Author Archives: rdmyers75@hotmail.com

the future of urban transportation

I like the vision of future urban transportation laid out in this article from Atlantic CityLab:

My utopian vision of how this could play out is to rededicate a lot of space in cities that was de facto applied to cars in the 1950s, after the death of the streetcars and the explosion of expressways, over to active transportation. Cars entering city limits would have to be autonomous or switched to driverless mode, as these will be deemed safe for all users of the transportation system and will operate in much less road space than drivers need now. (As a reference point, auto accidents are the leading killer of young people worldwide.) Parking needs could decrease dramatically, too, as most autonomous vehicles will be on-demand and active, compared to the 95 percent of time that current cars sit parked. We would have a transit backbone consisting of heavy and light rail/streetcars, and regional/arterial buses. The rest of the network and space would be slanted towards walking, bike-share, and other alternative modes.

I don’t necessarily think this is a “utopian vision”. I think a lot of it is just going to happen and is already happening. Enormous amounts of space that have been devoted to car maneuvering and parking are going to be available for other uses. The question is, are we just going to let all the space sit there or have a good plan for what to do with it? Some of it can be used for housing and economic activity, some for parks, wildlife habitat and movement corridors, and food growing, and some for managing water or harvesting solar energy. And of course, combinations of these are possible. But we do need to have a vision and a plan, which some can call “utopian” if they so choose.

falling fruit

This website, called Falling Fruit: Mapping the urban harvest, is attempting to be a worldwide map of harvestable food in urban areas. I think this is a great idea both for sustainability and for livability in urban areas. There must be a lot of fruit and nut trees on private land and in forgotten spaces of public land – median strips, the “tree lawn” between street and sidewalk, and so forth. But in many cases the people who own or control this land may not be interested in taking care of these trees. At the same time, I believe there are a lot of frustrated urban armchair gardeners out there who would love to take care of them, but don’t have permission to access the private property, or don’t know about or feel comfortable taking care of the trees on the public property. So a website like this could begin to connect the trees to the people who are willing to take care of the trees.

That’s just the trees we have now. If something like this took off, we could gradually replace more of our ornamental urban landscaping with edible landscaping – fruit hedges, strawberry lawns, and so on.  We could incorporate rain barrels, rain gardens, compost bins, even chickens and rabbits for people who are open to that. We could take wildlife habitat into account to, and start to take a larger view of the landscape – how patches of urban habitat can be connected, and how patches of urban habitat can be connected to larger urban parks and rural reserves.

By the way, I don’t mean for urbanism to be the primary subject of this blog. The subject is how our civilization is connected to, and impacting, and dependent on, the natural world and what that means for the future. But at the risk of stating the obvious, urban areas are where the people are so I will return to urban design and urban hydrology and urban ecology and land use and transportation topics fairly often.

EU considering ban on gasoline and diesel powered cars

According to Wired, the EU is floating the idea of a complete ban on gasoline and diesel powered cars in European city centers by 2050.

An ambitious set of goals, laid out in the document “Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area” (PDF), calls for a gradual phase-out of gas-guzzling vehicles in favour of electric vehicles and improved rail networks. The EU wants to “halve the use of conventionally-fuelled cars in urban transport by 2030” before getting rid of them entirely by 2050.

This doesn’t strike me as all that ambitious. We can and will switch to electric, natural gas, and propane powered vehicles a lot faster than that if the economics begin to favor it. And they will if, for example, distributed solar energy comes online in a big way. And I expect to see that in decade, not four decades. However, just the fact that most people and governments see it as ambitious illustrates exactly why it is good to get it out there and in peoples’ minds – it may be more likely to happen that way.

Biophilic Cities

Biophilic Cities: Integrating Nature into Urban Design and Planning

Yesterday I mentioned Blue Urbanism by Timothy Beatley. An earlier book of his was called Biophilic Cities: Integrating Nature into Urban Design and Planning. This echoes some of my personal ideas about building a civilization that is truly in harmony with nature. Here’s the description on Amazon:

Tim Beatley has long been a leader in advocating for the “greening” of cities. But too often, he notes, urban greening efforts focus on everything except nature, emphasizing such elements as public transit, renewable energy production, and energy efficient building systems. While these are important aspects of reimagining urban living, they are not enough, says Beatley. We must remember that human beings have an innate need to connect with the natural world (the biophilia hypothesis). And any vision of a sustainable urban future must place its focus squarely on nature, on the presence, conservation, and celebration of the actual green features and natural life forms.

