City program affords easy, environmentally-friendly disposal

The city of Henderson is encouraging residents to give their holiday trees a new lease on life through recycling. The city’s free holiday tree recycling program helps to greatly reduce the number of trees sent to the landfill while also providing nutrient-rich mulch to promote the growth of trees citywide.

“Last year we recycled 3,970 holiday trees,” said Doug Guild, Parks superintendent, city of Henderson Parks and Recreation Department.

“Recycling makes sense because holiday trees are all natural and biodegradable, while mulch provides important nutrients for other trees and plants so they can thrive in our harsh desert environment.”

Americans purchase around 30 million Christmas trees each year from 12,000 growers nationwide. Ninety three percent of these trees eventually are recycled either at private homes or in in one of the nation’s 4,000 tree recycling programs.

Holiday trees can be dropped off during regular park hours Dec. 26, 2012, through Jan. 17, 2013, at seven locations throughout Henderson (see box below).

All non-organic material must first be removed from trees, including lights, ornaments, wires, tinsel, and nails. These items cannot be recycled and could damage chipping equipment. Flocked trees cannot be recycled.

The Parks and Recreation Department will chip the trees into mulch for use in parks and landscaping around Henderson municipal buildings.

Free mulch will also be made available to the public from 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Jan. 5, 2013, at Pecos Legacy Park, 150 Pecos Rd., and Jan. 12, 2013, at Acacia Demonstration Gardens, 50 Casa Del Fuego St.

For additional information, call 267-4000 or visit cityofhenderson.com/parks.

As you take down the Christmas tree, take a moment to imagine its next incarnation: Chipped up and mixed into soil, it might soon secure new grasses along some South Texas highway or sustain vegetable sprouts in someone’s garden.

Adding weathered plant material back into the soil is becoming the norm for a growing number of people who are buying and using mulch and compost.

While San Antonio has for years been turning brush into mulch and offering the compost at a minimal cost to residents, other cities are catching on.

Two decades ago Houston offered only a couple of places to buy it; now there are more than 60. Beyond buying, more people are learning how to make compost themselves from clipped grass and wilted vegetables.

“We are in a high growth mode and poised to steamroll,” said Michael Virga, executive director of the U.S. Compost Council, which plans to debut a campaign this spring with a message aimed at landscapers, green builders and the public about soil quality and the importance of recycling food.

“Compost Camp” is offered by the State of Texas Alliance for Recycling. Urban Harvest, the Houston gardening nonprofit, offers classes in compost and soil.

The Texas Compost Council, with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, plans to offer a Master Composter program, like the better-known Master Gardener training. Its aim, council director Alan Watts said, is to “communicate to citizens how they will save time, money and effort with natural landscaping practices.”

San Antonio has offered mulch for a minimal cost per pound from its brush pickup sites for many years and accepts undecorated cut Christmas trees at locations around the city after each holiday season.

This year, Christmas trees can be dropped off from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, and again on Jan. 12 and 13. The Bitters Road and Nelson Gardens brush sites will take trees all month. After the trees are ground into mulch, residents can return to the drop-off location and pick up mulch for free while supplies last.

Beneficial fungi

Soil is supposed to contain more than tiny bits of rock, clay and sand. That’s only the building block. Soil needs plant material in various stages of decay to feed plants and hold soil so it doesn’t float away in the first heavy rain. To be complete, soil also requires bacteria and fungi that colonize plant matter and break it down, releasing a trove of nutrients in the process.

For John Ferguson, who now finds himself surrounded by warm piles of live soil, the “aha” moment came long after a master’s degree in physics, even courses in soil science.

He got sick while using the fungicide Captan. Fungicides kill unwanted pests, but they also kill beneficial fungi. Fungi play a fundamental role in unlocking nitrogen, a primary plant food.

When Ferguson realized the importance of natural plant decay in soil, he tried to buy compost. But not enough people were making it, so he began producing it himself and now owns Nature’s Way Resources in Conroe.

Twenty-three states have banned organic material in landfills. Often they are places where landfill space is scarce.

But Texas is long on land, and disposal fees at landfills are comparatively cheap. Watts thinks this doesn’t matter, because Texans are ready for a more sophisticated understanding of the reason to compost.

“Saying that we’re running out of landfill space as a reason to compost is like saying we are running out of graveyard space as a reason to cure disease,” he said. “It’s not the land you’re trying to save, it’s the material that is going into the ground.”

