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JOHN McCAIN'S STUNNING VEEP PICK IS ALASKA GOV. SARAH PALIN
- New York Times
- Palin is an Idaho native and UI grad
- Earlier: Alaska's governor under investigation
- Sarah Palin Wikipedia profile
- Official McCain-Palin Web site
In a speech about America's 'promise,' Barack Obama comes out swinging
- New York Times
- C-SPAN replay (RealPlayer)
- Speech transcript
- The scene in Denver: 'festival ritual'
- Danny Westneat: 'He's going to win'
- Joel Connelly on the youthful love train
- Obama commences the campaign in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan
With a $1 million donation, GOP governors give Dino Rossi financial parity in a close race
Boeing »Boeing Machinists appear likely to vote against the company's final offer
Transportation »Critical Mass bicyclists return to Seattle's streets today
UW Huskies »Sports blogger: Willingham is what college football claims to care about but doesn't
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Crosscut's 2008 election predictions, UPDATED
Death by a thousand (paper) cuts
The mayor's block party weekend
Lake Union Park: a first assessment
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The mayor's block party weekend
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Crosscut's 2008 election predictions, UPDATED
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Is Sound Transit really one of 'the world's biggest boondoggles'?
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Extreme Seattle
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Death by a thousand (paper) cuts
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The post-partisan electorate
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Lake Union Park: a first assessment
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Why Palin, why now
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Election reflections
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The funny thing about Seattle ...
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Crosscut highlights
Like the skinny houses of two decades ago, dense townhouse projects seem to be everywhere, and they look terrible. An architect and former Seattle City Council member says Seattle can do better.
A report lays out a road map, backed by polling that revealed surprising attitudes of Seattleites and Portlanders about their hometown architecture.
Crosscut most recent
The Olympics, Seattle-style
Maybe what we need around here, to unstick our sluggish planning and get some major projects built, is a Summer Olympics. Or, better, a Phantom Olympics that delivers the benefits but without the Olympics. Calm down, and let me try a mostly-in-jest thought-experiment.
A suburban sucker's bet
An interesting follow-up to my story last week on the future of suburbia is a profile of Merced, Calif., in the Aug. 24 issue of The New York Times. Skeptical that some burbs might become the new ghost towns? Check out the picture of the Riverstone housing development that accompanies this story, of an unfinished project baking in the sun and dirty air of a boomtown gone bust.
Only a small part is done, and there are some missed opportunities. But the way South Lake Union opens up from the edges of the park is stunning and bold. The design pulls off the difficult trick of incorporating a working waterfront with a public park.
Urban planners love to hate the suburbs, but what's going to become of them? Will Bellevue eventually become a post-carbon ghost town or a new urban hybrid? Some reflections on the urban/suburban debate.
LEED-ing the way to sustainability
It seems like every month, a new trend or concept emerges in Seattle's green scene. But what does Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design have to do with the building boom in Seattle, and how does it work? Consider this the everyman's guide to the LEED process.
Seattle has a streetcar named Desired
Minneapolis is the latest city to develop Portland-envy and, thanks to the Portland-imitating Seattle Streetcar, a little Seattle-envy as well. Minneapolis is now considering a starter-streetcar line, with maybe six more to follow. Minnpost.com writer Steve Berg recently visited the Northwest cities, rode and praised the streetcars, and was "reminded again how far behind downtown Minneapolis has fallen."
Seattle Public Schools flunks civics
What does it teach kids to slaughter a grove of mature trees in a city whose urban forest is already in crisis? A city which will need a new generation to help fix serious environmental problems like cleaning up Puget Sound and dealing with cancer-causing pollution?
Finding the banality of Nazi evil close to home.
Walkability is nice, but it's not making us skinny
Current theory says that a city's walkability promotes health and will impact the fight against obesity. The claim is that America's weight problem can be helped by making cities more pedestrian-friendly. It should follow, then, that our most dense and walkable cities are where the skinny people are, right? Well, not really.
