ReGeo progess

Padma is out, perhaps ReGeo is in. Moving into the phase of trying to display the system's flows in an easily readable way. What do you think of the "flow hexagon"?

Padma Mock-Up

29 days to go until SASBE2009 entries are due. Two sides of A3 and 500 words is a tight space for a project such as this. This is a mock-up of how we might fill the area with information.

Padma

Padma
[Sanskrit for Sacred Lotus]

The lotus in both Egypt and India symbolizes the union of the four elements; earth, air, fire, and water. The roots are in the earth, it grows in and by means of water, its leaves are nourished by air, and it blooms through the power of the sun's fire.

The name for our SASBE2009 competition entry?

5 km2
50,000 inhabitants

Unfinished street pattern

Concept for energy & material systems

Nieuwland, Amersfort, the Netherlands: Win? Fail?

Nieuwland is a housing development in the Netherlands of 5000 homes on about 75 hectares of greenfield. After being conceived in the 1980's as a sustainable community, it took many years to plan and is still expanding. "Sustainability" was achieved by a strong building code policy which enforces low-energy construction and necessitates solar panels. I had the chance to take a tour of the town during which I developed some strong reactions.

Win:
- Each section of the city is designed by one or more architects; each of whom took a very different approach to applying their mandatory solar panels. The result is a sort of solar panel design test facility. Some of the buildings look awful while others pull off the feat with charm.
- The radial street plan is walking and bicycling friendly.
- Canals and a small lake are great landscape elements.

Fail:
- Yuppy takover. Nieuwland fails to reach any socio-economic class other than middle-class families who are drawn to the quiet community for its safety and schools. "Everybody has two kids and two cars," said the tour guide. Boredom lays heavily in the air.
- A three meter earthen wall surrounds the entire community for "sound protection" but feels more like an attempt to make a gated community. By walling themselves in, connectivity is lost and further dependence on automobiles is created.
- The city center is literally a parking lot, depriving the inhabitants of a community feel.
- The one shopping center feels like Disney Land and lacks store variety. There are no street cafes or smaller shops interspersed in the community.
- There is too much street parking and personal garages. People drive into town center despite the bicycle lanes.

Nieuwland is relevant because it is a testing ground for sustainable building and a showcase for what can go wrong in city planning when mixed-use and mixed-economic class issues are not accounted for.

Energy Storing Kinetic Monument

Store energy during peak production times. Extra power is used by a winch to elevate a monument in an urban setting.
Release green electricity on demand. As the monument is lowered, the energy is captured by a turbine.

Create awareness for energy issues. The physicality of the monument allows the onlooker to put abstract notions of electricity use and kilowatt hours into a tangible object. The monument also adds a dynamic element to its setting by gently rising and lowering with the electricity supply and demand.

Specifications: (scalable to other situations)
3m x 3m x 15m concrete obelisk
324,000 kg
Storage capacity:
8.83 kWh
Equivalent to:
15 street lights (50 watts) for 12 hours

Post-Oil Wells of Opportunity

click to view larger

This generation has the great honor to transition from the Fossil Fuel Age to renewable resources. During this development, it would be fruitful to reuse oil and gas wells as geothermal energy plants.

Adaptive reuse of society's legacy from previous economic regimes can lead to low-cost and highly sustainable future. No one knows exactly how many oil and natural gas wells there are in the world, but the value is in the tens of millions.

The geothermal activity varies from well to well depending upon factors such as well depth, the thickness of the Earth's crust in that area, and local subterranean temperature. Many of these wells were drilled deep into the earths crust, even as far as 11 km deep.

While a well with a temperature of 200°C can power a city, even wells which produce 37°C can power a neighborhood. Several smaller wells in close proximity can also be combined into one system.

An oil or gas well does not have to be empty to harness geothermal energy: even operating wells can use the heat of rising water or petroleum for geothermal power. In the case of depleted wells, often hot water can be brought to the surface. If a well is hot dry rock, Enhanced Geothermal Systems can be used.