Composting has grown significantly in Texas for a different reason, and it has a lot to do with the Texas Department of Transportation. It has become, it believes, the single largest purchaser of compost in the country.

Driven by TxDOT

In 1985, landscape architect Barrie Cogburn tried to help TxDOT determine why its freshly graded slopes so frequently slumped away in the rain, taking with them the department’s expensive plantings. Cogburn noticed that new topsoil brought in by subcontractors was often little more than finely ground rock.

At a workshop she learned just how much organic material was ending up in Texas landfills.

“They have too much, and we don’t have enough,” she thought. “There has to be a way to come together on this.”

Cogburn and Scott McCoy of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality teamed up in an experiment adding compost to TxDOT’s soil. They also added dairy manure that was piling up in Bosque County, polluting water all the way downstream to Waco.

The results were favorable: TxDOT embankments started staying in place. And the organic material retained water, so the department had to irrigate less. The practice is now widespread.

Drought, hardpan, climate change predictions, soil depletion, the current popularity of gardening all point the same direction. Ferguson puts it this way: “We have got to get it out of our landfills, and get it back into our soils.”

ingrid.lobet@chron.com

Express-News Staff Writer Mary Heidbrink contributed to this report.

As we look back on 2012 at “Rosie on the House,” it’s clear that a handful of topics hit home with Arizona homeowners.

You wanted to know how to handle electricity problems; how to fix plumbing messes; how to keep homes, garages and attics cooler in the summer; and how to kill scorpions, cockroaches, termites and pests invading homes and gardens.

You’re not alone out there in the wilds of your Arizona subdivision; we’re on your side. You’ve got problems at your house, and we’ve got answers.

Here’s what drew the most traffic on our website this year:

1. “How can I get rid of crickets in and around my home?” (42,698 hits) This is a real Arizona problem, because where crickets are, scorpions will follow.

2. “What is the correct mortar mix ratio for masonry?” (23,486 hits) C’mon folks, is there really that much do-it-yourself mortaring going on in Arizona?

3. “What are the pros and cons of Kool Deck vs. an acrylic pool deck?” (10,677 hits) Kool Deck was invented in 1962; acrylic is a bit newer alternative, but in Arizona, homeowners are using lots of other options these days.

4. “CanI replace the broken glass in an aluminum frame window?” (4,971 hits) Yes, you can, and it’s easy to do.

5. “Howcan I remove nail polish that spilled on my wood floor?” (4,949 hits) Evidently, there are lots of botched DIY manicures out there. A visit to the salon might be a cheaper way to go.

6. “How can I renew my cultured-marble countertops?” (4,354 hits) Yes, you can spiff them up, and you might be surprised that it takes a trip to the auto-supply store first.

Here’s a sampling of calls to our radio show this year:

In August it was bugs, bugs and more bugs; evidently our muggy monsoon made the desert more inviting for critters.

On one program, we heard from John in Mesa about earwigs coming up through his drains; Miguel in Maricopa whose backyard was being overrun by ants; and Grace in Carefree who had a tarantula she wanted to protect so it would eat other bugs. There were also homeowners fighting agave snout weevils, bedbugs, spring mites and termites.

By the way, you can trap earwigs by setting out a couple of empty tuna cans filled with fish oil or vegetable oil — if you can stand the thought of doing that in a bathroom or kitchen.

In October, Tom in Tucson wanted to know how to protect his electrical panel from lightning strikes. We recommended a whole-house surge protector plus lightning protection.

Every time Dee in Phoenix turned on her dining-room light or her washing machine, there was static on her radio. We urged her to call the utility company. And all four new outlets in Gary’s new garage addition in Peoria were just plain dead, and no circuit breakers were tripping. That sounds to us like the wiring was done wrong somewhere. (Call your contractor, Gary!)

Let’s not forget the ever-popular conversations on odors. One November radio show was probably the most successful ever at drawing listeners to respond to our topic of the day: bad smells.

To recap: Bradley in Tucson wanted to vent an exhaust fan to the outside of his house to get smells out of the kitchen. We suggested calling a heating and air-conditioning company.

Diane in Dewey noticed a gasoline smell in the garage of a house she considered buying from a man who loves cars. She added a contingency to her offer requiring a pre-sale garage cleaning.

Terry in Flagstaff had a smell in his bathroom sinks, even after removing the P-traps to clean them. If he runs Bio-Clean through the sinks and toilets once a week for four to six weeks, it could help. If not, he may need an ex- haust fan on his main sewer pipe.

