Eco-friendly Portland has once again raised the bar on green building. A movement that started out in a piecemeal fashion with environmentally conscious buildings dotting city landscapes is being transformed with Portland's $2.2 billion South Waterfront project - a large-scale redevelopment that, when complete, will constitute an entire eco-friendly neighborhood.… more

In Las Vegas it is now a misdemeanor to feed "the indigent" "punishable with a $1000 fine or a jail term of up to 6 months or both. Officials hope the new ordinance will force the city's estimated 12,000 homeless into soup kitchens and shelters and away from public parks.

Leaders… more

Money Magazine last week announced its annual list of best places to live. Guess what step one in the selection process was - eliminate all cities with more than 300,000 people! It shows an amazing bias toward cities of any size. As if you can’t live a good life in… more

Although my Miami-based daughter warned against it ("Oh, mom, you don't want to take that. Get a town car."), I thought I'€™d give South Florida'€™s Tri-Rail a try. Although I had checked the schedule before leaving Chicago, I was still uncertain I would take the train when I arrived at… more

Who says you need a yard? Now you can take it with you.

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Portland's 30 miles of bike boulevards are likely to expand as the city considers how to make bicycling one of the city's major forms of transportation. Bike boulevards are streets, mostly through neighborhoods, where a variety of traffic calming devices are used to slow traffic and make biking safe and… more

In his third State of the City address, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper told citizens that Denver must go green to thrive for generations to come and issued a sweeping "Greenprint Denver" plan for a self-sustaining city.

According to the Rocky Mountain News, Hickenlooper's vision ranged from making the… more

A city-wide writing program launched in Philadelphia in April this year. It's called the Autobiography Project. The program invited residents of the city to tell their own life stories – or simply individual stories taken from their lives – in 300 words or less. The Project even sponsored community writing… more

Best headline of the day found in the Chicago Tribune bemoaning the Sox two losses on the road to the Detroit Tigers: "Trips Are for Skids."

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What most distinguishes successful areas is their concentration of talent, where talent is defined as a combination of knowledge, creativity and entrepreneurship. Successful regions will be those which highly value learning, an entrepreneurial spirit, and being welcoming to all. [But] we must resist the pressure to try to save jobs… more

Dave Wetzel, vice chair of London Transport, was in for an informal talk today about London Mayor Ken Livingstone's congestion pricing and other transportation initiatives planned and underway.

Dave made the point that Mayor Livingstone was elected with a very clear program of advocacy for congestion pricing. So voters knew… more

Ray Kurzwell's op-ed in yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer is a must-read. It begins...

"A key point to keep in mind as we contemplate the future: The pace of change is accelerating.

"And that means our power to expand the boundaries of human knowledge and accomplishment is accelerating, too.

"That the pace of change… more

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced today a reward of $2500 for information leading to the identification, apprehension and conviction of person(s) responsible for vandalizing City property by placing hundreds of large, unsightly, confusing and entirely inappropriate stickers with the initials “BNE” on parking meters and other City property, in… more

Where do well-educated college graduates go? Many of them land in New York.

But where do they live when they get there as affordable housing grows more scarce?

One new option is urban dorms, communities of "the overeducated and the underpaid," according to the New York Times. While there is… more

While Democrats in Congress seek to increase the current $5.15 minimum wage for the first time in eight years, Chicago City Council is expected to vote July 26 on a proposed minimum wage ordinance for big box retailers that would lift pay to $9.25 an hour plus $1.50 per hour… more

Chicago "opens" its first virtual grade school this fall. The school is expected to serve 600 students. Parents set the school hours, children get online curriculum tailored to their skill levels and families get computers with high-speed acess, along with instructional materials. The virtual school plans family activities and field… more

Ditch the gas tax and pay by the mile. That's the short version of Oregon's new experiment to generate adequate funds for highway maintenance.

