Yule Heibel's Library tagged sustainability →  View Popular, Search in Google

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...sustainability is about more than new technologies. At its most basic, “sustainable” means enduring. A sustainable community is a place of enduring value. Doug Kelbaugh, the dean of the University of Michigan School of Architecture, put it this way, “If a building, a landscape or a city is not beautiful, it will not be loved; if it is not loved, it won’t be maintained and improved. In short, it won’t be sustained.”

Distinctiveness involves streetscapes, architecture, and historic preservation but as Cortright points out, it also involves cultural events and facilities, restaurants and food, parks and open space and many other factors. “Keep Austin Weird” is more than a slogan; it is a recipe for economic success. A distinctive city is a city that the young and well-educated want to live in, that boomers want to retire to, and most certainly a city that people want to visit.
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I have mixed feelings reading this. Victoria BC fulfills some of these criteria, yet Victorians have let their downtown become ugly and empty (they have done everything BUT sustain it), and they neglected the historic preservation of a key piece of industrial archaeology, thereby failing to sustain it (the historic Johnson Street Bridge). Natural beauty is great (and Victoria has plenty of it), but natural beauty has to be enhanced by built beauty, and in that department, some cities fall down, badly. Meanwhile, there are other cities, with far fewer natural beauty resources, that manage to build up beautifully.

beauty sustainability endurance cities atlantic_cities uli tourism

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We need to focus, ironically, on ends, not means. For example, in passive solar buildings, focusing on the end goal (thermal comfort) rather than the means (heating air) changed the design approach dramatically. It turns out that human comfort has more to do with surrounding surface temperatures than with air temperature in a building, so massive walls that absorb and store the sun’s gentle heat also provide a more comfortable environment without all the hot air. Or, if lighting is the goal, electricity and bulbs are just one potential means; a building that welcomes daylight is the simple, elegant solution—even better than a complex system of wind farms generating green electrons for efficient fixtures. Likewise, the goal of transportation is access, not movement or mobility per se; movement is a means, not the end. So, bringing destinations closer together is a simpler, more elegant solution than assembling a new fleet of electric cars and the acres of solar collectors needed to power them. Call it “passive urbanism.”
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sustainability cities urbanism energy streetsblog peter_calthorpe climate_change

Corporate Knights's Issue 34 on Sustainable Cities (Canada).

cities sustainability canada corporate_knights

Retrofitting older cities/ existing communities to green-ness?
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We are studying different business models (and their pilot projects) for creating better urban environments (aka "smart cities" or "eco-cities"). Living PlanIT is the first business model we have examined in depth. On June 28 one of us (Bob) attended an event in Paredes where an important deal between Living PlanIT and Cisco was announced. It's important because the imprimatur of Cisco, a leader in networking technology, means that Living PlanIT can now shift into execution mode and try to demonstrate that its co-founders' vision for creating a sustainable smart city can work.
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urbanism green_technologies green_strategies retrofit harvard_business sustainability

Featured Guest: Gregory Unruh, director and professor of the Lincoln Center for Ethics in Global Management at the Thunderbird School. He is the author of Earth, Inc.: Using Nature's Rules to Build Sustainable Profits."

biosphere gregory_unruh harvard_business sustainability economic_development

Wish I could attend this event:
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Old is the New Green:
Starbucks Center
Presented in Partnership with the Cascadia Region Green Building Council Seattle Branch.

This iconic building was built in 1912 by Union Pacific from Yesler Mill timber to house the Sears and Roebuck & Co. store. At 2.1 million square feet the LEED-EB certified building is the largest multi-tenant building in Washington State and helped to breathe life back into Seattle's SODO neighborhood.

Kevin Daniels, President of Nitze-Stagen and Daniels Development, will speak to the challenges of being a trail blazer in sustainable preservation and what made this project such a success. Don't miss the chance to get an insider view at what makes Starbucks' global headquarters a leader in green preservation.
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heritage sustainability preservation urban_renewal adaptability seattle architecture

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Judging by what's covered in the media, it would appear that so-called "green" developers are leading the way when it comes to sustainable water and stormwater practices. But there is plenty of evidence to debunk that myth.

This website will showcase innovation in the public sector, leadership from the grassroots, inspiration from NGOs and - above all - partnerships that empower citizens to become part of the solution to floods, droughts and stormwater problems.
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raincatchers urban_design water stormwater_management green_strategies sustainability

Great defense of cities by Paul Hawken.
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Urban migration represents a kind of collective wisdom, and how we configure our cities will be critical to our survival. Regardless of the myths about living close to the land, cities are where human beings have the lowest ecological footprint. It takes less energy, wood, material, and food to provide a good life for a person in a city than in the country. Rather than perceive the city as an ecological sink sucking up the resources of the countryside, which cities can do, cities can also be a kind of ecological ark, places where humanity gathers while we peak in population and develop ecological intelligence for a new civilization. There is wisdom in this that is rather extraordinary. It was not predicted that cities might be the best strategy for our long-term survival and well-being. Yet that is exactly what is happening.
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sustainlane paul_hawken sustainability cities urbanization environment ecology

Page for WATT, Rotterdam's Sustainable Dance Club. Includes a really cool video (one guy, quoting verbatim, talks about how we're "leaving the tree hugger age" and moving into a whole new era that embraces innovation etc.). Found via Inhabitat (see http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/10/02/sustainable-dance-club-opens-in-rotterdam/), which includes more images.

dance_club sustainability innovation rotterdam environment

Ping Magazine interview with Berlin-based Kristin and Lukas Feireiss on their book, _Architecture of Change - sustainability and humanity in the built environment_, regarding the "conscious contradiction in the title — changing and sustaining. But how can I change and sustain at the same time? This challenge is what we try to put across."

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There’s more to architecture than its simple purpose of shelter or protection, a cast to architecture. However they are creating social environments, urban spaces and the public spaces where people actually interact. So they are the catalyst for social interaction, for society to work in. This is a big topic and we can go from dictatorial architecture to that of social engagement.
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This book gives a broad overview of what’s possible in sustainable building practices or social practices in architecture. So it ranges from economically speaking very simple, modernistic architecture to very free-flowing, avant-garde forms; from small, private houses to school buildings to skyscrapers, to federal buildings. It’s not restricted at all to one certain section. And secondly it comprises all these ideas that are in a state of research or initiative.
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Bonus: gorgeous pictures/ illustrations.

Wouldn't mind having a copy of this book!

pingmag ping_mag architecture sustainability design

- transcript of a talk by Pier Giorgio DiCicco; emphasis on the bodily; added two rather long comments.

anonymity cities embodiment pier_giorgio_di_cicco sustainability urbanism

via CEOs for Cities, an article by Alex Steffen, which argues for dense, urban communities that will help curb (literally) car use. \n\nFrom his intro preamble: "This is a rough draft of a long essay about why I believe building compact communities should be one of America's highest environmental priorities, and why, in fact, our obsession with building greener cars may be obscuring some fundamental aspects of the problem and some of the benefits of using land-use change as a primary sustainability solution."

alex_steffen cars cities environment green_strategies sustainability urbanism worldchanging

SDTC = Sustainable Development Technology Canada; this particular page describes the Innovation Chain, particularly in Canada. Points out its weak spots, very interesting.

canada funding innovation research sustainability technology