We had answers for all those issues. But a few questions had us scratching our heads:

How do I wash my rocks (the crushed granite) in my yard?

Our first response: “Why would you want to do that?” But other callers set us straight. Washing your rocks is important, they said, especially after pruning back that giant lantana and leaving a big dirty ring of messy gravel around the plant.

The really tidy gardeners apparently put ArmorAll into a garden sprayer and splash it around the rocks. ArmorAll typically contains water, PDMS, diethylene glycol, glycerin, and various other chemicals. I’m not sure if that will help your plants or not.

How do I get rid of the geckoes climbing up my walls? They upset my dog.

Unfortunately for the dog, you need those geckoes to eat the armies of insects that could invade your yard. One idea: Spray the bugs so that the geckoes move next door.

What tree won’t sprout roots that invade pipes?

We often hear from homeowners asking about tree roots clogging sewage pipes. Just before Thanksgiving, one caller complained that her neighborhood has been invaded by roots of sisu trees planted by the homebuilder.

One neighbor even found a root crawling up into his toilet. That was a new one for me! Now the HOA is pulling out trees to replant with something better.

Unfortunately, there are no trees that won’t invade plumbing. Any variety of tree could cause problems, not just the sisu, a native of India.

By the way, when homeowners have roots clogging plumbing, it’s generally in a bathroom at the front of the house where the biggest landscaping trees were planted.

Here’s to many merry home repairs in 2013 and a happy new year to all. We’ll be talking next week about how to successfully hang artwork and shelves using the latest DIY technology.

For more do-it-yourself tips, go to rosieonthehouse.com. Rosie Romero is the host of the Rosie on the House radio program from 8 to 11a.m. Saturdays on KTAR-FM (92.3) in Phoenix, KQNA-AM (1130) in Prescott, KAZM-AM (780) in Sedona, KAFF-AM (930) in Flagstaff and KNST-AM (790) in Tucson. Reach him at 888-767-4348.

The Cirque du Soleil had plenty of options when it considered where to build its corporate headquarters, but it chose to invest $100-million in a barren site on the edge of a giant garbage dump in the Montreal neighbourhood of Saint-Michel.

“Every little municipality, every mayor wanted Cirque du Soleil. We really chose the worst compared to the others,” says Gaétan Morency, vice-president of citizenship. But the company, which creates shows seen by millions of people around the world, had unusual criteria for its decision. “We wanted to help a community grow and be proud again,” Mr. Morency says.

In the 15 years since it moved in, Cirque du Soleil has created jobs for young people in a neighbourhood with a history of gang violence and where many families live in poverty. It has launched a program in the local schools and is one of the partners in TOHU, a neighbourhood cultural centre with a circular stage that offers regular performances. The headquarters has expanded twice with new additions in 2001 and 2007.

But far fewer businesses have followed the company into the area than Mr. Morency expected. “It is not an easy neighbourhood, maybe that is why it reacts less rapidly,” he says.

Saint-Michel is in the north end of Montreal and was a separate municipality until the mid-1960s. The Autoroute Metropolitaine, a major highway also known as the 40, cuts through it connecting Montreal to Quebec City.

The area around the Cirque du Soleil headquarters feels windswept and far emptier than the busy streets in many other parts of Montreal even though 2,000 people work at the headquarters and all the artists hired by Cirque come for preparatory training sessions that can last several months. As well, thousands of people attend regular shows and events at TOHU.

“We have seen a few retail stores, and a new restaurant in front. But it closed at the end of the summer,” Mr. Morency says.

But that may be about to change.

In neighbourhoods closer to downtown, such as the Plateau-Mont-Royal, industrial buildings once used by the garment and textile industry have been converted into offices or condominiums, says Jordan Perlis, an agent with Colliers International in Montreal.

This wave of development is now spreading north, toward Saint-Michel, fuelled in part by the demand of the city’s growing video game industry.

“I am hoping that trend will continue,” says Mr. Perlis, who is seeking commercial tenants for a building in the neighbourhood. The presence of Cirque du Soleil gives the area a “level of credibility,” he adds.

Pierre Durocher, who works with the non-profit community organization Vivre Saint-Michel en Santé, says Cirque du Soleil has helped to restore the pride of a community that had been in steady decline for years. But the effort to turn the neighbourhood around began before the company arrived, Mr. Durocher says.

