For most of human history, night arrived as a planetary certainty. Darkness spread across landscapes, and the sky revealed thousands of stars. Today, that sky is disappearing. Artificial light spills upward from cities, scattering through the atmosphere and turning night into a permanent haze. Research mapping global sky brightness shows that more than 80 percent of humanity now lives under light-polluted skies, and the Milky Way has vanished from view for over a third of the world's population.
This week on Talking Headways we're joined by Dr. Lawrence Frank to talk about how the built environment and the way we get around connect to public health outcomes. We also discuss the work that led to Walk Score, the shortcomings of transportation cost benefit analysis, and the systematic externalization of health benefits. Once again, at Streetsblog, we give you three ways to connect to the spirited discussions of Talking Headways:
I have chosen to paint many elements incompletely, in fragmented splatters, drips, and glazes to emphasize their lack of solidity and definitiveness. From these fragments, our cultural needs and desires are often revealed: movement, disposability, convenience. While not majestic or inherently aesthetic, I try to paint these banal places with a degree of sympathy. In some sense, it is an attempt to try to love this strange world we have created. The views in these paintings were selected because they have historical roots.
To understand how artificial intelligence is starting to shape the built environment, look at the ceiling inside Mt. Hope Elementary School in Lansing, Michigan. There, running across the tops of classrooms and hallways are thousands of feet of exposed metal electrical conduit-the tubing that holds the electrical guts of the building.