Urban Planning Blog

We know that building environmentally-friendly buildings has finally come into vogue when you have more than one accreditation services. Earlier LEED was the gold standard for a building seeking to achieve a ‘green’ status. Well, it still is and thanks to its long-standing and stringent standards, it has gained more importance and credibility in spite of its steep costs [$3000 per home].

For anyone unsatisfied with LEED, the options for green-home ratings are proliferating. The National Association of Home Builders is starting a certification system. Randy Hansell of Earth Advantage, a Portland-based rating system launched in 1994, reckons that there are more than 60 green-building rating systems in the country, up from six or seven in 2000.

Some local programmes, such as Earth Advantage, are partnered with LEED—and most are cheaper. (Earth Advantage usually costs $500-800; the price depends in part on how far in the boonies a green home is located.) [via The Economist.]

I bet many homeowners have received cease and desist letters from the authorities for an unauthorized construction on their property. More often than not, the ignorance of the homeowner is attributed to the lack of permits. But not so in this case.

Read an actual letter sent to a man named Ryan DeVries by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, State of Michigan. This guy’s response is hilarious, but read the State’s letter before you get to the response letter.

Don’t we love our bureaucracy?

tags: humor, environment, permit, bureaucracy

Land use planning can be used as an effective tool in reducing the economic and social risks of natural hazards. The local governments provide the better authority to implement planning mitigation strategies due to extensive and comprehensive potential for tapping into community resources and public participation. The local governments are also in a better position to tailor the comprehensive planning strategies to align in line with the region’s specific vulnerability to natural hazards.

The authors advocate a combined strategy of sustainable development and hazard mitigation to draft land use plans. Use of high risk areas such as flood plains, steep slopes, earthquake fault zones, coastal areas should be discouraged for human habitation. Sustainable practices advocate relocating land use away from hazard areas and relying on resilient building practices to withstand natural hazards.

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The National Park Service is making its symbols and patterns available for free download in Adobe PDF and Illustrator formats. How long before someone offers stickers? I’ll definitely buy some.

Technorati Tags: National Park, maps, symbol, pattern, graphics, art

Disasters have caused tremendous loss of life and property around the world especially in the United States. This trend has seemingly increased in the 1990s. The conflict between natural disaster occurrences and choices of places where people want to live has often proven to be the cause of these losses. The government, at the federal level and state& local level has consequently increased their role in disaster recovery. Although traditional responses to disaster have entailed reactive measures like preparedness, response and recovery, more attention is being paid in recent times to proactive responses of hazard mitigation. Simply defined, hazard mitigation is advance action taken to reduce or eliminate the long term risk to human life.

The governmental intervention especially by the federal government has involved drafting and implementing legislation starting from the first disaster relief act in 1950 to the more recent Stafford Act in 1988. Since then, other piecemeal plans and proactive measures like NAPA’s report, Coping with Catastrophe (1993), NFIR Act (1994), and Office of Technological Assessment’s report recommending an action-oriented approach instead of an information provision approach has signaled changing trends in disaster management. Agenda 21, an action agenda adopted at the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Summit focused on reducing natural hazards and encouraged proactive measures for disaster management. Uses of new concepts like ecological footprints as a way to understand the implications of consumption and development patterns helped to identify the regional trends in population toward disaster vulnerability.

Federal acts like the Stafford Act which is increasingly used to combat disaster recovery outlined the “provision of orderly and continuing federal assistance to state and local government to alleviate suffering and damage caused by disasters.” But recent trends have moved away from federal responsibility to holding individuals and local governments responsible for increasing susceptibility toward natural disaster. State and local governments are now required to evaluate the nature and extent of vulnerability to effects of natural hazards and accordingly develop systematic hazard mitigation plans. There also has been a significant shift in implementing ‘softer’ approaches such as watershed management, land use planning, using flood insurance and storm insurance as disincentives, and increasing awareness regarding relocating from vulnerable areas as opposed to traditional ‘hard’ structural solutions like levee construction.

