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Green Intelligence Forum: Creating the Sustainable City of the Future

The Atlantic is currently hosting the fourth-annual Green Intelligence Forum: Creating the Sustainable City of the Future, once again bringing together the world's leading authorities on energy and the environment for two days of dynamic conversation on the issues at the forefront of sustainable thought. On the first day, the Forum will explore macro trends in energy and the environment, including discussions on both national and global policy and sustainable business.  The following day, the event will examine green intelligence through the framework of sustainable cities. Expert panels will engage in key dialogue on topics including energy infrastructure, green building, and clean transportation

Scientific American Special Issue on Cities: Better, Greener, Smarter

Living City Design Competition Winners: "People thriving in partnership with nature”

The International Living Future Institute and the National Trust for Historic Preservation Bestow Top Honors and $75,000 to Paris team for “visionary pragmatism”

IMAGES: International Living Future Institute

First Place in the competition went to the UK's Daniel Zielinski and Maximilian Zielinski for their reinterpretation of Paris.

The International Living Future Institute today announced the winners of the Living City Design Competition, which it hosted in partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, at Living Future ‘11.  The competition called for teams worldwide to create powerful visualizations of how existing cities might be transformed to achieve and transcend the Living Building Challenge 2.0, the built environment’s most rigorous performance standard.
 
More than 80 teams submitted entries, addressing 69 different cities spanning 21 countries. Submissions were evaluated based on their ability to capture the attention and imagination of a broad audience and reassess assumptions about a future filled with high-tech, ecologically dislocated cities.  Rather than constructing new cities from scratch, submissions also focused on the premise that a “living” future will rely on retrofitting the existing built environment and regenerating the evolutionary capacity of life.
 
“Each of the entries represented the crucial first steps in redefining our urban ecosystems and how they work in tandem with their natural environment,” said Jason F. McLennan, CEO of the International Living Future Institute and a member of the seven-person jury panel that selected the winners.  “This process was at least as important as the impressive end results.”
 
The Winners

Daniel Zielinski and Maximilian Zielinski of the United Kingdom earned the first-place prize and a $75,000 award for their Paris-based entry, which was able to combine a deep respect for the City of Light’s rich history and culture with a pragmatism that could be implemented in myriad contexts.  The jury noted: “Daniel and Maximilian crafted an elegant interplay of design solutions with real-world strategies.  Their submission achieved the end goal in a way that welcomed and incorporated the present, and instead of simply showing how the ‘natural world’ might colonize urban environments, it created fertile ground for people thriving in partnership with nature.”
 
The team Atelier G40 captured second place, including a $25,000 award for its entry, “City Makes. City Lives.” that re-envisioned Bellingham, Wash.  The jury was impressed with the strategic nature of the team’s approach to urban transformation.  The jury couched this entry as a cleanly conceived approach that showed a deep cultural understanding of its place.
 
As it was first conceived, the Living City Design Competition included an additional stand-alone prize of $25,000 to be awarded to the entry that best incorporated historic preservation into its vision for the future.  During the review process, however, the jury concluded that because all of the leading entries fully incorporated the historic character of their communities, the original intent of the award was no longer warranted.  Instead, the jury awarded five teams $5,000 each in recognition of their unique contributions:

• Earning the Can-Do Award for its entry, “Coeur d’Alene After the Reign,” a student team from the University of Idaho was acknowledged for its ability to demonstrate how a post-oil world might also include healthier, more supportive and more meaningful community life.  The jury summed up the theme of this entry as: “The future’s gonna be fun.”
• Two entries took the Images that Provoke Award: Team [GU] of Seattle and Rollerhaus Pictureworks & Design Co. of Chicago each earned high marks from the judges for their powerful visuals.  The jury noted that “these entries make the viewer feel physically transported into an imagined reality.”  The Chicago team achieved this effect by “overlaying the prairie on the city,” while the Seattle project achieved what the jury termed “Watershed: Reclaimed, City: Bubblewrapped.”
• The Cities that Learn Award was given to Ashok B. Lall Architects of New Dehli, India and Team OLIN of Philadelphia, Penn.  The “evolving blocks” explored in “Patchwork Philadelphia” and the “catalyzing of the emergence of healthy diversity” envisioned in New Dehli both demonstrated nuanced conceptions of how the cultures and traditions developed in different neighborhoods might interact.  These entries acknowledged cultural realities and explored how social equity might lead to ecologically restored cities.

