Originator of the Term “Eco-City” Cites Misuse

As the person who first coined the term “Eco-city”, Ecocity Builders founder Richard Register questions the interpretation of the term in such places as the upcoming Abu Dhabi World Future Energy Summit in January of 2010. Register has been an advocate for the idea of ecologically healthy cities since 1965, and he started using the word variously spelled ecocities, eco-cities and EcoCities in 1979. According to Register, the ecocity is designed on the measure of the human being, not the car, powered by solar energy, fed by organic farming and designed to build soils and restore biodiversity and climate stability. He says we know it can be done because he knows people who are doing it.

The Abu Dhabi conference will feature engineering firm Arup’s design of Dongtan, China (on hold for three years now) and San Francisco’s Treasure Island, as well as Abu Dhabi’s Masdar eco-city.   The conference ventures to design the whole city a little differently, using renewable energy systems, better recycling, rooftop gardens and shade roofs over building in hot climates, and more pedestrian-oriented streets. Register says these goals are virtuous, but he also says that the emPHAsis is on the wrong syllAble.  The talk is more about massive new renewable energy supplies than energy conservation by city redesign ­ and Masdar’s so-called “pods” look suspiciously like a different design for cars after all.  Biofuels are also problematic, as it requires

According to Register, the Abu Dhabi conference attempts, once again, to make cars a central feature of the ecocity. Register believes this is a contradiction.  The automobile, he says, is on average about 30 times heavier than a human being and takes up about 60 times the volume standing still.  Moreover, car accidents kill a million people every year and contribute heavily to climate change. In Register’s view, the car is intrinsically incorrigible. When designing cities on the demands of automobiles, you have to invest billions of extra dollars on streets, parking lots and parking structures, freeways and interchanges, police and ambulance services, insurance, hospital bills and on and on. What if you put that money instead into designs based on the dimensions of the human body supported by bicycles and transit? Register suggests that car companies switch to a different product line building streetcars, trains, elevators, bicycles and the mixed-use cities that bring jobs, commerce and social life close together on much smaller areas of land.  “It’s a full employment, planning and intelligence-rich strategy for green jobs,” says Register.

Register is not alone in his interpretation of the “ecocity.”  The term has similarly been defined by the likes of Arizona architect Paolo Soleri, Curitiba Mayor Jaime Lerner (Brazil), Chinese ecocity theoretician, Congress member and Director of the Research at the Research Center for Ecological and Environmental Studies at the Chinese Academy of Science Rusong Wang, and climate scientist Stephen Schneider who accepted the 2007 Nobel Prize on behalf of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes.

“I met Arizona architect Paolo Soleri in 1965,” Register recounts, “in the early years of his talking about the disasters of the sprawl/automobile/paving/cheap energy way of designing and laying out cities. Soleri’s comment that no complex living organism is flat and spread out like a sheet of paper or the suburbs ­ two-dimensional rather than thee-dimensional in his words ­ and that cars are intrinsically an anti-city anti-human and ultimately anti-nature invention struck me as absolutely fundamental to understanding what human civilizations should be building.”

Register calls the relationship between complex living organisms like our own bodies and the complex built environment of cities, towns and villages “The Anatomy Analogy.”  He believes it prescribes a much more compact city like those of Europe as compared with those of the United States. But he and Soleri take the idea farther in proposing cities with buildings linked by bridges and the full range of community life and economy organized in much smaller spaces, leaving much more land and water for nature and agriculture while demanding far less in resources for life in the city. The lean and frugal city is Soleri’s term for such design.

Register’s organization – Ecocity Builders – along with Parantez Fair International in Istanbul, Turkey will hold the Eighth International Ecocity Summit in Istanbul this December. The world-renowned series follows the first, held in Berkeley in 1990, and five subsequent conferences in Australia, Senegal, Brazil, China and India. Ecocity World Summit 2008 will take center stage before a highly influential community of architects, planners, designers, policy makers, green businesses, political and nonprofit leaders, with the added participation of international experts and delegates.

Information on the upcoming Eighth International Ecocity Conference in Istanbul is available at www.ecocity2009.com and information on Ecocity Builders in Oakland, California is at www.ecocitybuilders.org

Moving around suburbs costs more

An article in today’s San Francisco Chronicle titled S.F. transportation costs lower than in suburbs quotes a report being released by the Urban Land Institute with the all-encompassing title of “Bay Area Burden: Examining the costs and impacts of housing and transportation on Bay Area residents, their neighborhoods and the environment.”

