An Array of Utopian Flowers
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The Literary Labyrinth of Stephen T. Vessels
Posted on November 27, 2022 | No Comments - Indigenous Voices from the Northeast: Past, Present and Future
Posted on November 26, 2022 | 1 Comment - Microplastics Are Everywhere: What’s The Risk?
Posted on November 22, 2022 | No Comments - Solving the Climate Crisis Through Global Soil Health with Didi Pershouse
Posted on November 20, 2022 | No Comments - Visionary Art of Lakota Sundance Chief Marvin Swallow
Posted on November 14, 2022 | 2 Comments
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WilderUtopia in 102 Languages
‘Medicine Walk’ Featured in SBLitJo
Santa Barbara Literary Journal released ‘Bellatrix: Volume 3’ in June 2019, which among adventurous fiction, poetry, essays, and lyrics, features an excerpt of Jack Eidt’s psychic-animism fiction, Medicine Walk. Buy the book!
Urban Land Archive
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Los Angeles River Revitalization: A Master Plan Gone Awry
Posted on April 2, 2021 | 1 CommentEnvironmental and social justice groups speak with EcoJustice Radio on the lack of vision and environmental, land use, and community protections in the LA River Revitalization Master Plan -
Defensible Space: My Wildfire-Appropriate Retrofit Journey – Part I
Posted on November 16, 2018 | 1 CommentAs the Western U.S. continues with massive wind-driven, high-intensity wildfires that often turn deadly, Naomi Pitcairn recommends retrofitting homes on the Wildland Urban Interface for fire-resistant resiliency. This is Part I of a three-part series. -
Iannis Xenakis and the Notion of a Cosmic Utopia
Posted on February 21, 2018 | No CommentsIannis Xenakis, the Greek-French experimental composer and protege designer for the famous architect Le Corbusier, advanced theories of the vertical "Cosmic" city as the only sustainable way forward. Here, he wrote this essay in 1966, decrying decentralization (read: suburban sprawl) in favor of building up, up, up...5 million inhabitants to be housed in a single megastructure, a hyperbolic paraboloid of more than 3,000 meters high and 50 meters wide. -
How Cities Can Build Affordable Housing
Posted on October 3, 2017 | No CommentsAlan Durning lays out how many cities have succeeded in building affordable housing with some lessons from unexpected places. Yet constrained housing markets come about from economics, environment, and geography, and sprawl remains a scourge that affordable cities have allowed. No silver bullet here, but ideas... -
Using Regenerative Design to Revitalize Newport Banning Ranch
Posted on September 6, 2016 | 1 CommentFacing a major Coastal Commission decision, Newport Banning Ranch developers should adopt staff's recommendation that all environmentally sensitive habitat should be protected and could be integrated in a vision for a small-scale visitor-serving development through Regenerative Design. -
Pruitt Igoe Myth: The Death of 20th Century US City
Posted on September 5, 2016 | 5 CommentsDestroyed in a dramatic and highly-publicized implosion, the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex has become a widespread symbol of failure among architects, politicians and policy makers. A 2012 documentary unveiled the many witting and unwitting villains, including urban poverty, public policy enforced racial segregation, and urban disinvestment in favor of the White Suburban Dream. -
Preserve Newport Banning Ranch as Sacred Archaeological Site Genga
Posted on May 12, 2016 | 9 CommentsNewport Beach's Banning Ranch, the site of a proposed mega commercial and residential development, is an extraordinary archaeological site. Once the site where an ancient Native American coastal village called Genga, a ritual and trading hub for both the Tongva and Acjachemen Native American Nations, existed for over a thousand years. -
Jerry Brown’s Regulatory Capture at the CA Coastal Commission
Posted on May 4, 2016 | 4 CommentsJerry Brown, once known as governor Moonbeam who signed into law the California Coastal Commission, now can be seen as the man behind handing it over to developers. Governor Brown must fire his four at-will commissioners with significant lapses of judgement and ethics, as well as his powerful backroom dealer from the Resources Agency. -
Reform California’s Environmental Quality Act? Not Now.
Posted on April 27, 2016 | 2 CommentsThe California Environmental Quality Act, protector of resources and communities through consideration of implications of proposed projects, is under attack. Representatives from industry and real estate development, and sometimes even Governor Jerry Brown, seek ways to weaken it, or to exempt their pet projects. While the law is far from perfect, it remains the gold standard of environmental protection in the US. -
Power, Influence, and Obfuscation: A Plan to Game the California Coastal Act
Posted on March 11, 2016 | 8 CommentsWhy did Coastal Commissioners dump popular Executive Director Charles Lester in a closed session at their February meeting in Morro Bay? It is part of a plan by well connected lobbyists and lawyers pushing environmentally damaging projects for their wealthy clients. -
L.A. River Must Transform as Watershed, Transportation Corridor
Posted on September 29, 2015 | 2 CommentsTakeaways from a recent Green Festival Expo discussion on the Los Angeles River Revitalization include that the job of planning for water resiliency belongs to all of us, not Frank Gehry regardless of his recent charge, and we must also consider how public access, parkland, ecosystem restoration, cargo and passenger rail, bicycle greenways, and anti-gentrification environmental justice will fit into the mix. Collaboration is the key. -
Starchitects and Spectacle: Sustainability Solutions Needed
Posted on April 8, 2015 | 1 CommentArchitecture must move on from an addiction to spectacle and fad, adrift in a sea of meaningless forms, leaving serious design and sustainability problems unresolved, says Peter Buchanan. But to do this will require a more critical perspective from architectural academe and the media. -
Laguna Beach “Ranch” Hotel Renovation Violates Coastal Rules
Posted on January 8, 2015 | 22 CommentsThe California Coastal Commission failed to enforce the Coastal Act and did not require a Laguna hotel renovation to address destruction of affordable rooms and environmental habitat as well as finish the long-awaited Trail to the Sea. -
Sustainable Vertical Urbanism: The Future of Cities?
