urbaNation

Gov. Jerry Brown quoted in the New York Times article, ‘California Imposes First-Ever Restrictions to Deal with Drought.’ Brown was attending the annual measuring of the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains. This year’s measurement revealed the lowest snowpack on record, by far. California grows a sizable majority of many American fruits, vegetables, and nuts and would count as the seventh largest country in the world based on the size of its economy. Climate change is a big deal. Pass it on. 

(Infographic: National Drought Mitigation Center / Bloomberg)

Related: 

‘California Drought Goes From Bad To Worse As State Grapples With Heat Wave’ (The Guardian)

‘NASA Study Finds Carbon Emissions Could Dramatically Increase Risk of U.S. Megadroughts’ (NASA)

‘What Would We Eat If It Weren’t For California?’ (Slate)

‘California Has About One Year of Water Stored’ (Los Angeles Times)

‘David Suzuki: ‘We Can’t Afford To Waste Water’ (Georgia Straight)

‘Water-Wise Lawn Alternatives’ (University of California) 

The agricultural as a math problem.

On March 16-19, 2015, USAID and CCRD will host the Advancing Climate-Resilient Development Symposium in Washington, D.C. This invitation-only Symposium will bring together adaptation and development experts and decision-makers to:

Share lessons learned from CCRD

Exchange adaptation-related approaches and experiences

Identify new ways to advance climate-resilient development

Implemented by Engility/IRG with a consortium of 11 partners, the CCRD project has piloted USAID’s “development-first” approach to climate change adaptation in more than 30 countries.

"Frank Gehry’s Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris’s Bois de Boulogne (above) and his Panama Biomuseum (below) flagrantly disregard their settings, reducing architecture to mere superfluous spectacle, over-exaggerated and detached from reality." 

"More than that, the attention attracted by works like those of Gehry and Hadid impedes the rethinking of architecture that is so desperately overdue. We need to move on from the adolescent search for momentary excitement and spectacle to a more mature architecture of synthesis and subtlety that reveals its understated riches over time. But that would entail architectural academe and media developing a much more searchingly critical attitude to architecture and how it is assessed so as to help us move forward to an architecture relevant and adequate to the manifold challenges of our time. To do this it also would help if we ignored, and starved of the oxygen of publicity, the architectural nonsense too long applauded in our times."

Is the parklet phenomenon just the beginning for rethinking how cities use their parking facilities? 

"Photograph of a man placing City Hall in a model of Los Angeles, [s.d.]. The man is pictured at left, leaning from off of what appears to be a gangplank, placing the model of City Hall daintily into place. The model of the city sprawls out in all directions beneath him" (Emphasis added).

How to Win Any Argument

I actually did retain something I read in high school!

Mayor runs over illegally parked car in tank 

Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011

This is the incredible moment a frustrated mayor drives an armoured vehicle over a MERCEDES – for parking in a cycle lane.

Arturas Zuokas, 43, took the drastic action after becoming infuriated with motorists parking their luxury cars illegally around the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius.

The flamboyant politician decided to take the novel approach of fighting illegally parked cars by driving over them in a Russian tank.

He said: ”I wanted to send a clear message that people with big and expensive cars can’t park wherever they feel like and ignore the rights of pedestrians and bike riders.

”It shows a lack of respect and won’t be tolerated. Of course, you have to have a sense of humour in my line of work and I thought this would be a way of drawing attention to the fact that the city intends to be proactive in its fight against illegal parking.”

The shocked owner of the Mercedes was photographed exiting a shop to find his German saloon destroyed by the smartly dressed civic leader.

The car was later crushed.

Seriously, these are up only up for 24 days!!!

The new edition of the journal Environment and Urbanization focuses on ways cities can increase their resilience to climate change. To celebrate the journal’s 25th anniversary, its publisher Sage has made the new issue and all previous ones free to access for 25 days:

Towards resilience and transformation for cities within a finite planet 

Urban environmental challenges and climate change action in Durban, South Africa

The constraints on climate change adaptation in a city with a large development deficit: the case of Dar es Salaam 

Incorporating climate change adaptation into planning for a liveable city in Rosario, Argentina

Experiences of integrated assessment of climate impacts, adaptation and mitigation modelling in London and Durban 

The political underpinnings of cities’ accumulated resilience to climate change

Shared learning” for building urban climate resilience – experiences from Asian cities  

Governing urban climate change adaptation in China 

What makes a great city? It is a pressing question because by 2030, 5 billion people—60 percent of the world’s population—will live in cities, compared with 3.6 billion today, turbocharging the world’s economic growth. Leaders in developing nations must cope with urbanization on an unprecedented scale, while those in developed ones wrestle with aging infrastructures and stretched budgets. All are fighting to secure or maintain the competitiveness of their cities and the livelihoods of the people who live in them. And all are aware of the environmental legacy they will leave if they fail to find more sustainable, resource-efficient ways of managing these cities.

an LAPD traffic officer’s supervisor.

Yesterday the LAPD failed Melanie Freeland.

Tomorrow, it might be you.

“Evidently, cops aren’t credible witnesses.”

Update: LAPD traffic investigators evidently don’t believe other cops who witness a right hook bike collision. bikinginLA, 29.08.13.

**the more you read this blog (bikinginLA), the more you want to get as far away from LA and LA-like places as possible**

(via citymaus)

Read these blog posts about a bicyclist hit by a car. The car made a right turn from the left lane and hooked a person on a bike. Two police officers saw it. But their accounts was deemed inadmissible. Horrible run around.

(via newurbanismfilmfestival)

Peter Root’s “Ephemicropolis,” a city of staples.