Green City Design

“Liuzhou Forest City will be the first urban settlement in China that will be able to generate its own renewable energy, increase biodiversity, and effectively reduce urban air pollution—which is a major challenge for present-day China.”

Not only is this a major challenge for present-day China, it is also a concern for most other developed nations are facing. We need to start looking at sustainability on a global scale and working together to live in an environmentally friendly manner together by sharing innovations and ideas. There has been a lot of pushback on green design due to people not understanding the severe deleterious climate impact our current way of life is exerting on the Earth. People are also worried about the way change will impact their current way of life and accessibility to priorly expected comforts.

Here are the facts:

“Covering an area of approximately 175 hectares along the Liuzhou River, Forest City will have offices, houses, hotels, hospitals, and schools that will be entirely covered by a total of 40,000 trees and close to a million plants, including over 100 species. It will be connected to the main city of Liuzhou by a rail line with electrical train cars.”

We can still lead our ordinary lives in an environment that is designed to both serve us as well as our planet. This new city that China is planning to develop proves that a functioning metropolitan city can also compromise some space for nature and biodiversity. But can they truly hold a large amount of people while covering up every single persons environmental footprint?

“The new city will be able to accommodate an estimated 30,000 people, and its plant-covered buildings are expected to absorb close to 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide and 57 tons of pollutants, while producing approximately 900 tons of oxygen per year.”

Not only have they figured out a way to absorb the toxins we release into our environment, but found a solution to plant enough plants to supply us and our areas with excessive oxygen. It is time for us to learn from each other and start initiative cities like this world wide!

Construction is expected to begin in 2020. Can’t wait to watch the progress!!

Alaska’s Permafrost is in Danger

We all know that a huge consequence of climate change is the fact that our water supply would be in danger and our sea waters would rise. This is especially true for The Arctic.

According to scientists from Woods Hole Research Center,”the most urgent is the fate of permafrost, the always-frozen ground that underlies much of the state.”

This permafrost contains twice as much carbon as there is in the atmosphere, from plants that took carbon dioxide from the environment centuries ago. Scarily, once this permafrost thaws, microbes can convert some of it into carbon dioxide and methane, causing even more warming to our already endangered planet. Not to mention, the wildlife and residents who live around the area would experience harmful, drastic changes. 

Out negligence to fix the issue of climate change with urgency is creating much more damage to our earth than raising its temperature. It is affecting our water supply, and directly melting structures of ice vital to keeping homeostasis to our environment. We must conserve not only the water that we drink, but the water that gives structure and protection to places such as the arctic. With a combination of green and grey infrastructure and governments coming together to set a clear path to a sustainable world, we can stop Alaska’s permafrost from thawing completely and preserve the Earth for many future generations to come.

“Water water everywhere, nor any drop to drink” – Coleridge

I first read this piece in my freshman english class. All our previous classes dealt with issues of race and gender, so this essay was, at first, a bit of a surprise. Our lack of consciousness regarding water is astounding since it’s such an integral part of our lives.

“The water I will drink tonight in a restaurant in Hollywood is by now ell down the Los Angeles Aqueduct form the Owens River, and I also think about exactly where that water is: I particularly like to imagine it as it cascades down the 45-degree stone steps that aerate Owens water after its airless passage through the mountain pipes and siphons” (Didion 1).

She highlights the journey of water to the faucet, and the immense quest it must take, something she thinks about often because there is so very little of it in California. She also writes about the many different roles water plays in our lives. Indirectly and directly. When water impacts people indirectly, their knowledge of it is little. But for many people water, in the form of tropical storms, drought, floods, etc. Water is also a symbol for many people.  People outside of California often cite pools as forms of water waste, but Didion says that pools (once filled) require virtually no new water since it recirculates. For Didion, pools serve a much different purpose “… a pool is, for many of using the West, a symbol not of affluence but of control over the uncontrollable. A pool is water, made available and useful, and is, as such, infinitely sooting to the Western eye” (Didion 2). Which shows how important is to the human psyche. Water, is omnipresent in our lives, but nobody thinks about it until it’s scarce. 

 

Nature’s Patterns Determine Infrastructural Verdicts

With a lot of infrastructure, high population density, and building crowding, cities are especially limited in resources and space, among others. As a result, researchers doing a study in Melbourne argue that officials must be mindful of the additional infrastructure implemented. In Melbourne specifically, large desalination plants have been added to combat effects of drought. However, the construction of one of the more recent plants was poorly planned—when it finally opened in 2012, drought conditions had already receded. It was also $5 billion. So how can we better plan for these types of conditions? Researchers developed a system of water-supply analysis in which a decision tree can be generated for multiple uncertainties in the equation. After running a simulation of Melbourne over a period of 30 years, they found that 80% of the interval would not experience heavy drought onset. While the cost-effective alternative would be to build no new infrastructure, smaller modules for plants were proposed, creating infrastructure that would meet the needs of the population, but also take into account the frequency and uncertainties of drought events.

While this article discusses grey infrastructure, theories of data analysis and consideration of event frequency are applicable to green design. The incredible aspect of the data simulations is that they can be run hundreds of thousands of times (for Melbourne—100,000 times!) and are able to calculate the percentage of best and worst alternatives. With a number of green infrastructure options, we may be able to incorporate green infrastructure into this technique, expanding options for cities. Green infrastructure tends to be more enduring and cost-effective as well, so combining it with decision-making algorithms may prove very fortunate to cities lacking in space and funds.

