Rethink development. “Start approving new housing without any parking and create and expand a car-free street into a car-free district,” said Richard Register, designer, builder and author in ecological city design and planning, who is organizing the Ecocity World Summit in April. “Go for higher density in the mode of very mixed-use with the sort of architectural features I talk about in my books: Rooftop and terraced gardens and cafes up there, bridges between clustered buildings.”
Register, president of Ecocity Builders in Oakland, Calif., pointed to other cities that work with their universities to create new spaces where there were previously none.
“The University of California at Berkeley has nine bridges linking 18 buildings, or in a couple of cases, the building is a bridge with a large open ground level passageway,” he said. “These features could be emphasized and buildings on campuses brought close enough together to create streetscapes in one part of town, and/or campus while opening up other areas for natural and agricultural activities.”
Move away from sprawl. Register’s group, Ecocity Builders, has a mapping system that helps identify “vitality centers” for more development where people can walk to conduct business.
Maria Terezinha Vaz, an Ecocity presenter and special guest, is the producer of A Convenient Truth: Urban Solutions from Curitiba, Brazil, an informative, inspirational documentary aimed at sharing ideas to provoke environment-friendly and cost-effective changes in cities worldwide.
The documentary focuses on innovations in transportation, recycling, social benefits including affordable housing, seasonal parks, and the processes that transformed Curitiba into one of the most livable cities in the world.
Through photography, Maria Terezinha Vaz integrates other passions, some of them lifelong. Trains, train tracks, the patterns and geometry of the rails and the machinery, have always held a fascination for her. She highly values historical and cultural preservation such as the Mayan land in Mexico, especially the sacred city of Chichen Itza. Preservation of the natural environment is also of great importance to her.
Preview:
The film includes interviews from world renowned Curitiba’s mayors Jaime Lerner and Cassio Tanigushi, as well as other brilliant minds who made Curitiba a world class model.
If you are interested in learning more about the specifics of many of Curitiba’s programs, take a look at her web page on the project, organized into the following:
In August 2005, Arup was contracted by the Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation (SIIC) to design and master plan an eco-city called Dongtan, near Shanghai. Dongtan will be a city of three villages that meet to form a city centre. The first demonstrator phase of the city aims to be completed by 2010, in time for the World Expo in Shanghai, and will accommodate a population of up to 10,000. Later phases of development will see the city grow to hold a population of around 80,000 by 2020 and up to 400,000 by 2050. The delicate nature of the Dongtan wetlands adjacent to the site has been one of the driving factors of the city’s design. We plan to protect and enhance the existing wetlands by returning agricultural land to a wetland state creating a ‘buffer-zone’ between the city and the mudflats - at its narrowest point, this ‘buffer-zone’ will be 3.5 kilometers wide. The project will increase bio-diversity on Chongming Island, and will create a city that runs entirely on renewable energy for its buildings, its infrastructure and its transport needs. Dongtan will recover, recycle and reuse 90% of all waste in the city, with the eventual aim of becoming a zero waste city. Dongtan eco-city incorporates many traditional Chinese design features and combines them with a sustainable approach to modern living, but not at the expense of creating a city that is recognizable as a ‘Chinese’ city. Dongtan demonstrates to the world China’s ability to work closely with the environment and has provided a methodology for sustainable communities across China and beyond.
In the world of people attempting work to make human society more
sustainable there are two very large generally unexamined problems:
1. Making small counterproductive “improvements” without understanding the whole system – thus failing to understand the dynamics of longer range failure.
2. Failing to address the built infrastructure of city, town and village as the foundation for arrangement of many technologies, including such crucial ones as energy,transportation and food production – all severely impacted by sprawl cities.
Examples:
New Orleans people helping put people back in dangers’ way by helping rebuild in car-dependent, low-density housing below sea level surrounded by 350 miles of levees.
Alternative: Build a pedestrian streetcar city of compact diversity on artificial mounds. Such development elevated above the floods is easily accomplished physically for neighborhoods or whole cities designed around pedestrians, bicycles and streetcars but impossible in the case of car-dependent sprawl because of the massive amount of land and fill that would be required. Such elevated development on artificial mounds is done in may parts of the world, including in New Orleans at New Orleans University.
Creek fans in Berkeley preventing the opening of creeks into the foreseeable future by refusing to consider land use shifting strategies fearing any kind of serious change, even through willing seller deals, that could remove some development along creeks.
Alt.: Ecocity mapping and transfer of development rights (TDR) strategies or simply spending City money for density shifting to help transit, housing needs and open space. Such strategies are pursued in South Lake Tahoe with a TDR strategy and at Portland’s Johnson Creek with a simple city funded willing seller deal purchase strategy.
Environmentalists driving Priuses so they can continue low density living and driving.
Alt.: Weaning from cars through using transit, bicycling, moving to centers, and supporting zoning and politics for shifting cities to centers oriented development. Happens all the time with people quitting or going lite on car dependence.
Solar on houses promoting low-density living and continued paving, car use and thus more energy use.
Alt.: Solar to apartments and condos from central generating plants and the grid. Solar on buildings not close to urban or rural centers should not be encouraged as the practice encourages NOT changing the disastrous urban structure that presently exists. Solar energy utilizing power plants or “solar electric farms” in sunny locations and “wind farms” exist and should be promoted.
You are likely going to hear a lot about Dongtan at the Ecocity World Summit. This project is being watched by government and community groups all over the world. Here is a post from Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (SP):
Due to its rapidly growing population, China is founding new cities, combining in the designing process, high end knowladge in green technologies and infrastractures.
Dongtan is the first eco-city to be built in the world. It is located on the island of Chongming in the Yantze River.
In collaboration with the Shangai Industrial Investment Corporation(SIIC), ARUP aimed on transforming Dongtan into a green city that will have minimal negative impact on the environment. Through sustainable design and planning, the city created will be self-sufficient, generating all its energy from renewable resources, growing all food and recycling all waste.
You can find the complete research concerning Dongtan EcoCity here:
No Comments » | 
Access, City Planning, Climate Change, Community, Development, Government, Green, Green Building, Transportation, richard register | Tagged: Conference of Mayors Climate Change Agreement, Cool Cities, Kermit the Frog, Walt Maddox | 
Permalink
Posted by ecocity
In August 2005, Arup was contracted by the Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation (SIIC) to design and master plan an eco-city called Dongtan, near Shanghai. Dongtan will be a city of three villages that meet to form a city centre. The first demonstrator phase of the city aims to be completed by 2010, in time for the World Expo in Shanghai, and will accommodate a population of up to 10,000. Later phases of development will see the city grow to hold a population of around 80,000 by 2020 and up to 400,000 by 2050. The delicate nature of the Dongtan wetlands adjacent to the site has been one of the driving factors of the city’s design. We plan to protect and enhance the existing wetlands by returning agricultural land to a wetland state creating a ‘buffer-zone’ between the city and the mudflats - at its narrowest point, this ‘buffer-zone’ will be 3.5 kilometers wide. The project will increase bio-diversity on Chongming Island, and will create a city that runs entirely on renewable energy for its buildings, its infrastructure and its transport needs. Dongtan will recover, recycle and reuse 90% of all waste in the city, with the eventual aim of becoming a zero waste city. Dongtan eco-city incorporates many traditional Chinese design features and combines them with a sustainable approach to modern living, but not at the expense of creating a city that is recognizable as a ‘Chinese’ city. Dongtan demonstrates to the world China’s ability to work closely with the environment and has provided a methodology for sustainable communities across China and beyond.
In the world of people attempting work to make human society more
