Green ArchiTEXT

San Francisco Gets Its First Eco-District

CREDITS: San Francisco Planning Department

By Laura Tam

Over the last year, there’s been palpable buzz in San Francisco around eco-districts — essentially, sustainability plans that operate at the neighborhood scale. We’ve learned about different eco-district models and how eco-districts are working in Portland, Seattle, Brooklyn and Denver. The San Francisco Planning Department has been especially proactive in this learning process, putting together numerous presentations on district-scale infrastructure and sustainability throughout 2012. The largest of these meetings, held last August at SPUR, kicked off a planning process for an eco-district in the Central Corridor of San Francisco. This 24-square-block area south of Market Street, centered around 4th Street, is currently undergoing a neighborhood planning and rezoning process to better manage and support growth around the new Central Subway.

What’s the buzz about? In areas of transition like the Central Corridor — once an industrial area and increasingly the home of the city’s high-tech sector — neighborhood rezoning creates many opportunities for new development. Some of this will be private development on sites within the corridor, and some will be public investment in transportation assets, water, wastewater, energy and neighborhood parks. The Central Corridor Eco-District was conceived to help the transitioning neighborhood perform well on the city’s environmental goals for greenhouse gas reductions, zero waste, water conservation and efficiency, stormwater management, renewable energy, transportation and more. READ MORE >>

via www.sustainableindustries.com

Jeanne Gang: Building A Wilder City

By Caroline Winter

Studio Gang Architects—run by Jeanne Gang, 48, and her husband, Mark Schendel—moved into the gritty Chicago neighborhood of Wicker Park in 2002. Initially, they shared their floor, above an Aldo shoe store, with a personal injury lawyer, a communist bookstore, and a poetry group. As these neighbors moved on and Gang’s reputation grew—she won a MacArthur Fellow “genius” grant in 2011—Studio Gang took over. Inside, research specimens line several of the orderly studio’s walls and windowsills: mushrooms, rocks, bent baseball cards, and various samples of wood. “A lot of the stuff we do involves testing materials or making big, giant mock-ups,” says Gang, who is slim with light gray eyes, a wavy chestnut bob, and an uninhibited laugh. “There’s a lot of craftsmen out here, people who fabricate things for us. It’s almost like a whole ecology.”

Among Gang’s intentions is to invite a “more wild version” of nature into cities, using what she refers to as “green infrastructure” to support and enhance urban landscapes. “Nature as we see it in cities is created, it’s man-made, it’s redesigned in a certain sense,” says Gang. “I think it’s important not for romantic reasons, but for practical and experiential reasons, to extend biodiversity within the ecosystem.”

This fall, Chicago broke ground on Gang’s biggest designed wilderness to date: Northerly Island. The plan, devised by Gang in collaboration with the landscape architecture firm SmithGroupJJR, fashions a public park out of Meigs Field, a former airport on a 91-acre man-made peninsula just off the southern tip of downtown Chicago. READ MORE >>

via www.businessweek.com

Place Capital: Re-connecting Economy With Community

...reform—of transportation, food systems, and so many aspects of the way we live—is no longer about adding bike lanes or buying veggies from a local farmer; the time has come to re-focus on large-scale culture change. Advocates from different movements are reaching across aisles to form broader coalitions. While we all fight for different causes that stir our individual passions, many change agents are recognizing that it is the common ground we share—both physically and philosophically—that brings us together, reinforces the basic truths of our human rights, and engenders the sense of belonging and community that leads to true solidarity.

Even when we disagree with our neighbors, we still share at least one thing with them: place.  Our public spaces—from our parks to our markets to our streets—are where we learn about each other, and take part in the interactions, exchanges, and rituals that together comprise local culture. Speaking at PWPB, Copenhagenize.com founder Mikael Colville-Andersen made this point more poetically when he said that “The Little Mermaid statue isn’t Copenhagen’s best monument. I think the greatest monument that we’ve ever erected is our bicycle infrastructure: a human-powered monument.”

Photo: Spacing Magazine via Flickr

Our public spaces reflect the community that we live in, and are thus the best places for us to begin modeling a new way of thinking and living. We can all play a more active role in the cultural change that is starting to occur by making sure that our actions match our values—specifically those actions that we take in public places. READ FULL ARTICLE >>

via www.pps.org

Atlantic Cities: The Real Reason Cities Can Be So Much Greener Than Other Places

By Michael Mehaffy

For those who do research on the sustainability of cities, there's a tantalizing puzzle. Per capita, cities are greener than other places; urban residents have a much smaller ecological footprint.

In our current models, we understand only about half of that difference, perhaps even less. To be sure, some of the greenness of cities is not so hard to explain. For example, people drive less in bigger cities because it's harder to drive, and because it's easier to get around without a car. Other factors are small in themselves, but add up: the closer spacing of buildings results in lower transmission losses and pumping energy; there's less embodied energy in roads and other infrastructure; urban residences tend to be more compact and energy-efficient.

