Knute BergerEditor-at-large

A Depression-era book series is the ultimate road-trip must-have, a way of comparing past and present as you tool around the country like a latter-day John Steinbeck. And in Washington, a new version...

Seattle's obsession with largely symbolic green measures (banning bottled water at City Hall and taxing plastic bags) and the current trend of marketing everything from hybrids to condos as "green"...

Barry Goldwater famously said that "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice." But I suspect even the late Arizona senator and 1964 GOP presidential candidate might be creeped out if he knew about...

Has the last Seattleite with local pride turned out the lights? A recent trip to Safeco Field makes me wonder.

Current theory says that a city's walkability promotes health and will impact the fight against obesity. The claim is that America's weight problem can be helped by making cities more pedestrian...

The libertarian magazine Reason has published a list of the biggest nanny cities in the country. The results for the big cities on the Pacific Coast are interesting. Portland is caught in a kind of...

What's to blame for all the anger as cyclists, drivers, and citizens fight over their rights on the streets? Is it $4 gas? Young punks? Class warfare? Poor urban design? It's time to theorize.

A number of bloggers have been looking into the Southern California habit of putting "the" in front of freeway numbers, as in "don't take The 5 because it's really backed up." People in other parts of...