The new slums of America?

I just started reading this article, from The Atlantic monthly mag, on how the combination of the subprime fiasco and the coming energy crisis will - some predict - help turn America's suburbs into a new slum. More on this later, after I read the piece.

North Carolina's 21st-century vision

A while ago, I posted an essay I wrote on an earlier blog, imploring North Carolina not to become another New Jersey. It seems they are taking steps in the right direction -- at least some North Carolinians want to take steps in the right direction.
A former state transportation secretary is proposing a series of ideas to help fund "urban transit" in 21st-century North Carolina, specifically, creating a "congestion fund" to finance rail, port and other public transporation needs. Critics are sure to rail against any proposed tax increases, but a tiny increase has made the light rail in the Charlotte area an early success.
Says the official, Sam Hunt:

"The congestion and the growth in these urban areas is a reality that can't
be ignored. If we don't come up with money to answer these needs, then the rural
areas can rest assured that their money will be transferred to those urban areas
-- because that's where the people are and that's where you have a majority of
the votes. So unless you come up with revenue to solve their problem, in the
long run the rural areas will lose, too."

Philly's walkability

Here's an interesting post about Philadelphia's walkability factor -- and the need to do more in the area. In case this link goes away someday, pay close attention to this one, as well: WalkScore.com

"Lost" map

Now, here are some folks with a creative spark: This is a site with maps of the fictionalized island on the TV show "Lost."

A geographer's nightmare, not to mention an accountant's, politician's, historian's ...

The Nashville Tennessean reports that Georgia and Tennessee could be headed for a border war -- literally. Georgia wants to redraw the state line northward about a mile, just far enough to allow Georgia to "tap into the waters of the dammed Tennessee River."

Brookings weighs in on '08

The always interesting Brookings Institution is weighing in on a variety of subjects that the candidates ought to be talking about this presidential election season. Among its many position papers is one to rebuild Middle America (the geographic middle, not political), and includes some good ideas on sustainability, particularly on the "North Coast," along the Great Lakes:

While other regions face long-term sustainability challenges from lack of water,
congestion, costs of infrastructure, sprawl, and risk of natural disaster,
the country’s "North Coast," with proper policy actions now, offers the
prospect of environmentally and financially sustainable commercial and
population growth.

By the way, if you get the chance, you should set up your own portfolio at the Web site. You can choose the categories you want to study and add articles to your portfolio, without filling up your own computer.

Going green not always easy for towns

The sluggish economy is among the factors affecting communities' efforts to go green, the New York Times reports. Other factors are legal/jurisdictional restraints and public resistance to change.

Biodiversity of parks

This post originally appeared March 8, 2007, on my recently deleted blog, Faux-Pen Space:

---
Here's a link to a Penn State report on the biodiversity of urban parks. They studied 10 parks in the Northeast U.S. and found almost no common species -- except, I guess, humans:http://live.psu.edu/story/22534

GPD, not GDP

This post originally appeared Feb. 27, 2007, on my recently deleted blog, Faux-Pen Space:

Found this trolling around the news world today. We at Faux-Pen Space play golf (we stop short of saying we're golfers), and we know a study like this has all sorts of ripple effects, including the need to mow more (and put more pollutants from gas mowers into the air), the need to fertilize more (and put more pollutants into the ground) and the need to drive to the golf course (putting more pollutants from our cars into the air). It ain't just about golf, or the faux-pen spaces they take up:
Study Examines Impacts of Climate Change on U.S. Golf IndustryANAHEIM, Calif., Feb. 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — WeatherBill, Inc.published a study today at the National Golf Course Owners Association annual conference analyzing historical weather data to determine changes and trends in annual Golf Playable Days* (GPD). The study concludes that U.S. GPD are increasing in 95 cities, primarily due to higher average temperatures. The study also identifies increasingly rainy trends in the Northeast and Southeast, a drier Southwest and West and increasingly uncertain weather in 33 cities. The free study can be downloaded at http://www.weatherbill.com/golfstudy."The average number of Golf Playable Days across the U.S. is 268 a year," says David Friedberg, CEO of WeatherBill. "In the West and South, given the extended season, the average golf course can expect 297 playable days a year vs. the 226 days in the Northeast and Midwest." The study includes a reference table showing the range of GPD in 195 cities as well as the 30 year trend in both GPD and weather certainty. The guide should be a useful financial planning tool for golf course owners and managers."Warming temperature trends during January, February and March were the most impressive weather change we observed," says Friedberg. "Half the cities in our study showed significant increases in temperature, particularly in the Southeast and Southwest. Rainfall changes were more widespread across the year and across cities, with about 1/3 of the nation showing a change in rainfall trend in any given quarter. Raleigh, North Carolina, Miami, Florida and Portland, Oregon showed a very challenging combination of more rain and more variability, which makes revenue planning for the weather sensitive golf business more difficult."WeatherBill published this first of its kind study to create awareness that climate change is starting to have an impact on the business of golf. "Golf course owners and managers will find it more challenging to predict golf playable rounds, product demand, revenue flows and maintenance expenses in many cities. WeatherBill hopes to adequately address these issues by providing the first online service for protecting revenue and earnings from unpredictable weather," adds Friedberg. Golf businesses can also use the free tools on http://www.weatherbill.com/ to compare their financials to historical weather data for a more detailed understanding of how weather may affect their business.WeatherBill, Inc. (http://www.weatherbill.com/) provides the only online service that allows businesses to protect revenue and earnings from the impact of bad weather. Founded by David Friedberg and several other former key members of the Google team, WeatherBill, Inc. is funded by New EnterpriseAssociates and Index Ventures. WeatherBill, Inc. is headquartered in San Francisco, California.*Golf Playable Days are defined as the number of days that the max dailytemperature is between 45 degrees and 105 degrees F, and the precipitationlevel is less than 0.25 inches (i.e. dry and warm enough to play golf).