One of the top priorities of residents was getting the city to stop throwing household waste into the old Miron quarry. After the Second World War, the limestone quarry was a source of pride and jobs in the neighbourhood. But then the city began dumping its garbage there. The stench helped to define Saint-Michel as the home of one of largest urban landfills in the country.

Cirque du Soleil helped to push the municipal government to stop dumping in the quarry in 2000 and to adopt an ambitious plan to turn the dump into a park with an artificial lake and bike paths. Now officially called the Saint-Michel Environmental Complex, the two-square-kilometre park is slowly being transformed. Grass grows on what used to be mounds of refuse. Gas from the decomposing garbage that once leaked into local basements is now collected by a network of pipes sunk into the garbage and burned by a Biothermica power plant to produce electricity.

“It was all part of us coming here, that the site would be managed,” Mr. Morency says. “Now, there is no more landfill going in.”

The park, to be completed in 2020, will change the feel of the neighbourhood, Mr. Durocher adds, and should attract developers and businesses.

Worried that people living in Saint-Michel will get pushed out by higher housing prices, he is working with others in the community on plans to prevent that from happening. They want to encourage the development of co-operative housing and they also have a scheme to help residents become homeowners.

Mr. Morency is proud of the social and cultural contributions Cirque du Soleil makes to Saint-Michel.

All the original landscaping was done by young people as part of a project with the Montreal police department. TOHU, the cultural centre, also offers regular work to locals. “It creates an alternative for those young people, from being in a street gang,” Mr. Morency says.

Cirque du Soleil has offered programming in local schools for seven years, which has helped it become rooted in the community.

“We have always strived to be a neighbour of choice. To be a neighbour of choice you have to meet your neighbours and know them and see what their issues are,” Mr. Morency says. “We never had graffiti on any of our buildings because they feel part of it.”

He thinks one of the company’s biggest contributions has been in changing the way residents think about their neighbourhood.

“Instead of being the landfill neighbourhood, it is the Cirque du Soleil neighbourhood. That’s a very big difference.”

Mr. Durocher doesn’t go quite that far. There is more to Saint-Michel than the Cirque du Soleil, and the community had already began its long, slow climb upward before the company built its headquarters here. But he is grateful for all it has done.

“They have played a very positive role.”

The Cirque complex

The Montreal headquarters is the heart of the Cirque du Soleil’s artistic enterprise.

It is where shows are developed, where costumes, wigs and outrageous clown shoes are crafted and where the performers come from around the world to learn their routines and how to apply their own makeup. The complex is three buildings in one. The first, known as the studio, was finished in 1997 and holds three acrobatic training rooms, with trapezes and built-in trampolinesthat send performers flying up past the office windows of the people in charge of getting the shows on the road.

An addition called the Ateliers was added in 2001. This is where master shoemakers, milliners, wig makers and carpenters construct the props and costumes for every show.

A third wing, called le Mat, or the mast, was added in 2007 to address a need for more administrative space and has eight floors of offices. A separate building, finished in 2003, is where many of the artists are housed when they visit Montreal.

As we look back on the year that was, let’s honor some of the outstanding issues and accomplishments for community sustainability that came to light during the year.  In many cases, naming a particular item one of the best of 2012 may be a bit (not completely) arbitrary:  by definition, sustainability is seldom a single “event” that occurs wholly within one calendar year.  But, in each of these cases, something caught my attention this year.

Mine is a very personal list.  Yours may differ, which is part of the fun.  Let’s get to it.

• Best community sustainability issue that reached critical mass this year: water.  Maybe it’s that I work for NRDC, whose water team has become invested in community solutions in a big way.  My colleagues published the second edition of our major green infrastructure report, Rooftops to Rivers, late last year, celebrating the efforts of cities across the country in solving serious runoff pollution problems with smart landscaping, green roofs, permeable paving and related approaches that also make dense neighborhoods healthier and more beautiful.  This year, they followed up with another (and seriously wonky) report detailing how local and state governments can potentially stimulate billions of dollars in private investment in these solutions.  And, as the year drew to a close, superstorm Sandy had demonstrated with terrible ferocity the importance of urban water management to a resilient future.  

But, beyond NRDC’s work or individual storm events, a lot of good things happened in 2012 to mark significant progress in using soft approaches to cleaner watersheds.  In particular, the federal EPA approved Philadelphia’s plan to deploy the most comprehensive green infrastructure program found in any US city; New York City announced that it, too, was embarking on a major green infrastructure program to reduce runoff and resulting sewage overflows; Washington, DC proposed a comprehensive zoning update that will include, among other things, green infrastructure requirements for new construction, and settled a lawsuit by agreeing to tighter deadlines for waterway cleanup.

