News and Notes
A quick update on some of our projects and programs.
Above: A design idea for Strawberry Creek Plaza by Walter Hood
1. In Berkeley: Heart of the City/Strawberry Creek Plaza Project
Working with landscape architect Walter Hood, we are in final stages of design work and rough cost estimating for the pedestrian plaza. Our next step will be to formerly introduce them to the City Council and Planning Commission. Strawberry Creek Plaza will be a very strong urban treatment of bringing a creek back into the center of a city with strong and intriguing design.
Berkeley Project Design Page
2. In Oakland: Oakland Urban Villages and Ecocity Mapping
We recently received a two year, $73,500 grant from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District for the project which will hire talent in both Ecocity Builders and our partners in Oakland - the Western Institute for Social Research and Oakland Community Action Network. We are also coordinating with the Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council in the City of Oakland. The grant is specifically designed to provide replicable regional and long term solutions that will significantly reduce green house gasses in the Bay Area. In this phase we will refine the mapping system to clearly show how to move development density and diversity toward future "vitality centers" or "urban villages." At the same time, using data from the City and other sources, and by involving people in the communities and exploring the existing and potential sites for the urban villages, we can refine a tentative scheme for a zoning map overlay.
Oakland Project Page
3. Two New Books
Richard will be dedicating a steady weekly allocation of time to both drawing and book oriented writing. One book he has in mind will look at the very long term prospects for civilization, and in doing that, try to clarify what needs to be done now. The other aspires to be a larger format book of his drawings in color with only limited text.
4. Membership
After the conference over 70 new members joined, and we are going to be putting more energy into continuing to build membership in the organization. To that end we are instituting a brief Members Letter that goes out in addition to this more general newsletter. Some editorial writings, like the one you will see here at the end of this newsletter, will appear in both electronic publications but for members first. Also we will be offering discounts on events, books and reports we provide to the public. We will also be putting efforts into recruiting activist support, asking members to back us up or have their own say in our projects, write in to our newsletter and appear in public meetings supporting our projects. We will no doubt come up with other ideas for member activists, such as an initiative to "Adopt-a-Journalist" which is described here, and an effort to identify "Lifestyle Heroes," Kirstin's latest idea, and see how they play out. For general support we are planning fund raising events, the first of which will probably be in September.
Membership Page
5. Outreach and Support
The Foundation for Sustainability and Innovation, in Southern California, has been a stead source of very helpful support over the last ten years and we recognize what a positive difference that has made. The Mazer Foundation, out of New Jersey, has been crucial to our efforts in both Berkeley and for the conference. Diana and Arjun Divecha and Marco Vangelisti, along with the Mazer Foundation, have made it possible to hire Walter Hood and progress energetically with the Strawberry Creek opening project in downtown Berkeley. One new idea we will pursue is to more energetically seek individuals of wealth who can make quick decisions for support and who might recognize the need to move from a real position of strength on these issues at this time in history, who have a sense of the urgency and the notion that city design of the ecocity sort has a key place in whatever solutions we put forward in - let's face it - rescuing the world - and starting right in the cities and towns where we live.
6. 8th International Ecocity Conference
Already, seven weeks out, we have interest from organizations in Alexandria, Egypt; London, England; Istanbul, Turkey and a national park in Kenya in possibly hosting one of the next two ecocity conferences, in 2009 or 2010. The correspondence has begun. Usually it is six months or so before realistic plans begin to shape up for serious consideration, but the signs are good, enthusiasm is high. We will continue on being "the keepers of the International Ecocity Conference Series," engaged in the selection process for future conferences and doing what we can to help design and support these events. We're keeping the conference website current, with a growing archive of speaker presentations. (From the home page, click on the left top bar "Presentation Archives.")
Conference Website
7. Ecocity Conference International Consulting
The idea came from being invited by the Shanghai International Investment
Company (SIIC) to speak at their up coming conference hosted by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-rural Construction, People's Republic of China and People's Government of Hebei Province, "Ecological City - Our Common Homeland," June 19 and 20, 2008. In addition they asked if Richard would recommend other speakers. He did and some of them they proceeded to invite. With SIIC being a sponsor and also being the client and holding company for building several ecocities, the potential of serious consulting immediately looked strong. The idea then formed itself into setting up an ad-hoc list of willing speaker/consultants who would be past speakers at our International Ecocity Conferences. When clients show an interest in the future, or are contacted by conference past speakers and would like helpful ecocity consulting, then a crew of consultants will be assembled for the particular "job" from among those interested and whose calendars are clear for the time needed for the consulting. Several speakers, in a preliminary small sampling, said they would be interested in this and at the moment we are exploring for more clarity on how it would work.
|
When Walter Cronkite famously declared the Vietnam War "unwinnable" in 1968, President Johnson reportedly said that once the anchor was against him, he had lost Middle America.