A biophilic city is more than simply a biodiverse city, says Beatley. It is a place that learns from nature and emulates natural systems, incorporates natural forms and images into its buildings and cityscapes, and designs and plans in conjunction with nature. A biophilic city cherishes the natural features that already exist but also works to restore and repair what has been lost or degraded.
In Biophilic Cities Beatley not only outlines the essential elements of a biophilic city, but provides examples and stories about cities that have successfully integrated biophilic elements–from the building to the regional level–around the world.
From urban ecological networks and connected systems of urban greenspace, to green rooftops and green walls and sidewalk gardens, Beatley reviews the emerging practice of biophilic urban design and planning, and tells many compelling stories of individuals and groups working hard to transform cities from grey and lifeless to green and biodiverse.

“blue urbanism”

Blue Urbanism: Exploring Connections Between Cities and Oceans

Blue Urbanism by Timothy Beatley is about building awareness among people in cities about their impacts on the oceans. Here’s the description on Amazon.com:

What would it mean to live in cities designed to foster feelings of connectedness to the ocean? As coastal cities begin planning for climate change and rising sea levels, author Timothy Beatley sees opportunities for rethinking the relationship between urban development and the ocean. Modern society is more dependent upon ocean resources than people are commonly aware of—from oil and gas extraction to wind energy, to the vast amounts of fish harvested globally, to medicinal compounds derived from sea creatures, and more. In Blue Urbanism, Beatley argues that, given all we’ve gained from the sea, city policies, plans, and daily urban life should acknowledge and support a healthy ocean environment.

The book explores issues ranging from urban design and land use, to resource extraction and renewable energy, to educating urbanites about the wonders of marine life. Beatley looks at how emerging practices like “community supported fisheries” and aquaponics can provide a sustainable alternative to industrial fishing practices. Other chapters delve into incentives for increasing use of wind and tidal energy as renewable options to oil and gas extraction that damages ocean life, and how the shipping industry is becoming more “green.” Additionally, urban citizens, he explains, have many opportunities to interact meaningfully with the ocean, from beach cleanups to helping scientists gather data.

While no one city “has it all figured out,” Beatley finds evidence of a changing ethic in cities around the world: a marine biodiversity census in Singapore, decreasing support for shark-finning in Hong Kong, “water plazas” in Rotterdam, a new protected area along the rocky shore of Wellington, New Zealand, “bluebelt” planning in Staten Island, and more. Ultimately he explains we must create a culture of “ocean literacy” using a variety of approaches, from building design and art installations that draw inspiration from marine forms, to encouraging citizen volunteerism related to oceans, to city-sponsored research, and support for new laws that protect marine health.

Equal parts inspiration and practical advice for urban planners, ocean activists, and policymakers, Blue Urbanism offers a comprehensive look at the challenges and great potential for urban areas to integrate ocean health into their policy and planning goals.

 

California by Edan Lepucki

California: A Novel

Here’s a new entry in the apocalyptic fiction genre: California by Edan Lepucki. I haven’t read the book yet, only a review in the New York Times. Anyway here is what the NYT has to say:

…characters traverse a cross-section of mid-collapse landscape, framed by the gradual decline of civilization. This approach may seem too optimistic given dire news about melting icecaps and acidic oceans, but it does allow for a reading of the novel as satire, skewering the elements of modern life that have brought us to this tipping point…

Perhaps the world as we know it will indeed end this way for many Americans: terrified of porcupines, longing for the sound of S.U.V.s, unable to ­distinguish between an artifact and a keepsake, helped to find temporary sanctuary by the last black man on earth. If it does, we won’t be able to say that “California” didn’t warn us.

There’s also something about a turkey baster. Hmm…I’m not sure this will immediately float to the top of my reading list.

the urban carbon cycle

This article from Landscape and Urban Planning looks at carbon emissions and carbon sequestration in Beijing:

During the study period, carbon sequestration only offset 2.4% of carbon emission, indicating a serious imbalance of the city’s carbon metabolism. The city’s core built-up area expanded along eight axes, and its form fluctuated between simpler and more complex. From a small-scale perspective, the spatial pattern mainly showed expansion and aggregation of patches with high carbon emission and shrinkage and fragmentation of patches with high carbon sequestration.