Texas is leading the way towards capturing geothermal power from active and empty oil wells ("Stripper fields" is the Texas lingo for depleted oil and gas wells) of which the state has over 1,000,000. Building off abundant existing oil and gas infrastructure, several transformation studies have been completed with promising results. They have shown that existing oil and gas wells posses temperatures within the range for electrical power production [pdf].

"There are 5,000 megawatts of geothermal power in hot water coming up from abandoned oil wells in West Texas," says Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association, a trade consortium. "All that energy is just being wasted." [link]

Geothermal energy provides clean, renewable baseload electricity available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, unlike the inherent uncertainty with wind or solar energy. Geothermal heat as low as 37°C can be used to make electricity in a binary power plant. This method of power generation is very environmentally-friends as binary plants use a self-contained cycle. Nothing from the process is emitted, including "greenhouse gases".

To take advantage of the Fossile Fuel Age's legacy resources, oil and gas wells throughout the world should be evaluated for their geothermal potential. However, I would like to offer a further consideration.

Cities in the temperate regions of the earth not only have a high demand for electricity, but also heat. Geothermal wells cogenerate electricity and heat. In order to effectively use the heat resource, which has a low transmission distance, future communities could be stragetically located on post-oil well sites. Heat accounts for a large percentage of building upkeep costs. It has already been shown that cascading heat from natural resources and industry in places like Denmark and Iceland works.

The energy (and exergy) from the well would then be used several times. Heat would cascade from power generation, to heavy industry, to greenhouses, and finally to dwellings, which only require 40*C.

The vision is for a city which blooms around the geothermal hotspot as desert life is centered around an oasis.

Living Artefact

After much creative brainstorming today, the SASBE2009 team has decided to use the human body as a metaphor for our built environment. Shown here is one way in which it could look; a person in the Child's Pose of yoga facing south. This diagram shows buildings with mixed-uses and passive and active solar gain. In the north (where the butt is) there will be space planned for renewable infrastructure, such as an anaerobic digestor and CHP plant.

Energy Collecting Mixed-Use Building

7 weeks to go until our entry for the SASBE2009 competition is due. This is a personal brainstorm for a large building which utilizes many renewable infrastructure technologies.

The building is designed to capture as much sun as possible for passive solar gain, growing food, and improved living conditions.

The north facing side will be utilized by functions which do not require direct sun, such as rainwater storage, food storage, and retail.

The structure's first level will be a series of archways allowing for open transportation and easy connectivity. In the northern portion of the building, a hole is cut through to create a public square and allow more light to fall into the living and working spaces.

Storage of Solar PV electricity in potential energy of structure

This idea came to me the other day when thinking about the inherent problems of solar PV electricity; namely, its only there when the sun is out.

I had read about storing solar energy by pumping water up into higher reservoirs. To apply this same concept in an urban setting, I first thought about putting reservoirs on buildings, but then decided that it would require too much supporting structure. Instead, utilizing the mass of the building itself struck me as an alternative.

In this concept, a series of racks and pinions are used in conjunction with electric motors to actually raise the structure using excess electricity from solar PV. Then, to meet evening demands, the structure is slowly lowered, and the energy is harnessed. I imagine that if a system like this were perfected, then it would have an acceptably high efficiency rate. Also, a row of gently oscillating buildings would be aesthetically pleasing, like the motion of tides.

Some difficulties will need to be overcome. A safety mechanism would need to be created in case the motor fails such that the building does not suddenly fall some meters. Also, infrastructure such as plumbing, electricity, and entrance ways would have to be flexible.

Are there any reactions to this concept?

SASBE 2009 Student Competition

Three students, an Architect Julia Hidalgo Casanueva of Costa Rica, an Environmentalist Chris-Marije Westerink of the Netherlands, and myself will spend the next 8 weeks preparing an entry into the SASBE2009 Student Compition hosted by the 3rd CIB International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Built Environments.