Don't Let North Carolina Become Another New Jersey

This post originally appeared on May 24, 2007, on my recently deleted Faux-Pen Space blog:
--
As my aunt pulled up to a stoplight outside Durham, North Carolina, one afternoon last July, she told me that at one time, hers would have been the only car there. This time, six cars were ahead of her.
More than once during my weekend visit, she remarked how the Triangle had built up in her 31 years of living there, and how tough it would be to get around without a car. I had a similar experience; I was staying at the Washington Duke Inn, and unless I arranged a ride, I was forced to limit my explorations to wherever my feet could take me. How many times can you visit the Duke student center in one weekend?
As someone who had not been in North Carolina since 1978, I was wowed by the growth of the Triangle. And now, you may have read, that state outranks mine - New Jersey - in population.
Yet, while my "Garden State" faces the prospect of becoming the first state to reach "build-out," some North Carolinians are wasting the opportunity to get things right where we’ve gone way wrong – public transportation.
Don't let the light-rail opponents get away with getting rid of the half-cent transit tax. You will pay dearly in the end.
Up here, the Delaware River Port Authority’s high-speed line carries 33,000 riders a day to and from Philadelphia. In fiscal year 2005, NJ Transit carried some 800,000 riders a day and another 620,000 riders on the weekends. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority carries 299 million riders a year on its rail lines, trolleys and buses in and around Philadelphia. Just imagine all those people driving on our (still-crowded) highways.
Now, imagine those kinds of numbers on North Carolina's highways. I’m no demographer, but it wouldn’t surprise me if many newcomers moved there to get away from the mess we have here.
Your light-rail foes don’t get it. The idea is to build the light rail before North Carolina becomes another New Jersey. Before they join us at "build-out." The unintended consequence of keeping mass transit out of your back yards is that you will get more cars passing by your front yards.
It is encouraging that a Charlotte area poll shows a majority favoring keeping the tax, but 57 percent is not a large figure. Don’t be NIMBYs; embrace the rail. Perhaps all these foes need to be convinced is to spend time with me on New Jersey's roads. And I promise I won’t wax nostalgic about how things used to be.

The only remaining candidate with the testicular fortitude to talk about INFRASTRUCTURE

Mike Huckabee and I probably will never agree on the issues involving LGBT rights -- unless he has a revelatory vision and realizes how wrong he is on the subject.
But the Arkansas governor, Baptist preacher and still-standing presidential candidate and I share some common ground: America's transportation system is broken and needs a good infusion of cash and commitment to get better.
The other folks still in the race -- at this writing, it is (alphabetically) Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney -- might have something about infrastructure buried in the position papers on, say, the economy, but on Huckabee's page, right there, high on the list, just under securing America and immigration is: "Plan to Strengthen America's Infrastructure."
Huckabee starts off with a whopper, taken from a Jan. 24 speech at Florida Atlantic:

If we're going to spend $150 billion, I'd like to suggest that maybe we add
two lanes of highway from Bangor all the way to Miami on I-95. A third of the
United States population lives within 100 miles of that.

Then he jumps right in with another:

This nation's infrastructure is falling apart.

Through a well-thought essay, Huckabee describes his vision for improving America's infrastructure, guided by his four principles of stimulus, safety, security and sustainability. He shares with readers how, on becoming Arkansas' governor, he inherited one of the nation's worst highway systems. He notes that Arkansans approved a billion dollars' in road improvements, and that Arkansas' roads are considered among the most improved in the country. He also lays out data collected from the study from Texas A&M last fall that spells out the grim fact that we waste tons of time and money sitting in traffic -- which shows no signs of getting better any time soon.

He addresses a wide range of topics, from port security to green building to water use. He talks about stimulating the economy through American labor and American steel and American concrete.

I think his hand is forced at focusing on highways, because, for good or ill, that's how we get around in this country. But he doesn't ignore rail or public transportation. Does this sound like a presidential candidate?

- We must link land use and transportation planning. It is
folly, for example, to provide rail service to places that don't have the
density to make it work.
- We keeping building schools and post offices outside of town centers, so that everyone has to drive. Our children don't walk to school or to the playground anymore, which is not only a transportation issue, but causes childhood obesity as well. So transportation becomes a health issue, a lifestyle issue, which shapes the
future of our children and our county. We need to trim the fat and produce
an efficient, sustainable plan for the future.

Well, sad to say, Huck and I have too much of a gap between us on that other thing for me to support him. But Mike, have a change of heart about gay people, and maybe we can talk. Anyone who seems to write so easily about "land use" and "LEED Certified buildings" in the same essay knows how to make a gal's heart skip a beat.