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Brooke Baxter and Rolyn Hu are Brooklyn's cultural impresarios. The duo own and operate both Glasslands Gallery and the Manhattan Inn, two of the borough's meccas for music, art and food. They're also way into sustainability. Both spaces are built from salvaged materials and include loads of interesting nuances, such as repurposed doorknobs as tap handles, and school desks as......read more
In New York City, where land for parks is scarce, the biggest new green space is the High Line, a mile-long stretch of elevated railroad repurposed as park. Now, a group of innovative urbanists is proposing a subterranean version. As reported in this week’s issue of New York Magazine, the Delancey Underground (affectionately dubbed "The Low Line") would convert the......read more
Hallelujah! A baptist church in a neglected Manhattan neighbourhood has entered the urban farming game, with a 1,000 square foot rooftop garden that's producing abundant fruit and veg for the church's busy food pantry. Located in Hell's Kitchen between the Port Authority Bus Terminal and the Lincoln Tunnel, the Metro Baptist Church is as far removed from rural farm life as it gets. But with......read more
New York-based photographer Bridget Fleming spins street style around with her unconventional take on fashion blogging. Fleming's Downtown From Behind blog features backside views of bike riders on the streets of Lower Manhattan, creating "an environmental portrait for each street and its subject." The project is nothing if not ambitious. With subjects ranging from musicians and models to chefs......read more
When Hurricane Sandy brought work at Sebastian Errazuriz's studio to an abrupt halt, the Brooklyn-based designer and sculptor decided to do something to help victims of the storm. Taking white tees with two of NYC's most iconic graphics — Milton Glaser's "I Love New York" and the MTA subway map — Errazuriz dipped the bottom halves in blue ink. With the......read more
Vimeo user and photographer Josh Owens (aka Mindrelic) recently spent a month "hotel hopping" in Manhattan (sounds expensive!) shooting a bunch of time-lapse footage. Then he whipped up this video from an hour's worth of footage. Pretty outstanding. Here's an earlier Mindrelic NYC time-lapse, and another shot in the "sacred lands" of eastern California. ...read more
A GE bigwig is calling the political battle between economy and environment "nonsense." At a clean energy investment conference last week, Mark Vachon, Vice President of GE's Ecomagination program, said "environmental performance" is a key driver for business. "There’s this theory that you have to pick one: economics or environmental performance. That’s......read more
If necessity is the mother of invention, then the state of the environment should be driving innovation around the world. And indeed it is. In our new series "The Big SHFT: 10 Innovators Changing Our World," we team up with Ford Motor Company to profile leading innovators who are shaping new sustainable businesses and influencing positive change around the world. Executive produced by SHFT......read more
Tom Szaky is the quintessential eco-entrepreneur. While a freshman at Princeton, Szaky founded a company that recycles garbage into plant fertilizer, then packages it in discarded soda bottles. Fast forward five years, and TerraCycle Plant Food is available in every Home Depot, Target, Wal-Mart, and more than 3000 other locations. Today, TerraCycle is finding new uses for trash, creating products......read more
With the proportion of people living in urban centers at an all-time high--and national governments seemingly incapable of promoting the shift toward sustainability--cities are in the best position to implement solutions to big problems. NYC's billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg agrees, and he's putting his money where his mouth is. This week Mayor Bloomberg announced a new competition to......read more
