You wont generally find human-scale communities in sprawling urban areas dominated by highways ( what I call "spurbs".) Investing in human-scale development is a relatively new and enlightened way of buying real estate. You may be able to profit in real estate investment trusts, or REITs, or find communities that feature this kind of building.

Christopher Leinberger, a research fellow at the Brookings Institution and real estate developer, said human-scale or "walkable communities command a 40 percent to 200-percent premium in cost per square foot over properties in car-centric neighborhoods.

"Scientists are realizing that the best way to get their work out is a visual medium, with entertainment and science," festival director Arlene Burns says.

The films put the ocean's treasures squarely in our line of sight and load our memory banks with images and information that make its incomprehensible vastness come alive, in visceral action shots, weirdly beautiful deep-sea scenes, gawkingly breathtaking panoramas and sobering reports of malfeasance.

Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments planner Linda Meckel conducted a very thought-provoking survey on attitudes to housing and transportation at the most recent Imagination Coast breakfast. For participants, it was enlightening and often surprising!

Click the "Learn more" link for the video, recorded August 20, 2010, at the Monterey Couny Administrative Building.

With new plug-in electric cars scheduled to arrive in Santa Cruz County soon, so too should a means to juice them.

That's why a coalition of public and private stakeholders has secured tens of thousands of dollars to begin laying out a network of vehicle charging stations across the Monterey Bay Area.

Unlike the popular Toyota Prius, which has a back-up gasoline engine, many of the forthcoming plug-ins like the Nissan Leaf rely entirely on battery power and require a periodic recharge to keep going. The Monterey Bay Electric Vehicle Alliance, started last year, plans to finance at least 20 charging stations this year and help retrofit the handful that already exist.

"As more of these cars come to market, we really need to prepare our communities," said Sharon Sarris, who helped design one of General Motors' early electric cars and later founded the Monterey Bay alliance.

The USDA regulates farming and agriculture, as well as food safety and natural resources. So Rep. Sam Farr and other local leaders wanted to show the secretary local efforts on improving standards since E.coli outbreak of a few years ago.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack got the lay of the land Saturday from Farr and agriculture industry leaders. Their goal was to show him food safety practices in action.

The city of Pacific Grove is taking steps to be more green.

The city [hosted] a public workshop on Monday, hoping it will get input from the community about their upcoming green building program.

The goal of the program is to lower greenhouse gas emissions and reduce the city's carbon footprint.