The government has realized the importance of moving people out of harm’s way rather than continually fund reconstruction and recovery post-disaster. The federal government also makes federal assistance subject to condition before disaster strikes and adjusts share of federal assistance in order to get state and local governments more involved in disaster mitigation. This is supported by upping the level of public education and awareness of locating in high-risk velocity zones and inventorying and disclosing all properties within the flood hazard zones.

Another school of thought talks on the use of sustainable communities to fight a more sustained battle against disaster recovery. Emphasis on high density development and efficient use of space and land outside the high-risk areas that are susceptible to disasters like flooding, earthquake, and hurricanes is the hallmark of sustainable-oriented mitigation. Sustainable communities effectively balance risk against other preferable social and economical goals. It promotes a closer connection and understanding of the natural environment instead of the traditional school of thought of dominating nature.

Sustainable communities better understand the interconnectedness of social, economic, and environmental goals. Of course, this requires a new ethical posturing that errs on the side of caution and helps us refrain from actions that may have serious or long-lasting effects on our survival. Understanding that sustainable community planning is largely participatory and community based helps delegate more responsibility to the individual to prevent loss from disaster. However, it may also entail clarifying and reestablishing the ethical content of private property ownership and use to see and purse a larger public good.

References:

Tags: disaster+mitigation, sustainability, sustainable+communities, prevention, disaster+recovery, redevelopment, prevention, Stafford+Act

Now that’s what I call a “green car”

[image source: Daily Dose of Imagery]

Technorati Tags: green car

(image source: Arborsmith)

Ever hear of arborsculpture? Well, I never had until I read this interview with Richard Reames, one of the world’s foremost arborsculptor. Before you cast any befuddled looks my way, let me define it for you: Arborsculpture is the “art of shaping tree trunks to create art and functional items through bending, grafting, pruning, and multiple planting.” It is almost akin to bonsai which is a gardening art that specializes in making miniature trees. I consider the art of bonsai somewhat ‘insensitive’ plant life because you are restricting and controling its natural growth. I remember a Marathi movie, Chaukat Raja in which they had likened a mentally retarded person to a bonsai. But then, anything even hedge trimming could be considered unnatural.

Another interesting thing that caught my eye was when Richard Reames brought up the topic of ‘living houses’:

I believe that if enough people put their minds to using living trees,
we can learn to grow houses. I believe that if we put our minds to it,
like going to the moon, there’s no reason we couldn’t all be living in
houses where the walls and ceilings are composed of living tree
material and there are leaves coming out of the roof. We could
accomplish this in one generation. We’d build doorways and windows that
the trees would grow around, and also plumbing and electrical conduits.
The trees would just swallow all the pipes. We’re going to call this
“arbortecture.”

This ties in perfectly with my personal philosophy that we can never have enough trees and a better way of living would be to live in harmony with trees instead of just cutting them down. The environmental effects of trees in living are well documented (see image below):

Technorati Tags: trees, environment, arborsculpture, chairs in trees, arbortecture, nature

Thanks to global warming and climate change crisis, beachfront property might not seem like a feasible option in the future. Increase in sea level will definitely impact such properties as the world’s geography undergoes some serious changes. The New York Times mentions that:

According to a 2000 report by the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, at least a quarter of the houses within 500 feet of the United States coast may be lost to rising seas by 2060. There were 350,000 of these houses when the report was written, but today there are far more.

That is indeed a significant impact and this time, it will not affect the lower income group of people like it did in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Denial may work for some time but in the long run, beachfront properties will be the first line of defense in our battle against rising waters. And as we have been constantly reminded, nature always wins.

We finally heard back from the EPA’s P3 [People, Prosperity, and Planet] Request for Proposals and sadly, they rejected our grant application. The reason - too ambitious and infeasible for the allocated grant money. Well, they are right. We had submitted a proposal suggesting developing a sustainable model to rebuild Southern Louisiana by seeking to analyze risk perceptions and economic necessities of residents that force them to make unsustainable choices.

On the flip side, it is not entirely lost. We can always choose to divide up our proposal and resubmit to other funding organizations or just modify this and send it off to a larger funding organization. In lieu of Katrina hurricane, we found our proposal quite timely and had managed to keep the scope of the project broad enough to warrant adequate examination of the research issues involved. Restricting ourselves to a particular region of Louisiana or just to media-popular New Orleans would have led us to ignore correlational factors that influence every move in the southern state.

