Michigan Coverting Old Car Manufacturing Plants into Green Energy Plants

Michigan, struggling as more thousands of jobs are slated to be cut, is actively converting old car manufacturing plants into green energy plants that will produce solar and wind energy technology.

The NY Times article

A Second Article

And Wayne County, MI, which constitutes Detroit, has set up a land bank to "encourage investment, revitalization, and rehabilitation in Wayne County" by "selling abandoned property at affordable rates to those who will use it productively."

Parasite Prefab - Lara Calder Architects

Literally living on infrastructure... from ArchDaily.

Living the Map

50 states, 50 weeks, 50 jobs...

I.B.M. makes Dubuque, Iowa smarter?

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/the-smartest-us-city-is-dubuque/

IBM is giving Dubuque's government and citizens the digital tools to measure, and alter, the way they use water, electricity, and transportation.

Is knowing half the battle?

Getz the Dataz

Some of my favorite websites for stats:

Bureau of Transportation Statistics
Airline, Rail, Interstate, Border Crossings, Personal Travel...

American FactFinder (Census)
Population, Race, Household Size...

Bureau of Labor Statistics
especially the American Time Use Survey

Economic Census
There's a bajillion different kinds of businesses.

Data.gov
Basically everything, which means it's a bit unwieldy

Reference USA
(Available through Columbia Libraries) It's difficult to describe how much information is here... and it all has Geographic coordinates so you can map it if you want.

Enjoy!

GE Smart Grid Fun

This is too fun: GE Plug into the Smart Grid
Like I said.. too fun:

Check this project..

http://matsysdesign.com/category/projects/sietch-nevada/

NY Times Toxic Waters Project

http://projects.nytimes.com/toxic-waters

Data.gov

Lots of data here, including geospatial:

http://www.data.gov

Recovery.gov

Hello World!