Adopt-a-Journalist!
In mid May we received a letter from 89 year old Benjamin Keh. "Just discovered the existence of Ecocity Builders and I am rushing to join this very enlightened movement." He also asked if AARP, the American Association for Retired Persons (or is it People? - they are loath to spell out their name on their website, preferring the acronym in the way of our sound byte times) was aware of us and our prescriptions for cities that would help its members in particular - as well as everyone else in general. I asked if he might like to write the editor of their newsletter to see if he or she would like to have an article or editorial about Ecocity Builders. That gave me the idea that our other members might also like to contact and nurture just one or two journalists. One article can make an enormous difference.
Link to rest of article
|
It's the Economy, Stupid!
by Richard Register
Analysis, first appeared in the June 6, 2008 in the Member Letter
It's the Economy, Stupid!
Remember that line? The Clinton for President campaign came up with it in their victorious race against George Bush, Sr. Simple minded as it was, it seemed to have worked.
Here we are now with the largest one-day increase in oil prices in history, $10.75, and the highest closing price in history, $138.54/barrel. Also today we have reports of the highest monthly unemployment increase in 22 years and the Stock Market dropping more, 394 points, than on any other day in the last 15 months. To recast the slogan, "It's the stupid economy." Something in the economy seems to have not worked.
"How many times do I have to tell you," scolded the ecology teacher, "society's economy is based on nature's, not vice versa."
Capitalism has been based on the delusional notion that infinite growth in a limited environment is healthy, that prosperity can and should mean maximum consumption everlasting, world without end. But the world does end in the sense of having limits and ignoring that rather simple and gigantic fact could well be its end. Environmentalism is or should be - certainly ecology is without question - based on the idea of balances that get adjusted pretty quickly and severely when contradicted for long. Infinite growth in a limited environment is a clear formula for massive collapse if not suicide when growth suddenly hits the wall of finite limits.
This is not a capitalist vs. socialist issue in the slightest. (Link to rest of article)
|
|
|
|
Ecocity Builders Members and Friends,
Ecocity World Summit 2008 (7th International Ecocity Conference) is over and we are rocketing into the future as the latest probe to Mars, far, far away, digs into the ice under orange skies this very day. Strange times! Meanwhile back at the ranch, down on the dirt where people build cities from slums to splendid gleaming towers, where they get around in gas hogging SUVs and streetcars and on bicycles, skateboards, shoes and bare feet, we've just wound up our Seventh International Ecocity Conference. Somewhere around 1,200 people with more than 200 speakers attended from 73 countries, our largest in the International Ecocity Conference series to date.
Said many, in addition to my own biased self as co-convener, it was the best conference we had ever experienced. The breadth of knowledge and geographical representation, the originality and innovation present and represented in both the experienced and the new talent was truly stunning, all the more so because we were dealing with a subject that is hardly mainstream, though backing into the spotlight most subtly. The UN Conference on Climate Change in Bali four months earlier missed the subject entirely - amazing! Do the largest things humanity builds have anything to do with global heating? "More than anything else," should have been the answer. But the UN Conference didn't even ask the question. We did, and we went on to one of the most broad and deep-focus panoramas of solutions ever gathered in one place. "Where did you get all these incredible people?" I was asked several times, and I'm quoting. They said, "incredible," and repeatedly. My answer: I'd been looking for them over the last 35 years and slowly they appeared all on their own creative initiative. Necessity is the mother of invention they say - well, we need them and thus they've appeared. Let's hope we used them well and - the point of many conferences - that our event further empowered them all to work in new combinations with each other or back home in their same good ways on into the future.
