New Books I Recommend

Welcome to the Urban Revolution by Jeb Brugmann is a detailed and careful exploration of the huge urban shift that has been occurring and how it translates to daily life and reality.

The city has become so much more than it used to be. The city itself, per Brugmann, may be used as a resource to address and solve such problems as how to respond to poverty, how to read globalism, how to react to environmental changes and so forth.
I recommend this highly as Brugmann's research seems to be vast and the form of his argument is easily decodable.


2) Alistair Horne's Kissinger 1973, the Crucial Year. I've always been fascinated by the Nixon era and the text that Nixon stood for. Another character from the time period I've always had an interest to know more about is Henry Kissinger. Something about the voice, I don't know.

In Kissinger 1973, the Crucial Year, Horne details the year most impressively thus providing a fascinating behind-the-scenes of that very important year. The arguments are well-historicized and the story-telling flows well.

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Which Cities Do Most Prefer?

It's one of the times I'm concurring with David Brooks. His piece goes well with a lot of the new research that revolves around urban planning.
Brooks writes:

"You may not know it to look at them, but urban planners are human and have dreams. One dream many share is that Americans will give up their love affair with suburban sprawl and will rediscover denser, more environmentally friendly, less auto-dependent ways of living.
...
America will, in short, finally begin to look a little more like Amsterdam."

Read it all here.

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SLC Drives Cheaply

Just read this on the Times. Salt Lake City is one of my favorite spots so, naturally, I was interested in the subject.

"The best deal on fuel in the country right now might be here in Utah, where people are waiting in lines to pay the equivalent of 87 cents a gallon. Demand is so strong at rush hour that fuel runs low, and some days people can pump only half a tank.

Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr. of Utah spent $12,000 to convert his government-issued S.U.V. to run on natural gas.

It is not gasoline they are buying for their cars, but natural gas.

By an odd confluence of public policy and private initiative, Utah has become the first state in the country to experience broad consumer interest in the idea of running cars on clean natural gas."
graph per ny times

Conversation I Heard Out and About

She: I want that.
Other Person (OP): It's nice. Don't you have plenty of t-shirts, though?
She: That's irrelevant. Not ALL my t-shirts are 100$ organic cotton! I want to be more green, you know?
OP: True, true. But aren't you then wasting resources by buying more even though the new stuff is 'green'?
She: The color brings out my eyes, though.
OP: It's a really nice shirt, yup.

Eco-Friendly Clothing and Cost

Eric Wilson's article "A World Consumed by Guilt" has an interesting premise. It problematizes green clothing and how it is marketed. He observes:

Some clothes, like Loomstate’s $295 organic cotton jeans — sold unwashed
and not color-fast, to save energy — require unusual care. A pair of
2(x)ist soy underwear, $24 at Macy’s, include a warning that
imperfections are to be expected. “These characteristics should not be
considered flaws in the fabric,” the packaging says, “but rather as an
intrinsic quality contributing to the uniqueness of the garment.”

Some designs marketed as environment-friendly might include only a
fraction of organic cotton, or a tag made of recycled paper. And some
so-called green fashion may be downright silly, like the Goyard canvas
shopping tote shown in the Barneys “Have a Green Holiday” catalog: the
bag is $1,065, plus $310 for painted monogramming of a triangular
recycle symbol in gold. The canvas, the catalog says, is “100%
recyclable.”

Being environmentally conscious is crucially important and such awareness should extent to all facets of life. Fashion should not be any different, naturally. It is, after all, a multi-billion dollar business, hence it begs for attention. So, I applaud the designers' individual desires to make visible efforts to be green. This is all about acquiring the right behaviors of consumption, right?

However, would we be more environmentally conscious if we consumed less? I admit, I do enjoy my new Ben Sherman items and I am always [secretly] looking forward to what the next new line will look like. However, teaching myself how to hold my desire for unneeded new things in check is, de facto, more beneficial to me and the environment.

Using what we already own till it's time to update is a more environmentally conscious move. Minimalism, I believe, informs environmental awareness. Of course, designers have to think of their profit margins and by choosing to provide green clothing they are providing alternative options for those who have the resources to only acquire $285 organic cotton jeans and $1,065 'green' bags.

But the rub would lie in the following, I would reckon, and that is: how can the average shopper be adequately reached and informed about issues of consumerism and their overall immediate purchasing effect, or 'carbon footprint' on the environment?

graph per nyt