Posted on December 17, 2014 | 2 Comments"Vertical City," a complete ecosystem in the sky that you never have to leave, accommodates population growth and protects the planet, but may have significant drawbacks for the people who call it home and their connection to the earth. Projects in China and Dubai illustrate the concept and its limitations. -
Green Urbanism: Balancing Environmental Justice with Gentrification
Posted on August 9, 2014 | 2 CommentsIs it possible for urban planners to make places more attractive and healthy, without then making them more expensive? Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow investigates recent research into the ongoing debate about environmental gentrification. -
Greening Detroit: Positive Change Moves Slow and Fast
Posted on July 10, 2014 | 3 CommentsOn one hand, Detroit turns the water off for communities challenged by its legacy of disinvestment and neglect. Yet, with urban farming, electric streetcars, neighborhood reinvention, Mayor Mike Duggan’s pledges begin to manifest in the city’s North End, despite considerable financial and cultural impediments. John Eligon elaborates. -
Sprawl vs. Open Space: “Rio Santiago” Again Threatens Orange
Posted on May 13, 2014 | 1 CommentJack Eidt writes on the dangers of proposing mixed use development far from urban amenities and alternative transportation. The real estate industry in Orange County, California and beyond, has consistently violated engineering and planning wisdom by building in floodplains, paving over precious open space land and losing opportunities to preserve wildlife habitat and recreation opportunities amid the suburban sprawl at the edge of the wilderness. -
Copehangen’s Sustainability Vision: Carbon Neutral, Climate-Adapted
Posted on October 10, 2013 | 1 CommentGlobal warming poses a real threat to cities but planners in the Danish capital are taking visionary steps to ensure its resilience – and success – as far ahead as 2100. The city approved a plan for carbon neutrality, while a 10-person team focuses on how the city will adapt to a changing climate. -
Songdo, South Korea: Utopian City of Big Data and Urban “Sustainability”
Posted on October 1, 2013 | 11 CommentsThe idea of the "utopian" community began in 1516 with Sir Thomas More's fictional perfected society to present-day attempts to build the most sustainable urban ecosystem. With the case of Songdo International Business District, South Korea, we begin a series of case studies in the success and failure of utopian experiments in living sustainably. -
LA River: An Urban Ecosystem Makeover in Transition
Posted on September 16, 2013 | 1 CommentAfter seven years of study, federal officials have recommended a $453-million plan that would restore an 11-mile stretch of the Los Angeles River but leave much of its banks steep and hard to reach. Advocates will continue to press for a more ambitious alternative that would bring more people to the river, improving parks and recreation as well as ecosystems. -
Detroit Future: Landscape Urbanism, Antidote to Industrial Blight
Posted on August 17, 2013 | 4 CommentsFor the last 40 years, Detroiters have fled the once-majestic downtown core for the bucolic image of sprawling suburbia. Now an urban revival in the name of "Detroit Future City," complete with forests, parks, farms and waterways, is planned to overcome the financial mismanagement and industrial blight that have plagued the city for far too long. -
Austria: Energy-Efficient Office Tower Rises Over the Danube
Posted on July 22, 2013 | 4 CommentsTall buildings tend to use massive amounts of energy with big carbon footprints. One new Viennese project featured in Passive House Plus shows that high rise doesn’t have to mean high environmental impact. -
Orange County Toll Road to Nowhere Denied Permits
Posted on June 19, 2013 | 3 CommentsOrange County's Toll Road Agency is pushing the first segment of a previously rejected road extension that will have significant and irreversible environmental and economic impacts. According to the Save San Onofre Coalition and the State Attorney General, the project had failed to undertake sufficient environmental studies. As a result, the Regional Water Board in San Diego decided to deny the project a waste discharge permit. -
Los Angeles River Revitalization: A City Rediscovers its Flow
Posted on April 9, 2013 | 9 CommentsThe LA River, an over-engineered concrete "water-freeway," is undergoing a long-term greening and revitalization. A 32-mile greenbelt, developed through numerous projects, promises to improve the health of the ecosystem and the value of the river as a regional public amenity, while managing flows and protecting properties. -
BioMilano: Italian Eco-Vision Grows 26-Storey Vertical Forest
Posted on January 15, 2013 | 2 CommentsBosco Verticale or Vertical Forest, the first phase of BioMilano, a re-envisioning of Milan, Italy, with an eye toward ecological urbanism, integrating tree and skyscraper, city and wild.