Reflecting on this diverse pool of entries, the jurors noted: “We were heartened that, collectively, the competition’s participants demonstrated a deep understanding of the foundational elements of a restorative civilization.  Some entries brilliantly addressed the built environment’s relationship to waterways; others celebrated the human element and reminded us that we are intrinsic to our ecosystems; and still others showed a subtle awareness of the healing power of thriving, connected habitat.”
 
Four other submissions were selected by attendees at Living Future ’11 as the winners of the People’s Choice and Living Building Community choice awards:

• “Chamizal Connection” by Alvarez and Sanchez was honored in both categories for its regeneration of an urban zone in Mexico City
• “Symbiotic Districts: Towards a Balanced City” by Portland Ecodistricts was also selected as a People’s Choice award
• “Fight for your Right of Way” by The Miller Hull Partnership and “Pioneer Square – Living Green and Blue” by International Sustainability Network were also chosen as Living Building Community choice award winners

“The Living City Design Competition teams have engaged in a process that is truly the beginning of the work at hand: connecting with our communities, asking the crucial questions about how each specific place may be restored, and empowering communities to participate in their own evolution,” the jurors stated.
 
The Judges

Composed of leading thinkers, critics and practitioners in the evolving field of restorative design, the jury included:

• Eden Brukman, Vice President, International Living Future Institute
• Liz Dunn, Director, Preservation Green Lab at the National Trust for Historic Preservation
• Doug Farr, President, Farr Associates
• Patrice Frey, Director of Sustainability, National Trust for Historic Preservation
• Jason F. McLennan, CEO, International Living Future Institute
• Bill Reed, Principal, Integrative Design Collaborative; Regenesis, Inc.; and Delving Deeper
• Susan Szenasy, Editor in Chief, Metropolis Magazine

Judges and competition organizers are now exploring ways in which the winning teams can engage with their respective communities to take these visions from conversation to action.

Second Place went to Atelier G40 for “City Makes. City Lives.”, re-envisioning Bellingham, Washington.

France plans 13 ecocities

By Daniel Finnan

France is set to have 13 ecocities attracting 50,000 extra inhabitants over the next 25 years in specially designed eco-quarters. The government has told local authorities to submit their plans by March next year.

Eighty per cent of France’s population lives in urban areas which produce 70 per cent of French greenhouse gas emissions. 

The plan aims to “show that it’s possible to grow, to welcome new inhabitants and do it in a sustainable way,” government adviser Emmanuelle Gay told RFI (Radio France Internationale).
 
The schemes will represent the “top level of sustainable urban development”, Gay says.
 
The “cities of tomorrow” scheme will receive 750 million euros out of the 35-billion-euro “big loan” that President Nicolas Sarkozy launched in an attempt to revive the economy. READ MORE >>

via www.english.rfi.fr

eVolo: Cities of Tomorrow - Envisioning the Future of Urban Habitat

eVolo 03 examines “innovative urban proposals that will transform the way we live; projects that preserve the natural landscape with integral architecture and urbanism with deep connections to site, culture, and environment. These are concepts of hybrid urbanism that offer a juxtaposition of programs to live, work, and play for a hyper-mobile population.”

Check out the latest issue of eVolo here.

Cities of Tomorrow:

Arup Biomimetics
AS/D
BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group
LAVA - Laboratory for Visionary Architecture
MAD Architects
Matter Management
MONAD Studio
NH Architecture
Rag Urbanism
Rojkind Arquitectos
SOFTlab
Ted Givens
Terreform One
Trahan Architects
UNStudio
Vincent Callebaut
Will Alsop
WOHA Studio

2010 Skyscraper Competition
Australia in 2050
Urban Visions: 1850 - 2100

 

Living Technology for Sustainable Cities

Rachel Armstrong looks at living principles and the use of metabolic materials for conservation and restoring the built environment in News in Conservation, from the International Institution for Conservation (IIC):

"All buildings built today have something in common. They’re made using Victorian technologies. This involves blueprints, industrial manufacturing and construction using teams of workers. All of this effort results in an inert object, creates an impenetrable barrier between architecture and the natural world and implies a one-way transfer of energy from our environment into our homes and cities. This is not sustainable. Genuinely sustainable homes and cities need to be connected to nature, not insulated from it.