Link to rest of article
|
Post Conference Reflections
What We Learned
Great people
Thinking through the design of a large event with some of the most innovative and inspiring people, history, experience, ideas, and projects is quite an experience. People sympathized with conference organizers and most understand what a difficult, financially risky but intellectually and personally satisfying enterprise these things are. So we were very impressed with two things: appreciation from so many conference participants, which was very heartening, and the truly impressive and enormously creative contributions provided to society - and ultimately nature and into the future - by those who we featured.
Fabulous support and partnerships -
The Helen and William Mazer Foundation came forward with a very major contribution to help the conference and we had the pleasure of meeting two of their officers in person. They came out from New Jersey and Massachusetts to take part in the conference, Steven Bercu and David Berkowitz. Autodesk was a major sponsor, providing significant financial assistance to the production and support for our opening night with photographer/author Gary Braasch, and also providing Doug Eberhard as one of our speakers, in his case covering their work and related work in information technology modeling, visualizations and communications. Other major sponsors were Bicycle City, the San Francisco office of EDAW, the landscape architecture firm, and the San Francisco office of Arup, the design/engineering firm. San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR) and the San Francisco Neighborhood Parks Council which was represented with a talk by Isabel Wade, were very generous in connecting us with important and supportive people in the City of San Francisco including the Mayor, Gavin Newsom. He gave a rousing welcome, and Director of the Environment Department, Jared Blumenfeld, who spoke and moderated several times, once explaining San Francisco's plans and progress toward a much greener more ecocity future. Our friends and important supporters Joell Jones and Marco Vangelisti helped greatly financially, supporting the filming that took place in the Main Hall and other various expenses, and Dianna and Arjun Divecha provided the very first reception of the whole conference just preceding the talk on climate change and cities by Gary Braasch. Thank you!
Our moment is soon!
A powerful sense suffused the meeting that people are waking up, not just to climate change, but are beginning to become aware that rising oil prices really do mean we will soon, society-wide, realize that we need to rethink the way we build our "constructed habitat" and that will constitute a real breakthrough.
Ocean acidification
A real shocker was delivered by Marcia McNutt, CEO of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, in her "state of the oceans" talk. We'd heard of the drastic over fishing going on world wide, with something like 90% of the traditional fisheries "fished out" or nearly. And we'd heard of the slight rise in temperature of the surface waters and damage to coral reefs, which she also recounted. But it was frightening news begging for action when she explained the degree to which CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing acidification of the ocean. Dissolving the shells of shellfish and invertebrates like clams and oysters, shrimp and krill was a real nightmare scenario shouting out for what you might call an Omnibus, or All Things Rescue Operation: that and the forests and whole world biodiversity. This atrophy of calcium carbonate in the shells caused by increasing acidification of the seas is miniscule right now, but it's just beginning and the projections of going farther down this path are truly dire. Of course in bringing these experts together, such as herself and Stephen Schneider, we are hoping to let them, as well as our full audience know, that city design, layout and structure is at the foundation of massive impact for good or ill in precisely the subjects they are expert in.
We need much more effort on behalf of the pedestrian environment
Richard spoke at length with Jaime Lerner, past Mayor of Curitiba, Brazil and our keynote speaker, at the Academic Session's first night Reception sponsored by Stacey Frost and her organization, Re:Vision. He had been wondering about this: When he first went to Curitiba in 1999 there were 27 blocks of pedestrian streets and he had heard they were built fifteen or more years earlier than that. Were there any more streets converted from auto-dominated to pedestrian since then in Curitiba? No, Lerner said. Richard was surprised and asked why not?
(link to rest if article)
|
BAY AREA SUMMER EVENT!
June 21st and 22nd, 9AM-7PM, Sharon Meadows,
Golden Gate Park
Come engage fellow citizens, non-profits and municipal agencies in workshops and hands on demonstrations designed to create beautiful communities in the Bay Area.
Free Event, 100% Non-Commercial
Live music! Family Friendly
A Zero Waste Event
Bring your own food & drink for our city's largest potluck ever!
The NEW ME IS WE!
info@beautifulcommunities.org
http://www.beautifulcommunities.org
|
Virtual Internships with Ecocity Builders
Ecocity Builders is looking for several virtual volunteer interns and several local volunteer interns. If you are qualified and interested, please contact Executive Director Kirstin Miller for more information. kirstin@ecocitybuilders.org
Projects
1. Imagining Center Street. Help create a booklet for download that contains the set of exercises, drawings, sketches, photos of models and designs for Strawberry Creek Plaza, with explanation by landscape architect Walter Hood, narrative by Richard Register, and a chronicle of the project's evolution. We need an intern who can assemble all of the pieces and create an attractive and well organized booklet that can be downloaded and/or printed and used for education, outreach and fundraising.