With the FHA reporting a $30 billion shortfall in highway maintenance, Oregon hopes its experiment will lead to a better system.

The experiment involves three groups: The first… more

One September morning in 1997, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley attended a reception for the mayor of Mexico City in the Aon Center. Sara Lee CEO John Bryan was there, too. Daley took Bryan to the window, pointed in the direction of what is now Millennium Park and told him, "We… more

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced Thursday that nearly half a million dollars has been earmarked to aid the city's efforts to eradicate graffiti. The funding will foster a historic interagency collaboration between the Pubic Utilities Commission, the Municipal Transportation Authority, and the Department of Public Works.

Under the Mayor's Cleaning… more

Leni Schwendinger does gorgeous work through her company, "Light Projects." Here'€™s her latest, Luminous Tower at Coney Island:

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I am on a national conference call now where this comment was just made: "Our [declining Northeastern] state is always much more motivated to do something if they think another state has already done it, and our state is getting behind."

Wondering what the correlation is between this kind of follower… more

What does it mean when I can take a $2 trip from the Loop in downtown Chicago to Midway, hop on a $79 flight from Chicago to Atlanta, then have to pay $50 in cab fare for a 18 minute trip from Atlanta Hartsfield Airport to the FBO in the… more

The next three speakers of Florida’s House of Representatives are encouraging citizens to hold community “IdeaRaisers” before the end of the year. The best 100 ideas for shaping the state’s future will be compiled in a book which they say, “will hold legislators accountable” and “shift power from special interests.”… more

The Miami Herald reports on its nine-month investigation on the air cargo industry which it claims operates under the radar and averages a crash a month. Part One of the series appeared today.

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Portland City Council unanimously voted last month to impose a new charge on Flexcar, one of the nation's first carsharing company. For the first time, Flexcar will be charged for revenues the city loses by letting the private company park its vehicles for free in metered public spaces, usually close… more

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom today released his first annual "Safe Summer Violence Prevention Plan."

It is a comprehensive violence prevention plan focused on mitigating and reducing the customary increase in violence that comes with the end of the school year. Though formally released today, SF Safe Summer 2006 is… more

A controversial program for black students in an L.A. high school is producing big academic gains. The Village, "was created three years ago by African American faculty at Cleveland High, in Reseda, amid some controversy, because it is aimed only at black students. It focuses on forging personal connections with… more

Two stories today on the healing power of art making caught my attention.

One from the New York Times was a story on a program at the International Center of Photography for girls who have been in trouble with the law. They "have been trying to gain a measure of… more

Creative toll strategies might make more of an impact on traffic congestion than new technologies, according to Kara Kockelman, associate professor of transportation engineering at the University of Texas, Austin.

Research shows that once popular strategies to speed traffic, such as HOV lanes, actually worsen traffic flow by reducing lane-choice flexibility… more

Writing in Fortune (7.10.06), Geoffrey Colvin points out that Americans' pay is stagnating. Pay is no higher than it was at the end of 2003.

"The conventional resposne is to urge greater achievement in science and technology, long our economy's foundation... But a contrarian school argues that the whole debate is… more

$10,700. That's what a full time minimum wage U.S. worker earns per year. For a family of three, that is almost $6,000 below the federal poverty line.

The $5.15 an hour minimum wage was last raised in 1997. Since then, its purchasing power has declined 20 percent.

Read Bob Herbert's column… more

The LA Times commemorated Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's first anniversary in office by declaring "everything has changed. Los Angeles has never had a mayor like Villaraigosa, one who so seamlessly melds personality, power, politics and his love of the city. His omnipresence and his personality demand attention, and he makes the… more

Volunteering is fairly consistent across ages in the U.S. with volunteerism peaking among ages 35 to 44 at 34.5 percent. Volunteers spent an average of 134 hours on volunteer activities from September, 2004 to September, 2005.

Here's how they spend their time:

Fundraising - 30 percent
Food prep/serving - 26… more