Vancouver has successfully combined and implemented “green streets” and “complete streets” concepts, which somewhat obviously should be combined and implemented everywhere.
Tag Archives: green infrastructure
ecosystem value of urban soil
Soil is a critical part of a functional ecosystem, and yet most engineers and architects who work with soil in urban areas are not trained to really understand how soil works as part of an ecosystem. Soil scientists and agricultural engineers are, but they are not working in cities for the most part. Anyway, I like the premise of this article.
Towards an operational methodology to optimize ecosystem services provided by urban soils
Urban soils need to be taken into account by city managers to tackle the major urban environmental issues. As other soils in forest or agricultural environments, urban soils provide a wide range of ecosystem services. However, their contribution remains poorly assessed up to now, and as a result there is a strong lack of consideration by urban planning of the services they provide. Indeed, urban soils are mostly seen as a land surface (land area, two-dimensional system) and if they are characterized, it is almost exclusively for their potential contamination and their geotechnical properties. So, policy makers and planning operators rarely consider soils as a living resource, capable to fulfill essential functions. From the conclusions of previous studies, a selection of ecosystem services provided by soil and adapted to the specificity of urban context is proposed. This paper also aims at proposing the concept of the DESTISOL decision support system for urban planning projects upstream of the planning decisions, illustrated by an application example. It is based on an integrative approach linking soil quality indicators (e.g. physico-chemical and biological characteristics, fertility, pollution), soil functions and soil ecosystem services. The method leads to the semi-quantitative assessment of the level of ecosystem services that are either provided by urban soils or required to fit with the urban design.
Snails rehab infiltration
If if I understand this correctly, these researchers used snails to restore the capacity of clogged infiltration basins somewhere in Europe.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925857418300624
February 2018 in Review
Most frightening stories:
- A general rule across many types of wildlife is that their range after urbanization decreases to between one-half and one-third of what it was before urbanization.
- The Cuban sonic attacks are real. At least, the people who experienced them have real brain damage, even if we still don’t know what technology did the damage.
- Cape Town will probably not be the last major city to run out of water.
Most hopeful stories:
- There are some new ideas for quantifying ecological function. There is also new technology for mapping urban vegetation based on photos.
- You can read a book or take a free course on why Buddhist meditation may be really good for your brain and life. Also good for your brain would be curing Alzheimer’s disease, which has now been done in mice (although it seems to have caused them other problems).
- Quantum computers are getting closer…maybe.
Most interesting stories, that were not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both:
- I learned about a number of professional and academic models of animal movement and population ecology, along with some general theory on the subject.
- You can take a free class on how to start, or finish, writing a novel.
- SpaceX is planning to launch more than 4,000 small satellites.
why our institutions are failing to deliver optimal green infrastructure
I think this article explains well why real green infrastructure is hard to achieve. Multiple goverhment agencies are responsible for bits and pieces of it, and even if they are acting efficiently within each of their limited missions, they are not coordinating to achieve goals efficiently as a whole. I see this plenty in my professional life dealing with water, parks and transportation agencies.
Urban development has altered surface-water hydrology of landscapes and created urban heat island effects. With climate change, increasing frequency of extreme heat events and in some areas, episodic drought and flooding, present new challenges for urban areas. Green infrastructure holds potential as a cost-effective means of providing microclimate cooling and stormwater diversion. Further, green open spaces when combined with the provision of equipment and facilities have the potential to promote physical and emotional well-being. However successful implementation may be predicated on co-ordinated efforts of multiple agencies. The Institutional Analysis and Development framework developed by Crawford and Ostrom is used in a case study to understand the institutional impediments, transaction costs and gaps in responsibility associated with the delivery of green infrastructure. Lessons learned are potentially transferable to other urban settings. Our analysis reveals areas of high transaction costs as well as a gap in the polycentric decision-making of agencies. The local government council is concerned with the well-being of its residents but has limited financial capacity. None of the agencies who deliver green infrastructure have responsibility for facilitating the indirect or preventative health benefits. Thus, a co-ordination problem among agencies can lead to suboptimal investments in green infrastructure.
January 2018 in Review
Most frightening stories:
- Larry Summers says we have a better than even chance of recession in the next three years. Sounds bad, but I wonder what that stat would look like for any randomly chosen three year period in modern history.
- The United States is involved in at least seven wars: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and Pakistan. Nuclear deterrence may not actually the work.
- Cape Town, South Africa is in imminent danger of running out of water. Longer term, there are serious concerns about snowpack-dependent water supplies serving large urban populations in Asia and western North America.
Most hopeful stories:
- There are some new ideas and practical examples of urban green infrastructure planning that take full advantage of ecological and social science to maximize benefits. Also, there are some advances in the idea of using gamification in urban planning. Biophilic Cities is a new (to me) group trying to create “cities of abundant nature in close proximity to large numbers of urbanites.
- There is new evidence that reading is really good for the developing brain.
- Practical wireless charging may finally be getting close. End the tyranny of the cord!
Most interesting stories, that were not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both:
- Sales of electric vehicles may take off in 2018. Sales of autonomous vehicles will eventually take off, but 2018 may not be the year.
- Just when people on the street might have heard of CRISPR, there are already newer and more powerful gene editing techniques coming online, including the idea of gene circuits. There is some doubt about whether CRISPR will ultimately work in humans. And in other biotech news, brain scans have reached the point where they can reveal an image you are picturing in your mind.
- If you are a white supremacist, it’s okay to have an Asian girlfriend according to the New York Times. The unfortunate corollary would seem to be that if someone is accusing you of being a white supremacist, you can’t just get an Asian girlfriend and expect that to be a sufficient defense.
living near a forest is good for your amygdala
The amygdala is a part of your brain, and what is good for it is good for you.
