Mayor Bloomberg has gone on a crusade to wean New Yorkers off calorie-filled soda, but it seems the rest of the country is voluntarily snubbing the sugary stuff. Soda was once the most popular drink in the United States but it has recently fallen from grace, and now many soda drinkers are making the switch to bottled water. Although this doesn’t solve the issue of plastic bottle waste, water’s rise over soda shows that a sizable section of America is striding towards a healthier future.

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Post tags: american diet, beverages, Bottled Water, consumers choose water over soda, corn syrup, decrease in soda sales, eco design, fast food, green design, Health, mayor bloomberg, nutrition, soda ban, sugar soda, sustainable design, us diet

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Post tags: Architecture for Humanity, Breezy Point, Charities, disaster recovery, Hurricane, hurricane recovery, Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Sandy donations, hurricane sandy recovery, mayor bloomberg, natural disasters, new jersey, new york city, NYC, occupy, Occupy Sandy, Red Cross, soup kitchens, Staten Island, The American Red Cross, volunteering

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Post tags: Airbnb, airbnb housing, airbnb nyc, airbnb sandy victims, housing, Hurricane Sandy, hurricane sandy housing, hurricane sandy victims, mayor announcement, mayor bloomberg, mayor bloomberg housing, mayor bloomberg news, News, nyc news, temporary housing

Just one day after Hurricane Sandy made landfall on the eastern coast of the US, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NY Governor Andrew Cuomo gave frank statements in which they acknowledged the relationship between recent extreme weather events and climate change. Cuomo compared the storm systems that have hit New York to experiencing “a 100 year flood every two years,” and that the city will have to take preventative measures such as the construction of levees and storm surge barriers in an effort to prevent such flooding from occurring in future storms.

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Post tags: Climate Change, floodwalls, hurricane irene, Hurricane Sandy, levees, mayor bloomberg, Michael Bloomberg, sea level rise, storm surge

News has just broke that NYC Mayor Bloomberg has signed a contract with Google to replace all the city’s yellow cabs with Google’s patented driverless cars. The mayor’s office reported that 5000 driverless cabs will hit New York City streets by 2014, and the vehicles will come specially outfitted to meet the needs of busy New Yorkers. New in-vehicle amenities will include everything from ATMs, hot food vending machines, and what the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission calls “better entertainment options”.

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Post tags: driverless vehicles, google car, Google driverless cars, google driverless NYC taxis, Google driverless taxi cabs, google evs, google taxis, google vehicles, google zippers, mayor bloomberg, nyc replaces taxis with google cars, nyc taxis, nyc transportation

Last year thousands of people visited the National 9/11 Memorial as it opened in New York City, however it turns out that the accompanying 9/11 Museum will not be opening anytime soon due to a financial dispute between the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Both organizations refuse to pay for the site’s infrastructure costs – which amount to hundreds of millions of dollars – and as a result the museum designed by Snohetta is expected to miss its projected opening date of September 11, 2012.

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Post tags: 911 memorial, mayor bloomberg, Memorial Museum Foundation debate, National September 11 Memorial & Museum, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, snohetta, subterranean museum

Hey New York, go run in the street! Seriously, do it! Summer Streets returns to the city today, banning cars from seven glorious miles of Manhattan from 7 a.m. until 1 p.m. The city will close Park Avenue and connecting streets from the Brooklyn Bridge all the way up to Central Park. The DOT has created a route with spurs and rest stops along low-traffic streets to the Hudson River Greenway, Harlem, Governors Island, and other popular destinations, so you will have plenty to do as you peruse the car-free avenue!

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Post tags: 7 miles of car free streets, banning cars from manhattan, car free manhattan, car free nyc, car free streets, car free streets new york, mayor bloomberg, no cars in manhattan, nyc department of transportation, nyc dot, summer streets, summer streets manhattan, summer streets new york city, summer streets nyc

Image © Jim Henderson via Wikimedia Commons

Not long after the holiday break, a Staten Island mother received a shocking letter from her children’s school: PCBs had been found on the floor tiles. The culprit was a leaking light fixture. Tests at PS 36 confirmed that the air was safe, but that was after the fixtures in the two affected classrooms had already been removed. PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) are man-made chemicals that were used in a wide variety of industrial applications until 1979 when they were banned because of their high toxicity. The discovery at PS 36 adds to the mounting concern about PCBs in New York City schools; last year, the city found the toxic chemicals leaking from lights in three other elementary schools.

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Post tags: epa regulations, health concerns new york city, health concerns nyc schools, mayor bloomberg, new york city public schools, new york city schools, nyc environmental concerns, nyc public school health concerns, nyc schools pcb levels, pcb concerns new york schools, pcb in nyc schools, pcb leaking from light fixtures, pcbs in new york city schools, pcbs nyc schools, polychlorinated biphenyls, polychlorinated biphenyls nyc schools, ps 36 pcb levels, toxic pcbs

New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg just announced the launch of the Urban Technology Innovation Center which will help fast track sustainable building practices by connecting building owners looking to be more eco-friendly with companies developing cutting edge green technology. The partnership — which will be led by the City of New York, Columbia University, the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, and City University of New York — will help building owners go green at a lower cost while allowing sustainable innovators to test their products in the marketplace and gather data about their performance in the real world.

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Post tags: green architecture new york, mayor bloomberg, new york city, new york city buildings, new york city green building, new york sustainable initiatives, nyc sustainable initiatives, sustainable architecture new york

As the world’s eyes zeroed in on this week’s COP15 climate change talks, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg gazed on a much more placid scene – Denmark’s 209 megawatt Horns Rev 2, the largest offshore wind farm in the world. Bloomberg admired the overhead view as he toured the farm by helicopter, and expressed his desire for the Big Apple to follow suit. With gears already cranking on a 700-megawatt wind energy project in Long Island that could eclipse the Horns Rev 2, the mayor seemed to be daydreaming of his own wind-powered vision for NY‘s future.

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Post tags: "wind turbine", cop15, copenhagen, danish wind farm, green mayor, greennyc, horns rev 2, mayor bloomberg, Michael Bloomberg, new york city, New York., wind energy

Last Friday, NYC Mayor Bloomberg announced that he would be dropping a measure that was a part of the ambitious Greener, Greater Buildings Plan (GGBP) which called for buildings over 50,000 square feet to undergo audits to determine what renovations would be required to make them more energy efficient. When announced earlier this year, the Greener, Greater Buildings Plan would be the first to require existing, not just new, buildings to meet energy efficiency standards. The changes made on Friday would mean that building owners are only expected to voluntarily participate in audits, which is certainly saddening and disappointing to us here at Inhabitat.

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Post tags: building retrofits, city audits energy use, eco new york city, Green Building, green new york city, green nyc, greener greater buildings plan nyc, mayor bloomberg, new york city, new york city green building, New York., planyc 2030

This past Sunday, in New York City, the unthinkable happened: Broadway was officially closed… to cars that is. As part of Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to reduce traffic in the city, two sections of Broadway, from 47th to 42nd and from 35th to 33rd Streets, were closed to all vehicular traffic. For the first time ever, happy New Yorkers were able to traverse Times Square without feeling the need to compete with cars. If you think that’s impressive, wait till you read what they have planned next!


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Post tags: broadway, broadway closes, emissions reduction, mayor bloomberg, midtown, new york city, traffic reduction, vehicles