The $28 Trillion Question: Are We Thankful Enough For Our World to Save it?

26Nov09

Later today, as the majority of Americans break bread with family and friends, we should carefully consider a few things. What, exactly, are we giving thanks for? What, fundamentally, enables the existence of those things? And how much, precisely, are we willing to pay in order for our grandchildren and their grandchildren to be able to give thanks for those same things?

I’m going to skip ahead here and get right to the spoiler. A predictable climate is the root of all prosperity. It is what shapes the seasonal rites of innumerable species, and it is what we’ve built the entirety of human development on. A predictable climate allows us to plant rice in Japan, corn in Iowa, and wheat in Chile, and to expect a harvest some months later. A predictable climate allows us to anticipate storm systems, map ocean currents, maintain trade routes. It informs what we build where, and how. It shapes what we believe; religion and climatology were once the same. Nothing is more central to human culture than a predictable climate.

It is a predictable climate that we should give thanks for today, because without it we most assuredly would not be here. So when you gather ’round the table, hold hands, and thank God or whatever else for blessings big and small, consider the fact that climate change is real. Consider that the cost of past actions is still being tallied, and the check will soon arrive. Consider that the cost will be astronomical no matter how you look at it: either we give up a lot in a hurry or we give up everything down the road. Consider whether you’d like your grandchildren to have anything worth giving thanks for.

I am writing this partially in response to an article posted today on CNN.com and excerpted below. So much research has been done, so many reports released in recent years that agree with the fundamental assertions of the article, that the conclusions it draws are no longer surprising. And yet, still, we keep on keepin’ on. Check out the article, watch the video, and decide for yourself how much the future will cost.

London, England (CNN) – A possible rise in sea levels by 0.5 meters by 2050 could put at risk more than $28 trillion worth of assets in the world’s largest coastal cities, according to a report compiled for the insurance industry.

The value of infrastructure exposed in so-called “port mega-cities,” urban conurbations with more than 10 million people, is just $3 trillion at present.

The rise in potential losses would be a result of expected greater urbanization and increased exposure of this greater population to catastrophic surge events occurring once every 100 years caused by rising sea levels and higher temperatures.

The report, released on Monday by WWF and financial services Allianz, concludes that the world’s diverse regions and ecosystems are close to temperature thresholds — or “tipping points.”

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A Thousand Words: Organoponico, Caracas

19Nov09

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from Discovering Urbanism: What will a recovery look like?

17Nov09

The Urban Land Institute and PriceWaterHouseCoopers has released their 2010 real estate forecast, a market analysis considered by many to be the most reputable in the industry. The first line gives a good impression of the tone of the report:

“More investors recognize massive losses—value declines will eventually total “40 to 50 percent” off market highs, propelled by lagging impacts of the deep recession.”

Other descriptive words from the first page: “savaged,” “debacle,” “even worse,” “enveloping gloom,” “doom,” “anemic demand,” “carnage,” “comatose,” “mammoth value busts.” (I didn’t see “apocalyptic” but I didn’t read the whole thing). You get the picture.

However, some smart growth advocates are seeing a silver lining in the fact that urban infill and redevelopment projects have shown to be more resilient than the typically housing on the exurban frontier of metropolitan areas.Kaid Benfield pulled out this quote from the report:

“Next-generation projects will ori ent to infill, urbanizing suburbs, and transit-oriented develop ment. Smaller housing units-close to mass transit, work, and 24-hour amenities-gain favor over large houses on big lots at the suburban edge. People will continue to seek greater convenience and want to reduce energy expenses. Shorter commutes and smaller heating bills make up for higher infill real estate costs.”

