Group items tagged

Large increases in urbanization can lead to more concrete and asphalt reducing an area's flood mitigation services. Low density housing, however, has little effect on flood mitigation services but does cut down losses in the amount of land available for food and carbon storage, the study showed. Researchers investigated how a projected 16 per cent increase in the human population in Britain by 2031 would affect key ecosystem services depending on how cities expanded to meet the growing demand.

Sebastian Thrun talks about Google's amazing driverless car - and his very personal quest to save lives and reduce traffic accidents. Jawdropping video shows the DARPA Challenge-winning car motoring through city traffic with no one behind the wheel; dramatic test drive footage from TED2011 demonstrates how fast the thing can really go.

Hoping to accelerate the adoption of solar energy by a wider audience, the city of San Jose, together with the Bay Area Climate Collaborative, recently launched a new program that will allow businesses and governments throughout the region to take advantage of similar "solar group buys."

More than one billion urban residents will face serious water shortages by 2050 as climate change worsens effects of urbanization, with Indian cities among the worst hit, a study said Monday.

IN JUST a few thousand years, we humans have created a remarkable civilisation: cities, transport networks, governments, vast economies full of specialised labour and a host of cultural trappings. It all just about works, but it's hardly a model of rational design - instead, people in each generation have done the best they could with what they inherited from their predecessors. As a result, we've ended up trapped in what, in retrospect, look like mistakes. What sensible engineer, for example, would build a sprawling, low-density megalopolis like Los Angeles on purpose? Suppose we could try again. Imagine that Civilisation 1.0 evaporated tomorrow, leaving us with unlimited manpower, a willing populace and - most important - all the knowledge we've accumulated about what works, what doesn't, and how we might avoid the errors we got locked into last time. If you had the chance to build Civilisation 2.0 from scratch, what would you do differently?

Cursed by the winds that blow from Chernobyl a few kilometres away, Pripyat is a snapshot of the astronomical cost of the world's worst nuclear disaster. And its fate stirs chilling thoughts for Japan, grappling with its own nuclear crisis in Fukushima.

A new analysis, published this week and conducted by a team of scientists led by Drew Shindell of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, shows stricter vehicle emission standards would yield major health, agricultural, and climate benefits.

Bloomberg's office says the new initiatives include plans to build solar power plants on capped landfills and launch a loan program to help property owners pay for green energy efficiency upgrades.

The sign was a digital billboard, a new breed of outdoor advertising that is growing in both the region and the nation. The problem for Young, a Philadelphia architect, is that they're energy guzzlers, compared with other signage. In a recent report, he found that the largest of them can use 30 times what a typical household consumes. The report - funded by an independent grant but done under the auspices of an advocacy group that opposes the signs - concludes that as Philadelphia strives to become the nation's greenest city, a proliferation of digital signs might not be sending the right message.

On April 26, 1986, history's greatest nuclear accident took place northwest of the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl. Despite the scale of the disaster, 25 years later, we still do not know its real effects. An international team of investigators has shown for the first time that the colour of birds' plumage may make them more vulnerable to radioactivity.

At PdF Europe 2010

A survey by the National Association of Realtors conducted in March 2011 revealed that 62 percent of people ages 18-29 said they would prefer to live in a communities with a mix of single family homes, condos and apartments, nearby retail shops, restaurants, cafes and bars, as well as workplaces, libraries, and schools served by public transportation.  A separate 2011 Urban Land Institute survey found that nearly two-thirds of 18 to 32-year-olds polled preferred to live in walkable communities. Younger Americans are also using technology to substitute for driving, connecting with friends and family online, substituting Facebook, Twitter, Skype, or FaceTime interactions for in-person visits and using online shopping and e-commerce in place of driving to and from grocery and retail stores, the report notes. For generations of Americans, car ownership was an almost mandatory rite of passage-a symbol of freedom and independence. For more and more young people today, a car is a burden they no longer wish to carry.