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Weekend Reading 5/16/14
Clark John Oliver shows us how the media should be handling debates between climate scientists and climate deniers. A white girl remembers Billy Frank. Jen This long, personal, and wildly popular essay from Bike Portland’s Michael Andersen on the evolution of Portland’s bike culture shows just how compelling it can be when people who normally write about policy write from the heart. As someone who just yesterday found herself rescuing...Read more » -
Top Ten (Sightline) Hits of 2012
Okay, we knew lots of you were into bikes, and it shows. But, more generally, it looks like Sightline readers simply favor posts about getting around. As we close out 2012, we’re taking a look back at the most popular Sightline articles of the year. The upshot: bikes reign, but you’re also reading plenty about public transit, traffic trends, mobile food vendors, and even road porosity. The outliers? Clotheslines and...Read more » -
Alan Durning at TEDx: Legalize It!
In this 13-minute video, I tell the stories of everyday citizens who are organizing to make sustainability legal. From clotheslines to reused pickle jars, from car-sharing to wilderness outings for poor teens, common-sense, green solutions are too often against the law. On jobs and climate and fairness and biological diversity and toxic chemicals — all the dimensions of sustainability — we know that we need to overhaul the house from...Read more » -
Innovative Green Building at Seattle’s Via6
Working on long term policy change doesn’t always yield immediate results. So here at Sightline we find it especially satisfying when our ideas take physical form, as they are in a new building in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood. Longtime Sightline supporter Matt Griffin’s Pine Street Group is finishing up work on Via6, a 654-unit apartment building that includes features directly inspired by Sightline. The project has already gotten well-deserved press for...Read more » -
Report: Making Sustainability Legal
We’ve been cleaning out the fridge for nearly a year now, and we’ve compiled our list of moldy, past-their-prime laws into a handy new report. It’s all in there, from freeing taxis and food carts to legalizing car sharing and clotheslines. Plus, we’ve cataloged three success stories, where outdated rules have been brought into the modern age. Download the full report, or get the two-page summary to take to your next cocktail...Read more » -
Making Sustainability Legal
Some of the most innovative solutions for building thriving and sustainable communities in the Northwest are, at present, simply illegal. Current rules make it difficult to share bikes, find a cab, take toddlers on the bus, and hang a clothesline.Read more » -
Weekend Reading 3/16/12
Clark: WSU researchers find that exposure to toxic chemicals can affect the next three generations of offspring. From the press release: “While toxicologists generally focus on animals exposed to a compound, [this] work…demonstrates that diseases can also stem from older, ancestral exposures that are then mediated through epigenetic changes in sperm.” Ick! A short, readable guide to Tactical Urbanism: how to create mini-parks, greener streetscapes, safe places for kids to play...Read more » -
Legalize Couchsurfing
Tight budgets and the internet have given rise to the hottest new thing in travel accommodations. Web-based company Airbnb has received a lot of press recently for its for-profit service that matches travelers with spare bedrooms, such as mine (pictured above). It’s already growing like moss in the Northwest winter, but the potential is much bigger than most have considered. Airbnb and other companies that create a market for guest...Read more » -
Making Sustainability Legal: 2011 Progress Report
Six months ago, we launched the Making Sustainability Legal project arguing that, although the Northwest could benefit from a top-to-bottom remodel of its public-policy house, deep political divides and starvation budgets make big reforms unlikely soon. In the meantime, maybe we can clean out the fridge? Making Sustainability Legal is about pulling moldy regulations out of the back of our law books and composting them. Dozens of regulations, whatever virtue...Read more »