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Subscribe- Front Seat, the developers of Walkscore, received a Rockefeller Foundation grant. The popular mapping service that awards a Walkscore to an address based on it's proximity to services will expand to include public transit, transportation cost and greenhouse gas emission data into the scores. It's also making the software opensource and asking for recommendations on how to improve Walkscore. Will this mean homes with higher Walkscores will have even higher values?
- Mayor Gregor Robertson wants to make Vancouver, BC the greenest city in the world by 2020. His plans include setting up a low-carbon economic development zone to attract investment, and making all construction in the city carbon neutral by 2020. Meanwhile, in Portland, questions arise about the affordability of the proposed Oregon Sustainability Center, where rents will likely be higher than $30 per square foot and aimed at nonprofits.
- Expanding on its use as a tool to focus the search for land for renewable energy development, Google Maps will monitor annual deforestation in partnership with several space agencies. Currently, studies of deforestation are only carried out every five years. This could be a particularly valuable tool if an international mechanism for preserving forests using carbon credits is approved at the Copenhagen climate conference in December, as some expect. In other forest news, Argentina and Paraguay agreed to work toawrd zero net deforestation in the Atlantic Forest.
- USGBC is considering a change to what wood can earn points under its certification system. Instead of specifying FSC-certified only, USGBC has proposed benchmark requirements for certification systems: Governance, Standards Substance, Chain of Custody & Labeling and Accreditation & Certification Process.
- The recession is going to be slow, but housing starts are anticipated to reach normal levels by the end of 2011, according to a report on NAHB's Construction Forecast Conference.
- With a successful plastic ban already in place, now San Francisco is considering ways to reduce use of paper bags.
- Northwest Hub has a report on last Friday's AIA-Seattle's Designing for Livability conference.
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