The challenge is quite broad:

Propose a concept for a living area or single home that produces sustainable energy that equals out energy consumption. This includes energy for mobility, operation of buildings, product and food production, etcetera. We would like you to address the following topics:
* Concept of an energy-producing urban environment or solitary house and all its features
* A vision on the different energy sources
* Energy supply, demand, exchange and storage in time and space
* Integration of the latest available technology and ideas on sustainability
* The scale of being self-supporting
The setting is an urban environment with different means of transport (private and public). You may chose to combine urban functions or make a proposal for a mono-functional setting.

We are choosing to work at the 'living area' scale, perhaps about one square kilometer. It will be a very exciting time of research and creativity!

Here is some inspiration from across the blogosphere:

Eco•Laboratory in Seattle


Milano Santa Monica


Gwanggyo Green Power Center


Energy Producing Greenhouse

The Streets

The sustainable urban planning model is blowing up in NYC as reports are written about how to retrofit the city to be more friendly towards non-motorized transportation. Two amazing reports have been published recently about the streets of New York City:

• World Class Streets a report for NYC from Danish urban planner Jan Gehl
• Blueprint for the Upper West Side: A Roadmap for Truely Livable Streets from NYC Streets Renaissance

What Makes a Great Street? (nycsr.org)

Access & Linkages
* Easy to cross the street
* Sidewalks accommodate pedestrians and activity comfortably
* Multiple transportation options

Uses & Activities
* There are reasons to linger
* Ground floors are welcoming to passers-by
* Mix of restaurants, stores, and services

Comfort & Image
* Local and cultural identity is reflected
* Good seating, lighting, trees, and other amenities
* Clear signage with local information

Sociability
* People are inclined to gather
* Sense of pride and ownership
* Presence of children and seniors

Book: Drosscape

Drosscapes: Wasting Land in Urban America
Alan Berger
This book is exquisitely well crafted and tremendously revealing of the extend to which the American landscape is wasted.

Summary
Cities in the United States are characterized by wasted spaces in city center as well as in the periphery. The origins of these wasted spaces are the in-between areas left by aggressive horizontal development and areas left over from previous economic regimes (post-industrial landscape).

There are three archetypes of wasted space:

• Waste: solid waste, scrap metal, landfill
• Wasted: abandoned or contaminated
• Wasteful: vast parking lots, buffer zones

Pro- and anti- sprawl ideals are obsolete, because sprawl is the reality planners must work with now. Rather than thinking negatively about rapid horizontal development (sprawl) it should be seen as an opportunity for redevelopment.

The Drosscape manifesto is then to reuse the waste. The stage is set for designing with waste landscape. Designers must look for the undervalued and overlooked margins and employ inventiveness to make their plans.

Important Themes

The production of waste landscape
Deindustrialization
Manufacturing in the United States has been on the decline since 1950 leaving relics of industry within the center city. The industrial core is thus devalued and slips into a derelict state. Adaptively reusing this waste landscape is now a great design challenge.

Furthermore, citizens no longer need to live in compact urban areas to be close to their factory job. With the internet, there is no geography; a citizen can work from anywhere. So, urbanization now is a choice instead of a necessity.

Fordism: Rationality of the car society
The United States' landscape is built on the scale of an automobile instead of a human. The effect is that while the population is growing and the urbanized area is growing, the urbanized area density of persons per area is decreasing. This means more surface area for fewer people.

From the ground, a pedestrian finds vacant strips, seas of parking lots, unused land, warehouses, and empty perimeters around development. It looks poorly planned, poorly maintained, and is not enticing to walk through.

Types of waste landscape

• Waste Landscape of Dwelling: Voids of land designed into housing developments.
• Waste Landscape of Transition: Developers' holding lots in new-growth regions, sometimes used as storage facilities.
• Waste Landscape of Infrastructure: Areas associated with infrastructure such as between the highway lanes, under transmission lines, or around gas tanks.
• Waste Landscape of Obsolescence: The landscape of where the products of a consumer society go to die, such as landfills, junkyards, and scrap yards.
• Waste Landscape of Exchange: Dead shopping space, created by 'Demalling'. 440 regional indoor malls are abandoned or dying, leaving behind huge empty spaces and parking lots.
• Waste Landscape of Contamination: Airports, dump sites, ammunition depots. 1,300 sites are awaiting Superfund cleanup and reclamation.