On the one hand, I see this as a hopeful sign for movement toward a more sustainable economy. On the other hand, I’m a little reluctant to cheer too loudly during a recession. The million dollar question, in my mind, is not what the best investment bets are during the low period (could these not simply be inferior goods?) but what kinds of development will usher us out of the recession entirely and into a new economic paradigm. continue reading article at discoveringurbanism.blogspot.com

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Rules of Interaction & Urban Flow

14Nov09

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Los Angeles. Palm trees, movie stars, swimming pools, smog, and traffic. Spend much time in L.A. and you’ll likely spend as much time in traffic as you do eating and exercising combined. I made up that pseudo-statistic, but that doesn’t make it untrue. Enough people spend enough time in traffic in Los Angeles that a sort of social evolution occurs. Looking down from an overpass one witnesses a sort of miracle: millions of cars weaving across six or eight lanes at varying speeds, somehow maintaining a nearly universal distance from each other, avoiding collisions, with practically no direct communication and absolutely zero planning or leadership. A mechanical herd of caribou, a gas-powered flock of birds.

The flow is far from perfect. Accidents do happen, bottlenecks are commonplace, speeds are often lower than desired. But it’s there. It’s visible. Perhaps not on par with the avian ballet of Winged Migration, but the behavior of drivers in heavy traffic (particularly when they are accustomed to heavy traffic) is noticeably different than the behavior of drivers in light traffic. When freedom of movement gets restricted by the phalanx of fellow motorists a strange sort of surface tension develops, like drops of rain coalescing into a stream.

Many of us have seen a bird fly into a window (a carrier pigeon actually crashed into my porch door earlier this week). But how often do you hear of an entire flock knocking themselves stupid? In the book Getting to Maybe, the authors reference the research of Craig Reynolds, who developed computer simulations in order to understand why “a flock of birds, a school of fish, or a hive of bees is up to fifty times more sensitive to changes in its environment than any single bird, fish, or bee.” A common notion is that flocks of birds take their cues from a lead bird, but if the lead bird in a flock crashes into a building those behind him simply fan out and reform once past the obstruction, like water flowing around a rock.

Reynolds recognized the improbability of the heroic leader bird theory and disregarded it, focusing instead on rules of interaction that would increase sensitivity to stimuli and environmental changes. Different sets of rules would cause his digital “boids” to move in different patterns, and through trial and error Reynolds discovered three simple rules of interaction that made his boids fly just like birds.

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from FASLANYC: Shitty Eco-Urban Park-like Place

11Nov09

In the past decade or so many articles have been written and promising careers made by speculating on the potential of landscape and architecture for remaking infrastructure.  The movement has even given rise to the “emerging field” of landscape urbanism, home of such new school luminaries as Chris Reed, Liat Margolis, Pierre Belanger, and Kate Orff.  This movement, coinciding nicely with the rise of web 2.0 and parametric design capabilities, have given bldg blog and pruned a fertile field to plow.  Budding young academics have taken the mandate to make beautiful, bombastic drawings about just how fun and beautiful things will be if we make all infrastructure social.

The adoption of this mindset is now ubiquitous to the point of becoming almost passe [sic].  Every thesis from Penn or Harvard deals with this subject, and the revolution is coming to a university near you.  Despite all of this attention, the treatment of this new design paradigm is still largely superficial and celebratory, with little effort being made to discuss the real implications of a newly social/ecological infrastructure.  And so we end up with proposals like a new water infrastructure for the city of Chicago that conjures images of the White City, or the remaking of the notorious Gowanus Canal into a neighborhood amenity that resembles the banks of the Sienne.  Everything is beautiful and clean and new, except for the old things which are preserved as pretty relics.

Now, I should offer up here that most of the people making these proposals are much-esteemed and putting out intelligent work.  However, the tone of the writings and renderings tend to be one of placation as opposed to provocation (Julie Barmann et al not included).  There is a reticence to admit the fact that most of these operations they propose to incorporate into social urban spaces are messy.  In fact almost any place where work is done is messy, be it a healthy forest floor where bacteria decompose the detritus of the previous growing season or a concrete plant.  Yet, when designers claim they can take the stormwater infrastructure of a city and daylight it, making it a cultural amenity for all to experience we end of with projects like this.

Now, the above project riles me up.  I love the idea, but the renderings are disingenuous. continue reading at faslanyc.blogspot.com

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