Meanwhile, the city of Chicago announced a program of small grants to help individual homeowners adopt “backyard” projects such as plantings and rain barrels that help clean the watershed; and, in Seattle, long a leader in these issues, Washington State University and the non-profit Stewardship Partners are working to install 12,000 rain gardens in Puget Sound communities by 2016.  If you’re working on city sustainability and aren’t including clean water solutions in your portfolio, you’re not just overlooking a critical set of concerns but also missing a lot of creativity and excitement.

• Best regional plans for thoughtful land use and transportation investment:  the Southern California and Sacramento Sustainable Communities Strategies.  The best work to emerge so far from the implementation of California’s SB 375, the state’s landmark smart growth legislation, these two plans tackle climate change by placing a majority of new homes and jobs in transit-accessible locations, reducing traffic and related carbon emissions, preserving single-family neighborhoods, and saving hundreds of square miles of farmland and open space.  Now the plans must be carried out, of course, but the law’s mix of carrots and sticks makes me hopeful.
• Best provocative new book:  The Space Between.  This one was a very tough call, given The Walkable City, Jeff Speck’s definitive work on how to shape cities that put people, not cars, first, and Chuck Marohn’s burning fiscal indictment of sprawl, Thoughts on Building Strong Towns.  But my nod goes to Eric Jacobsen’s Christian case for cities, The Space Between, because of its freshness.
• Best expansion of the green city vocabulary:  Walk Appeal.  This one comes from Steve Mouzon, who also gave us the apt phrase “original green” to describe buildings and communities that respond to environmental issues naturally rather than with technological add-ons.  “Walk appeal” describes the extent to which a street or community induces us to use our feet simply because it’s enjoyable.  (Honorable mention:  Scott Doyon’s “pub shed.”) 

• Best well-deserved recognition for a sustainability leader:  Dr. Richard Jackson’s Heinz award.  Long a champion of safe, walkable, clean neighborhoods, Dick Jackson is chair of the department of environmental health sciences at UCLA.  He’ll be the first to tell you that he’s far from the only one who is showing us why we need to improve our built environment to protect human health.  But no one does it with more conviction and authority.  This year Dick’s fantastic work earned a prestigious Heinz award; I can’t think of anyone more deserving.
• Best new idea in community revitalization:  use of LEED-ND as a planning framework for recovering neighborhoods.  OK, I’m (very) biased on this one.  But many of us involved in the creation of the green rating and certification system LEED for Neighborhood Development hoped from the beginning that the system would find multiple informal uses for citizens and planners in addition to its formal application in honoring worthy new development with certification.  Constructed as a logical, ordered framework of standards measuring neighborhood characteristics that affect sustainability, LEED-ND also provides a structure for guiding the thinking of community development corporations and other leaders of distressed city neighborhoods as they plan improvements.  It is now being used for just that purpose in Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Boston, Los Angeles, and perhaps elsewhere.       
• Best municipal blueprint for changing an unsustainable community into a sustainable one:  Plan El Paso.  This superlative city plan could just as easily have been picked as one of the best in 2011, when it was preliminary and EPA recognized it with a national award for achievement in smart growth.  But, in March of this year, the city council formally adopted it and, in November, El Paso voters approved the issuance of $473 million dollars’ worth of bonds to begin funding it.  These actions give us another opportunity to salute the city’s leadership – and the skill of its planning team – in moving forward with what may well be the nation’s best-articulated commitment to a more sustainable future in a community not previously known for environmental aspiration.
• Best continually improving and evolving sustainability tool: Walk Score.  The genius of Walk Score is its simplicity:  enter an address and you get a numerical rating from zero to 100 instantly.  Walk Score isn’t perfect, particularly because it relies on imperfect databases and also because it attempts to quantify something – walkability – that is partially subjective.  But it’s incredibly good in approximating the relative completeness and convenience of locations.  Best of all, its keepers don’t rest on their laurels but continuously tinker with the system’s underpinnings to make it more reliably accurate.  (Honorable mention in this category goes to the ever-improving and highly useful Housing + Transportation Affordability Index from the Center for Neighborhood Technology.)
• Best accumulated body of recent work by a federal agency:  HUD.   As I wrote earlier this month, I have been seriously impressed by the community-building work of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development since its Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities was created almost three years ago.  Working with an extremely limited budget (as federal programs go), HUD continues to assist cities and towns all over the country as they develop commitments and investment for a more resilient, greener future.  It’s a remarkable portfolio of accomplishment.  (Honorable mention to the work of the National Endowment for the Arts, including its Our Town program, and to EPA’s always-impressive Office of Sustainable Communities.) 
• Best little-known work by a community-based non-profit that deserves a pat on the back:  The Boston Project.  A faith-based organization in the city’s Talbot Norfolk Triangle district, the Boston Project embodies “a passion for seeing renewal in urban neighborhoods.”  It was founded by Paul and Glenna Malkemes, who run the organization’s activities out of their house; the first floor serves as a free, pleasant and safe drop-in center where youth can come and go at their leisure to do homework or enjoy fellowship.  With its affiliate TNT Neighbors United, the project is working, with some success, to create “a multi-site urban garden” with a walkable route that connects community green spaces such as planned play areas, passive parks, vegetable gardens, and orchards. 

