News, June 21, 2009
Where in the world have all the tourists gone?
Since 2001, the number of day trips that Americans have taken to Canada has decreased by almost 70 per cent
Urban upgrades with seniors in mind
Seniors do better, it is said, when they can stay in their homes.
Making that easier means improving everything from crosswalks to electronic medical records, said a group of health, environmental and urban planning experts at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center on Thursday.
Retailers Head for Exits in Detroit
Shopping Becomes a Challenge as Auto-Industry Collapse Adds to City’s Woes
Plan envisions John St. as ’spine’ of cultural area
John St. would become a more pedestrian-friendly “cultural corridor,” with widened sidewalks and reduced car lanes in some sections, under a plan unveiled by a group of businesses in the entertainment district.
The Toronto Entertainment District Master Plan, launched yesterday by the area’s business improvement association, envisions the street as a “promenade” that would stretch from about Queen St. to the Rogers Centre.
Beer the way the pioneers drank it
Tilling the fields or building a log cabin, a settler in 1860s Ontario could build up quite a thirst.
“People would have on average six beers a day,” explains Geri Smith, who works in marketing at Black Creek Pioneer Village.
What cities are attracting Gen Y?
Via creative economist Richard Florida, Kevin Stolarick at the Martin Prosperity Institute and BusinessWeek, here are the top 25 Best Cities for Gen Y. The rankings are based on more than thirty weighted variables in five categories: the share of a population at the young and single life stage, economic strength; education levels and safety; economic growth; and local amenities, measuring all 363 metropolitan areas in the U.S.
How Some Places Fare Better in Hard Times
While the disparity in unemployment rates is enormous, it isn’t random. Some areas aren’t just miraculously better able to handle the downturn. Long-standing features of the urban landscape can explain the bulk of the variation in today’s unemployment rates.
Given the enormous gap in unemployment between skilled and unskilled workers, it isn’t surprising that skills best explain today’s metropolitan unemployment rates. The share of adults with college degrees in 2000 can, on its own, explain about one-half of the variation in the unemployment rate.
Somewhat remarkably, the educational level of the metropolitan area before World War II can do almost as well. The attached figure shows that as the share of the population with college degrees in 1940 increases by 10 percent, current unemployment levels decrease by 6.7 percent.
Atlanta startup turns human waste into fuel EnerTech Environmental, an Atlanta startup, on Thursday unveiled the United States’ first commercial biosolids-to-energy facility in California’s Inland Empire. “Biosolids” is the nice term for processed sewage sludge.
Driving around Baltimore, it’s not hard to spot vacant lots where nothing much is happening.
In an effort to spur debate, the city’s arts agency put a photo described as a typical abandoned lot online and asked people for their ideas of what could be done with it.
“There are 35 or 40 neighbourhoods in Baltimore that that site could be in … there are large sections of abandoned buildings,” said Gary Kachadourian, visual arts coordinator with
Urban Farming, a Bit Closer to the Sun
THIS summer, Tony Tomelden hopes to be making bloody marys at the Pug in Washington, D.C., with tomatoes and chilies grown above the bar, thanks to the city’s incentives for green roofs.
On the road to sustainable eating
She’s a baker, farmers’ market vendor, local foods enthusiast – and, lately, a bus driver.
Carole Ferrari is owner of the Local Café, a small catering company that supplies made-from-scratch cookies, cakes and more, prepared in the belly of an old school bus. Her passion for improving food systems got her thinking about the energy costs associated with making and then shipping ready-to-eat foods to their varied destinations. So the long-time cook and daughter of chefs fixed on a solution: a green-themed spin on Meals on Wheels.
City Power: Can We Generate Energy While Just Getting Around? (VIDEO)
Green in 3D: 16 Vertical Farm & Skyscraper Park Designs
Not a Hollywood scary movie! A Parking Lot to Last 16,000 Years
Forested Urban Roofs
designed a “a monoculture of evergreens that emulates northern forests.” Metropolis writes that Balsley’s designs are ”undu lating stands of Austrian pines [that] deliberately avoid the usual sedum carpets and overly manicured containers of roof greenery.
