Archives For sustainability

4

Cities Pricing Out Their Own Density

luxury downtown condominiumThe success of a thriving downtown hinges on achieving a critical mass of businesses and homes inside a given radius. The allure of the city is built around having quick access to a myriad of amenities just a short trip away. Having public space, shopping, cultural institutions and employment all within minutes of your front door is the boon of urban living–made possible by tens of thousands of people in close proximity in order to support all of those individual destinations. The value placed on that access translates into higher home prices that tend to shrink the average size of urban residences by shedding “extra” uses.

But some of our cities are becoming the victims of their own success. As a finite amount of land becomes more desirable, prices begin to migrate outside the realm of accessibility for a larger portion of the population. The degree of socio-economic diversity begins to wane and lower-income residents are forced to move farther to the urban edge. The very density that defines the city is beginning to run counter to the forces of its own market inertia. Continue Reading…

Economic 
3

We Are Hardwired for Loving Nature

park canopy dappled lightWhy are streets with trees better received than those without? Why is dappled light through leaves more pleasant than sun beating against the pavement? What is our affiliation to rolling streams and bubbling brooks? Why do little kids love playing in piles of fall leaves? According to biologist E.O. Wilson, the answer is because a connection to nature is hardwired into our DNA, leaving us with a biological propensity to feel better in the presence of natural systems.

Continue Reading…

Cultural 
0

Restoring Infrastructure With Interaction

Gowanus Canal from the BQEMayor 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…

Infrastructural 
2

Sobering Fact: Water Through a Power Plant Can Fill the Empire State Building Every Day

Salem MA Power Plant

As Americans we use a lot of water—per capita, more than any other country on the planet. A huge portion (49% as of 2005) of what we use goes to thermoelectric cooling, or removing heat from our fossil fuel burning power plants. That’s around 200 billion gallons a day, but we have a lot of power plants out there. How much does one of these plants actually use? The biggest culprits are the oldest plants that are the least efficient, built before the days of harnessing cogeneration. Taking the coal-fired power plant in Salem, Massachusetts (set to be decommissioned next year), the word is that the plant currently uses up to 359 million gallons a day when it is running at full capacity. How much is that? Continue Reading…

Sobering Facts 
1

Rethinking the Urban Grid

historic grid mapWe often use the utilitarian, rational deployment of street grids as a boon to our best cities. American cities like New York, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. stand as the result of a preplanned order deployed to guide expansion over time. In many ways it has worked. Partitioning up the city has helped to shape a straightforward process for development, creating defined districts for zoning along with a web for transportation. But as the way we interact with the city evolves, including the buildings within it, the grid lags behind, representing the same functions that it did centuries ago. These massive infrastructural frameworks have grown to the point of being outmoded, trailing the urban evolution around and within them. We are at a point for a reassessment for how best to use this wealth of connective tissue that provides access to and from our homes, our jobs and our leisure both inside and outside of the city.  Continue Reading…

Urban Planning 
2

Why LEED Doesn’t Work in Rural Africa and What Will

Community Architecture in AfricaThis is a guest post by friend and former classmate, Charles Newman. Charlie has committed his architectural practice to helping communities in places around the world. He is currently working for International Rescue Committee in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo as the Community Driven Reconstruction Manager and he keeps a great blog on his architectural travels in Africa. Aside from being a LEED AP, his work consistently seeks to integrate sustainability.   

While in a small southern town of the Democratic Republic of Congo in mid 2012, a colleague of mine approached me for some guidance on a large health proposal he was putting together. A portion of the grant would be earmarked for the construction of hundreds of clinics across the DR Congo, and he mentioned that the donor would be very interested in “green” building standards. Knowing that I was a LEED Accredited Professional, he began asking how we might be able to incorporate such building standards into the designs for the pending projects. I rattled off some general guidelines such as using local materials – recycled ones if available, incorporating existing infrastructure, natural ventilation, etc. He jotted down a few notes, then began to pry a little deeper. “What about the LEED point system? Could we incorporate that into our strategy?”

My response was frank: “No, not really. LEED doesn’t work here in rural Africa.” Continue Reading…

Architectural 
7

Microcommunities Challenge the Suburban Model

Dwell Development HouseOutside of Seattle, the design-build firm  Dwell Development is in the process of building out their vision of transit oriented development. They are calling it Columbia Station. Pitched within the rising popularity of the term “microcommunity” the project plan includes 15 residential homes all built on the same block and within a quick walk to buses and the commuter rail. As more of the designed units get built the proposal could be an example of the elusive search for a middle ground between urban centers and suburbia. Continue Reading…

Urban Planning 
1

Do Not Skip the Simple Questions

kid with bright ideasThe scale of our society’s deficiencies in regards to sustainability can be daunting, even to proponents, and with a problem so large there is a tendency to look for large scale solutions. Rightfully so. We have a lot of ground to cover, so if we can catch up with some big moves all the better, and there are plenty of them floating around: carbon pricing, national recycling programs, grid-scale renewable energy, power plant emissions. The danger here is the misconception that the only solutions are difficult solutions or that sustainability itself is overly complicated. Once these impressions set in it becomes very easy for us to distance ourselves from contributing. After all, aside from a letter to elected officials and signing some petitions, how much can one do to support the construction of offshore wind turbines or improve state energy codes? Difficult questions have a way of dissuading us.

The truth is that there are countless opportunities for sustainable improvement that are very simple and the fact that they remain underutilized is not because the solutions or difficult, let alone impossible, but because no one has spoken up yet. Sometimes all we have to do is ask. Continue Reading…

Cultural 
4

The Common Dilemma of Architecture and the Environment

architect and the client cartoonMost of us probably have a friend that is either an architect or an environmentalist. Okay, maybe not. Perhaps most of us know someone that is either in a creative design profession or cares about the natural environment–enough to know that both groups have some common threads. Both work too many hours for too little money despite being devoted to their work. Both find it difficult to convey the full range of their roles to those outside of their profession. Both struggle with the task of trying to achieve greater relevance in the eyes of American culture. Architecture and the environment; an odd pairing perhaps given that buildings and nature are not exactly best friends right now, but their similarities could result from the fact that both groups ultimately face the same uphill battle. Continue Reading…

Cultural 
1

The Electronic Waste Race

trash stream from electronicsOver the past two decades the evolution of consumer electronics have cause massive amounts of information to migrate from the physical world of paper into the digital network of electrons. Throughout that time increases in efficiency and capability have shrunk the physical size of computers while expanded the capacity for information and exponentially increased speed to move it back and forth. The same progression, however, has led to a new, complex and rapidly growing waste stream that we know relatively little about. At the same time, the lifecycle of our paper products has not been idle. Steadily improving forestry practices, more efficient production methods and vast improvements in recycling make paper a much greener option than it was years ago. More and more, we need to consistently reevaluate which medium is offering us the most sustainable option. Continue Reading…

Economic