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Design o’ the times: Empowering minorities to shape urban landscapes
Photo by Bridgette Wynn. When people ask me why I write about architecture, design, and cities — why I focus on these topics instead of all of the others — I like to tell the story of a park bench. I...
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Austin gets a super swank zero-energy suburb
How do you build a (nearly) net-zero-energy suburb in 2008, at the nadir of the economic crash, when no bank in the country is convinced you’ll be able to sell your more energy-efficient but pricier...
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Urban farmers vs. NIMBYist vegans, round one
Urban farmers are raising and slaughtering their own livestock, and a shadowy organization called Neighbors Opposed to Backyard Slaughter is up in arms about it. Writing at Mother Jones, Keira Butler...
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Dirty cities make us happy
What features of a city make for happy inhabitants? Most of them are pretty predictable: Mass transit, an environment conducive to raising kids, and affordability all ranked highly in a survey...
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America has 40 million McMansions that no one wants
Americans, especially generations X and Y, want shorter commutes, walkability and a car-free existence. Which means that around 40 million large-lot exurban McMansions, built primarily during the...
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The McMansion trend has peaked
Americans’ ideal home size declined to 2,100 square feet from a peak of 2,300, according to real estate research firm Trulia. (The full account of this trend was laid out by Kaid Benfield at Atlantic...
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Why the 21st century will see migration back to the Rust Belt
In the 20th century there was a mass migration to the Sun Belt, because everyone thought that living in a warm climate and having a big house would make them happy, even though actually it made us...
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You work 3.84 minutes per day to pay for your bicycle, 2 hours for your car
James D. Schwartz of The Urban Country recently calculated that Americans work on average two hours out of every day to pay for their cars. Now he’s figured out that a bicycle costs only 3.84 minutes....
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World’s worst elected official makes the case for sprawl
“Well, let me state it unequivocally: I love sprawl,” says L. Brooks Patterson, county executive of Oakland County, Mich. “I need it. I promote it. Oakland County can’t get enough of it,” he...
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Smallest legal apartment in California is prefab, adorbs
If you’re like me, you watch this video and think “my house is 10 times as big as this apartment and only slightly more functional,” and then curse the day you moved to the suburbs. This is the...
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River rising: Water helps revive a washed-up industrial town
Almost as good as a parking lot: An artist's rendering of the completed river restoration in downtown Yonkers. (Image by City of Yonkers.) For nearly 100 years, New York’s fourth largest city sat on...
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Mexico City’s urbanization threatens ancient ‘floating gardens’
A man works his plot in the chinampas of Mexico City. (Photo by Eneas De Troya.) Chinampas, or floating gardens — small artificial islands full of crops, built up on shallow lake beds — once sustained...
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Goodbye-ways: The downfall of urban freeways
The golden days -- when the traffic hadn't caught up with the lanes. (Photo by coltera.) We can say this for our Great Urban Freeway Experiment: It seemed like a good idea at the time. The time was...
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Need a ride? Check out London’s mobile bike library
Photo by London Bicycle Library. A bus and a library make most people think of boring days locked inside a school — unless that bus holds an AWESOME mobile bike library! Meet London’s Bicycle Library:...
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Gallery walls: Cities embrace street art as a ticket to success
The artist Gaia puts up the first installation in what he calls "a museum for street art." (Photo by Martha Cooper.) Street artists from around the world are descending on Baltimore this spring to...
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Slow ride: Buses are the new vehicles of youth rebellion
To entice teenagers, Ford and other automakers need to make their cars more like smartphones … They could automatically check teenagers into Foursquare when they arrive at the mall. The car could read...
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How successful cities are like marijuana
Photo by Spreng Ben. If you’ve got an acre of land, and a magical get-out-of-jail-free card, which cash crop do you grow — wheat, soybeans, or marijuana? That’s a good metaphor for a city’s decision...
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Adorable video of kids on wheels in the bike-friendliest place on earth
There is a city in which 80 percent of residents commute to work by bicycle, even in winter. And they train their young to do the same! Should we be surprised that this city is the capital of a...
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Detroit residents are turning the city into suburbs
Detroit is undergoing a remarkable process of un-building, its residents literally transforming its denser neighborhoods into sparse suburbs. It’s the inevitable consequence of the shrinking of a...
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Millennials love cities because they provide the one thing their boomer...
Why is Gen Y migrating to the cities? Because millennials are craving the things they didn’t get in their suburban upbringings, like connectedness and adventure. Basically, they’re throwing off their...
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Romney, once an anti-sprawl crusader, created model for Obama ‘smart growth’...
Mitt Romney pushed for smart-growth policies in Massachusetts. (Photo by Gage Skidmore.) Everyone knows that “Obamacare” was modeled on Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts health-care law. But did you know...
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New research shows Big Tobacco targets black kids
Photo by Fried Dough. Big Tobacco agreed way back in 1998 to stop marketing [PDF] cigarettes to kids. Turns out cigarette companies are still up to their old tricks — they’re just being slightly more...
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Jungle gym urbanism: Help this guy turn a vacant house into a bouncy-ball pit
Cross-posted from Next American City. Guerilla urbanism can take many forms, as there are myriad ways to reactivate an abandoned public space or vacant building. Art exhibitions, temporary shops, ad...
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Dutch ‘Repair Cafes’ keep stuff out of the trash by fixing it for free
In the Netherlands, there are more than 30 “Repair Cafes” — groups that meet once or twice a month to repair (for free!) clothes and gizmos and tools that might otherwise be discarded. The New York...
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First-graders protest Starbucks to save local coffee shop
Back in 2011, a tragedy of epic proportions struck the East Village: Starbucks moved in. And not only did it move in, it kicked a beloved local coffee shop, The Bean, out of its flagship location....
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Teaser: Ridin’ bikes with U.N. suits
This afternoon, the United Nations had an event to promote urban bicycling in advance of Rio+20. Full story is coming on Monday, but, for now, please relive the excitement — nay! the grandeur! — of a...
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NYC’s homeless bee swarms are good for bees, scary
Bees swarm a light pole in Central Park. On a rooftop a few dozen blocks south of my apartment, there’s a beehive. The hive’s owner, a woman named Susan, keeps what she described as an Italian species...
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New York’s newest street, 6 ½ Ave., is just for pedestrians
For years, 1,200 people an hour have been seeing this six-block stretch of street in secret. But finally, New York City is bringing these back-alley relationships into the light, and giving them the...
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Google is in the hitchhiking business.
Or so an anonymous source at Google told the Wall Street Journal earlier this week. Since May, workers at Google, Walmart, and a few other companies in the San Francisco Bay Area have been able to...
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You know you want to be Grist’s newest fellow
Are you an early-career journalist, storyteller, or multimedia wizard who digs what we do? Then Grist wants you! We are now accepting applications for the spring 2017 class of the Grist Fellowship...
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