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Ecocities Emerging
To support humanity's transition into the Ecozoic Era
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December 2008
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Greetings,
Welcome to the December edition of Ecocities Emerging, an initiative of Ecocity Builders and the International Ecocity Conference Series.
The Low-Carbon Economy (LCE) is an increasingly popular term for a proposed new global economic environment to replace the current high-carbon economy which requires pumping massive amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and is hurtling the planet towards ever increasing catastrophic climate change disaster.
The LCE was being discussed in China at a UN sponsored conference I attended last month; US President-elect Obama is crafting an economic reform package for the United States that he says simultaneously addresses climate change issues; UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has described this task as the "defining challenge of our age"; and recently European Commissioner for the environment, Stavros Dimas, said that the European Union has "high hopes that the US will be our partner in the necessary shift towards a low carbon economy."
A planned transition to a LCE is necessary for our long term survival. Discussions about the largest things we build, (cities, towns and villages) and power, (with energy, food, water, goods and services) -- the very systems that currently demand the high carbon outputs -- are key to focusing LCE discussions into a comprehensive and practical dialogue about how to build and maintain an enduring world civilization.
At this time Old Thinking is still prevalent -- that we should figure out how to maintain high carbon cities and societies with partial and/or potentially dangerous solutions like "better" cars, nuclear power, carbon capture and storage (an unproven technology), and cellulosic biofuels (a proposed technology, and biofuels are in direct competition for soil and acreage with hungry people and the planet's remaining biodiversity).
But why tune up an unsustainable model with partial solutions, when, in likely the same amount of time it would take to build all those nuclear plants and finish work on questionable next generation biofuels and "clean" coal, we could instead reshape and rebuild the model to run indefinitely on clean renewables?
The New Thinking argues that we should utilize the remaining gift to the Industrial Age, fossil fuels, to rebuild our civilization so that it can operate into the future on a fraction of the energy it demands currently. This transition would require a huge effort, the kind of massive global project that we've been hearing world leaders hinting about more and more, just without a clear vision as of yet.
Ultimately, the economy isn't based on theories, products, indicators and investment portfolios. It is based on time and labor, dirt, minerals, water, wood, wind, decomposition, the sun. The faster we reconnect with our economic base, the sooner we will be able to stop climate change, set up the LCE and usher in a new era where humanity lives in balance with living systems. Only then will we have an enduring civilization.
As we build, so shall we live.
Kirstin Miller, Ecocity Builders
Oakland, California, December 2008
ecocitybuilders.org
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The
Ecozoic Era refers to a vision, first promoted by cosmologist Thomas
Berry, of an emerging epoch when humanity lives in a mutually enriching
relationship with the larger community of life on Earth.
Will
we be able to make the transition in time to retain a biosphere healthy
enough to regenerate living systems now under extreme stress? There is
no way to be certain, but our position is that there's no time to sit
around and wonder about it: now is time for action.
Thank
you for all that you are doing to help accelerate progress toward a
civilization in balance with living systems.
Maybe one day all cities
will be ecocities.