Role of the urban designer
There are profits and opportunities within the wasted landscape. Some businesses, such as Home Depot (a chain hardware store), actively seek contaminated sites to build new stores on because contaminated land has a higher rate of return than clean land.

Opportunities can be found in government incentives, such as the Federal Superfund, to clean up and reuse Brownfields. It should be noted that Brownfields are not systematically mapped, but are rather discovered in the early stages of development, so there are many more than are currently known.

Alan Berger contends that cities should claim the right to reclaim vacant and derelict lots for redevelopment.

Reflection

Push-pull out of the city: Rationality of the family unit
Many factors pushed families out of the cities and into the surrounding towns. These included inner-city low quality of education, high crime rates, high property taxes, few housing options, and greater amount of air pollution. These repellents must be addressed before revitalization of city centers can be attractive. Meanwhile, an opportunity for better quality of education, the 'garden city' suburban lifestyle, and quieter neighborhoods draw families into the country side.

Negative effects of wasted landscapes
The negative financial and health impacts of poor planning have been exposed by the 2008 credit crisis and high rates of depression and obesity in the suburban United States. In reaction, there has been a push action to slow down horizontal development, such as the New Urbanism Congress and Smart Growth legislation.

Urban sprawl is economically unsustainable. Suburban home purchases on barely qualified credit played no small role in the current global financial crisis. The epicenter of the U.S. foreclosure crisis can be found on the metro fringes. The home buyers who took on variable-rate or interest-only mortgages along with long commutes into their workplace by means of a car found themselves caught in a double bind of too much debt.

The government could save millions on public infrastructure, such as power, water, sewerage, schools and hospital services if development occurred close to central business districts rather than on the city’s fringe. Funding used to build additional infrastructure on the fringe is nothing more than a subsidy to developers.

Transportation costs are also on the rise. The old economy of car dependence is over; with rising oil prices it is not affordable to live in outer suburbs and drive to work.

Spreading cities creates a society dependent upon the automobile. This in turn creates pollution, injuries and death from traffic, mental stress, and a decrease in physical activity.

The US has the fewest percentage of trips in developed areas taken by walking and bicycling which leads to a decline in public health. One-third of US neighborhoods are without sidewalks and less than half of US children have a playground within walking distance of home.

“Most Americans live in suburban habitats that are isolating, disaggregated, and neurologically punishing… This pervasive situational loneliness, of being stuck alone in your car, alone in your work cubicle, alone in your apartment, alone at the supermarket, alone at the video rental shop – that’s how American daily life has come to be organized…” (Frumkin, 2004)

Sprawl not only reduces the opportunity of regular exercise, an important anti-depressant, it also limits opportunities of interpersonal contact, which aggravates social isolation.

Spatial planning policy in the Netherlands versus the United States
The planner's role in the Netherlands is a balancing act between different forces which seems to create an ongoing conversation. The National government, municipal government, stakeholders, environmentalists, businesses, and local citizens can play a part in shaping decisions. The planning process is highly legislated and thereby controlled. The results of this approach are easy to see. The cities remain compact, livable, and centered around public transportation hubs. Farmland and nature are preserved against market demands for increased housing. When new housing is required, the National government specifies the building location.

Conversely, in the United States, planning is only governed by the local town (municipality) with minimal overarching power from higher governments. The town planning boards are left to act withing their own self interest. In the resultant delegislated planning environment, towns are somewhat powerless against market forces; they must plan for economic survival. In many cases, planning for survival entails propagating leapfrog business parks and low-density housing on 1-2 acre lots.

An important piece of the this puzzle concerns local government funding, which is almost exclusively from property taxes. From the property taxes comes funding for all schools, including elementary, middle, and high schools. Compact housing and apartments are avoided because they create more children to be educated on less land than low density housing on more land.

