Author name: Northern Section

STARS (Sustainable Transportation Analysis & Rating System) does more than simply “green up” our current transportation system.As a transportation planning professional, learn how to meaningfully improve the environmental, economic, and social performance of transportation projects and plans.Join this co-hosted workshop between APA California Northern Sustainability Committee and the North American Sustainable Transportation Council. Go HERE […]

Ask, Geoff Andersen, president and CEO of Smart Growth America. The program saves communities and the federal government millions and billions of dollars and creates local jobs at a very high ROI! Hard to beat it, yet the House of Representatives voted to eliminate its funding! The vote in the senate is up tomorrow (091911).

A recent review of a session at the APA California Conference (“Translating Sustainability into Practice: Tools for Measuring Community Sustainability”) seems to argue that that a robust understanding of sustainability is not possible, that measurement is unnecessary, and that neither is needed because an effective response can be found in traditional planning as usual. Even

See the posting in Sustainability Perspectives Journal. TNS Candada’s new The Sustainability Transition Lab hold the promise for the innovation required for making big, bold, replicatable steps towards community sustainability.

A new report on Senate Bill 375 identifies potential challenges to implementing the bill and discusses opportunities to overcome these challenges. The report was recently published by Elliot Rose and UCB’s Center for Resource Efficient Communities. From the Exec Summary: California Senate Bill 375 of 2008 aims to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the

was the theme for MIT’s Projections 10 Journal (Feb 27, 2011). A rich volume of seven articles all available on the web.

Will MIT’s new–and FREE–open-source, city-building urban network analysis (UNA) software (for ArcGIS 10) be the panacea for the “70% of today’s [global] urban growth /1/ occurs outside the formal planning process[?]. If nothing changes, the inefficiencies, pollution, and misery of modern dysfunctional cities may become the norm. Avoiding that future just became a bit easier

From Global Planners Network: The American Planning Association (APA) is leading an Urban Planning Initiative under the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas. The 30-month project will promote urban planning as a tool to foster sustainable, climate-proof development across the Americas, under President Barak Obama’s Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas. The work,

Thank you Daniel for a surprisingly engaging question (go to this APA SCP Linked In discussion for more detail and others’ responses). With only nine voices contributing, we already have quite an interesting variety of perspectives. I have to say that I cannot really get used to “sustaining places,” even after reviewing and commenting on two drafts of the Task Force Report.

Read/skim the full story here (PDF) (another PDF version here). Also peruse their website. Go here for a web-based version of the story with video. Whistler, BC, is generally recognized as one of Canada’s leaders in community sustainability planning, engagement and implementation, and it was one of the very first communities to begin developing a