Chrysler expanding its ethanol model line

DaimlerChrysler AG pledged to build 500,000 ethanol-fuel vehicles annually, or a quarter of its U.S. production, by 2008, as automakers try to address concerns over heavy foreign oil consumption and high gas prices.

Thomas W. LaSorda, chief executive of Chrysler, made the pledge yesterday at a meeting of the Renewable Fuels Association in Washington, where President Bush announced measures aimed at reducing the country's dependence on foreign oil. He encouraged production of ethanol-powered cars and gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles.—by Sholnn Freeman, Washington Post

Interview with Jane Jacobs

Read James Howard Kunstler's 2000 interview with Jane Jacobs from Metropolis Magazine, March 2001.

'Cities' author Jane Jacobs dies at 89

Jane Jacobs, an author and community activist of singular influence whose classic "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" transformed ideas about urban planning, died Tuesday. She was 89.

A native of Scranton, Pa., Jacobs lived for many years in New York before moving to Toronto in the late 1960s. She and her husband, architect Robert Jacobs Jr., were unhappy that their taxes supported the Vietnam War and turned to Canada as their permanent home. Robert Jacobs died in 1996.

Jacobs, who based her findings on deep, eclectic reading and firsthand observation, challenged assumptions she believed damaged modern cities — that neighborhoods should be isolated from each other, that an empty street was safer than a crowded one, that the car represented progress over the pedestrian.—by Hillel Italie, AP National Writer

Los Angeles with a downtown?

It isn't easy to create a real downtown district, vibrant and intense, in a city as sprawling and diffuse as Los Angeles, Frank Gehry admits. But that's what he has set out to do with his design for Grand Avenue.

The $750 million project, which includes the first high-rises he has ever designed for his hometown, is the first phase of a $1.8 billion development plan by the Related Companies that will remake Grand Avenue as a pedestrian-based gathering point.

"When we talk about L.A. having a downtown, it's a stretch, because L.A. is so spread out as a city," Mr. Gehry said in a telephone interview. "Our downtown probably is a linear one — Wilshire Boulevard or Sunset Boulevard."

He said his goal was "to develop the beginning of a community that has the body language of a community and has the scale of a community.—Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times