• Best body of educational work by a national non-profit:  American Society of Landscape Architects.  With a relatively small staff, ASLA is quietly doing incredibly innovative work that improves city communities.  Go to the organization’s web site and see, among other things, 30 (mostly urban) case studies that illustrate the transformative effects of sustainable landscape design; animations of the possible, using Google Sketchup to show how to build parks out of waste, design neighborhoods for active living, create smart landscaping that saves energy, transform ugly transportation infrastructure into attractive people spaces, and design wildlife-friendly neighborhoods; a guide to the beautiful hidden spaces of Washington, DC; a study on the economic benefits of green infrastructure; an interactive tour of the Society’s own innovative green roof; materials on brownfields transformation; and much more.  Not to mention the Sustainable Sites Initiative, a partnership undertaking that seeks to do for landscapes what LEED has done for buildings and neighborhood development.  Very, very impressive.  (Honorable mention:  Project for Public Spaces.)
• Best sustained excellence in writing about people and community:  PlaceShakers.  The hard-to-define, geographically dispersed firm PlaceMakers does a lot of things, but what I like best about them is their writing, in the PlaceShakers blog.  Scott Doyon, Ben Brown, Hazel Borys and company are kind of all over the place in what they think and write about, and that’s a very good thing.  While it all comes back, one way or another, to a decidedly new urbanist view of community design (form-based codes, the transect, skinny streets, and so forth), it’s a refreshingly broad and very well-written take on that approach.  Scott, for instance, explains walkability by reference to where the bars are in his community; Hazel links neighborhood feel to Christmas carols and a meditation on the Ode to Joy that most of us know as the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony; when Ben discusses the intricacies of housing market trends, you feel as if they are being explained by your favorite uncle.  And, yes, the rest of them write, too.  Their articles aren’t lectures so much as stories told by interesting and fun people who, in the process, tell you as much about themselves as about their subject matter. 

• Best architecture/planning firm of the year:  Mithun.  There are firms that design outstanding urbanism.  And there are firms that design outstanding green buildings and community features.  But there is none that integrates those two important concepts – both critical for sustainability – better than Seattle-based Mithun.  I reported on two of its projects during the year:  the firm was the guiding force behind Denver’s award-winning Mariposa project as well as the master planner for the excellent green revitalization concept for the Sunset neighborhood of Renton, Washington.  Late in 2012 Mithun added significant talent and capacity by merging with the highly accomplished, San Francisco-based Daniel Solomon Design Partners, long a leader in urbanist design solutions.  It will be exciting to see how the firm’s work will continue to evolve.

Not a bad year, that.  Next, I’ll look at some stories to follow in 2013.  Happy New Year, everybody.

Related posts:

• HUD builds impressive record of support for smarter community planning (December 5, 2012)
• EPA honors seven outstanding community sustainability projects (November 28, 2012)
• Sandy as preview: making communities more resilient to severe climate events (with Lee Epstein) (November 5, 2012)
• How California is planning growth for a prosperous economy and clean environment (September 25, 2012)
• How far will we walk to go somewhere? It depends. (July 30, 2012)
• Walk Score gets interactive, makes space for user photos comments (September 26, 2012)
• Kaidslist: the trendy Ins and Outs of smart growth sustainability (February 15, 2011)

Move your cursor over the images for credit information.

Kaid Benfield writes about community, development, and the environment, here and in the national media.  For more posts, see his blog’s home page