I think this sort of study is useful as we think about what it would mean for cities to be truly sustainable either within their own boundaries or in the context of the larger landscape. 2.4% doesn’t sound like much, but if that is the answer with no system-level planning or management, could it be boosted to 5% or 10% with a more systematic approach to green infrastructure? The rest of the landscape (farms, protected forests, grasslands, and wetlands, and bodies of water) would do its share. Finally, technology would have to make up the remaining gap, if we really want to one day get to carbon neutral or even begin to role back the damage we have done to the atmosphere and oceans.

 

fish passage on the Mekong

According to NPR, Laos is building several dams on the Mekong and there’s an argument about whether the fish passage systems that have been designed will be effective:

“I’m confident that the mitigation measures we can employ here will allow fish to pass the barrier we’re going to create. From studies we’ve done, the impacts people are saying the project will cause, change in flow, quality, sediment distribution, fish food, none of those things are going to arise from this project.”

The risks the dolphins downstream face are real, Hawkins says, but he says that’s because of bad fishing practices, tourism and poor management. As for migratory fish that use the Hou Salong channel, Hawkins says, the fish passageways his company, Megafirst, are building around the site should take care of the problem…

“The effectiveness of such fish passage mechansims is quite OK, let’s say, quite well proven for European or North American rivers, where we have small number of species that are well known,” Meng says. “But in the Mekong, we don’t have five fish species which we have to take care of, we have 70, maybe even more, and we have no clue about them. So building something for them to migrate up and down with, that’s just guessing at the moment.”

Trandem of International River says fisheries experts estimate that at least 43 species of fish are likely to go extinct because of the impact of the dam, including the Mekong giant catfish, the world’s largest. Sedimentation — the silt the river carries downstream to Cambodia and Vietnam — is another problem. The Xayaburi will have major food security implications as well, Trandem says.

“By blocking sediment, we know that where there’s a lot of agricultural productivity and rice growing, these areas are going to suffer a lot because they’re no longer getting the same nutrients,” she says. “And so this will have a significant impact, especially in the Cambodian flood plains but also in Vietnam’s ‘rice bowl,’ which is really the center of rice production for region.”

This is all interesting to me because of the question of whether technology like fish ladders can mitigate our environmental impacts. Even if it can, I don’t doubt for a second that there is a lot of bad development going on that will impact the ecosystem regardless of what is done with fish passage.

 

the trophic theory of money

This is Brian Czech on the “trophic theory of money”:

Due to the fundamental structure of the economy, the size of the economy – as measured by GDP – is a perfectly valid indicator of environmental impact. Agricultural and extractive sectors form the base, which must expand to support the growth of manufacturing and service sectors – yes even the “information economy.” This structure, which is the closest thing in economics to an inescapable law of physics, gives us the “trophic theory of money,” which says that the level of expenditure (GDP, in other words) is proportionate to environmental impact including such tangibles as biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution in the aggregate.

It makes perfect sense that the overall scale of human activity is proportional to environmental impact, at least for a given level of technological knowledge, which doesn’t change very fast. Where I think he is wrong is the idea that money is a good measure of that impact. If you drew a pyramid showing the environmental impact of various sectors of the economy, starting with the lowest “trophic levels” like agriculture, forestry, and mining, and continuing up to the service and information sectors, it would indeed be a pyramid – agriculture, forestry, and mining would have the biggest ecological footprints, then the footprint of various sectors would decrease as you worked your way up the scale.

However, if you drew the same pyramid based on the contribution of each sector to GDP, it would be inverted, with agriculture, forestry, and mining representing much smaller numbers of dollars changing hands, and higher-tech sectors much more. The reason, I think, is that agriculture and mining have been around forever, and have become very efficient from an economic perspective (although we certainly don’t count their true costs in an environmental sense). The rate of technological change is low in those sectors, and we have turned them over to a small number of firms that know how to operate very efficiently and drive costs down, making small profit margins on a large scale. Relative to historical levels, prices are low enough in these sectors that we can largely take these goods and services for granted, and the majority of us have some money left over to spend on more frivolous goods like electronics.

The high-tech industries are rapidly evolving and have many players competing against each other to come up with novel things that we have just figured out we are willing and able to pay for. The profit margins in these sectors, and the total number of dollars changing hands, are much larger. This allows a larger number of players to compete at smaller scales.

A fun place to look at these statistics yourself is the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis’s interactive tables.