How to fight the development NIMBYs
Patrick Devine thinks he has the answer. A real estate lawyer with 31 years in the business, he has spent decades trying to understand why it is that the city handles development so badly. Nothing the city does is more fundamental than planning, but the process, says Devine, is “dysfunctional.”
“The key issue,” he argues, “is governance. The only person looking out for the whole city is the mayor. Each councillor is the king or queen of their own ward.”
The problem lies with these same councillors, most of whom are willing to sacrifice the city to give local voters what they want. Many municipal politicians will tell you privately that such-and-such a development deserves their support, Devine explains, but they vote against at council to appease the NIMBY electorate.
Infill with design: Skinny idea with BIG results
The reason for all this interest lies in the façade of the couple’s home. Exceedingly narrow, it soars like a cliff for 3 1/2 lofty storeys. Compared to its chubbier neighbours, the only word for this three-metre-wide (10 feet) frontage is “striking.”
Rediscover Your Local Library
Save money and resources by using your local library for books, CDs and other media you’ll likely use only once.
In Ottawa: City officials laud higher construction charges
“Our wallet is empty, our bank is closed, and our credit is dried up,” Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger told a rare joint session of the California legislature early this month. “People are writing California off. They are talking about the end of the California dream.”
If only that was hyperbole.
California, home to 38 million people, or 13 per cent of Americans, faces a stunning $24.3 billion (U.S.) budget shortfall. The state controller, John Chiang, warned last week that California is “less than 50 days away from a meltdown in the state government.”
The Golden State will run out of cash to pay its bills by the end of July.
Alarm bells ring on drought ‘disaster’ Farmers and ranchers across a vast section of Alberta and Saskatchewan are staring down the same ominous fields of parched soil and brown crops
Sat, June 20, 2009
Splash pads are in, ball diamonds and soccer fields are out.
Think more walking paths and fewer outdoor pools.
London’s just-released long-term plan for its parks and recreation will cater more to greying boomers and growth areas of the city.
The $232-million blueprint gazes 10 years into the future, when the number of children playing organized sports is expected to decline and more seniors will be looking for ways to stay fit.
The city updates the master plan every five years as the population changes, said Donna Baxter, the city’s manager of policy and program development.
OECD, FAO Report Warns Of Food Insecurity.
“The agriculture sector is showing more resilience to the global economic crisis than other industries as food is a basic necessity, but the risks of a sharp rise in food price still remains, according to a new report by the OECD and FAO released on Wednesday. The OECD-FAO report, titled Agricultural Outlook 2009-2018,
Car-driven society poses health risk The more you drive, the less you walk. Walking provides exercise without really trying.
What the financial collapse can teach us about the food system
Like the financial sector, the food system has dramatically globalized over the past generation, even as it has become increasingly concentrated (PDF). Just as traders in New York, Tokyo, and London—often employed by the same mega-banks—can make, say, the Argentine peso plunge or soar with a few keystrokes, global food commodity markets have become tightly intertwined.
Quiz: Should I see the critically acclaimed documentary ‘Food, Inc.’?
Do you eat food?
- Yes, three-square meals a day. Add 1 million points.
- No, I’m not into that right now.Subtract 50 points.
Have you read The Ominvore’s Dilemma?
- Yes, I loved it. I own a signed first edition, and I have a poster of Michael Pollan in my bedroom. I can probably recite the text of the 2008 Farm Bill from memory. Do you want me to try? Subtract 50 points.
- Well, I started it. I read the bit about corn, and the crazy farmer in Virginia who slaughters his own chickens, but the chapter about Big Organic went on and on, and yeah, I decided to read The Devil Wears Prada instead. Add 1 million points.
- No. I work for Monsanto. I’m reading this to track “organic” propaganda. You enviros are all wussies. Add 50 points.
Where does meat come from?
