We often write in TreeHugger about the importance of cities and of neighborhoods, about new urbanist designs that work like cities used to; Mark Oppenheimer writes in the New York Times' real estate magazine a wonderful article entitled "It's a wonderful block"- His own West Rock Avenue in New Haven, Connecticut....

Bike racks are a very cool form of public art. So hopefully New York will be able to artistically combine form and function when it picks from 10 intriguing international bike rack designs to start gracing New York's city streets. Last week 9 prototypes were installed for use at the city's Astor Place.

San Francisco's Embarcadero Freeway. Torn down after the 1989 earthquake, the freeway was replaced with a vibrant, multi-use boulevard. (photo via Flickr)

A competition for the title of 'fastest mode of transportation' in Tel Aviv on Tuesday. (Photo by Omer Cohen.)

An Artist's Rendering of the Green Civic Center

San Francisco, just recently ranked the second greenest city in the US, forged a partnership yesterday with the Clinton Global Initiative to green the city's Civic Center....

Image source: Chicago Climate Action Plan

Image Source: Cool Roof Contractor

Source

Arrol Gellner is an architect and syndicated columnist writing about design and planning. He notes that our planning and design is now based on the needs of the automobile, but that things can (and probably will) change..

From tiny apartment to big front porch

Buffalo has everything going for it; green hydropower, water, railways, canals, a temperate climate; it should be a hot spot. Instead it has a smaller population than it did in 1907 and acres of empty houses. Adam Sternbergh writes in New York magazine about how New Yorkers are taking notice and moving there- mostly the creative types that can work anywhere (and don't have a lot of money)