From the category archives:

Philosophy

Fifty For Five Brings Nic to New Orleans

August 25, 2010

That’s right, I’m headed down to New Orleans bright and (too) early tomorrow morning to cover Rebuilding Together’s big event in the Big Easy. Fifty for Five is an effort to rehab 50 homes in the Gentilly neighborhood in 5 days and is a sort of celebratory construction binge to mark the more extensive work [...]

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American House Shrinkage

July 29, 2010

I haven’t been keeping up on my NAHB reports lately, but thankfully someone else has picked up the slack. According to Treehugger, those report reading over-achievers, the size of new homes in America has finally stopped it’s seemingly endless progression into the realm of gargantuan absurdity. In fact, in a shockingly uncharacteristic bout of logic, [...]

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Where We Sleep: The Master Bedroom Question

July 22, 2010

I have been thinking a lot about bedrooms recently. It could be because I have a little girl who keeps me from spending a whole lot of time in what I call my bedroom (a corner of our living room). Or, it could be because we are soon to be building a home with a [...]

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The Entrepreneurial Planner: A Series on Effective, Sustainable City Planning

June 23, 2010

Lee Striar has graciously agreed to be a guest blogger for us from now until whenever he tires of the effort. We hope you enjoy his writing and the inevitable conversation it will provoke. Share your own thoughts in the comments. Nic and Chad have asked me to write a series of blog posts on [...]

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The “Less” Revolution

April 6, 2010

What if we changed the word “green” to the word “less”? What if the Green Movement was the Less Movement, if Green Building was Less Building, if the Green Economy were the Less Economy? What if, instead of recycle and reuse we only focused on that third “r” of the triumvirate . . . reduce? [...]

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Our Top 10 Priorities When Building a Green Home on a Budget

March 22, 2010

You may have heard of the phrase “money is no object.” It is apparently a combination of words reserved for people who also own private islands and have buildings named after them. It is also occasionally thrown around by politicians when they want to protect democracy or get reelected. We have never actually heard it [...]

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Over-Conditioned: The Super-Sized HVAC Problem

January 29, 2010

Technology, it seems, has given us the opportunity to defy nature’s impact on our lives in all but the most extreme conditions. This is particularly true within the confines of our houses and other buildings. In our homes, the words “climate control” no longer suggest the nefarious plan of a volcano-dwelling, Bond villain, but rather [...]

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I Imagine Buying Things: Cars vs Houses

December 16, 2009

I took a moment to imagine a strange scenario the other day. I sat back in a comfortable chair, stimulating beverage near at hand and tried to picture myself shopping for a new car. It was an exercise that taxed my imagination but also held an important lesson or two. When looking for a car [...]

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Transit Oriented Development- Laying Down The Tracks of the Future

November 17, 2009

Yvette, as most of you know, is interning with us. This is post is part of her ongoing contribution to our blog conversation. Read it and grace her with some of your expertise and ideas in the comments. From November 2nd to November11th Philadelphia’s highways, bridges, and local roads were unusually congested with frustrated commuters [...]

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The Extra Bedroom Problem

November 16, 2009

We tend toward large homes in the US and this tendency has become more and more pronounced despite the shrinking of our average family size. Much of this growth is probably a result of cheap space and cheap energy. There is simply a lack of significant economic incentive toward modesty. Land is relatively abundant and [...]

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