Climate change data has shown how everything is interrelated and a little bit of tweaking elsewhere can have larger implications often unintended elsewhere. Developing a sustainable model for Louisiana (and New Orleans) cannot be a piecemeal project but has to encapsulate the larger region. This may not have been possible within the parameters of the P3 Project but hopefully, the EPA takes this issue seriously enough to allot more funds for such a study.

Library design with “reclaimed fuselages of 727/737 passenger jets”. Cool and cheap manner to recycle when it is expensive to do so in traditional ways.

The American Institute for Architects has announced its list of Top Ten Green Projects. I have seen the UT School of Nursing and Student Center in Houston but haven’t had the pleasure to have walked through it.

Today, San Francisco marked the 100th anniversary of the earthquake that killed almost 3,000 people (most of them perished in the fires that spread post-earthquake). Although it has been a hundred years since a natural calamity flattened the ‘Paris of the New World’as it was called in the 19th century, little had changed in terms of vulnerability for an earthquake today. In fact, a similar magnitude earthquake today would inflict more damage and cause more shaking, and probably also kill more people due to increased density.

It is surprising to note that in spite of all our technological progress, we still remain susceptible to natural calamities and can do little to prevent them. We can all make great exhortations about the way we have established ourselves as the dominant species on the planet but yet at the end of the day, the planet still reigns supreme. The previous year was calamitous causing untold damage and killing hundreds of thousands in both developing and developed countries. The earthquake unfortunately remains as mankind’s greatest threat and its unpredictable nature simply adds mystery to the death it brings in an instant.

Urban agglomerations have formed human populations to concentrate at fewer locations than ever before. The world population increases and the urban areas grows. Such high concentration of people in a single location is extremely dangerous when earthquake strikes. Unfortunately, the more populous urban regions like Tokyo, Bombay, San Francisco, etc also lie on the seismic-sensitive zones. Does this strike a blow to dense and compact living?

Will the next big one give us the answer?

New Orleans brings to mind several images dominated of course by the debauchery-riddled and flamboyant Mardi Gras. But death, destruction, despair, and desolate landscapes are far from your mind. The city stands on a rich cultural heritage and although (ecologically) as I argue, the city should not exist; it not only does but also prospers and throbs with urban vibrancy. However behind the glitz and glamour of the chic French Quarter with its colonial architectural trimmings lived one of America’s poorest cities. Crime was rampant and racial divisions were never more pronounced. I had stopped over for a night while traveling to Texas last year just before Katrina hit so it was an immensely sad experience to see a city shaken at its very foundations. We talked to a local architect who had nothing but frustration and disgust writ all over his countenance over the rest of the country’s apathy. And rightly so too. People seemed to have forgotten that this is just the beginning and the worst might be lurking behind the next hurricane.

The basin of the world’s third largest river (after Nile and Amazon), New Orleans and much of Louisiana stands on unstable ground that constantly changes its geographic form every thousand years. The mouth of the Mississippi has moved left and right since forever and it continually seeks to do so. But it finds itself restricted and controlled by the sub-standard levee system (the Dutch do it better). New Orleans is famously known to exist below sea level and if you look at the cross-section of the city, you will see a great depression in a bowl-like fashion protected by feeble contraptions erected by man. In spite of many warnings by scientists and climatologists, stubbornness of American people (in the region) often mistaken as resilience failed to inspire any preventive action. The result – Hurricane Katrina literally exposed the dangers of human impact on marshlands by destroying nearly 80% of the city. Levees snapped like twigs and all talk of their engineering prowess was muted.

