Screen grab. Image: Streetfilms, CC
"It was a wrong turn... we didn't have to turn over all of our public spaces to the motor vehicle."
The man in the picture above is Paul Steely White, the executive director of
Transportation Alternatives. In the video below, the start of a great new series that will "examines what went wrong in the early part of the 20th Century, when our cities began catering to the automobile, and how those decisions continue to affect our lives today," Mr. White describes the transformation of NYC (he's sitting on all that is left of the "park"...
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Images from The Big Picture
The Libertarian point of view is that building codes are evil and an intrusion. They even say that "Building codes restrict innovation. If we didn't force everyone to comply with old technological standards in construction, we would likely have developed a system that is both cheaper than current systems and more resistant against natural disasters." Others say "Strict building codes makes it harder to build buildings. Prices of structures... Read the full story on TreeHugger 
Images: 
There are few appliances dumber than an electric hot water heater; it uses energy made from boiling water to run turbines to turn generators to be distributed over wires...to boil water again. The
All illustrations courtesy of 
Images by B. Alter
Of all the new architecture built for the Vancouver Olympics, the