Word: urbane
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...most Americans outside a handful of urban areas, not driving is not an option. But auto addiction takes a hidden toll. There's health: The average American walks as little as four minutes a day, in part because little is within walking distance. That sedentariness has contributed to the rise in obesity over recent decades. Next is the theft of time: More driving means more hours in the car, especially with traffic worsening. The population of extreme commuters - those who travel 90 minutes or more each way - has hit 3.5 million, double the number in 1990. But the worst effects...
...miracle of New Urbanism is its simplicity. Duany has designed whole towns under the movement's principles - like Seaside, Fla., or Kentlands, Md. - and to walk their streets is to be transported back decades, before McMansions and SUVs. Houses are more human-sized, in part because the designs create vibrant, walkable public spaces, where people can eat, work and have fun. The explosion of the American house - up from 1,385 sq. ft. on average in 1972 to 2,140 sq. ft. in 2000, while the average number of people living in it has decreased - is, in Duany's view...
...blends ancient Chinese garden designs - a koi pond, bamboo hedges - with sharp Modernist forms while blurring inside/outside spatial distinctions. Just so, Bawa's naturally ventilated Ena de Silva House (Sri Lanka, 1960) borrowed from Sinhalese manor houses and Kandyan spaces - shrine room, verandahs - to create something new: an innovative, urban courtyard home with windows that could be used, according to the client's wishes, "for serenading at night...
...September 2006, Thailand's military deposed Thaksin in a bloodless coup. After months of massive anti-Thaksin street demonstrations by the urban middle class, who chafed under his increasingly authoritarian rule, the generals stepped in. Bangkok residents, euphoric at Thaksin's demise, showered the soldiers with praise and flowers. The military claimed that Thaksin was corrupt, dividing the country, fomenting violence, and disloyal to revered constitutional monarch King Bhumibol Adulyadej (all allegations that Thaksin has denied). But while the generals' takeover was executed with impressive precision, the same can't be said of their administration of the country. Their appointed...
...powder cocaine and the same sentence for possession of 50 grams of the drug in crack form. These guidelines were first crafted in the 1980s: While the social climate of the period—in which crack was seen as a unique and devastating contributor to crime, violence, and urban decay—may help to explain such disparate punishments, it hardly justifies them. Though few today see crack cocaine as a more dangerous threat to American society as other highly addictive drugs, legal observers have noticed one important difference between crack and other drugs: those convicted of crack violations...