urbo

BrightSource Energy is on its way to building the world’s largest solar themal energy project with recently secured funds from Google and the U.S. Department of Energy. The company will generate enough energy in the Mojave Desert to power 140,000 California homes by the time it reaches capacity in 2013.

(via poptech)

(via utnereader:mothernaturenetwork)

Check out the United States of Awesome.

communityactsofcompassion:

Community Acts of Compassion is selling a 36 foot self-contained unit with a fold-out room, which provides space for a total of three examination rooms. It is outfitted with a 20kw generator and ability to plug into regular electricity. It has a fresh water tank, two sinks, a waste water tank, a hot water heater, air conditioner/heater, cabinets, wheel chair lift, air dryer, three dental chairs with units, two doctor’s stools, chemiclave 6000, 1- Ritter Speedclave. This clinic can be used for dental as well as medical outreaches and services. Asking price is $50,000.

For more information, please contact Richard Larsen at ralarsen@actsofcompassion.net of 972-979-0915.

If I am understanding correctly this is the area where the new pedestrian/bike bridge is going in to connect the people of Garden City with the recreational area & future park. More info

(via ayjay:socks-studio.com)

I want an urban block set!

smartercities:

CEOs for Cities Announces the Talent Dividend Prize

Source: Next American City

Cities across the nation are in a brutal race to produce jobs and get people back to work, while slashing municipal budgets to match plunging tax revenues.

Every mayor is expected to have a three-point plan that is the magic elixir for economic development, usually headlined by “Attract new industry.”

Bagging the buffalo may sound like a good plan. We can all hope for the best. But hope is not a strategy.

What ought to headline every local economic development plan is not sexy. It doesn’t generate headlines. No consultant can trademark it. But it is the one strategy that is a sure winner, and it is a strategy that makes not just one city richer but all of America richer.

The strategy? Increase college attainment rates.

(I told you it wasn’t sexy.)

Here’s why it works. It turns out that 58 percent of any city’s success as measured by per capita income can be explained by the percentage of college graduates in its population. (And that’s conservative. Some economists calculate the impact at 80 percent.)

Why? Because every one percentage point increase in college attainment is associated with an increase of $763 in per capita income. That’s not just a result of moving a certain number of people over the four-year college finish line, but of shifting the entire education distribution curve forward.

Increasing college attainment rates isn’t easy. But it is easier than we think. It turns out that millions of Americans started college. They raised their hands and said, “I want to go to college.” They got in to college. They paid for classes. They earned college credits. They just didn’t finish.

And finishing is what counts.

Amazingly, even in this lousy economy, Americans with college degrees have an unemployment rate that is almost half the rate of those who attended but did not complete college. The median annual salary for a college graduate is $20,000 more a year than someone who started college but didn’t finish. So the financial impact finishing college has on families and on cities is significant.

That’s why CEOs for Cities, with the support of the Kresge Foundation and Lumina Foundation for Education, is launching a $1 million prize competition today to drive increased degree attainment in America’s major metro areas. 

The Talent Dividend Prize will be awarded to the metropolitan area with the greatest increase in the number of post-secondary degrees granted per capita over a four-year period. 

That could be Boise!

xWe love Betaville, a new open source, multiplayer environment for cities. Participants can share, discuss and tweak new works of public art and architecture and urban design in this addictive app.

In other words, the future of a street corner, a blank wall, a vacant lot, or an entire city can now be tinkered with on an ongoing basis at negligible cost by the full spectrum of subject matter experts: the people who know what it’s like to live there now, the people who know how to make new things happen… and people with great ideas to share, anywhere in the world, whenever they can and care to. —BxmC

(Link to download.)