But the most intriguing reason may be the one we understand the least: people in cities actually interact and use resources in a more efficient pattern. When we look at individual factors in isolation, we miss the synergetic effects of this network. READ MORE >>

via www.theatlanticcities.com

BSA LifeStructures' Urban Forest: Modeling Nature for Sustainable Solutions

Interesting ideas being developed via BSA LifeStructures' Urban Forest concept - on their blog at "Some Cities Contemplate Sustainability, Others Are Living It":

Cities today are looking for an edge to curb operational expenses. Where capital is available, investing in sustainable technologies is a win-win. The city of South Bend, with the help of BSA LifeStructures, is moving towards a more sustainable model; beginning with the development of Ignition Park on the brownfield site formerly occupied by the Studebaker Corporation. BSA LifeStructures' Urban Forest concept focuses on bringing sustainable technologies to the urban setting. Through our campus planning and business incubator planning strategies we are aiming to reduce storm water runoff, generate sustainable power, and lessen the development footprint of the park. While these technologies and concepts are adding to the initial development cost, the payback is such that the city couldn't afford not to move forward with these concepts. In fact, the city is looking to utilize these concepts outside of the park as they address sustainability regionally.

The goal when implementing a concept like the Urban Forest is to gain support from multiple entities and interests within the community. READ MORE >>

via blog.bsalifestructures.com

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

Cities as Ecosystems: A Fresh Look

By Michael Totty

Cities are hot (as in buzz, not global warming) among environmental thinkers, thanks in part to the growing consensus that dense urban areas represent the most sustainable way for billions of people to live (at least when compared with suburban sprawl). So we asked some economists, planners and urban experts to suggest the most influential books on sustainable cities. Here are their recommendations:

Matthew Kahn is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, teaching in the school's Institute of the Environment and the departments of economics and public policy.

"Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence" By Peter Newman and Jeffrey Kenworthy

"The Transit Metropolis: A Global Inquiry" By Robert Cervero

Both books introduced me to the broad idea of how a city's urban form affects its residents' travel behavior. Put simply, when people live and work at higher density in closer proximity to fast public transit, they are more likely to use public transit, and the end result is a smaller per capita carbon footprint. It is important to note that none of these authors are economists—economists can learn plenty from urban planners!

Peter Weingarten is the director of architecture in the San Francisco office of the Gensler architecture, design and planning firm.

"Living in the Endless City" By Ricky Burdett and Deyan Sudjic, editors

"Living in the Endless City" is a companion to the 2008 publication "The Endless City." These two books are essential reading for anyone interested in a comprehensive understanding of the state of contemporary cities. Economic sustainability underpins any truly sustainable development. Few books do as good a job as these two at articulating the scope of challenges today's cities face. The contributors lay out a veritable mountain of information and statistics on the changes facing contemporary cities, from urban migration to energy consumption and climate change. READ MORE >>

via online.wsj.com

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

ArchNewsNow: 2011 Rudy Bruner Award Winners Offer Innovative Models for Urban Placemaking

The Rudy Bruner Award, now in its 13th award cycle, has a longstanding commitment to promoting excellence in urban placemaking, and has honored more than 65 projects since its establishment in 1986. Acknowledging the dynamic interplay between process, place, and community values in realizing successful design, the award engages an in-depth, on-site evaluation process that strives to recognize outstanding interdisciplinary approaches to transforming urban challenges into community opportunities. These projects comprise a rich collection of well-documented case studies that serve as a growing resource for practitioners and community leaders alike.

Five projects from around the U.S. were recently honored with the 2011 Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence. The prestigious biennial award recognizes exceptional civic places that harness collaborative design processes to improve the urban environment. At a time when conventional approaches to project development have been plagued by economic challenges, this year’s award winners exemplify flexible, resilient strategies for effecting lasting positive change within their communities. As the Gold Medal recipient, the Bridge Homeless Assistance Center in Dallas, Texas, will receive $50,000, while four Silver Medal recipients will receive $10,000 each.

While encompassing a wide range of disciplines and approaches, this year’s winners reflect a common understanding of the critical role that citizens, institutions, and governments play in the creation of successful civic places. Each project offers a powerful example of the positive influence that community-minded design and development can have in empowering local communities and addressing pressing social issues. READ MORE >>

via www.archnewsnow.com

Montreal discovers it's not easy going green

By Alex Aylett

Loving Montreal in the winter takes practice; loving it in the summer is easy. Festivals crop up everywhere, café tables spill out onto the streets, and parks overflow with people taking in the beauty of the days. This is the season when we show off our colours to the world. But according to a new Green Cities Index produced by The Economist, one colour that is not on display is green.

Released last week, the index evaluated 27 North American cities in nine key areas ranging from carbondioxide emissions to how they govern environmental issues. Montreal ranked 19th overall, and last among the four Canadian cities in the index - trailing Calgary by four spots. Other Canadian cities fared much better. Vancouver was ranked second overall, and Toronto also finished in the top 10. That a city as dynamic and creative as Montreal should have ranked so low raises important questions.

It is not all bad news for Montreal. We earned high marks in transportation, thanks to our high rate of non-automobile commuters (second only to New York,) and investments in public transit and cycling infrastructure. In total 29 per cent of us leave our cars at home when we head to work every morning. That's more than double the index average of 13 per cent, and well above Detroit's laggard four per cent. Our ranking was also bumped up because of our low per-capita carbon-dioxide emissions (thank Hydro-Québec for that one) and our high recycling rates.

You could probably have guessed that Montreal would have done well in those areas. They are all the result of decades of municipal and provincial investment. Where we've ranked poorly is more telling: Montreal has among the fewest per-capita LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)-certified green buildings in the index; we use more energy per capita than the index average; and the carbon and energy efficiency of our local economy is abysmal. For every dollar of local gross domestic product, Montreal uses almost three times more energy than the index average. READ MORE >>

via www.montrealgazette.com