We walked through the Ninth Ward and even after six months we could see destruction and wrecked home as far as our eyes could see. It is almost that this part of town has been declared a ghost town and no cares to rebuild. The catch however might be that probably the best option is not to rebuild. Easier said than done; this area was inhabited by mostly low-income people because no one else wanted to live on ‘that’ side of the town. The low-income people also happen to be mostly African-American so the issue of not rebuilding slowly transcends from that of rational thinking to resolving issues of social and racial equity. Can we genuinely deny these people from coming back? If we can stop them from living in this vulnerable location, where do we put them? Of course, New Orleans needs people who can work low-end jobs at the bars, restaurants, grocery stores and those people cannot live in flood-safe areas occupied by the middle- and upper-class residents. So technically, the low-income people have a choice of living in flood-prone areas that are cheap to build in but face risks of destruction almost every year or not living in New Orleans at all. So will New Orleans exist as an urban space without its share of poor people that are needed (relative and in an economic sense) in a society? Probably not; no matter how much the upper class of New Orleans citizenry secretly wishes. Hence my conclusion that New Orleans may or must not exist in its current urban form; it should either drastically evolve to live sustainably and densely so as to reduce its ecological footprint in a worsening ecosystem or in a worst-case scenario, count its losses, cherish its history, pack up and move on.

Cities have died before either gradually due to economic or social decline or suddenly due to natural cataclysmic changes. Our capacity to absorb havoc wrecked by nature might have increased and it might take one heck of a natural disaster to wipe off a city especially in a developed nation. As I mentioned, the next hurricane season is expected to be worse and so will be subsequent seasons; natural processes or global warming – the consequences are similar. If at all we choose to rebuild, the way we do it will be paramount in testing the hypothesis that man learns from history. Sadly, I think that we often prove that hypothesis wrong.

Much of Louisiana’s history mostly in modern times is peppered with controlling nature to suit man’s commercial purposes [read John McPhee's Control of Nature for more]. The Army Corps of Engineers unfortunately bounded by legislative intent draws much ire. However, they are as much to blame as the next person stamping his authority on a fragile ecology. Man’s control of nature stems from affixing an economic value to nature’s resources and adapting them for his personal use. Nature conservancy for the sake of preservation or aesthetic appeal hardly finds takers in a fertile and plentiful landscape of Louisiana. The lazily meandering muddy Mississippi drains much of continental United State carrying tons of sediment to the Gulf Coast. Nature entertains itself in a cyclic dance over thousands of years of reclaiming land and giving it back. It must not have envisioned the rise of a dominant species such as man to alter its natural cycle and attempt to achieve the impossible i.e. control or even alter the course of natural evolution. For proponents of the fact who believe in the natural order of things irrespective of man’s role in this world, it would be a worthwhile experience to see the impact of human presence in an otherwise fragile yet resilient environment. You need not go far to see this impact.

Living in Mumbai and dealing with the phenomenon of “annual floods” that brings the city to a screeching halt causing tremendous loss in both economic and emotional terms offers you enough justification. Even passionate Mumbaikars didn’t know of the existence of the river Mithi that is supposed to be a city river. We dismissed it as one foully oddity in the city center and a place for us to pollute so we can live in relative ease elsewhere. We always considered the mighty sea as the city’s focal point. Take a walk after any major festival especially Ganpati immersion, you would get a classic example of a city’s continued apathy toward its natural environment. The brashness with which we pollute our cities deservedly gets us cloudbursts and flash floods. Those who fail to see a connection are simply in a state of denial. If man hadn’t intervened, Mumbai would still be a group of seven islands in nature’s blissful arms. Of course, the economic potential wouldn’t then be realized and any progress has its costs, right? But each time the costs are borne by Mother Nature. Never can we envisage partaking in few of the costs that might be a direct result of civilization.

Why the sudden shift from New Orleans to Mumbai; because I see much in common in the existence of the two metropolises on two sides of the earth. They exist where realistically no city should. I wouldn’t argue for complete abandonment of these cities but definitely would argue for more respect to nature and the natural environment it exists in. Attention to a more sustainable living wouldn’t undermine the city but instead elevate its position in the list of some of the greatest cities to live in. After all, that is exactly what we aspire for, right; to live in a city that makes living enjoyable and does not engage in a constant struggle with nature. Like it or not, nature always win. She always has more time and energy that we can ever possibly dream of. It is just a matter of time before she decides to crack the whip.