What to do with Route 81; why malls can’t ever be green; and reports of Buffalo’s demise.

The Onondaga Citizens League is continuing its series of blog posts on what to do about Route 81 in downtown Syracuse. The latest: “Creating an Urban Mobility Plan.” Josh has some thoughts on passenger rail as part of the answer.
Upstream argues that any bigger-better-bottle-bill in New York ought to up the deposit […]

The Invisible Flood Blog commemorates two years since the Upstate floods of ‘06, observes the demolition of a flood-damaged house, and offers support to Midwestern flood victims.
What with tornadoes and hail, the Golden Snowball has found plenty to keep discussing well away from the winter season.
WinterCampers also keep the posts coming for all your outdoor […]

Frugal Upstate on a core concept of frugality: playing the hand you were dealt.
Everyone’s favorite punching bag, Richard Florida, gets a closer listen at CNY Ecoblog. (I wonder what Florida thinks about playing the hand you were dealt…) Quote:
Florida’s contributions to urban planning and economic geography are undeniable, but some of his ideas […]

This photo was taken a few months ago at Shove Park. It’s an info kiosk installed a few years ago by Cornell Cooperative Extension about Geddes Brook — and it managed to escape vandalism, until this spring. Why do kids do this? What excitement do they get out of this kind […]

Upstream looks at a 1917 diary by a Mohawk Valley farmer and wonders why the diarist wrote nothing about World War I, which was raging at the time. (Much in the same way as someone from the future might come across the remnants of this blog and wonder why I never wrote anything about […]

Up the Creek!, the blog project about Onondaga Creek, has made some self-guided walks available. You can download an MP3 file, put it into your player, and take a tour of the creek.
Sharon Wager, a Camillus real estate agent, has a blog. I’ve linked to it because she has some occasional personal observations […]

Burgh Diaspora, a Rust Belt blogger, scoffs at Gov. Paterson’s recent comments on upstate New York’s “brain drain.” He links to a study that indicates the problem is not that too many college grads are leaving, but too few of them are arriving. (However, I think that speaks to a problem we are […]

New York Cowboy reviews Small is Beautiful, a 1973 book about how to manage growth and sprawl.
Steve Balogh, writing at Groovy Green, reviews James Kunstler’s World Made by Hand, a novel about life after “peak oil.”
Steve has been reading mainly schoolbooks lately and here is his report .
Josh Shear reviews The Lost.
(What I’m reading […]

Earthquakes, booze, diapers and flaming pits of fire.