The CTA! Gettin' OnBoard!

Way to go CTA. Their new website, CTA Gifts is chock full of kitchy CTA memorabilia. From station themed mugs and t-shirts, to cuff-links made from gold and old CTA tokens. Some things, I'm afraid, might be priced out of what I would imagine their target market would be, but right on with the idea. I'm all aboard!

On a similar note, Carfree Chicago also makes CTA station buttons, complete with all the colors that that stop there! Sweet!

Sustainabile Blogs

I believe that the interconnection of blogs is one of the things that make them so appealing. It is this similarity of ideas and reflection of ideas that allows for communities to spawn. This being said, I have recently found some blogs that represent, for me, some quite interesting fonts for ideas.

Green Flow is the blog element of Common Current, a website run by Warren Karlenzig, author of How Green is Your City? and common coworker of Paul Hawken. He is based out of California, and often cites sustainability oriented occurrences going on out there, and often outside of there.

Sustain Lane goes down a road that Tree Hugger seems to wish they could, but isn't really their focus. Where Tree Hugger focuses mostly on finding green findings floating about the internet, but also has a bit of greening tips available, Sustain Lain seems to be the opposite. With a stronger focus on teaching, rather than just 'putting it out there.'

Political Videos

I just ran across this website, good.is, which appears to be a web based version of Good Magazine. They do some really spectacular videos. Like current political updates of School House Rock, but for (young?) adults. The video on the vice presidential nominees does an especially good job of not taking sides, much to the chagrin of their liberal audience. This particular video is a delightful expose on the vice presidential candidates, featuring a song with the chorus "I'm in love with a bad mamjamma." Take some time to look at these videos, they're all pretty solid, especially the hidden costs of the iRaq war. 

Housing and Transportation Affordability Index

This excellent interactive map done by the Center for Neighborhood Technology shows how driving oriented different neighborhoods are. With this information, we can predict how these neighborhoods will be affected by rising gas prices. Once this is cross-referenced to average income levels (unfortunately not as detailed as I'd like) in these neighborhoods, we can make accurate predictions on how the individuals in these neighborhoods will be affected by these gas prices. Ideally, then, we can predict how the neighborhoods could be changed to decrease the amount of driving required, by say, re-urbanizing them.

Pure Imagination

So I work on highway removal and boulevard replacement, and a current initiative is the Buffalo Skyway, and how horrible it mars the Outer Harbor. Along with our main initiative, one of the things I do is learn as much about what other people are saying about this. That includes all manner of creative solutions. Including this one, to employ the original structure as some sort of conservatory corridor. Pretty outrageous if you ask me, but exciting in a tingling kind of way, nonetheless.

Patchwork Nation

There are a few places to frequent that have particularly interesting election material. The two websites that have the best state-by-state public opinion information, I believe, are pollster.com and this similar NPR website. Both allow you to see current polling information, and I think comparison of the two can help prevent biased reporting.

But another website I've found of note lately. This is the Christian Science Monitor's Patchwork Nation. While I do have serious reservations about any news source with Christian Science in their name, this is, in fact, a quite legitimate news source. And this Patchwork Nation segment is valuable. It breaks down the country, by county, into one of 11 categories. From Tractor Country to Monied 'Burbs, they've done a pretty good job. They can also tell you the relative strength of any of the eleven categories in any county.

From there, they've gone and used this interesting map towards its logical ends, with updates from specific counties they are following that represent the average in a category. It gives an honest account of the many parts of America that I, in an "industrial center" have almost no other contact.