Search Results

Why don’t women bike to work more often? You hear many theories: we’re less willing to ride in traffic, we can’t arrive at a showerless office all sweaty, we never bothered to learn how to fix a flat, our schedules are over-extended, we work longer hours to make the same money as men, those of us with kids spend twice as much time on average caring for them, and many...

Anna: Jon Stewart gives the best explanation I’ve seen of cognitive dissonance and how it plays out: Two rats in a bag! And in related cognitive dissonance news: Want partisans to listen to ideas that contradict their views? Give them an ego boost. Our other big pollution problem: Antibiotics. The Heartland Institute went too far lumping mass murderers and terrorists with everybody who’s concerned about climate change. A bunch of their backers are pulling away....

Editor’s Note 6/22/15: Happy summer, Cascadia! Have you bought a new bike in honor of the sunny season? Moved to a new place and still wondering where to stash your wheels? Here’s a hefty dose of inspiration from one of our all-time most popular Sightline articles. More ideas still welcome! Back in February, Treehugger posted a visually tantalizing slideshow of bike storage options. We featured it in Sightline Daily’s news digest, but something about it...

Alan: More than slogans and sound bites about the causes of the record-setting low teen birth rates in the United States. President 42 on President 36. Liz Canning in the Bay Area is crowdsourcing a film about cargo bikes, and the trailer for it is the coolest cycling video I think I’ve ever seen. (And I’ve seen a lot.) Check it out and, if you’re a cargo-ista, shoot some footage...

Here’s a good reason to build rain gardens and green roofs, and to plant and protect trees: It’ll save you money. That’s the conclusion of a new report from the American Association of Landscape Architects called “Banking on Green.” The study surveyed green stormwater projects from across the US, plus a handful from Canada, and determined that in 41 percent of the cases, the environmentally friendly approach was cheaper than...

Roadside rain gardens are, for the most part, enormously popular. Yet after a recent faulty installation in Ballard, which was later corrected, some folks have begun loudly criticizing them as a threat to health, safety, and quality of life. Check out the comments section on Lisa Stiffler’s recent blog post, Rain Garden Backlash is All Wet, for a good example of the controversy. I don’t want to minimize the concerns...

Rain gardens are suffering from an identity crisis. On one hand, there are homeowners who love rain gardens composed of feathery grasses and bushy native shrubs. They even hire landscapers to install them and post signs to let others know that their yard is helping solve the problem of polluted runoff. There are Puget Sound databases and maps packed with examples of the water-sponging plantings. Walking tours in Portland and...

Next week, the Seattle city council will take up a package of modest but important regulatory reforms. These are precisely the sort of fixes Sightline has been advocating: targeted updates that move us toward a more sustainable city—one that’s not only cleaner but that also offers richer economic opportunities to its residents. Interestingly, many of them are actually “back to the future” type proposals. For example: Coffee shop-size neighborhood commerce—the...

Eric dP: For Northwest history geeks, I recommend reading the introduction to this assessment of Latinos in Washington. It traces the history of Latinos in the region from the earliest Spanish explorers in the region, through settlement, the mid-century Bracero program, and up to the present day. I learned more than a couple of things. Plus, all kinds of fun stuff related to coal trains. Over at Climate Solutions, Ross MacFarlane...

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...