Not that we didn’t know this already, but it says that “the average San Francisco household spends roughly $500 less on transportation each month than households in such suburban outposts as Antioch or Livermore.” All the talk about the inherent costs and problems associated with suburban life is great, but it’s the hard numbers that often drive the point home.

For families in more distant automobile-reliant suburbs, though, the monthly transportation costs spike. The estimate for Antioch is $1,311, for instance, while in Livermore it’s $1,281. Cities with little connection to transit also suffer – such as Pacifica, where a household’s monthly transportation is estimated to cost $1,246.

Read the whole article, it’s a good one to quote the next time someone tells you they live in the suburbs because it’s cheaper. Also check out the full report at bayareaburden.org. Also, check out the recent article Investment in public transit creates U.S. jobs for new green economy in The Hill.

Topsoil: The World’s Urban Sponge

All those urbanites growing organic food in the city has a certain appeal for the media, but to the average person, it may feel like a temporary marginal fad at best.  So why are city governments around the world taking it so seriously?  As it turns out, this trend has the potential to solve some of the worst problems that cities face – namely, climate change and water shortages – with a simple element: Topsoil.

Over the last several decades, many of the rainforests that act as our “carbon sinks” have been slashed and burned to make way for agricultural production.  Likewise, grasslands and savannas in Africa and America are routinely burned to make space for agriculture.  The farms that consequently inhabit those places feed the world’s cities – from Buenos Aires to Anchorage, Tokyo to Sydney, and everywhere in between.  Moreover, as cities expand to make room for sprawling communities, former farmlands are converted to suburbs because land-holders typically sell to the highest bidder – developers.  Consequently, more farmland must be created and more wild places (habitat) destroyed to make room for more farms.

The global market for agricultural products has obvious implications for climate change, as carbon-sequestering forests are cleared and products are shipped long distances using vast amounts of fossil fuels.  However, what may be less obvious is the solution to feeding the world’s cities without encroaching on our wild lands and carbon sinks.

Most people know by now that forests pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, helping to fight climate change.  What might be less apparent is that soil sequesters carbon with far less risk than forests.  As temperatures rise due to climate change, bark beetles have begun to infest many of North America’s forests, killing off thousands of acres of forest and priming these vast swaths of land for massive forest fires.  Once the trees are dead, one lighting strike or one match will be all it takes to send all that sequestered carbon back up into the atmosphere.  If sequestering carbon in forests is our plan, this is quite a gamble.

Healthy topsoil, on the other hand, can soak up carbon with a remarkable rate of absorption and no risk of loss to the atmosphere during forest fires.  Collectively, tillage management and cropping systems in the U.S. are estimated to have the potential to sequester 30–105 million metric tons of carbon per year, says R. F. Follett in an abstract on ScienceDirect.  Unfortunately, we are losing topsoil around the world at an alarming rate. According to Allan Savory and Christopher Peck of Natural Investment Services, LLC, it is estimated today that our crop and range lands lose 4 tons of soil every year for every person alive. That’s 21 gigatons of soil lost to the sea, lost to productive use on land and releasing vast amounts of carbon (New Scientist, December 2006).  Thus, the problem with our current practices lies not only in deforestation, but also in our astronomical loss of topsoil to the world’s ocean because of overgrazing, poor farming practices, resulting erosion, and urban runoff.

Topsoil is not the only thing we are giving away to the world’s oceans.  Fresh water is systematically being diverted from our aquifers in an attempt to avoid flooding.  The unintended consequence of our diversion strategy is that we are depleting our aquifers and causing severe water shortages for ourselves and for species that rely on fresh water.  The water wars that happen every year in communities around the U.S. have as much to do with our ecological illiteracy as with a drought in any given year.  Our cities’ lack of permeable surfaces and topsoil to store the water mean that it’s not sinking into the ground and reaching our aquifers, nor is it being caught and stored for use in the dry season.  Instead, this fresh, drinkable rainwater is often contaminated by chemical lawn fertilizers, motor oil, and other products before hitting the asphalt and concrete gutters that will carry it to storm drains and ultimately, to the ocean.

Although the system may seem too set in asphalt and concrete to change, cities are catching on and, along with community-based organizations, pioneering a new pathway to solve many of their woes at once.   They are addressing climate change and water shortages (and epidemic obesity) simultaneously by building sustainable local agricultural systems that feed their residents on-site while acting as a giant sponge for both water (to recharge the aquifers) and carbon.