“Our results reveal a significant positive association between the coverage of forest and amygdala integrity,” the researchers report. The amygdala is the almond-shaped set of neurons that plays a key role in the processing of emotions, including fear and anxiety.
Perhaps surprisingly, Kuehn and her colleagues found no such association from living close to urban green spaces such as parks, or near bodies of water. Only proximity to forest land had this apparent positive effect…
The study complements the already-strong psychological evidence of the benefits of living close to nature. Previous research has linked access to green space to longer lives, lower levels of aggression, and kids’ cognitive development. One study suggests it even makes for nicer people.
BIODIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEM SERVICES IN URBAN GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE PLANNING
I like this article from Italy a lot because it represents a practical approach to focusing on ecosystem services in urban areas.
Target 2 of the European Biodiversity Strategy promotes the maintenance and enhancement of ecosystem services < (ES) as well as the restoration of at least 15% of degraded ecosystems by creating green infrastructure (GI). The purpose of the this research is to present a GI proposal that combines the delivery of regulating services with the restoration and ecological reconnection of urban forests and trees in a densely urbanised context.
The project area covers about 3 000 ha in the urban sector of the metropolitan area of Rome and the GI components consist of 533 ha of areal green spaces and of more than 500 km of road verges. Planned interventions include forest restoration and tree plantations, with a varying service supply according to type and condition of the different components. Potential natural vegetation (PNV) models and dispersal potential of representative forest species, together with structural and functional vegetation models for the enhancement of air pollutants removal, guided the selection of the species to be promoted and of the planting pattern. Environmental benefits of the proposal include more than 30 ha of restored urban forests, about 15 000 planted individuals of native oaks, a sevenfold improvement in ecological connectivity and halved isolation between green spaces. On the other hand, the expected socio-economic benefits include almost 300 000 potential beneficiaries of the improved air quality and avoided costs for damages to human health that range between 40 700 and 130 200 EUR per year.
Notwithstanding their preliminary character, these estimates allowed the proposal to highlight the relationship between GI and public health. Moreover, they showed the economic and social effectiveness of nature-based solutions in comparison with further development of grey infrastructure. These results promote the definition of a national GI strategy in Italy.
November 2017 in Review
Most frightening stories:
- I thought about war and peace in November. Well, mostly war. War is frightening. The United States of America appears to be flailing about militarily all over the world guided by no foreign policy. Big wars of the past have sometimes been started by overconfident leaders thinking they could get a quick military victory, only to find themselves bogged down in something much larger and more intractable than they imagined. But enemies are good to have – the Nazis understood that a scared population will believe what you tell them.
- We should probably be sounding the alarm just as urgently, if not more urgently, on biodiversity as we are on global warming. But while the case against global warming is so simple most children can grasp it, the case against biodiversity loss is more difficult to articulate.
- A theory of mass extinctions of the past is that they have been caused by massive volcanic eruptions burning off underground fossil fuels on a massive scale. Only, not quite at the rate we are doing it now. Rapid collapse of ice cliffs is another thing that might get us.
Most hopeful stories:
- Donald Trump does not appear to be trying to destroy the Federal Reserve.
- You can get a good robot vacuum cleaner now for about $200.
- In discussions of urban green infrastructure, provisioning ecosystem services have been largely ignored, but the potential is there. Permaculture is still out there.
Most interesting stories, that were not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both:
- You can get an actuarial estimate of your life span online. You can also search your local library catalog automatically whenever you consider buying a book online. Libraries in small, medium, and large towns all over the U.S. appear to be included.
- “Transportation as a service” may cause the collapse of the oil industry. Along similar but more mainstream lines, NACTO has released a “Blueprint for Autonomous Urbanism“, which is my most popular post at the moment I am writing this.
- It’s possible that the kind of ideal planned economy envisioned by early Soviet economists (which never came to pass) could be realized with the computing power and algorithms just beginning to be available now.
disappearing bugs
This surprising study from Germany raises the possibility that a catastrophic loss of insects is occurring and that it could lead to ecological collapse.
More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
Global declines in insects have sparked wide interest among scientists, politicians, and the general public. Loss of insect diversity and abundance is expected to provoke cascading effects on food webs and to jeopardize ecosystem services. Our understanding of the extent and underlying causes of this decline is based on the abundance of single species or taxonomic groups only, rather than changes in insect biomass which is more relevant for ecological functioning. Here, we used a standardized protocol to measure total insect biomass using Malaise traps, deployed over 27 years in 63 nature protection areas in Germany (96 unique location-year combinations) to infer on the status and trend of local entomofauna. Our analysis estimates a seasonal decline of 76%, and mid-summer decline of 82% in flying insect biomass over the 27 years of study. We show that this decline is apparent regardless of habitat type, while changes in weather, land use, and habitat characteristics cannot explain this overall decline. This yet unrecognized loss of insect biomass must be taken into account in evaluating declines in abundance of species depending on insects as a food source, and ecosystem functioning in the European landscape.
I knew about the frogs, elephants, tigers, bees, and loss of larger animal species and biomass in general, but I hadn’t really heard this idea that insects are disappearing. I can see a silver lining to this – I can’t really create elephant or tiger habitat around my house, and frog habitat is a little tough, but insects – I can actually help the little guys. On a larger scale, there is the question of green infrastructure – can we deliberately design habitats in cities, larger reserves, and corridors connecting them to support as much ecological function as we can? I think so, but I don’t think our public officials, engineers, urban planners, scientists, and others in a position to do this are tuned into the issue or even very open to hearing about it.