Archive for the 'Sustainability' Category

New Urban Visions and Shortcomings

Published by Taylor on June 10, 2009 in Design, Environment and Sustainability. View Comments

I’ve spent the past few weeks studying for my upcoming LEED Accredited Professional exam. As a result, I’ve been ruminating on sustainable development generally and LEED in particular.

This is a very effective video argument for New Urbanism (HT: The Daily Dish):

I find this vision compelling: walkable communities, condensed necessities like grocery stores, schools, workplaces, and churches, large public parks and recreation spaces, and conserved natural areas. But it’s silly to have a conversation about New Urbanism or neighborhood revitalization as if it’s an intrinsically and universally beneficial trend. The fact is, I’m drawn to this vision because I’m exactly the demographic that stands to benefit from it: white, middle/upper-middle class, well educated. Part of the creative economy and able to work essentially anywhere there’s a wireless connection. Lover of overpriced “artisan” sandwiches and ratios of coffee products and steamed milk. I own a Kindle for crying out loud.

The uncomfortable assumption underlying so many of these New Urban dream-scapes is that what would make for a REALLY great community would be an exclusive bunch of people like…well…me. And that’s crap.

As much as I like to think otherwise, I’m a boring cliche. I’m a product of privilege (more of the “great public schools” variety than the “trust fund” variety, but I digress) and will have the luxury to find parks for my hypothetical future children to play in, take bike rides on greenways, and work from various coffee shops whenever I need a change of scenery. New Urbanism seems well-equipped to satisfy that lifestyle but, frankly, I’m not worried about people like me.

Because walking to work can’t just be the accepted ideal for those of us who set out daily to work in a brightly-lit office or take our laptop to the village green. The checkout clerks at the grocery store, the teachers in those great public schools, and the folks waiting tables at the neighborhood restaurant all must be a part of this vision. But thinking about those folks (not to mention the factory workers and farmers who are presumably at the margins of this type of scenario…theoretically manufacturing wind turbines and growing organic spinach) brings up all sorts of difficult questions about affordable housing and the costs of living in trendy, clean, sustainable communities.

So here’s my challenge to New Urbanists: prove that your ideal communities can be inclusive of all people. Show me a plan that includes affordable housing between the coffee shop and the grocery store. Factor in the carbon footprint (not to mention actual costs) of low wage earning commuters who can’t afford to live in newly-remodeled trendy lofts.

Some of this admirable, inclusive work is taking place, but I think it merits a larger role in the conversation about green building, sustainable communities, and New Urbanism.

TED Talks: Dan Barber

Published by Taylor on April 26, 2009 in Agriculture, Animals, Business, Food, Sustainability and TED Talks. View Comments

This is the first of an ongoing series in which we highlight particularly fascinating talks from some of the world’s most innovative thinkers. These videos are featured courtesy of a Creative Commons license; for more on the TED conference (Technology, Entertainment, and Design), click here.

Dan Barber is a chef and restauranteur who visited a truly amazing farm in Spain that raises geese for fois gras in a shockingly humane and natural way. The portrait Barber paints of the Spanish farmer is remarkable, and the amount of care that goes into raising these animals stands in astounding contrast to commercially-produced fois gras, beef, pork, poultry, corn, or soy. It’s neat to watch a clear lover of food discuss a revelation about the production of ingredients and what it means to learn from nature.

You can also download this video to iTunes (MP4 file) by clicking here (“Save Link As” on Windows).

We’d love to hear your reactions in the comments. In particular, I’m curious to know: is this destined to remain an inspirational micro-scale anecdote, or are there lessons in this story that could meaningfully impact our food systems at large?

On Prizes and Progress

Published by Eric on July 23, 2008 in Energy, Environment, Politics, Space and Sustainability. View Comments

Last month John McCain made a campaign promise that, if elected, he would champion a $300 million prize to develop an inexpensive and powerful automotive battery that could “leapfrog” current available batteries. While the announcement garnered some press coverage, it was covered with fervor in the political as well as technology blogosphere. In fact, it seems to have been one of the most polarizing political announcements in technology and clean-technology investment spheres since a number of candidates promised to make changes in laws regarding carried interest. Tech investors left a number of interesting commentaries on the McCain battery plan. Many deemed the intentions of the plan as noble, but the logistics poor. One of the major arguments, among others, was that the development of such a battery would have a monetary upside that would far outweigh the $300 million prize. Others argued that such money would be better used in some kind of federal R&D program that could foster emerging battery research.

These commentaries got me thinking about prizes and the inherent “carrot and stick” issues that surround such achievement-based prizes. While the clean-tech detractors certainly make interesting and very true points, they’re forgetting the intangible inspiration factor that such a prize could create. An excellent example of such inspiration success could be the $10 million Ansari X-Prize awarded in October of 2004. In the the nine years from introduction to its presentation to the Paul Allen-backed winner Mohave Aerospace Ventures, the prize inspired over twenty-six teams made up of both amateurs as well as professionals to create and successfully launch a reusable manned spacecraft in two separate flights within two weeks. What many fail to point out is that over $100 million was invested in technologies leading up to the two successful Mohave flights.

