May 27 Listener

It is worth purchasing a copy of this weeks Listener. There is a reasonable article about the future of city planning in New Zealand, detailing the possibilities for our main urban centres.

'Auckland is run by a business class which favours development and employs a bureaucracy to further developers. They just let developers do whatever they wanted to do and couldn't see they'd made mistakes.'

Says Ian Athfeild, 'Now the country is looking around for a champion for their physical environment... If architects are going to rule, now's their chance.'

inflatable decentralised racing hydroplanes

From Greenpeace UK, a very detailed analysis of decentralised energy in the UK. (If only John Lydon was a greenie) It is crucial you download the full report on distributed energy, I wish I had seen this a year ago.

Mmmmm, inflatable buildings.

Imagine a series of canals, with solar racing hydroplanes shooting passengers through them. Very cool.

Ceramic Hanging Apartments?

The form of these is beautiful, I can almost imagine a cluster of little living compartments....

Everything He Knows

Everything I Know is an excellent site on design thinking, by a lecturer on Interaction Design at the RCA. There is a lot here worth reading, for our brief, as well as in general.

Essential.

links for land-lubbers

A rapid roundup of recent reading.

Flat-pack housing

Beautiful patina in design

Ahoy there me scurvies

Mazda bioplastic

This guy really does talk a lot. At least most of it is worth reading.

wow, This could be as ground breaking as the Vespa?. Or an evolutionary dead-end like the Sinclair C5. Not exactly pretty, sadly, but a very interesting idea.

Taxibus

a HA! another of my ideas is justified, in Taxibus.

Could this engage some real thinking about mechanics? Of course the cost of a new type of vehicle would be prohibitive for operators here, but what would the ideal vehicle for this role look like?

H2PIA

H2PIA is interesting as an indication of some similar approaches to our Urbibana.

Basically a self contained, self-sustaining community. The idea of generated storage is rather close to the energy use formulation I set out last year. I just hope that when the sun and wind ARE available, electricity is used as directly as possible.

“The renewable energy comes from solar or wind power and is used to split H2O – ordinary water – into H2 and O2 – hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen is vented into the atmosphere, which already contains about 20 percent O2. The hydrogen is used in fuel cells that can produce energy, for instance in the form of electricity and heat. In the fuel cell, the energy is created by silent electrochemical processes with no pollution. The only product left over when the hydrogen is used up, is pure water. During periods with low energy demand, we can store the hydrogen. Then, when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining, we use the stored hydrogen.”

There are some aspects of the community I am dubious about, primarily the fact it is indicative of yet more suburban sprawl. Could it have been more centrally designed, with a minimal footprint? The actual aesthetics of the structures also leave a lot to be desired, nevertheless I think H2PIA encapsulates the relative scope of our own project.

In Reply

My greatest fear is if, as you say, sustainablility becomes a throwaway word. I mentioned earlier I don't particularly like the term, as to sustain doesn't particularly imply improvement per se, rather the ability to continue in a mode of life indefinitely. I want to see vast areas of lowland broadleaf-conifer native forest reclaimed, not what little we have left simply protected.

Another worry is the corporate idea that the current levels of consumption/production can be continued if they are made more 'sustainable'- Treehugger is full of examples of products which may very well be low-impact to operate, but still exist to fulfill a marketing niche which is not especially important. I don't really have faith in the idea that rapid economic growth and ecological sustainability can both be retained concurrently.

'Business can be a vehicle for change. Prosperity can help us build the kind of world we want. Scientific exploration, innovative design, and cultural evolution are the most powerful tools we have. Entrepreneurial zeal and market forces, guided by sustainable policies, can propel the world into a bright green future.'

- Business will only ever be guided by the most effective contemporary means to maximise profit margins. A bright green future will only exist where it can visibly improve market value. I am extremely cynical of the idea that 'Business can be a vehicle for change'. It is business that markets us products we don't need, manufactured via methods the earth can not support, and that constantly requires these products to be replaced through planned obsolescence so profitable production may continue.

'Today you can drive a Toyota Prius that burns far less gasoline than a conventional car. Tomorrow we might see vehicles that consume no fossil fuels and emit no greenhouse gases. Combine cars like that with smarter urban growth and we're well on our way to sustainable transportation.'

- Except that the total energy expenditure in manufacture is greater than that of conventional vehicles, the total expected life of the battery is 8 years, and when this time is up the car is vastly less environmentally sound when it is retired, due to the quantities of noxious heavy metals within the battery. Future cars may not emit greenhouse gases directly, but manufacturing needs to be completely reviewed, and the entire life cycle fully considered. And marketing personal vehicles with a built-in obsolescence of 8 years, while profitable, is ecologically reprehensible.

I don't see a solution to the current quagmire, without 'Asking people in the world's wealthiest, most advanced societies to turn their backs (so to speak) on the very forces that drove such abundance'.

I don't understand how you can publish a website named 'Worldchanging' but refuse to try. I am not being naive, I know this is borderline impossible- People need to fully understand the social and ecological implications of where this 'abundance' came from, but they will refuse to confront the answers. The USA consumes resources at a rate that would take 5 earths to support if the world population followed suit. I don't see how you can continue to consume products at the current rate while scaling back the associated resources by 500%.

'Quality is wealth. More is not better. Better is better. You don't need a bigger house; you need a different floor plan. You don't need more stuff; you need stuff you'll actually use.'

-This is spot on. Sorry for the depressing post, my 16 year old eco-Marxist self is talking to my conscience....

Vis the scooter, I am really happy the concept has been proven. However, my own particular take on such a concept has changed enough since last year that I don't feel too bad about the similarity.

Edit: This article was written by the same person, but is a marvellous call to arms. It is strange how different the tone is, it could almost be defined as 'Asking people in the world's wealthiest, most advanced societies to turn their backs on the very forces that drove such abundance'.

Green is the new black

The green swell really is starting to pick up momentum. ( Green revolution : Wired ) With 'world day' a few days ago, and the word 'sustainable' set to be the next El-nino, word of 06. Its quite nice to see but at the same time I am slighlty sceptical that it can simply become just another fad and eventually turn into pseudo-green; The old crap with nice new shiney, eco-green packaging. And a fair point "As we create a more sustainable civilization, we need people to actually understand the systems which make that civilization possible" (thats were we come in..)

But nice to see it hitting mainstream conciousnous, and before you know it treehugger will be a compliment.

And doesn't this look rather familiar? 'A tiny, three-wheeled car that could help solve city congestion'
It has a top speed of 100 km/h (60mph) and uses a novel tilting chassis to make it safe and manoeuvrable.
Another one of those, "man, I thought of that last year" things. But like we talked about, its kinda nice to know that your thoughts are on the right track and see your ideas getting a kind of stamp of approval.

edit: Some more images



Via Worldchanging

Guadalajara library

This is a fantastic idea: taking existing structures which are under-utilised but built to very high tolerances, and re-establishing them in a new role. There is a vague similarity to my nesting idea too.

Aerolibrary