard in the effort to overthrow industrial food and reintroduce sustainably grown, delicious food to populations that were knocked off the land a generation or two ago.

    There's been a lot of talk around here about whether or not humanity's future requires messing up Bobby Kennedy Jr.'s ocean view from "the Vineyard." (I say, the hell with him. Mess it up!) This story may be more important, though: An LA developer wants to bulldoze a 14-acre community garden, with 360 family plots, right in the middle of an industrial zone in South Central. The city should be paying these people to do what they're doing, for all the environmental and social benefits they're creating. At the very least, the city should buy the land back from the developer and make the garden permanent.

    LA greens, and I know you're out there, get out and man the barricades with those brave gardeners.

    Tom Philpott Cities

  • Stockholm-ward Bound

    Stockholm is second Euro capital to charge for driving into the city All the cool cities are doing it! (Wait, is Stockholm cool?) This week, Sweden’s capital began a trial […]

    Grist staff Cities

  • Two new books on nature reveal three writers’ ways of seeing

    “It was on Cape Cod during fall a few years back, after the century fell but before the towers did, that I began paying a series of visits to the […]

    Jane Brown Cities

  • Enviros need to get social, says activist-turned-sociologist Marshall Ganz

    Most of us can probably name a grandfather or great-aunt who was active in a chapter of a national association. My own uncle was a member of the Benevolent and […]

    Gregory Dicum Cities

  • Small Wonder

    Sales of some big SUVs drop by half It’s an early Christmahanukwanzakah present for the planet, and a chunk of coal in the stocking of Detroit’s Big Three automakers: The […]

    Grist staff Cities

  • Character Building

    Sierra Club celebrates eco-friendly building projects in new report The Sierra Club has often gone to court to stop bad development schemes, but now the venerable green group is trying […]

    Grist staff Cities