The art of sustainability

 

This article showcases the impact art has on viewers. Art is interpretational allowing viewers to form their own opinions. During this process viewers are more likely to take interest because they are not being forced to learn, instead they are educating themselves. Professor John Robinson also states the importance of giving people the freedom to interpret on their own, “Around 90% of the visitors changed their cultural perceptions of animals and spontaneously made statements about the need for more sustainable lifestyles that can help conserve these animals. This happened without a single word being uttered or printed about conservation or sustainability. Viewers were subjected to an emotional experience, allowed to internalize it for themselves and see where that took them”. Usually people are taught through structured lectures and facts, this leads to emotional detachment. People are less inclined to care if they are bombarded with facts, but through art they form emotional attachments. This leads us to question our approach when spreading awareness on sustainability. Scientists should take a step back from lecturing (with data) to explore other avenues of spreading awareness.

Megacities & Green Infrastructure: Learning by Example

By Caroline Zuba

Today’s megacities have a lot to offer to residents. Not only are they attractive commercial centers, they offer an abundance of resources ranging from schools, doctors, non-profits. In megacities known for their high-pressure lifestyles, mental health is often overlooked. In growing cities like Tokyo, suicide rates are high, and mental health in general is low.

An often overlooked “solution,” or at the very least a potential help, is green infrastructure. Helpful in climate change work and water management control, it is easy to dismiss green infrastructure as useful for nothing more. However, this recent study shows that green infrastructure improves the general quality of life and may be helping improve mental health in residents. Accessibility to nature is often an issue for those in economies that do not prize either mental health, greenery, or down-time, and so the city must become responsible. In this case, Tokyo is stepping up to the plate to fight stigma and aid its community.

Green infrastructure, as mentioned before, is also useful in water control and climate change work. Trees are an exceptionally cheap way to help a city. Not only is mental health being addressed, the payoff is $505 million in decreased air pollution, improved stormwater remediation, savings in heating/cooling costs, and CO2 sequestration.

What Should Our Future Cities Look Like?

Even being in the year 2017, a year that represented “the future” in the past, humans continue looking forward to further improve and progress. One area that this thought process is employed in would be urban design. Architects, designers, and urban planners create plans for how our future cities should look like, taking into account the strive towards urban sustainability. ABIBOO Studio is an international design firm that focuses on innovation in architecture, urban areas, and interior spaces that allows for the integration of “arts, engineering, economics, sensorial experiences, and technology” (ABIBOO). In this article from ABIBOO’s Think Tank, Juanjo Ortega discussed the different aspects necessary to create an ideal future city, emphasizing urban sustainability as the key to the future. He presented a new strategy, hybrid urbanism, that offers programs for a city population involving projects to preserve natural landscape with architecture and urban planning that will help promote culture and the environment.

A couple of ideas and focuses presented by Ortega include buildings designed to clean the air through a series of green houses that work as filters and creation of terraces for collection of rainwater and agriculture or to bury organic residues to produce power, fertilizers and biogas. The main concept of his ideal future city is to have a “network of effective infrastructures in small areas with mainly touristic buildings where visitors and workers share the resources and the facilities” (Ortega).  The ideas he highlighted in this article involved solutions and innovations that will reform cities to make them more sustainable and more efficient for the future populations to come.

Children Are the Future – Education Should Start with Them.

They say you can’t teach an old dog a new trick. I’ve found this to be quite true; especially when it comes to any form of conservation. People from the older generation seem to be too stuck in their ways to change – refusing to embrace new technologies and ideas. The key to the future lies in the younger generations that still maybe taught how live in a mutually beneficial relationship with the environment. That is why I really liked the article, Getting Kids to Wise Up About Water Conservation,” by Kate Galbraith. In it Galbraith describes an organization with a goal of educating children in proper water management. She writes, “they give children a water-saving ethic and can also reach parents, who may not prioritize conservation.” Though this may be an uphill battle, any household that embraces the ideas their children bring home is an important victory.

Denmark Leads the Way To Use Water Sustainably

Researchers in Denmark are working on creating models of existing infrastructure to determine where leakages may be occurring. They are using algorithms to determine water pressure which can then be used to determine if there is a hole somewhere in the system. This is a very important development being made because issues within the infrastructure can cause cities to lose billions of liters of water that could be used as drinking water. Once this system is created, it can be used by cities globally to keep infrastructure and water use running efficiently and sustainably.

 

Water Conservation in Los Angeles

According to Jacques Leslie, writer for the NY Times, Los Angeles is one of the leading cities in water conservation efforts and reusable technology. Since 1970, the Los Angeles population has increased from 2.9 million to 3.8 million but the city is consuming less water than it did in 1970. Two main projects are responsible for these incredible results. LA has built a water treatment wetland in place of what used to be a bus maintenance yard. Additionally, a water management plan has prevented flooding in an area with 80,000 inhabitants. These projects lead to the recycling of wastewater from sewers, stormwater and polluted water. In 1990, LA was forced to limit the quantity of imported water as other cities are facing today to prevent overconsumption and wastewater. 89% of Los Angeles water is still imported today since rain is limited in LA and droughts are common. Even with this imported water, LA has reduced its per capita water use to 46 gallons a day. These outcomes are credited to the cycling of stormwater, groundwater and wastewater from homes. When it does rain in Los Angeles, major flooding occurs. To control future flooding, infrastructures were built to rapidly remove the stormwater into the Pacific Ocean and out of residential areas. Even though this controlled flooding, urban development led to increase water runoff due to impermeable cement streets. The water carries toxins, chemicals and pollutants and when moved into the Pacific Ocean, pollutes the beaches. As a solution Dorothy Green of Heal the Bay and Andy Lipkis of TreePeople proposed that instead of exporting the water into the sea, the water should be captured for recycling and stored water could be consumed as needed. A $2.7 million dollar plan helped capture stormwater in Sun Valley, which is prone to flooding. This project was completed in 2010 and allowed residents to collect stormwater. Projects like these has transformed Los Angeles from the infamous city of exported water to the leading city in water conservation efforts.

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