urban history Archive

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Featured Stories

• Wildlife Crossings: Animals Survive with Bridges and Tunnels
  Posted on May 19, 2013 | 1 Comment

  Providing crossing infrastructure at key points along transportation corridors is known to improve safety, reconnect habitats and restore wildlife movement. Throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and North American, wildlife crossing structures have been implemented with demonstrable success.

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• Henry Miller’s Free Association into the Surreal
  Posted on May 19, 2013 | No Comments

  In 1934, Henry Miller, then aged forty-two and living in Paris, published his first book. In 1961, finally published in his native land the book promptly became a best-seller and a cause célèbre. By now, the "controversies" dominate his legacy, including issues of censorship, obscenity, misogyny and anti-Semitism, clouding the import of Henry Miller's words. "Tropic of Cancer" broke literary ground, mixing novelistic forms with autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, and surrealist free association.

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• La Loba: Wild Woman, Luminous Wolf
  Posted on May 15, 2013 | No Comments

  Clarissa Pinkola Estés retells the Tarahumara story from the deserts and mountains of Northern Mexico, about a wolf woman, a collector of bones, who resurrects the wild spirit of life from the depths of the Underworld.

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• Vandana Shiva: Maintaining Biodiversity and the Seeds of Freedom
  Posted on May 11, 2013 | No Comments

  Historically, farmers have stored, traded and shared choice seed from one season to the next. According to Dr. Vandana Shiva, this practice ended with the introduction of patented genetically engineered seeds. Saving seeds now exposes the farmer to costly fines and lawsuits for patent infringement and has resulted in many farmer suicides.

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• African Garden Cities: Urbanization Without Planning for People
  Posted on May 7, 2013 | No Comments

  Master planned, self contained New Cities have appeared all over Africa. Emulating models from the global north, private-sector boosters advance them without considering factors such as environment, economy, context and even poverty. Nairobi-based urban practitioner Jane Lumumba argues they might only make social and economic problems worse.

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• Earth Sheltered Homes: Energy-Efficient, Living With the Land
  Posted on May 6, 2013 | No Comments

  Earth Sheltered, energy-efficient houses are bright, airy, dry and quiet. Though popular now among advocates of passive solar and sustainable architecture, Earth Sheltering has been around for nearly as long as humans have constructed their homes.

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• Robert Haw: Overcoming Climate Disaster with a Carbon Tax
  Posted on May 3, 2013 | No Comments

  Earth's climate is changing rapidly posing grave concerns for sustaining life on the planet. We must first drop the denial of scientific evidence and mounting climate disasters, and adopt a Carbon Fee and Dividend, which will spur a transition to clean, renewable energy.

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• End Corporate Personhood: LA Joins National Movement to Repeal Citizens United
  Posted on May 2, 2013 | No Comments

  We, the People of the USA, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling and other related cases, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights. Join the National Day of Action on May 10th with two marches in Los Angeles.

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• Haitian Vodou: Summoning the Spirits
  Posted on April 30, 2013 | No Comments

  Like several West African religions, Vodouisants believe in a supreme being called Bondyè, from bon "good" + dyè "God." Because Bondyè is unreachable, Vodouisants aim their prayers to lesser entities, the spirits known as Lwa (Loa), contacted and served through possession. In turn, the Lwa confer material blessings, physical well-being, protection, abundance.

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• Edison’s Reef: A Not So Glowing Report — By Jerry Collamer
  Posted on April 27, 2013 | No Comments

  While large fish fail to thrive at Southern California Edison's artificial reef off the coast of San Clemente, California, mitigation mandated by the California Coastal Commission to repair destroyed kelp beds at their San Onofre Nuclear Plant (called SONGS), a wider marine mammal crisis is ongoing. Could radiation released from SONGS be the culprit in both cases?

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