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Ecocity World Summit 2009
Istanbul Turkey, December 13-15
http://www.ecocity2009.comOrganized by Yildiz Technical University Faculty Of Architecture, Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Parantez International in Istanbul
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Colin Grant Weighs In
 Colin Grant is Founder and CEO of Visible Strategies and will be contributing a regular column in Ecocities Emerging. December 2008
Full Circle
So in my first Ecocities article I suggested that, for Greenhouse Gas Emissions and energy transitions, very soon 350ppm of atmospheric GHGs would become the new 450ppm "safe" level (we're currently at over 380ppm), and that ICLEI US's ambitious 80% GHG cut by 2050 targets would soon be out of date and that 2020 would become the new 2050 as per NASA scientist and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) rebel Jim Hansen's warnings. Well, at the recent Poznan conference in Poland, Al Gore officially left the "450ppm is safe" gang and has joined the "350ppm-or-bust" gang. His Apollo type mission of 100% "clean" energy by 2018 is now linked to an 80% GHG cut by 2020 as Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute did earlier this year with his Plan B 3.0. I predict that at ICLEI's world conference next year, the leadership cities will be taking on the 80% by 2020 challenge. For all intents and purposes, 350 is the new 450, and 2020 is the new 2050 and eventually, all the green city membership groups will follow along as quickly as they feel they can. For more details on the science, see the excellent www.350.org. Meanwhile, the lag effect still rules. Last week I attended a Sustainable Silicon Valley (SSV) event at the historic Sun Microsystems campus in Santa Clara, California. One of the core topics was about how California is going to achieve State Act AB32, which mandates reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, a reduction of an estimated 174 Million Metric Tons of GHGs or about a 30% GHG cut, (unless of course the Governor decides it might reduce economic growth - got to love the Cheneyesque addendum). Now California is pretty widely regarded as the most entrepreneurial part of the US, and Silicon valley is widely seen as the most entrepreneurial part of California, and yet nobody else present seemed to be aware of the 800 pound gorilla in the room. 30% GHG cuts by the leaders are likely to mean far lesser achievements by the laggards and many of the US laggards are likely to head in the wrong direction, i.e. increased emissions. And as I mentioned in earlier articles in this series, Europe's leader, Gussing in Austria has already achieved a 90% GHG emissions reduction while creating more jobs, becoming a net exporter of renewable energy and a wealthier community and leading German, Swedish and Danish communities are not far behind. I was left wondering how Silicon Valley, arguably the most entrepreneurial area in the world, can be so unambitious? One of the presenters at the SSV event was from Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) and he showed lots of nice PowerPoint Slides of some existing solar panels and lots of future Californian windmills and future Californian wave power machines and other future Californian developments that would happen by 2030. But all of the future Californian things he showed already exist somewhere in Europe. And here's the rub. Lurking beside the projector screen was another 800lb gorilla. PG&E does not allow the two-way metering that is an absolutely essential component of a renewable energy revolution, whereby, for instance a home can feed photovoltaic generated electricity on a sunny day and consume PG&E energy from the grid on a dull day. Without removing the barriers, it will take until 2030 and beyond to get where we can and must get by 2020. It doesn't have to be like this, but it won't happen through polite discourse as the gorillas dance behind the expert panel. So I come full circle. The science is telling us that nothing short of an 80% GHG cut by 2020 will do. All the technology exists today to allow this to happen and every case study shows it can (and in some cases has already been) done and that it can be done while creating more jobs, business and community security. Yet, in spite of the myriad city membership and collaborative organization, no group of cities has stepped up to the plate, backed Mr. Gore and announced that they will join Gussing as 90% emissions reducers. If any city out there wants to start, I can plug you in with lots of others who may join you, my company provides software that can allow you all to track your journey, share lessons, and show the world what you're doing. The previous articles in this series show how a city can grow most of its food, generate most or all of its energy (and in some cases even more than it needs) and rise elegantly to meet the challenges of the 21st century. If you want to make it happen, I'd love to hear from you. My phone number is (++1) 604 733 6040 and my email is cgrant@visiblestrategies.com
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NewVista
Scalable Sustainability
by David Hall
A Global Imperative
NewVista is a concept for sustainable human development. It integrates all aspects of life, including metropolitan planning, agriculture, housing, industry, commerce, and community services, on a massive scale, in an ecologically sustainable way. The global imperative demands our attention: we must confront impending and catastrophic environmental crises on a global scale, with detailed attention to full cycle systems. Humanity can buy very little time "going green," incrementally, by driving hybrid cars, recycling, or devising emissions trading schemes. Sadly, many of our options for living sustainably, though well-meaning and often locally relevant, will only temporarily sustain the unsustainable. The NewVista concept offers a solution in the form of a paradigm shift. A radically different lifestyle must be enabled. A life lived within walking distance.