One example of such a city is Petaluma, CA.  On October 24th of this year, the City of Petaluma, along with nonprofits Daily Acts, Rebuilding Together Petaluma, and Petaluma Bounty, came together with over 200 citizens to sheet mulch 25,000 square feet of unused lawn at City Hall and install edible landscaping, community gardens, and a rooftop water catchment system.  Leaders at the event spoke about carbon sequestration in the soil, replenishing the aquifer, and providing a source of local organic food for city residents.  Large-scale private-public partnerships include the City of Detroit and Hantz Farm, which together may soon create the world’s largest urban farm, although it’s unclear what their plans are as far as sustainable farming practices go.

According to a U.N. climate change paper on agriculture last year, by 2030 an estimated 5.5 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent a year could be avoided by agriculture with about 89% achieved by soil carbon sequestration.  Cities have an opportunity to build carbon sequestering capacity, thus potentially qualifying for carbon credits while also reaping the benefits of tax revenues from the sale of agricultural products within their borders.  By creating permeable surfaces and building topsoil, cities will also begin to recharge their aquifers, avoiding the water wars with farmers that are so common in today’s system.  Perhaps those urban farmers are really onto something.

To learn more about urban agriculture around the world, consider attending the Eighth Annual International EcoCity World Summit.   A highly influential community of architects, planners, designers, policy makers, green businesses, political and nonprofit leaders, with the added participation of international experts and delegates will be convening for the conference to present papers and ideas on the EcoCity and its role in the escape from dangerous climate change.  Participants from Australia, the U.S., the U.K., Israel, France, Senegal, Egypt, Singapore, India, Nepal and more will join together in the discussion in Istanbul this December.  In addition, more than 100 papers will be presented in concurrent sessions from more than 40 countries representing young emerging and pioneering talent from around the world.

For more information, go to: http://www.ecocity2009.com

Author:
Stacey Meinzen
www.ClimateActionPlans.com

Tailpipes, Traffic and Climate Change

In the early 1960’s, International Ecocity Conference Series Founder and President of NGO Ecocity Builders’ Richard Register was living in Los Angeles when it was, as he says, “Hell on wheels, smog burning your throat and eyes and hundreds of ‘excess deaths’ a year from air pollution.”  Register has never been fond of cars, but he concedes that almost five decades later, despite millions more cars on the road, catalytic converters have done much to clean up the smog problem in LA. However, he still takes issue with car-centric cities. While no one would disagree that clearing the air of smog is a good thing, we must ask ourselves if slapping a filter on our tailpipes is enough to abate the other problems that come with lots of cars.  Nothing we add to our tailpipe can alleviate traffic, prevent car accidents that kill 40 thousand people in the U.S. every year, make our communities more walkable, or stop climate change.

While owning a car has become a common aspiration in many developing countries, those Los Angeleans who daily spend two or more hours sitting in traffic on LA freeways may wonder why anyone would want to follow suit.  According to Forbes.com, the annual delay per driver in the U.S. is in excess of 47 hours per year, creating delayed shipments and wasting more than 2.3 billion gallons of fuel each year.  Moreover, according to the Texas Transportation Institute the cost of U.S. traffic delays is, conservatively, $63.1 billion a year, based on 2003 figures.

Yet the world drives on.

In Sao Paulo, nearly 1,000 cars are added to the streets each day. Traffic in Bangkok has gotten so bad that hundreds of women over the past few years have been forced to give birth in cars. The Royal Thai Traffic Police has trained 145 of its officers in basic midwifery.  While some may admire the multi-tasking that’s inherent in such a situation, perhaps it’s time to think about creating a different kind of city.

As we approach the UN Climate Talks in Copenhagen this December, we might consider stepping back – way back – out of our cities and looking in at what has happened to them.  Could they not be better designed to meet humanity’s needs and to avoid catastrophic climate change?  Could they not afford us more time with family and friends and less time stuck in a metal box with wheels on a four-lane road?

Register believes the answer is yes.  His solution? The EcoCity.  Register first conceived of the idea several decades ago, calling it, “One stop shopping for all your solutions.” According to Register, EcoCities could not only run on one tenth of the energy that cities currently do, but also could bring on the age of bicycle and rails while reducing car crashes and supporting solar and wind energy.  EcoCities also hold the promise of reforestation and restoration of vast areas of green space and farmland recovered from urban sprawl.