The Boston Globe reported on the connection between spatial planning policy and house prices in an article “Priced Out”:

Local officials say the added property tax from a new house - particularly anything short of the supersized ''McMansions" that are in favor with so many zoning boards - does not cover the added education costs that come with children in those homes. That claim often lies at the root of the endless maneuvers by Massachusetts communities to keep out new residential development in general, and homes that could house schoolchildren in particular.

Local land-use policies ''have become very anti-child," says John Clifford, town administrator of Marshfield. ''The general consensus is, any subdivision that could bring children to town will negatively impact the town's finances. For a state that is losing population and losing younger population, that is a pretty damaging view."(Jonas, 2006)

Business parks and shopping are highly desirable by towns because they generate property tax revenue but produce no children. Located outside of city center, these business parks fuel non-metropolitan population growth, buffer zones, and car transportation.

Instead of a planning conversation like the Netherlands cultivates, the United States engages in a planning monologue in which the only actor speaking is money.

Power struggle
In the United States there is a three-tiered hierarchy of spatial planning power. First, the Federal Government has very limited control over the individual states. This power is only to maintain federally owned land and federal highways. Second, the States have some power such as building codes and lawmaking which can impact land use. Third, the town directly controls land use by means of the zoning board.

One single town on its own does not have the power to promote smart growth except at the town's own economic detriment. Due to this, some States have experimented with Smart Growth land use laws, such as educational subsidies provided for towns which zone for high density housing. For the town, this can be seen as either empowering the land use board to make positive decisions or stripping the town of its autonomy.

In Massachusetts, the Smart Growth land use laws (Code 40R, 2006) are too controversial to be effective and very little change has been inflicted on land use. The problem lies within the interpretation of the Smart Growth laws. The State interprets Smart Growth as an avenue towards sustainable growth. The Town planning boards interpret Smart Growth as an agent usurping power within town borders. For example, if a town in Massachusetts declares a Smart Growth area, any development which matches the Smart Growth codes has legal right to build, with or without the Town planner's consent. The result has been very little implementation of the 2006 Smart Code laws, despite the good will of the State. The following is an example the power struggle:

Framingham, for instance, has been very open to affordable housing, and several years ago approved zoning changes to allow residential development in the downtown business district. That would seem to make the community a perfect candidate for the new 40R zoning. But Framingham planning director Kathy Bartolini wants no part of it.

Her biggest objection is that once a smart-growth district is approved, any development proposal that conforms to 40R's guidelines on density and affordable housing can be built ''by right," with the local community given very little say over what happens within the district's boundaries. ''It's either their way or the highway," says Bartolini. ''I don't know of too many communities that will even contemplate this." (Jonas, 2006)

For any new Smart Growth regulation to seriously take hold and make progress, it must appease both the State power who desires more sustainable communities and the Town power which wants to maintain autonomy as well as high property tax revenue.

American cities are rotting from the inside while families and businesses look further into the countryside where land is still cheap. Factors limiting how far afield from the city development can reach long ago dissolved in the de-industrialized, Fordian environment. Town planners on their own are not powerful enough to stop the expansion. The State or even Federal government must create incentives and/or penalties strong enough to repair the inner-cities while preserving nature and productive land.

Critical Review

Interesting?
Drosscape is a to-do list for an aspiring urban planner. The waste landscapes presented in Drosscape represent holes in the city awaiting adaptive reuse. As a sustainable urban planner, these areas are the highest priority. The game is to find economically competitive ways to turn dead areas into lively communities.

Lessons learned?
Urban sprawl is not good or bad, for this generation it is a starting place.

Recommendable?
If you are interested in working in urban planning in the United States, it is a must read. Otherwise, it is a warning for the unwanted results of market based spatial planning.


References
Berger, A. (2006). Drosscapes.
Frumkin, H. (2004).Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities.
Jonas, M. (2006). Priced Out, The Boston Globe.