To lower housing prices, look at Chicago
Median condominium prices in Chicago, notes Harvard urban economist Edward Glaeser, are $232,000. That's very low, even a shade under those in Trenton, N.J. (The King County median price for condos is $285,000.) What do those smart urbanists in Chicago know about affordability?
Vancouver's in-city oasis, VanDusen Botanical Garden, hopes to go green big-time with a $23 million visitor center that could be the region's first structure to meet the most rigid sustainability standards.
Sausage Links, tree-cutting edition
Timber! The Seattle Times has a series of special reports about the lack of oversight in the logging industry and the cost to state taxpayers. According to the report, no one checked when Weyerhaeuser started clear-cutting unstable slopes, some of which eventually slid and cost millions of dollars to clean up. Naturally, David Goldstein at Horse's Ass blames Republican-led deregulation. ...Googie resurrected in Ballard?
The group Sustainable Ballard is sponsoring a bike rack design contest. The winners will have their racks made and installed at key neighborhood locations. Sustainable Ballard says there is a "dearth" of bike racks in Square Head City. Winners of the competition will be announced at the Ballard SeafoodFest July 26-27.
As the process to replace or remove Seattle's elevated waterfront freeway grinds on, a last-ditch pitch is being made to keep it standing.
Go, Nuke Building!
The University of Washington's More Hall Annex, aka the Nuclear Reactor Building, has become a cause celeb for fans of mid-century modern architecture and atomic history. The UW is planning to demolish the building, but a graduate student, Abby Martin, has mounted an effort to get the structure listed on the National Historic Register of Historic Places. Time seemed to be running out, but it ain't over yet.
Portland and Seattle are among the top 10 "best-designed" urban areas, but Seattle ranks lower in part because of its record on historic preservation.
A close look at the ambitious "Cascade Agenda," which hopes to preserve the central Puget Sound region's natural systems from a Pugetopolis that sprawls all the way to the Cascades. The mechanisms are known, but it's not clear they can work well enough or soon enough.
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Other media
Nickels peeks under the Cascade Curtain and gets pissed off
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Joel Connelly, blogging from the Democratic National Convention in Denver, had a nugget from Seattle's strongman mayor, Greg Nickels.
The mayor's block party weekend
A suburban sucker's bet
Sydney Orchestra admits it mimed performance at Olympics opening gala
The making of an effective arts board
Amazon mobilizes fans to sell its Kindle
As economy softens, it just gets worse for newspapers
Howard Schultz drops his lawsuit against the Sonics, ending any possibility of a return
Boeing Machinists leaders recommend rejection of the contract offer and a strike
TV audience for Obama's speech: bigger than the Olympics opening ceremony
The Fairbanks newspaper's editorial page shakes its head over the Palin choice
It's a girl!
A Stumptown weekend
Portland is one cool town. As a lifelong Washingtonian, I've always considered Seattle my city, whether growing up in the rural community of Arlington or living on Whidbey Island for the past 33 years. But after spending a weekend in Portland, defection is not out of the question. I'm not surprised that a growing number of our South Whidbey "kids" have decided to make Portland their new home town.
A soda company's porn-star-studded past: what the P-I didn't mention
New restrictions to bottom-trawling off Alaska, Northwest coasts
The Filson of my dreams
No longer in the garden: pesky starlings
Soaking up B.C.'s Sunshine Coast
Howard Schultz drops his lawsuit against the Sonics, ending any possibility of a return
Sports blogger: Willingham is what college football claims to care about but doesn't
The Olympics, Seattle-style
A Stumptown weekend
Portland is one cool town. As a lifelong Washingtonian, I've always considered Seattle my city, whether growing up in the rural community of Arlington or living on Whidbey Island for the past 33 years. But after spending a weekend in Portland, defection is not out of the question. I'm not surprised that a growing number of our South Whidbey "kids" have decided to make Portland their new home town.
An all-737 fleet now: Alaska Airlines retires its last MD-80
Mountain meadow
Rowing with the sunrise
Mountain meadow
Showdown vote in Alaska over fisheries and mining
The funny thing about Seattle ...
'Drill their brains out!'
The real superpower threat: Luxembourg
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