Postwar suburban sprawl, courtesy of George Bailey and his Savings and Loan A lot of the Libertarian types think that those of us promoting higher densities and urban life are trying to limit freedom of choice. Joe Mysak wrote in Bloomberg about us:

The notion appeals especially to people who like to think they'll be in charge after the revolution. They would apparently love nothing more than for the population to be confined to Soviet-style concrete-block high-rises and be forced to take state-run streetcars to their little jobs at the mill.

According to the Read the full story on TreeHugger

Kapor Klein House model, Marcy Wong Donn Logan Architects There is a fight going on in Berkeley, over the construction of a house for Mitch Kapor, the founder of Lotus and creator of Lotus 123, the program that made personal computers useful. Neighbours, architects and others call it "absurd" that the house should be called green, saying its 10,000 square feet is far too big. One neighbour complains that "green building begins with using 'just enough' and preserving what already exists. Clearly the idea of 'just enough' is not part of the design concept." But how much is too much?... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Images from Sanctuary Magazine, Rachel Pilgrim & Andrew Lecky So many of the green houses we see are single family, alone in the country, but there are more and more developers and builders trying to build green communities. On Munro court in the mining town of Castlemaine, outside of Victoria, Australia, eight lovely little modern houses have been designed by Robyn Gibson of Lifehouse design. None are over 1500 square feet, and it is sort of a cooperative, sharing responsibility for the communal vegetable gardens, emptying the compost and feeding the "chooks" [sic] ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

NoMix Toilet. Photo: Flickr Technological Innovations in the Bathroom? You Bet! Being green is all about solving problems and grabbing overlooked opportunities. It turns out that there's such a double-win in most bathrooms around the world; if we had "NoMix" toilets that separate urine from solid waste, municipal wastewater plants would have a significantly easier task (and produce more methane to generate electricity), and we could much more easily extract precious nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen for use as fertilizer (instead of using fossil fuels). So what's stopping us from going NoMix?... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Images: Studied Impact
It's hard to fathom much of the news from Dubai, especially when it comes to architecture. Then again, this city of excess has delivered some astonishing structures, including, of course, the world's tallest building. So it with a mixture of cynicism and excitement that we greet proposals such as this. Actually, it's just a competition entry. But this is Dubai, and you never know.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: Ivan Prole Look at the bottle of juice you just drank. The detergent you're going to use. The plastic backer on the desk calendar. What's on all of them? That familiar "chasing arrows" graphic with a number in the middle. That means it's recyclable, right? Sorry, but not quite.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

A coffee cup as a plant pot, coke cans for Halloween cape, a detergent bottle as worm harvester or washing tablet net bags for toy storage; these are all things people have done with the packaging they found in their daily lives. Reuse is often better than recycling, so when the consumer gives a packaging a second life before eventually recycling it wherever possible, he saves resources. The object he or she reused has gained the value of the item he or she would have had to buy otherwise. Packaging has become a visible problem to all of us, and although governments tent to push towards packaging reduction and recycling, re-using co... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Designers, engineers, inventors, and crafty gadgeteers, it's time to get the brain juices percolating and submit for the 2010 James Dyson Award. The competition is put up by the James Dyson Foundation, founded by the British inventor responsible for the now-iconic Dyson vacuum cleaners, the Airblade hand dryer, Air Multip... Read the full story on TreeHugger