Wait, isn’t something off here? Why would Mohave and Paul Allen put up ten times the financial muscle into winning a prize that doesn’t even cover the costs of research and development? In the typical investment world such ideas are shear lunacy. In this case wouldn’t it make sense that the prize money merely inspired the group towards the end goal? Why can’t the same true for battery improvements, or wind power, or any other publicly available prize? Isn’t the mere possibility that such a prize could inspire a talented scientist or engineer to shift their efforts towards developing new technology worth forgetting a few logistical shortcomings in a plan?

There however is another important fact that many clean-tech investors have left out. Beyond talk of batteries and prizes, recent campaign statements by both major party candidates illustrate the fact that both candidates are actively interested (at least for now) in making some serious changes to federal energy policy. Placing individual candidates positions aside, if promises from both candidates hold true into a new administration shouldn’t clean-tech investors (as well as the general public) be excited about the possible sea change such policies will bring?

Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user AndyArmstrong.

Density, Congestion, and Car Culture

Published by Taylor on June 2, 2008 in Environment, Infrastructure and Sustainability. View Comments

One of my new favorite blogs is Ryan Avent’s site The Bellows. In a post about biking and mass transit in DC, Avent makes a striking statement about density:

Imagine [...] a world where the city established dedicated bus and bike lanes, free from automobile traffic. Imagine that drivers who did want to come into the city had to pay a daily toll, and that the proceeds of that toll went toward increased bus, streetcar, and rail capacity in the city and out into the burbs. Does it not seem that everyone, drivers included, would get where they were going a lot faster? That those without cars would enjoy greater mobility, and that the metro area as a whole would spend a lot less on gas?

Automobiles just weren’t made for the kind of urban density one finds in the District, and it’s incredibly inefficient to just give the streets over to them. At some point, a city reaches a threshold at which it needs to say that cars are welcome, but they’re going to defer to people using other modes of transportation, because we simply can’t afford to accommodate the parking and road space occupied by thousands of single-passenger motor vehicles.

I would love to bike to work, though doing so would necessitate some sort of showers at my office and–in the relatively small city where I live–a death wish as I combat obscene amounts of traffic, no bike lanes, etc.

This is of course an issue of city planning priorities and resources, an unchecked car culture (where 15 minutes waiting in traffic still, for many folks, beats a city bus or a bike ride up a hill), and a host of other factors (like pre-existing narrow streets with scant room for a bike lane). But it’s also, fundamentally, an issue of density.

I have no real wisdom to offer on this subject, but I wanted to highlight Avent’s comments and pose a few questions: What’s the solution for small or mid-size cities that lack the requisite density for these measures to really work? Is that density threshold lower than I imagine? Instead of transportation alternatives, should we be equally concerned with expanding incentives for tele-commuting and satellite work locations?

Image used under a Creative Commons License courtesy of Flickr user bfick.

More Than Greenwashing: The Advantages of LEED

Published by Taylor on May 15, 2008 in Design, Environment and Sustainability. View Comments

I’ve been fortunate enough to tour two LEED-certified facilities (one Gold Certified, the other Platinum) in the past two weeks. Being in these spaces has helped solidify in my mind that green building–done well–creates living and working environments with advantages that are obvious and attractive to even the biggest green skeptics.

First I visited Warren Wilson College. This small liberal arts school in the rural mountain outskirts of Asheville, NC merits its own post (or several) on the sustainability efforts on campus. The tight-knit community at the college is committed to sustainable practices for all the right reasons and everyone really lives out that commitment, whether by working on the campus farm, recycling and reusing to admirable extremes, or helping to build (as a group of students did) a Gold LEED-Certified campus building.

When I was shown around the Orr Cottage (video tour above), what stuck out most was the simple elegance of many of the green building techniques embodied in the construction. These are, for the most part, not incredibly new ideas, particularly technological, or even all that complicated. But together they create a work and study environment that’s impossible not to envy. Some highlights:

Green materials: carpeting that, as Stan (a professor at WWC) says in the video, is “100% recyclable and 100% recycled.” Material for desks–”wheat board”–that’s made from grain waste. Re-purposed wood and salvaged doors.
Refreshing air: incredible air quality, due to sincere diligence avoiding volatile organic compounds whenever possible in glues, paints, sealants, etc as well as the fact that fresh air is continuously cycled through the building
Passive solar: the building is oriented to maximize sun exposure (genius…and yet, why so rare?) to help heat the building with winter sun.
Bright sunlight: but what about summer? Shades over windows at just the right angle block out the high summer sun while allowing bright light to enter above employees’ heads and computer screens. Say goodbye to headache-inducing fluorescent lighting, except on particularly dreary days.
Natural landscaping: outside the cottage, beautiful native grasses and wildflowers in place of the typical collegiate lawn. The native grasses and flowers require once a year maintenance (a controlled burn), and no extra water (they act as a storm water run-off filter for the building
Character: recycled antique doors for each office inside, giving each bright, plant-filled (another benefit of great sunshine) office its own unique style

As luck would have it, the week after my trip to Warren Wilson, I was in Maryland to see the headquarters of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, just outside of Annapolis. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is a nonprofit group working to restore and protect the massive Chesapeake Bay watershed. Some highlights from the Merrill Center–at the time of its construction, the first Platinum LEED-certified building in the country–after the jump… Continue reading ‘More Than Greenwashing: The Advantages of LEED’