Cars & Transportation

Photo credit: merfam/Creative Commons

Defying all expectations, Ray LaHood, the former Republican Congressman appointed as head of the Department of Transportation, has emerged as a vocal advocate for high-speed rail and passionate advocate of bikes.

His most important—and for some, surprising—move, however, has been to promote "livable communities" that make walking and biking attractive options for American citizens.

Design & Architecture

Artist's rendering of the 'Lusail Iconic Stadium' for Qatar. Image: Foster + Partners.

Qatar is touting its eco-friendly design for a new football stadium as a key component of the country's 2022 World Cup bid. In designs released by architects Foster + Partners, the building certainly looks cool and has a lot of the right qualifications -- energy efficient, close to transit, partially solar-powered. But critics say there's one big problem with the stadium: It shouldn't be built at all.

Food & Health

Image: Scientific American

You probably already know there are many chemicals in the everyday products that we use -- but do you know how many of them have actually been tested for consumer safety? As this telling infographic over at Scientific American shows, this number is startlingly miniscule thanks to a old legislative loophole. They explain:

Travel & Nature

Image: Flickr via Roberto Verzo

Veles, a town in northern Macedonia where industrial pollution has left the soil with heavy metals seven times over the international safety limit, thinks it has found a solution: plants. Specifically, roses.

The problem stems from a lead and zinc smelter that has left a 30-year legacy of contamination but claimed no responsibility for cleanup. Residents aren't getting much help, from the government, either.

Culture & Celebrity

Photo: johanferreira15/Creative Commons

The Lorax, a timeless environmental story from Dr. Seuss, is set to hit movie theaters in 2012 with a 3-D animated update to the classic cartoon -- and with Zac Efron voicing the role of Ted while Betty White plays his grandmother. But which actor nabbed the title role?

Cars & Transportation

Photo: Ford

Creating 1,200 Jobs
Making more fuel efficient vehicles doesn't happen by magic. It requires lots of R&D;, and once you've come up with a new engine or transmission or whatever, it requires big capital investments to retool factories. That's exactly what Ford (among others) is doing. The blue oval company has announced investments of $850 million in Michigan plants (including Van Dyke Transmission, Sterling Axle, Livonia Transmission and Dearborn Truck Plant) between 2011 and 2013 as part of its "competitive plan to engineer and manufacture even more fuel-efficient vehicles and fuel-saving technologies in the state." This will create an estimated 1,200 new full-time manufacturing and engineering positions, something that is welcome in this economic climate.

Design & Architecture

In 1965 Archigram envisioned the Plug-in City. Geoff at Bldgblog describes it:

Archigram proposed using construction cranes as permanent parts of their buildings. The crane could thus lift new modular rooms into place, add whole new floors to the perpetually incomplete structure, and otherwise act as a kind of functional ornament. The crane, "now considered part of the architectural ensemble," Archigram's Mike Webb wrote, would simply be embedded there, "lifting up and moving building components so as to alter the plan configuration, or replacing parts that had work out with a 'better' product."

45 years later, plug-in cities are all the rage in the design pages.

Cars & Transportation

Photo: Bike Contrail

Follow the Rainbow
What if cyclists could leave behind a trail, a bit like in Tron, the old-school arcade game? That would be very cool for bike activists trying to make their presence felt and encourage local authorities to create new bike lanes where there are lots of cyclists using the road. That's what the Bike Contrail, which we wrote about last year, attempts to do. Pepin Gelardi and Teresa Herrmann, the designers who came up with the idea, are now trying to raise some money to start making Bike Contrails and giving some to non-profits who could use them in their activities. Read on for more details.