Register is far from alone in this idea.  A highly influential community of architects, planners, designers, policy makers, green businesses, political and nonprofit leaders, with the added participation of international experts and delegates will be convening at the Eighth Annual International EcoCity World Summit to present papers and ideas on the EcoCity and its role in the escape from dangerous climate change.  Participants from Australia, the U.S., the U.K., Israel, France, Senegal, Egypt, Singapore, India, Nepal and more will join together in the discussion in Istanbul this December.  In addition, more than 100 papers will be presented in concurrent sessions from more than 40 countries representing young emerging and pioneering talent from around the world.

For more information, go to: http://www.ecocity2009.com

Author:
Stacey Meinzen
www.ClimateActionPlans.com

Moving in the City: A Promise For Better Health

The recent healthcare debate has highlighted many problems with the current U.S. healthcare system. Escalating costs, denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions and the lack of health insurance for almost 50 million Americans all point to the need for some revisions. While some deep systemic changes are needed, the healthcare debate must also include discussion of some of the underlying causes of the widespread health problems that are taxing the healthcare system.

When we talk about healthcare we usually think of the interaction between patient and doctor when the patient is sick. However, we often fail to acknowledge that healthcare starts long before this meeting. According to a recent report in Archives of Internal Medicine, four healthy lifestyle factors—never smoking, maintaining a healthy weight, exercising regularly and following a healthy diet—together appear to be associated with as much as an 80% reduction in the risk of developing the most common and deadly chronic diseases.

What’s truly stunning about this number is that, smoking habits aside, these factors are heavily dependent on collective structural decisions we have made about how to live together and move around. It is true that a person can choose to join a health club and work off the extra pounds from sitting idle in their office and car all day. But how did we ever arrive at a situation where little to none of our daily activities involve that most basic of human functions, moving our bodies?

The connection between city design and public health has become a popular topic among public health officials for good reason. Several recent studies show just what a toll car-centric lifestyles have taken on the American population.

A study entitled Relationship Between Urban Sprawl and Physical Activity, Obesity, and Morbidity published in the American Journal of Health Promotion found this: “People living in counties marked by sprawling development are likely to walk less and weigh more than people who live in less sprawling counties. In addition, people in more sprawling counties are more likely to suffer from hypertension (high blood pressure). Physical inactivity and being overweight are factors in over 200,000 premature deaths each year. Meanwhile, rising health care costs are threatening state budgets. Getting decision makers to consider how the billions spent on transportation and development can make communities more walkable and bikeable is one avenue to improving the health and quality of life of millions of Americans.”

Another study of nearly 11,000 people in the Atlanta area found that people living in highly residential areas tend to weigh significantly more than those in places where homes and businesses are close together. The effect appeared to be largely the result of the amount of time people spend driving or walking. Each hour spent in a car was associated with a 6 percent increase in the likelihood of obesity and each half-mile walked per day reduced those odds by nearly 5 percent, the researchers found.

“The kind of neighborhood where a person lives clearly has an effect on their health,” said Lawrence D. Frank, an associate professor of community and regional planning at the University of British Columbia, who led the study.

The CDC’s statement on climate change and public health states that “walking and bike riding are more than alternate forms of transportation; they are steps to healthier lives. Automobile traffic contributes to air pollution, which in turn means more illnesses related to breathing problems such as asthma. Furthermore, every additional car on the road can lead to increases in the numbers of injuries and deaths from vehicle crashes, which already kill more than 40,000 people each year die.”

Clearly, the way we have sprawled across the landscape is at the core of our health problems with our planet and our own bodies. High-density cities that connect housing, commerce, urban parks and farms using public transit, bike paths and pedestrian walkways hold promise for vastly improving our public health. Such an approach addresses the cause instead of treating the symptoms of our healthcare woes.

Several city planning and policy experts will be addressing the issue of public health in cities at the upcoming EcoCity World Summit in Istanbul this December. Presenters will include Richard Register of EcoCity Builders, Walter Hood (urbanist, landscape architect), Ken Yeang (bioclimatic design), David Hall (New Vista Ecocity), the World Bank Eco2Cities program, Global Footprint Network, Janet Larsen of Earth Policy Institute (representing Lester Brown’s Plan B), and Brent Toderian, head of City Planning for City of Vancouver, Canada and author of the EcoDensity Initiative.