Urban Harvest

Urban Harvesting is a theory originating with the Urban Environmental Management group at Wageningen University. The focus is to change from linear to circular urban metabolic activity: All primary resources (solar energy, wind energy, rainwater) and secondary resources (wastewater, waste heat, household and business wastes) that become available inside an urban tissue are captured and used, ie ‘harvested.’

My team's assignment was to design an intervention plan for a neighborhood in Wageningen to transform it into a self-sustaining 'urban tissue'. This meant eliminating external supplies of energy, food, and water by producing them on site.

The project was very interesting. For the consumption information, we unfortunately had to base our assessment on many semi-dubious assumptions. The design we created is financially not feasible, but still a good conceptual model.





Enjoy a short infographic movie of the project. It was written, recorded, and edited in one day, so at times it is a bit rough.

Urban Mandala

A mandala is any plan/chart which metaphysically represents reality as a microcosm of the universe. An 'Urban Planning Mandala' may seem far fetched, but in India there is such a practice, called Vastu Shastra.

Vastu Shastra is the Indian science of direction, movements and architecture. It aims to balance the natural elements with man and materials. The five elements in Vastu Shastra are interpreted mystically, but also can be applied within the framework of sustainable technology. Lets have a look:

EARTH (Bhumi)
Indian: Its magnetic field and gravitational force has considerable effects on everything on the Earth, living and non-living.
Sustainable design: Earthen walls, heat storing aqueducts, and geothermal energy.

WATER (Jala)
Indian: Rain, river, sea and is in the form of liquid, solid (ice) and gas (steam, cloud). It forms part of every plant and animal. Our blood is mostly water.
Sustainable design: Smart water design in the form of rainwater collection, greywater reuse, and blackwater anaerobic digestion can improve the efficiency of buildings and cities.

AIR (Vayu)
Indian: As a life supporting element, air is very powerful life source. Human physical comfort values are directly and sensitively dependent on correct humidity, air flow, temperature of air, air pressure, air composition and its content.
Sustainable design: Ventilation is very important in a house to remove polluted air, however, smart design is needed to capture the temperature of the exiting air in the new air.

FIRE (Agni)
Indian: It represents light and heat without which the life will extinct. All the days and nights, seasons, energy, enthusiasm, passion, vigour is because of light and heat only.
Sustainable design: Heating and lighting can be improved by the use of LED bulbs and radiant subfloor heating.

SPACE/ETHER (Aakasha)
Indian: It is the shelter provider to all the above elements. It is also considered the primary conductor of all energy sources within the universal context - physical energies such as sound and light, social energies such as psychological and emotional, and cognitive energies such as intellect and intuition.
Sustainable design: This can be translated as planning on the human scale to promote healthier lifestyles.

Vastu Shastra claims an invisible and constant relation between all the five elements. Properly designing buildings by understanding the effectiveness of these five natural forces can improve the living conditions.

There are also cryptic meanings behind the cardinal directions which are applicable to urban planning with an emphasis on solar energy.

North: Wealth, prosperity
Translation: Storerooms and industry where there is less sun.

East: Progress, growth
Translation: Schools and businesses should receive the rising sun.

South: Sleep
Translation: Apartments in the south to receive the full sun.

West: Pleasure
Translation: Cafes and nightclubs should recieve the setting sun.

Put an end to urban sprawl

AP photo, California, 2008

Obama's Urban Policy

Here at Blue Riders we are VERY excited about Obama's Urban Policy that the administration has been very transparent about. Here are some highlights:

STRENGTHEN LIVABILITY OF CITIES

• Build More Livable and Sustainable Communities: Our communities will better serve all of their residents if we are able to leave our cars, to walk, bicycle and access other transportation alternatives. As president, Barack Obama will re-evaluate the transportation funding process to ensure that smart growth considerations are taken into account.
• Control Superfund Sites and Data: As president, Obama will restore the strength of the Superfund program by requiring polluters to pay for the cleanup of contaminated sites they created.
• Use Innovative Measures to Dramatically Improve Efficiency of Buildings: Buildings account for nearly 40 percent of carbon emissions in the United States today and carbon emissions from buildings are expected to grow faster than emissions from other major parts of our economy. It is expected that 15 million new buildings will be constructed between today and 2015. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will work with cities so that we make our new and existing buildings more efficient consumers of electricity.
• Foster Healthy Communities: How a community is designed – including the layout of its roads, buildings and parks – has a huge impact on the health of its residents. For instance, nearly one-third of Americans live in neighborhoods without sidewalks and less than half of our country's children have a playground within walking distance of their homes. Barack Obama introduced the Healthy Places Act to help local governments assess the health impact of new policies and projects, like highways or shopping centers.

Other exciting parts...

• Support Regional Innovation Clusters: Thriving innovation clusters across the country like the North Carolina Research Triangle Park and Nashville's thriving entertainment cluster prove that local stakeholders can successfully come together and help reshape their local economies. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will create a federal program to support "innovation clusters" - regional centers of innovation and next-generation industries. This innovation clusters program will provide $200 million in planning and matching grants for regional business, government and university leaders to collaborate on leveraging a region’s existing assets - from transportation infrastructure to universities - to enhance long-term regional growth.
• Convert our Manufacturing Centers into Clean Technology Leaders: America boasts the highest-skilled manufacturing workforce in the world and advanced manufacturing facilities that have powered economic growth in America for decades. Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that America is at a competitive advantage when it comes to building the high-demand technologies of the future, and they will help nurture America's success in clean technology manufacturing by establishing a federal investment program to help manufacturing centers modernize.
• Increase the Supply of Affordable Housing throughout Metropolitan Regions: Communities prosper when all families have access to affordable housing. Barack Obama and Joe Biden supported efforts to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund to create thousands of new units of affordable housing every year. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will also restore cuts to public housing operating subsidies, and ensure that all Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) programs are restored to their original purpose.

Japan's Infographic Food Video

The Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) produced an infographic video about their domestic food production, which is the lowest of major developed nations. It is worth a look, especially since their problem (and solutions) can be applied elsewhere. And it is visually fun to watch, sort of like a Wii but politically minded.


[information aesthetics]

Urban Sprawl and Public Health. AKA, Suburbia Kills

In the past, the city would kill you with crowded situations, small spaces, poor ventilation, pathogens, and pollution. Suburbia was a place to “get away from it all”, be with nature, and take time at a more leisurely pace than in the city. However, do to poor planning and unforeseen consequences, suburbia might actually be killing its inhabitants.

A very accessible read, “Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities” by Howard Frumkin, Lawrence Frank, and Richard Jackson, 2004, addresses this problem directly by outlining the ways in which sprawl (suburbia) negatively affects public health.

Physical Activity
The US has the fewest percentage of trips in developed areas taken by walking and bicycling which leads to a decline in public health. (1) Higher density neighborhoods are associated with more walking and bicycling. (2) Mixed land use, such as shops and jobs near housing, contributes to healthy commuting while mono-culture single family homes does not. (3) Enjoyable scenery, eradicated by endless development, is a lost reason for walking and bicycling.

Injuries and Death from Traffic
“Strategies which reduce the need for car travel or substitute car travel with safer forms of transport would substantially reduce population death rates.” –I. Roberts, 1993

Water Quantity and Quality
Sprawl interferes with recharging of groundwater. While sprawling residential and commercial lots may each have a smaller proportion of impervious surface than lots in dense cities, the total impervious area across a community is increased with lower density. Leaking septic tanks, fertilizers for lawns, and a larger road network’s oil, gasoline and antifreeze drips collectively contaminate the water.

Mental Health
“Most Americans live in suburban habitats that are isolating, disaggregated, and neurologically punishing…This pervasive situational loneliness, of being stuck alone in your car, alone in your work cubicle, alone in your apartment, alone at the supermarket, alone at the video rental shop – that’s how American daily life has come to be organized…” –James Howard Kustler, 2003
Sprawl not only reduces the opportunity of regular exercise, an important anti-depressant, it also limits opportunities of interpersonal contact, which aggravates social isolation.

