New York’s bike sharing program has been in service for just over a month now, met with plenty of enthusiasm and criticism alike. I had some colleagues that were skeptics (even fellow bikers) of how often those blue bikes would be touring across the city grid, but the latest statistics are painting a picture of quick acclimation into local culture. At the same time, the greatest value of CitiBike may not just be the bike availability. In the digital age, a system like this has the potential to have a much broader influence on the future of the city.
Archives For Infrastructural
Mayor Cory Booker said it well: “from the Transcontinental Railroad to the Hoover Dam, to the dredging of our ports and building of our most historic bridges – our American ancestors prioritized growth and investment in our nation’s infrastructure.” Throughout history the image of new infrastructure has been synonymous with progress. The need for newer, larger and faster services brings the perception of an advancing society. The perception of progress and political tenure have proven to go hand in hand, so we seem to be able to find money to finance large infrastructural additions.
But when we look around at our infrastructural landscape, most often it is not progressing, but languishing. This is partly because fixing old infrastructural systems is not nearly as glamorous as building ones. Whether its the systems that move water, power, waste or people, the neglect of these essential systems has left them decayed, at times to a point requiring wholesale replacement. There have been designs that reuse dilapidated infrastructure for something new, but what if part of the problem is not just that systems are old, but that their relationship to the public encourages their neglect? Continue Reading…
A New Life Proposed for a NYC Waste Transfer Station
As efficiency and new societal demands force the evolution of our infrastructural landscape we are consistently constructing new means to service our culture with its fundamental needs. In addition to energy and new virgin resources, the victims of this course of natural selection are often the preceding installations that have lived out their usefulness. The route of demolition and wholesale replacement may have a certain degree of ease when it comes to the planning process, but it creates a missed opportunity in not realizing and capitalizing on the latent energy and lifecycle costs of our existing, retired utilities.
Dubbed “Harlem Harvest”, this theoretical project was charged with exploring a new life for an existing waste transfer station in New York City. The design combines a new bike storage facility, a new kindergarten school and a vertical farming greenhouse, garnished by new floating community garden plots lining the coast. As our proficiency with mixed-use buildings develops we are becoming more aware that the ecology of programs (architect for “uses”) integrated together in a building is just as important as the series of systems needed to make the building function. Continue Reading…
The term “geothermal” describes two similar technologies that operate on different scales. Both are used for harvesting clean energy from the earth. Both yield opportunities for displacing pollution and emissions. The best case would allow for us to pour support into both of these technologies, but the prolonged fragility of the economy prompts the question of which one of these options actually gets us farther? Which should we be encouraging, publicizing and subsidizing? Which gives more bang for the buck? Continue Reading…
A growing contingent of Philadelphia locals are trying to raise a cry for transforming a retired, elevated viaduct into a gardened, pedestrian thoroughfare. Being almost universally regarded as a success, New York City’s High Line is the obvious case study for how the re-purposing of old, industrial relics can transform them into unique, local icons ingrained with authenticity. With clear sustainable advantages pointing to reuse rather than demolition, the urban proposal has important differences from one of New York’s most treasured parks that could make the road to realization long and arduous. Continue Reading…
If our telecom network of wire and cable is the veins of the internet then data centers are its organs and they are consistently growing in size and number—a pace that no one thinks is going to slow in the foreseeable future. When it comes to the placement of these digital warehouses, the criteria for locations are equally consistent with new sites often placed out in rural or suburban America. Despite the fact that pedestrians and residents may not have much to do with having a data center down the block, moving them closer to points of higher urban density could let us better utilize all of the resources it takes to run them. Continue Reading…
For the first time in a while, our portfolio of renewable power sources has surpassed power production from nuclear generation. According to the latest Monthly Energy Review from the Energy Information Administration, the most sustainable forms of energy now produce more for us than the most hazardous, largely due to rises in wind, solar and hydro production. Continue Reading…
Despite the advances that the United States has made in building technology, urban infrastructure systems and sewage treatment, waste water management still comprises one of the larger portions of our antiquated infrastructural network; namely in the form of Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs).
While some communities and cities have separate systems to collect and divert stormwater and sewage, many older American cities were built on the model of a combined system, meaning that rainwater flows into the same pipes that carry waste from your home for treatment. Given that there is half as much pipe, CSOs are certainly easier and cheaper to install but their long term function brings an environmentally expensive drawback. When the rate of rainfall reaches a certain threshold (sometimes as low as 1/4″ per hour), the system of pipes becomes overwhelmed and treatment facilities can no longer handle the excess load. In these storm events, overflows are utilized that dump the combination of stormwater and untreated sewage directly into natural bodies of water. Pretty disgusting. Continue Reading…
We are on the verge of a new dimension to the virtual land grab of the net as the powers that be clear the way to receive applications for new Top Level Domains (TLDs) that will stake out fresh territory for how people can lay claim to cyberspace. While new websites now have choices such as “.com”, “.tv” or “.info”, we are only a short time away from the opportunity to have anything you want at the end of your web address. Two of the most anticipated in the bunch are “.eco” and “.green”, both seen as new umbrellas for the image of sustainability to get a more meaningful foothold in the digital ether. Will these new domain names be the start of a more ecologically conscious sea of web surfers and end up greening the web itself or are they merely just another way to slap a green label on a product? Continue Reading…
Part of ensuring that sustainability is more than just a technological fix to supplement a wasteful lifestyle is using design to reveal processes and concepts to onlookers that result in actually imparting knowledge. This can make the jump from simply catching attention to raising awareness and understanding. Designers are often presented with opportunities to decide whether a sustainable component will only be a hidden part of the inner workings of a building and landscape or a feature that is incorporated into how the design is perceived and experienced. If the goal is to change the course of our culture to more sustainable ends then some of the most successful designs are the ones that can successfully allow people to interact with sustainability itself. Continue Reading…