Pages tagged with smart growth

Infrastructure deficit, U.S.-China climate challenges, regional economic growth, and more!
Monday, May 14th, 2012

It’s been awhile since we’ve done a round-up of posts here at The Yardstick and since we’ve covered so many topics over the past couple of months, we thought we’d sum them up in case you haven’t had a chance to see them all: Metro Washington and the U.S. as a whole are suffering from a

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Why is WRAG Talking About Regionalism?
Monday, April 30th, 2012

Tamara Copeland is President of the Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers (WRAG). You can follow/contact her on Twitter @WRAGprez. Let's think of my block as a region. I've lived in my house - Copeland City - for more than twenty years. For all of that time, until last month, my house h

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Global Fridays: Are countries “cheating” to reduce emissions? What role does urban planning play in race relations?
Friday, April 20th, 2012

Happy Friday! To get your weekend off to a great start, here are a few international news clips related to climate change, bike sharing, energy efficiency, and a reminder on the role of land use plays in how people interact with one another: “Very few countries have cut their carbon emissions

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Talking sustainability with experts from Germany and Denmark
Friday, April 6th, 2012

Metropolitan Washington has made much environmental headway to be proud of. For example, by 2011 the District of Columbia was the “state” with the most LEED certified green building per capita and it also beat out New York City as the U.S. city with most green buildings. In 2011, Sustainable

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Region Forward is Celebrating Earth Month!
Thursday, April 5th, 2012

What’s better than Earth Day? Earth Month! All April long, MWCOG will promote initiatives and events by its member jurisdictions that make metro Washington region greener and more sustainable. Here at The Yardstick on RegionForward.org, we’ll feature green and sustainability themed blog posts

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Innovation and Urbanism: A Winning Combination
Friday, March 23rd, 2012

How innovative is your metro area? Jonathan Rothwell over at The New Republic breaks down some new OECD data on inventors per capita and applications for patents by country and by metro area. Rothwell notes that ten metro areas, which comprise only about two percent of the world’s population, acco

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New tools to measure and predict the region’s travel patterns
Wednesday, March 21st, 2012

Recent updates to the tools used by the Transportation Planning Board (TPB) to forecast future travel patterns in metropolitan Washington will provide more accurate predictions of where, when, and how the millions of current and future residents of the region will travel in coming decades. The ch

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Rising gas prices = More Washington area drivers searching for commuting alternatives
Wednesday, March 14th, 2012

When prices at the gas pump are on the rise, more Washington area commuters turn to the region's Commuter Connections program in search of information about joining carpools or vanpools or finding other ways to save money on their monthly commuting costs. In 2011, Commuter Connections received 20

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Climate & Energy Policy (European Edition)
Friday, March 9th, 2012

Uncertainty is a term that’s been used with much frequency since the beginning of the Great Recession a few years ago. While initially related to the economic sector, the lexicon of uncertainty has spread to other areas as well, including climate and energy policy. The United States currently l

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Study to assess availability of affordable housing around existing and planned transit stations in region
Wednesday, February 29th, 2012

A study recently initiated in Prince George's County, the District of Columbia, and the City of Alexandria will assess the availability of affordable housing options near ten existing or planned transit stations where future development could cause home prices and rents to escalate. Funded throug

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