Archive for the ‘sustainability’ Category

February 21, 2012

Daniel Arreola on Latino Urbanism

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet The Latino Urban Form lecture is this tomorrow!! We have an amazing panel who will talk about a relatively new and increasingly relevant concept called Latino Urbanism. To give you an idea of what Latino Urbanism is about, I asked each of our three speakers to give us their thoughts on it in a short interview. You can find my interviews with Kevin Kellogg or James Rojas here and here, respectively. Today I’m featuring the final interview with Daniel Arreola, a professor at ASU who teaches about Mexican Ancestry Populations in Phoenix. The lecture will take place on Wednesday…

February 15, 2012

Kevin Kellogg on Latino Urbanism

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Next week, the Sustainable Communities Lecture Series, brought to you by Women Design Arizona and Blooming Rock, will present a lecture on Latino Urban Form featuring three great thinkers on the subject. James Rojas, a transportation planner at the City of Los Angeles, is the founder and foremost authority on Latino Urbanism in the country. Kevin Kellogg, who has been featured and has written for this blog several times, is an architect and urban planner who has hands-on experience with Latino urban planning and design. And Daniel Arreola is a professor at ASU who teaches about Mexican Ancestry Populations…

February 14, 2012

What YOU Want to See in Arizona’s Next 100 Years

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet It’s Arizona’s Centennial today, a day to celebrate the last 100 years of our state founding. For me, today’s also a great day to pause and lay claim to the future we want for our state. To that end, I asked YOU, through Facebook, Twitter, this blog and the Blooming Rock newsletter, what you’d like to see in the next 100 years in Arizona. There were definitely themes to people’s responses, and so I’ve broken them down into categories, to help us better see what’s important to people today. Here’s what you said: Renewable Energy/Solar Power: Rocco Meneguale: I…

February 01, 2012

Bicycle Cellar in Downtown Phoenix a Step in the Right Direction for Air Quality

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Air pollution is a major problem for Valley residents, not just because it sullies our beautiful blue skies, but because it has a very real and lasting negative impact on our health. According to an excellent seven-part series currently running in the Arizona Republic called The Air We Breathe, “studies now link pollution, especially traffic-related pollutants to heart disease, premature births, asthma attacks and shortened lives.” The series, of which only three installments have been published to date, explores many reasons why we find ourselves in a choke hold with air quality, but lays much of the blame on…

January 25, 2012

Is the City of Phoenix’s Polyanna Attitude Towards Sustainability Hurting Us?

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Below is an article written by Phoenix’s sustainability officer about our city’s state of sustainability published in the Arizona Republic on Friday January 20, 2012: Greening of city hits stride – by Carolyn Bristo Phoenix led the way in sustainability decades before “green” was cool. Though the color brown is often associated with our desert region,”green” has saturated our policies for more than 30 years. In the 1960s, Phoenix developed rubberized asphalt made from recycled tires. We adopted water-conservation and energy-efficiency programs more than 30 years ago. Our alternative-fuel program is now one of the largest programs in the…

January 16, 2012

DVC’s State of Sustainability Forum – a Next Step after the Wreckage of Bird on Fire

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Andrew Ross’s book Bird on Fire: Lessons from the Least Sustainable City in the World is the talk of the town. And tomorrow night, it will be the subject of a panel discussion put together by the Downtown Voices Coalition called the State of Sustainability Forum. As I wrote in my article in the Atlantic Cities called In Defense of Phoenix, Ross’s book has raised a lot of ire in our city, whether it’s focused on the author himself who can conveniently go home to New York without offering any solutions after criticizing the place we hold dear in…

January 11, 2012

Why the Central Avenue Road Diet is a Big Deal

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet New bike lanes are in on Central between Camelback and Bethany Home as part of the planned road diet for the area! I rode this newly slimmed down stretch of Central on Sunday with a group of bikers in celebration of this move towards making Phoenix a more bike-friendly place. Someone said to me on the ride, there are people in Arizona that don’t like bicyclists, that don’t think they should be on the road. And for too long, these people have had all the say in the transportation planning of our city. the road diet is a…

December 29, 2011

In The Atlantic Cities: In Defense of Phoenix

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Check out my article in The Atlantic Cities in response to Andrew Ross’s book, Bird on Fire Lessons from the Least Sustainable City in the World: In Defense of Phoenix

December 19, 2011

What is D.U.R.T.?

by: Kirby Hoyt

Tweet Today’s post is by landscape architect and urban planner Kirby Hoyt, someone I met recently and immediately hit it off with. Kirby, along with his partner Rob Izer, just opened shop for their company Edge Industries on Grand Avenue. They call their studio the Funk Lab and it’s a place where great ideas are born, incubated and implemented and so I try to hang out there as much possible. Kirby Hoyt, founder of EDGE Industries, holds a Master of Design Studies from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and a Bachelors of Landscape Architecture degree from Iowa State University….

December 14, 2011

Central Ave. Road Diet Between Camelback and Bethany Home Happening January 2012!

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Plans for a road diet on Central between Camelback and Bethany Home have been in the works since March and it’s finally going to happen next month! Yes it’s just a tiny stretch of road in the larger scheme of things, but in reality this is a huge step towards shifting the mindset here in Phoenix away from car-oriented urban design towards Complete Streets. According to the Maricopa Association of Governments Complete Streets Guide, complete streets “ensure that facilities for bicycles, pedestrians and transit are recognized as integral to a properly designed and functioning street. They are as important…