2. Research Assistants. Research and document ecocity projects, people and plans world wide for our Ecocity Media site, working with our Ecocity Media Administrator.
3. Internet outreach. Connect our website and blog site with other social media. Log in comments and join in the conversations online having to do with ecological city design and planning.
4. Oakland Urban Villages Project. On the ground and Internet research. We need help gathering information and photographs for our mapping and community planning project in Oakland.
5. Lifestyle Heroes Project. Research high profile people around the world who are "walking the talk" -- going car free, moving to mixed use multistory city centers, reducing their consumption and going green in a big way. We want to make them into heroes and role models.
|
Ecocities, Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature
by Richard Register
|
 |
Order "Ecocities"
"Well-prepared, with vision, enthusiasm and powerful, practical tools, Ecocities enables us to challenge the doom-sayers and doom-makers to this race for a healthy, sane, compassionate future. We have to win, and the author explains how." -Lester R. Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute and author of Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization
|
Upcoming Talks
June 19 and 20, Langfang, Hebei Province, People's Republic of China
Conference name: "Ecological City - Our Common Homeland," Topic 4, "Theory and Model of International Ecological City." For the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Construction, P.R.China, the Government of Hebei Province and Shanghai International Investment (Holding) Company. Richard's talk: "The Ecocity in Its Time and Place"
August 7, Chicago, Illinois, Annual Meeting of the Green Communities Project of Enterprise Community Partners, an organization that helps build housing for low-income Americans by providing financing and expertise to community and housing developers. Richard's talk: "Ecocities - Urban Solutions for Those in Need: All of Us"
August 14, Center for Ecoliteracy's summer institute for K-12 teachers, "Environmental Sustainability: Making Learning Connections", The Bay School of San Francisco. Kirstin Miller will present a workshop on green building and sustainable development education.
September 30 and October 1, Geneva, Switzerland (in negotiation)
For One Planet Business with Green Power Conferences and their inaugural "Sustainable Cities and Communities" conference. Talk in section on "Practical EcoCity Case Studies" Title of Richard's talk: "Transforming existing cities with Ecocity Mapping - Oakland, California, a work-in-progress"
October 17 - 19, Hyderabad, India
For the World Academy of Science: General Assembly 2008 (Richard was inducted as a member in December, 2007). Conference theme: "The Anthropocene Crisis: Perils and Possibilities of the 21st Century". Presentation and panel on: "Asian Cities, Ecocities"
October 21 and 22, Singapore
For the Singapore Agency for Science, Technology & Research (A*STAR) and the Fulbright Academy of Science and Technology. Conference name: "Futuropolis 2058 - Creating Sustainable Urban Environments Through Innovation." Title of Richard's talk: "Enduring Civilization and the Dynamic Cities to Build It"
|
Ecocity Builders is a small nonprofit organization with a big message to get out to the world. If you are interested in helping financially, please give us a call or send us an email.
We'd love to talk to you more about our work.
Click here for membership information
Membership levels include: Basic $35, Patron $100, Sustaining $250 and so on. If you are not currently a member, please consider becoming one! You can also mail your donation to Ecocity Builders, P.O. Box 697, Oakland, CA 94604. Contact Kirstin Miller if you have questions: kirstin@ecocitybuilders.org
We'd also like to that this opportunity to send a big thank you to our Ecocity World Summit conference photographers. They include Susan Felter, Bill Mastin, Mona Miri, and Janet Delaney, and there were other students of both Susan and Janet there helping to document the conference. Great work!
Please check in regularly with our Ecocity World Summit website, which we are keeping current and adding more presenter slide shows all the time. This webiste has a lot of great information, as does our ecocity media site, which is also updated frequently, thanks to our new intern, Stephanie Hsia of Oakland, California.
Sincerely,
Kirstin Miller and Richard Register
PO Box 697
Oakland, CA 94604
Ecocity Builders
510-444-4508
ecocity@igc.org
www.ecocitybuilders.org
|
|
|
|
|
