In Sin City, excess and efficiency walk hand-in-hand.
Growth & Sustainability
Posted inJanuary 20, 2014: Building a More Sustainable West, One City at a Time
Phoenix tries to rise from the flames
The Sunbelt city is one of the nation’s most sweltering urban heat islands. But simple solutions to help cool it are at hand.
Posted inGoat
Bakken oil trucks can kick up carcinogenic dust similar to asbestos
Since the oil boom in western North Dakota began several years ago, the roads in this sparsely-populated corner of the state have been taking a beating. A typical shale oil well requires 2,300 truck trips in its lifetime, driven mostly over gravel roads. With nearly 6,800 wells currently operating in the Bakken oil field, that’s a […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 2014: Building a More Sustainable West, One City at a Time
Las Vegas Periphery: Views from the Edge, by Laurie Brown and Sally Denton
Las Vegas Periphery: Views from the EdgePhotographs by Laurie Brown, essay by Sally Denton, 96 pages, hardcover: $60. George F. Thompson Publishing, 2013 At the edge of cities, development and nature collide. That juxtaposition has always fascinated photographer Laurie Brown, and she explores it fully in Las Vegas Periphery. Focusing on a city that symbolizes […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 2014: Building a More Sustainable West, One City at a Time
Building better homes in Indian Country
Tribes use green building to address housing shortages.
Posted inJanuary 20, 2014: Building a More Sustainable West, One City at a Time
From paradise paved to paradise saved?
Driving around in circles looking for parking is so 1935 – the year Oklahoma City installed the world’s first parking meter. Parking’s waste of gas, time and space has recently inspired a host of phone applications to help people find spots more quickly, or even sublet their empty residential spaces. Though handy, the apps are […]
Posted inGoat
West’s building and population growth is not yet back to pre-Recession levels
When I started working for High Country News eight years ago this month, there was no shortage of issues to write about. Natural gas drilling was going nuts, nearly every sector of the economy was on fire and immigrants were streaming through the desert to live the dream. Perhaps most bewildering to me, however, were […]
Posted inDecember 23, 2013: Beauty or Beast
The Latest: Southern Colorado protected from proposed Army base expansion
BackstoryWhen Fort Carson proposed expanding its Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site in 2003, nearby ranchers worried. The 235,000-acre training ground, in southeastern Colorado, was slated to grow to more than 650,000 acres, and though the U.S. Army promised to work with “willing sellers,” locals feared land seizure through eminent domain, as happened in the 1980s when […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2013: Ecosystems 101
A demographer predicts big changes for the West’s housing landscape
Are we all headed to “megapolitan” areas like the Wasatch Front and Sun Corridor?
Posted inNovember 25, 2013: Ecosystems 101
Witness to the floods
As a working geologist, I am used to assessing the land, considering the flow of fluid and mass. However, it is one thing to see it after the fact in a rocky outcrop or rolling topography, and quite another to experience it firsthand (“The flood-prone Front Range,” HCN, 10/14/13). I was camping that fateful […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2013: Cosmic Prospecting
Cosmic Prospecting in Lead, South Dakota
What happens when an old mining town recruits a physics lab and pursues Big Science?
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Towering Cell Phone Trees
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. For a couple of years back in the 1970s, when I was a little kid, my family had an artificial Christmas tree that I thought was incredibly cool. It was fun to put together, […]
Posted inGoat
Americans are driving less, but Westerners still love their cars
Fellow Westerners: We are pathetic! Sure, we’ve got our redeeming qualities, I guess, but one of them is not our ability to mitigate the environmental impact of our commute. We Westerners are a tribe of steering-wheel-gripped, fossil-fuel-burning, trapped-in-a-tin-can-in-traffic creatures, guided along highways not by eyes and mind, but by the tinny, seductive voice of our […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2013: The New Geronimo?
Lessons from the flooded Front Range
Learning to live with the inevitable.
Posted inWotr
In describing weather, remember the caveats
The numbers get squirrely when it comes to explaining massive flooding.
Posted inGoat
Colorado floods will leave long-lasting impacts
Massive flooding along Colorado’s Front Range last week is finally starting to abate. In most areas water levels are dropping (although they’re now rising in some downstream communities, threatening to create further chaos). Assistant Editor Cally Carswell wrote on Monday about how geography and development made such a disaster inevitable. Five to 18 inches of […]
Posted inGoat
First settlement reached in Utah’s contentious road claims
If you’ve spent much time wandering around the rural West, especially in southern Utah, you may have come across an extensive network of highways. You might not have recognized them as such, though — these “highways,” in many cases, are nothing more than cow paths, faint two-tracks, and sandy washes. But an antique Western law […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
Conservation and affordable housing can coexist
I appreciated the nuanced description of Jackson’s affordable housing issues in “Paradise at a Price” (HCN, 6/10/13). I serve on the boards of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance and the Jackson Hole Community Housing Trust, and both are concerned that some people may not read past the statement that “conservation goals collide with the need […]
Posted inWotr
Durango life requires a hefty commute
Could this Colorado town benefit from high-density development?