Modern urban centers from Manhattan to Hong Kong now boast neighborhoods that house well over 100,000 people per square mile, while providing their inhabitants an excellent quality of life. As world civilization voluntarily and inexorably urbanizes, new megacities will be built everywhere. It is estimated that within the next few decades the number of megacities on earth - defined [...]

Only an extreme libertarian would claim there is no role for government.  In the face of population growth, aging infrastructure, and myriad new, cleaner and more sustainable ways to deliver energy, water and transportation resources, there is much to be done by the public sector.  Green public works will create wealth and resource abundance.  Green public works must include [...]

It is getting hard to keep track of all the credible companies delivering advanced structural building materials.  It’s fine to call something “green” that has a high recycled materials content, low embodied energy, doesn’t offgas unhealthy toxins, doesn’t include toxic materials, and has superb insulation value, but this is only half the story.  Many of these products are interesting for [...]

The parallels between the internet revolution and the 21st century green revolution are many, but the most salient perhaps is this:  Wonderful progress is going to come out of this boom, but lots of business models and products are going to come and go, and we’re going to look back at many of them and [...]

A few months ago we toured the “Idea House,” sponsored by Sunset Magazine, located in the lower Mission District of San Francisco.  The building was fascinating - two units, three stories - with one larger home taking up all three floors, and an apartment consuming part of the 2nd floor on the west side of the structure.  [...]

If you want to make money, you better have a contingency for a future where there’s global cooling, and brokers populate the streetcorners with signs that say “will trade carbon credits for food.”  No rational investor fails to prepare for likely eventualities - and the precautionary principle that informs global warming alarm will not help your portfolio when global [...]

This is part two of a series of comments and responses posted on www.treelink.org’s listserve, as part of a discussion regarding whether or not it is futile to try to have a viable urban forest given the ”smart growth” trends towards ultra high density cities.  Part one is entitled “Smart Growth & Housing Prices.” 

Remember the natural evolution of low
density suburbs [...]