In California and Oregon, beavers are enhancing wetlands that are critical breeding habitat for salmonids, amphibians, and waterfowl. In Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico, environmental groups have partnered with ranchers and farmers to encourage beaver activity on small streams. Watershed advocates in California are leading a campaign to have beavers removed from the state’s non-native species list, so that they can be managed as a keystone species rather than a nuisance. — placesjournal.org
Writing in Places Journal, landscape designer Stacy Passmore explores the amazing landscapes beavers create when they are allowed to fulfill their natural role as environmental engineers. More and more, beavers and humans have become partners in reshaping the landscapes of the American west... View full entry
It is now almost 80 years since the Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act enabled the construction of the post-war prefab, but controversies and concerns about building a home in a factory have run deep ever since. While practically every other item we buy rolls off a production line, housebuilding’s transition to the factory remains, for many reasons, problematic. — RIBA Journal
With the rise of automation and advances in building manufacturing, architects have considered if machines can replace the profession. However, makes the job so rewarding is thinking of new and creative ways to execute ideas. This level of creativity and design distinction is something architects... View full entry
MIT’s Self Assembly Lab and Maldives-based Invena have unveiled Growing Islands, a provocative underwater structural system that redirects wave energy and sand accumulation flows to build new islands and help rebuild existing beaches ravaged by rising sea levels. Diagram showcasing the... View full entry
[Oslo] has just phased out the last on-street parking spaces in the city centre, giving an edge to transit, pedestrians and cyclists without banning cars.
The initiative included incentives for cyclists such as new bike lanes, including better lighting and snow removal, along with subsidies for electric bikes and cargo cycles. Council also expanded transit services and lowered fares.
— Corporate Knights
London, Berlin, Paris, Toronto, and an increasing number of cities are aiming to reduce traffic congestion, polluted air, and valuable urban space occupied by parked cars through policy changes that promote walkability, pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly (and in certain cases, car-light or even... View full entry
“We’re in the midst of new cities fever,” says Prof Sarah Moser. The head of the new cities lab at McGill University has documented more than 100 cities that have sprung up across Asia and Africa since the early 2000s for her forthcoming Atlas of New Cities. — The Guardian
The Guardian kicks off its new Cities from scratch series with an overview of noteworthy planned metropolises that are replacing big swaths of desert, jungle, or sea across Asia and Africa. While some new cities started out ambitiously but had to eventually give up on key features, others took... View full entry
Abu Dhabi is claiming the title of the world's largest single-site solar project, having hit the go-button on the Noor Abu Dhabi project this week, with a reported capacity of 1.177 gigawatts, eclipsing Dubai's Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park – for now at least. The United Arab Emirates doesn't have a great record when it comes to per-capita carbon footprint, but projects like this show that it's serious about addressing the issue head-on. — New Atlas
"According to the Abu Dhabi media office, the project has sufficient capacity to supply 90,000 people and is expected to reduce Abu Dhabi's CO2 emissions by one million metric tons, or the equivalent of removing 200,000 cars from the road," reports New Atlas. View full entry
While other regions grappled with destructive waves and rising seas, the West Coast for decades was spared by a rare confluence of favorable winds and cooler water. This “sea level rise suppression,” as scientists call it, went largely undetected. [...]
But lines in the sand are meant to shift. In the last 100 years, the sea rose less than 9 inches in California. By the end of this century, the surge could be greater than 9 feet.
— Los Angeles Times
In her LA Times long read, Rosanna Xia tells the tale of coastal cities up and down the Golden State and their increasing struggles to defend beaches, infrastructure, and (mostly pricey) properties against the rising sea that relentlessly chews away on a coastline many perceived as permanent... View full entry
Nearly 300 coal-fired power plants have been "retired" since 2010, according to the Sierra Club. It's a trend that continues despite President Trump's support for coal. That has left many communities worried that those now-idled places will simply be mothballed. — NPR
In an NPR segment, which aired in May, Jeff Brady discusses the Department of Community and Economic Development's plans to reuse and redevelop retired coal plants. Plans of action are listed in a "playbook" that outlines the attributes of listed coal plants and the pros and cons of each site... View full entry
There is enough room in the world’s existing parks, forests, and abandoned land to plant 1.2 trillion additional trees, which would have the CO2 storage capacity to cancel out a decade of carbon dioxide emissions, according to a new analysis by ecologist Thomas Crowther and colleagues at ETH Zurich, a Swiss university. — Yale Environment 360
Following new research, Thomas Crowther and colleagues at ETH Zurich estimate that there are 3 trillion trees on Earth, more than seven times the number previously estimated. Crowther argues that given this new knowledge, it is possible that new and existing forests could become more... View full entry
The International Architecture Awards was founded in 2005 in conjunction with The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies. The Awards celebrate the world's best international architecture practices and examples... View full entry
At the Universidad del Valle de Atemajac in Guadalajara, Sandra Pascoe has successfully used nopales to create biodegradable plastic. It was a series of trial and error for Pascoe, who first started by taking small pieces of dry nopal, which she would then pulverize and mix with other ingredients. But it was too slow a process and she found that the material oxidized too quickly. Eventually, she eventually starting using the liquid inside the prickly pear and found success. — Remezcla
Does the answer to the world’s plastic pollution problem lie in the thick, sticky sap of Mexican cactus fronds? Sandra Pascoe, a researcher at the Universidad del Valle de Atemajac in Guadalajara, Mexico, thinks so. Her team is busy finding ways to transform the syrup into solid... View full entry
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has agreed to join a global declaration acknowledging the existence of an environmental and climate emergency. In recent months, New York City, the Vatican, the city of Vancouver, and the government of Ireland, among some 700 additional... View full entry
The National Park Service is diverting nearly $2.5 million in entrance and recreation fees primarily intended to improve parks across the country to cover costs associated with President Trump’s Independence Day celebration Thursday on the Mall, according to two individuals familiar with the arrangement. — The Washington Post
The move from the National Parks Service (NPS) comes as the department works to find funding to help ease its nearly $12 billion maintenance backlog. NPS estimates that it needs over $2 billion to repair its building stock, as well as over $186 million to improve NPS-administered housing, for... View full entry
On top of climate change, cities grow hotter and hotter due to an increase in urban heat island effect. According to Philip Oldfield's Guardian piece, "What would a heat-proof city look like?," there are four solutions cities can implement to decrease rising temperatures. Oldfield explains green... View full entry
Mayor Byron Brown said there will be a significant change documented in the 2020 Census for Buffalo. "We believe that in the 2020 census will allow Buffalo to show its first population growth since the 1950 census,” he said. — Spectrum News
After nearly 70 years of population declines, The City of Good Neighbors is growing once again. According to Buffalo mayor Byron W. Brown, the city could register significant population growth after the 2020 Census, a product, in part, of the city's growing refugee and immigrant communities... View full entry
