In 1993, Portland became the first U.S. city to enact a plan to address climate change. The city cut its carbon emissions by 15 percent from 1990 to 2017—even as its population grew by 38 percent. Today Portland is still pushing the envelope, but along the way it is learning important lessons about how these efforts affect its citizens.
In order for us to achieve our long-term emissions reduction of 80 percent by 2050, we can't . . . leave a third of the city behind.
Vacant land represents not loss but opportunity to an increasing number of forward-looking Clevelanders. By taking advantage of cheap, available land, residents are building a city for the new millennium that features green energy and urban agriculture.
During the past 400 years, the United States has been transformed by massive public and private works projects and technological innovations intended to facilitate commerce, improve public health, and foster economic development.
As smaller legacy cities continue the grueling work of rebounding from the severe economic and population losses suffered since their manufacturing heydays, the green approach is gaining traction.
Like many coastal cities, Miami is facing a climate future that is already here.
Renowned city planner and housing advocate Alan Mallach presents effective strategies for community leaders, local officials, and nonprofits contending with vacant properties in the United States.
The projects featured in this article are excerpted from Design with Nature Now. They were selected for the book because each in some way narrows the gap between theory and practice and opens up a wider horizon for the future of landscape architecture.
For some people, Santa Monica conjures images of sunshine and surfing. But the southern California city should rightly be known for sustainability, too.
Climate change can seem like an insurmountable challenge. But many tools and policies to decarbonize the economy and build resilience are readily available, says Billy Fleming, director of The McHarg Center and an editor of Design with Nature Now.
At the end of the day the challenge of sustainability for Phoenix—maybe for everywhere—is not a challenge of geography or of climate. It’s a challenge of politics.
The Colorado River holds life-sustaining importance for the vast desert regions of the American West. But with dwindling snowpack in the Rocky Mountains from which it springs, and increasingly thirsty soils and cities sapping its tributaries, this fabled river is in extreme danger.
of Water Use is Residential
of Water Use is Commercial
Resilient and drought-tolerant, tepary beans are native to the desert Southwest, grown by Native peoples since pre-Columbian times. But when the Pima and Maricopa tribes of the Phoenix region lost access to their water, cultivation of the beans nearly disappeared. Now with water restored, the beans are making a comeback—and so are their growers. Today, Native peoples are helping Phoenix prepare for climate change by sharing their resources and knowledge.
They know this place. And with that comes a resilience and adaptability to this environment.
Building long-term resilience to climate change can also improve quality of life today. With a single project, the Cleveland suburb of Euclid can mitigate shoreline erosion from Lake Erie, open access to recreation along the lakefront, and boost home values to boot. But how does the cash-strapped city pay for the project? That’s where Euclid gets inventive.
For communities across the West, the dual pressures of rapid development and climate change are making water an increasingly precious commodity—and an increasingly hot topic.
"Integrating Water Efficiency into Land Use Planning in the Interior West: A Guidebook for Local Planners" builds on years of research and community discussions and aims to build collaboration between land use planners and water planners.
Faced with an unprecedented array of uncertainties, American cities and regions increasingly turn to scenario planning.
As the global water crisis intensifies, the Colorado River Basin is poised to become a model for how to bring together stakeholders representing agriculture, urban areas, and the natural environment.
Cities around the world are hard at work on traffic congestion, but the task is about to get more complex, with the advent of driverless vehicles, delivery robots, and more. Heather Hannon explains how scenario planning can help design the future city.
The national dialogue about rising waters tends to focus on coastal states like Florida and New York. But residents in Michigan, which has one of the longest coastlines in the continental U.S., are also contending with changes.
The desert is the essential magic of Phoenix, and we have the most spectacular and beautiful desert in the world.
Two things that Oregonians hate—density and sprawl. Well, when you have 300,000 people moving every 10 years into your region, there are only two ways to accommodate that—either through density or sprawl.
See Portland’s urban growth boundary in action.
Of New Residential Units Built
Within 1979 Boundary
New Homes Planned
Comprehensive plans can inspire their creators to tap their highest and best professional skills, training, and vision—or cause them to question their choice of profession.
Recent news stories routinely feature “hot market” U.S. cities with astronomical housing prices that end up displacing residents with moderate or low incomes.
Imagery in the above videos are courtesy of the following:
Bike Town: J. Maus/BikePortland; Joe Biel/MusicVideoDistributors; M. Andersen/BikePortland; Street Films.
Blue Lake: The Library of Congress; The National Archives; Pond 5; Scientific American; Smithsonian Institution Archives, Image # SIA2008-0307; Western Reserve Historical Society.
Growing Pains: Metro; Pond5; Shutterstock.
Lakefront City: Google Maps; The National Archives; Smithgroup JJR.
Seeds and Water: Arizona Historical Society; Central Arizona Project; Gila River Indian News; High Country News; Imagn.
Superstition Vistas: Fregonese Associates, Inc.
The Water Game: Arizona Capitol TV; Arizona Governors Office; AZ Central/Imagn; Brigham Young University Museum of Art; Central Arizona Project; Pima County Arizona; Pond5; Pueblo Grande Museum, City of Phoenix, Artist’s rendition of the Hohokam canals by Michael Hampshire; Shutterstock.
Click here to watch the original Making Sense of Place series in its entirety.