- Industrial CAFOS that poison our food system, pollute toxic waste, emit greenhouse gasses, depend on fossil fuels, exploit our livestock, and damage local economies. Subtract 50 points.
- The store! Right? Maybe the farm? Add 1 million points.
- A thriving agricultural system that supports our farmers, contributes to the economy, and feeds the world. Now, I’ve copied this URL into my database, and BTW, we’re scanning IP addresses too. Expect to hear from our lawyers. Add 50 points.
Total your score …
Flu Finding Supports ‘One World, One Health’ View of People and Animals
A Wandering Mind Heads Straight Toward InsightThe trucking sector is a barometer of economic health. When the economy is thriving, manufacturers and retailers are shipping more goods overland. When it suffers, 18-wheelers are parked and their engines idled.
Looking for signs of economic recovery? Just ask a trucking firm.Researchers Map the Anatomy of the Brain’s Breakthrough Moments and Reveal the Payoff of Daydreaming
A story straight from a Hollywood screenwriter’s imagination!!
Microbe found two miles under Greenland ice is reawakened from a 120,000-year sleep
Feeling broke in Ontario - blame the Feds! Ontario can’t be Canada’s ATM
Diesel’s wild ride After 38% slide, prices are cheaper than gas again as weak economy shrinks demand for fuel
The trucking sector is a barometer of economic health. When the economy is thriving, manufacturers and retailers are shipping more goods overland. When it suffers, 18-wheelers are parked and their engines idled.
Looking for signs of economic recovery? Just ask a trucking firm.
News flash: More jobs and lower energy costs good for low-income Americans
Today, NRDC and Green for All are releasing “Green Prosperity: How Clean-Energy Policies Can Fight Poverty and Raise Living Standard in the United States” a new report by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI.)
The report finds that half of the net new jobs created through clean energy investments would be accessible to workers with high school degrees or less, and that about 75% of those jobs will offer good opportunities promotions and rising wages over time. In addition, investments in energy efficiency and transportation reduce monthly living expenses, which consume a high proportion of the budgets for low-income budgets.
The report concludes:
“The building of a clean-energy economy in the United States can also serve another purpose: to create new ‘pathways out of poverty’ for the 78 million people in this country (roughly 25 percent of the population) who are presently poor or near-poor, and raise living standards more generally for low-income people in the United States.”
According to a complementary study that PERI recently completed with the Center for American Progress (CAP), clean-energy investments at the level of about $150 billion per year-i.e. around 1 percent of U.S. GDP-can generate about 1.7 million net new jobs throughout the U.S. economy.”
Post Feedback
(WINDSOR) Green light given to downtown farmer’s market
http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Green+light+given+downtown+farmer+market/1722286/story.html
The downtown gets its own farmer’s market starting July 4 after city council gave the green light to a proposal by a residents group to convert the former Greyhound bus terminal into an open-air gathering spot for food vendors, crafters and musicians on Saturdays through the summer and fall.
“I think this is a very exciting opportunity,” said Coun. Bill Marra. Council added to a $10,000 grant from the Downtown Windsor BIA by agreeing to invest up to $6,800 in the venture by the Downtown Residents Association.
The tax dollars pay for hydro costs and installation of electrical outlets, as well as the cost of sweeping and patching the asphalt surface.
Market co-chair Gail Growe said backers deciding on pushing ahead with the pilot project due to the increased interest being expressed by the “buy local” movement, including the Bounty of the County map of local growers.
Councillors were satisfied part of the city’s investment would go towards improving the appearance of a city-owned property that has become a derelict eyesore. Coun. Jo-Anne Gignac cast the sole dissenting vote, arguing that “residents across Windsor would like to have a farmer’s market in their neighbourhoods as well.”
Gignac pointed to similar but failed recent attempts at a downtown farmer’s market hosted by the Armouries and a city parking garage on Pelissier Street. But city staff said those sites were “not conducive” to that type of offering.
The market will open Saturdays from July 4 to Oct. 10.
© Copyright (c) The Windsor Star