Social Capital
Social networks, trust, & reciprocity are undermined by the isolated nature of suburban homes and car transportation. Leapfrog development, strip malls, and low density are blamed.

Universal principles of perceptual organization

I came upon a quite fascinating delineation of perceptual organization while reading about semiotics for my spatial planning course. This is a copied segment of the discussion from the website:

Universal principles of perceptual organization

Proximity

The principle of proximity can be demonstrated thus:

What you are likely to notice fairly quickly is that this is not just a square pattern of dots but rather is a series of columns of dots. The principle of proximity is that features which are close together are associated. Below is another example. Here we are likely to group the dots together in rows.

The principle also applies in the illustration below. We are more likely to associate the lines which are close together than those which are further apart. In this example we tend to see three pairs of lines which are fairly close together (and a lonely line on the far right) rather than three pairs of lines which are further apart (and a lonely line on the far left).

The significance of this principle on its own is likely to seem unclear initially; it is in their interaction that the principles become more apparent.

Similarity

So we will turn to a second major principle of perceptual organization - that of similarity. Look at the example below.

Here the little circles and squares are evenly spaced both horizontally and vertically so proximity does not come into play. However, we do tend to see alternating columns of circles and squares. This, the Gestalt psychologists would argue, is because of the principle of similarity - features which look similar are associated. Without the two different recurrent features we would see either rows or columns or both...

Continuity

A third principle of perceptual organization is that of good continuity. This principle is that contours based on smooth continuity are preferred to abrupt changes of direction. Here, for instance, we are more likely to identify lines a-b and c-d crossing than to identify a-d and c-b or a-c and d-b as lines.

Closure

Closure is a fourth principle of perceptual organization: interpretations which produce 'closed' rather than 'open' figures are favored.

Here we tend to see three broken rectangles (and a lonely shape on the far left) rather than three 'girder' profiles (and a lonely shape on the right). In this case the principle of closure cuts across the principle of proximity, since if we remove the bracket shapes, we return to an image used earlier to illustrate proximity...

Smallness

A fifth principle of perceptual organization is that of smallness. Smaller areas tend to be seen as figures against a larger background. In the figure below we are more likely to see a black cross rather than a white cross within the circle because of this principle.

As an illustration of this Gestalt principle, it has been argued that it is easier to see Rubin's vase when the area it occupies is smaller (Coren et al. 1994, 377). The lower portion of the illustration below offers negative image versions in case this may play a part. To avoid implicating the surroundedness principle I have removed the conventional broad borders from the four versions. The Gestalt principle of smallness would suggest that it should be easier to see the vase rather than the faces in the two versions on the left below.

Symmetry

The principle of symmetry is that symmetrical areas tend to be seen as figures against asymmetrical backgrounds.

Surroundedness

Then there is the principle of surroundedness, according to which areas which can be seen as surrounded by others tend to be perceived as figures.

Urban Planning Firms in the Netherlands

The Dutch are cleaning up international design competitions for urban spaces. Two firms based in Rotterdam are worth taking a look at. I am interested in interning/working at one of these places, but they both require expert knowledge in AutoCAD software. So I think it is time to start some self-study!

OMA in Rotterdam ("The Office for Metropolitan Architecture" or in Dutch, Grandmother) is currently working heavily with rich middle-eastern countries to design amazing cities and ports. In its long history, the firm has done amazing work.

MVRDV in Rotterdam recently won a competition for a new high rise in Copenhagen, shown on the right and top-left. The firm has been around since 1991 and appears to be quite progressive. A recurring motif in their work is delightful green spaces within and on urban structures.

BEAR Architecten in Gouda does smaller scale work with a specific focus on sustainability and using the local environment in several ways, such as water landscaping, passive solar, and solar photovoltaics. They recently won a competition to design a sustainable development of 255 CO2 neutral houses in Lelystad-South.