If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.You see a lot of semis on I-5, but one caught my eye last week as I headed out of town on vacation.  On the back and side it said “OK Produce.” That’s it. Why would anyone name their company OK Produce? Do [...]

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I was excited to read in Inside the City that Sacramento is taking it’s first step toward bike stations that I see popping up worldwide - it’s called Bikes and Bites! People can rent bikes by the Sheraton for the next few months and cruise around midtown to find food and beverages.  Sounds like it [...]

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If you stopped by the Green Living Center opening last Saturday you may haveseen Brian from Urban Earth Solutions out front molding some sculptures with cob - a mixture of earth and straw.  I got to talking to him and realized we need to work some earth building into our projects!  Not only is it [...]

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Sometimes I get so wrapped up in defending well designed density that I forget some of the basic reasons for it. It was refreshing to see this post from a conference in Israel - where land is much scarcer and fought over than here. I liked this quote - “Transit, culture, creativity ­ [...]

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I was riding into work the other day and pulled up behind a set of Fallen Leaf Tree Service massive chipper and hauling trucks – the kind that normally spray nasty diesel exhaust all over. But this one had a sticker on the back that caught my eye “All Fallen Leaf Tree Service equipment [...]

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I recently read here about a couple of European towns that have removed all signage from their intersections… a kind of deregulation or intentional creation of traffic anarchy.
Can you imagine getting through Sacramento without any stoplights?
The result they have seen is that drivers have had to slow down and be more cautious about what they [...]

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Previously, we introduced one of our newest projects: Family Style. This project tackles something near and dear to our hearts - Families.
Having more than a couple kids in our West Sac projects so far would be a bit awkward. So we wanted to build one that has a bit larger unit sizes that can fit [...]

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As we move toward residential buildings that contain 10 or more units each, I can’t help but think there has to be a better way to heat and cool the units than putting in a separate HVAC and hot water heater for each one.
We are trying to push the limits of thermal mass with the [...]

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Have you seen Walkscore yet? It scores how walkable your house is.
My house got a 75 out of 100. Family Style got a 77, Newton Booth got a 72. If you are so unfortunate as to live at 3218 Yosemite Park Way Elk Grove in Laguna West you would only get a score [...]

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This article that Treehugger sent me to was quite a concept with huge implications for our culture. The basic idea is that peak oil will cause the abandonment of the suburbs and a rapid realignment of our society toward sustainable practices. Those of us that are appalled at the sprawl around Sacramento would like [...]

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