From the perspective of conservation and restoration of architecture, building and the environment are viewed as separate and even oppositional systems. Approaches are aimed at combating the impact of natural systems on the passive materials that constitute our buildings. At the time of design, it is assumed that architecture is an immutable object that will not degrade, decay, suffer trauma or become colonized by unwelcome organisms. The policing of the interface between the built and natural environment is energetically costly and reinforces the barrier that architecture creates between human activity and the environment. Whilst this standoff continues we will need to engage in active surveillance of this interface and play continuous catch-up to combat the forces of nature." READ MORE >>

China's City of the Future

At a construction site in northern China, a billboard boasts of a "liveable city" where residents can drink tap water, travel on clean energy public transport and enjoy acres of parkland.

For now, the ambitious "eco-city" covering 30 square kilometers of non-arable salt pans and former fishing villages has more cranes than wind turbines and will not be finished for at least another decade.

But its developers hope the settlement near the port city of Tianjin will serve as an ultra-efficient alternative to ill-planned and heavily polluting mega-cities not only elsewhere in the country, but around the world.

Changing the environment

"We hope to influence our neighbors," said Goh Chye Boon, chief executive of Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City Investment & Development.

"With the right ingredients, with the right eco mindset, I think together we can change the environment." READ MORE >>

via business.globaltimes.cn

The Green City that has a Brain

 

IMAGE: New Scientist

 

An eco-city in Portugal that its makers are aiming to build by 2015 takes its cues from the nervous system

IF TODAY'S cities were living things, they would be monsters, guilty of guzzling 75 per cent of the world's natural resources consumed each year.

Now a more benign urban creature is set to emerge. The planned city of PlanIT Valley, on the outskirts of Paredes in northern Portugal, is aiming to be an environmentally sustainable city. And, just like an organism, it will have a brain: a central computer that regulates everything from its water use to energy consumption.

...

Like other sustainable cities, PlanIT Valley will treat its own water and tap renewable energy. Buildings will also have plant-covered roofs, which will reduce local temperature through evapotranspiration, as well as absorbing rainwater and pollutants.

Yet that is where the similarities with other eco-cities end, according to its makers Living PlanIT based in Paredes. For a start, PlanIT Valley will be built closer to existing transport links than the likes of Masdar. More significantly, its "brain" will use data collected from a network of sensors akin to a nervous system to control the city's power generation, water and waste treatment. It's a kind of "urban metabolism", says Steven Lewis, chief executive of Living PlanIT. READ MORE >>

via www.newscientist.com

'Climatopolis': An optimistic look at how cities will handle a hotter future

Global warming is a given, writes UCLA economist Matthew Kahn in his new book, “Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in the Hotter Future.” But Kahn’s perspective on this isn’t gloomy: He says we could flourish in warmer climes.

With pop culture-friendly references sprinkled throughout, the book examines what weather patterns will look like across the nation in the next 50 to 60 years. Kahn creates optimistic blueprints for how life might unfold in 2070.

He imagines New York City-style highrises by the beach, ponders if koi ponds are the best use of our water supply, and considers whether moats should be built around the mansions of Malibu. He writes of making the most of it and of happy endings — not what we’re used to reading in works on global warming. READ MORE >>

via latimesblogs.latimes.com

Eco City Dreaming | Orion Magazine

...soon my eyes are drawn up to glass and steel. The John Ross turns its thirty-one-story oval elegantly sideways to the view, imperial, convincing. Its neighbor, Atwater Place, is all Bauhaus severity, but two other towers, Meriwethers West and East (where I’m staying), are faced in granite of a soft, almost buttery color. Is this really a “neighborhood,” as the real-estate brochures insist? Four condo towers in varying states of habitation and emptiness, two more half-built, and a medical high-rise linked by its glamorous new aerial tram to Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), up on the crowding hills just behind: South Waterfront we suddenly call it, this wide wedge between Portland’s Willamette River and Interstate 5. It was industrial low-rises and forgotten brownfields until planners and developers noticed the potential for better things so very close to the river, to OHSU, to downtown.

I’m a nature writer come home to the city, dazzled by comfort and the utopian promise of green buildings, sustainability, transit. It’s a vision of urban yet eco-friendly living—in this case a gleaming playground for the rich, yet (in theory) also an answer to calls for environmental justice and social equity. It is the odd beast of metro-centric environmentalism, a new way to live in the postsuburban age.

via www.orionmagazine.org