Bordeaux - shopping street © Christian Bauer
Rue Sainte-Catherine, the longest pedestrian street in Europe
A NewVista city has walking as its primary mode of transportation. Ensuring that all aspects of life are experienced within walking distance creates a cascade of positive, sustainable practices and design. The walkable life mandates solutions such as eliminating the need for personal automobiles, and NewVista takes steps beyond New Pedestrianism to completely remove the need for accommodating automobiles. With practical walking distance as the primary design imperative, NewVista promotes human-scaled neighborhoods. The pervasiveness of pedestrians in the NewVista concept requires provision of modest sizes, speeds and dimensions. This is highly effective in creating a good quality of life, and enabling sustainability. Local food production, proximate living and working spaces, localized trade and production, and the natural environment are all integrated into the design and concept of a life lived locally. Cities designed to enable walking improve neighborliness and allow individuals to gain a unique sense of worth in the participation of a vibrant localized economy.
The challenges we face must be resolved globally. The NewVista concept is a repeatable pattern that enables an economy of scale. A solution providing a sustainable lifestyle will have to be replicated many times, so that it can have the positive global impact that is needed. There are some projects, such as Masdar City-Abhu Dhabi and Dongtan, planned and underway, that aim to be the ecocity model for the future. In many ways they will succeed and much will be learned from them. However, these projects do not address the requirement that there must be thousands of ecocities constructed very soon, to effectively reduce ecological degradation. The NewVista pattern allows for new cities to be constructed anywhere, and to be easily linked as they expand and new cities are built, forming a high-density megalopolis. Inner-city high rise urban density and suburban land-consuming sprawl are unsustainable forms of development. No matter how you green-wash the world's current infrastructure-enabled lifestyle choices, they can not be transformed into something that is both sustainable and scalable. NewVista brings all of our life processes to within walking distance in a pattern that can be easily replicated, and thus can be implemented now on the monumental magnitude that matches the crucial immediacy of our moment.
Link to rest of article
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What's Important to Say
by Richard Register
What's important to say at this juncture? I mean, here it is, New Year coming, time of darkness before the yearly dawn - or so it should be in the natural order of things on this planet. But these are no ordinary times. January 20, just over a month away, is the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States of America, some sort of a sunrise we should hope. But then shortly after there's the likely kicking in of the next Great Depression, then the precipitous part of the decline in oil reserves, then gas, then uranium, then coal and its relatives in sand and shale, then the metals that will only be left in the earth in very poor ores, while the energy to mine them becomes so expensive and the machines to do the industrial adventure become so scarce because they are rusting, corroding and their metals are slipping through the fingers of tens of billions of people, in lost little bits and pieces, that we enter the Second Stone Age. There, pottery and basket making return as the highest productive arts of former civilization.
You noticed I slipped from the present moment to the distant future, but one that may be "only" 500 years out. Still, civilizations of real complexity and amassing of knowledge (if not wisdom as judged by results) have been building up our collective cultural inheritance on this planet for sixteen times those above mentioned 500 years, if we take the founding of Çatalhoyuk as a meaningful starting date, about 8,000 years ago. That's the town in present day Turkey many scholars regard as the first real city, if small - 4,000 to 10,000 people. It's an archeological site, abandoned of citizens for 7,200 years.
GM CEO Rick Wagoner
Does it make sense to think five hundred years ahead when the CEO of General Motors is screaming that his company is going under in three weeks? (I mean the "What's good for General Motors is good for America" company. The second generation version of that quote is "What's bad for General Motors is bad for America - bail us out or else.")
Jane Jacobs in her last book, "Dark Age Ahead" and an earlier one, "Cities and the Wealth of Nations" said that the worst of it is that even pretty basic cultures, much less complex civilizations such as our metals- and electronics-heavy one powered by fossil fuels, experience quick amnesia in a broad spectrum downturn, the core and foundation of which is ultimately an economic downturn. People forget even simple crafts, she said. Their tools wear out, along with their knowledge of how to make and use them. She uses the disintegration of various crafts in Appalachia as an example, simpler societies failing to inherit - or even wanting to inherit - things and knowledge from before. The syndrome is almost like a personal depression that loses interest and turns dead eyes on the good things of the past; an economic depression spreads that kind of giving up to millions. In "The World Without Us," Alan Weisman is eloquent on the erasure of civilizations - faster than you think - by not just economic missteps but dear Nature who giveth us all, but also taketh away.
'Warsaw Without Us' by Mondolithic Studios, cover piece commissioned by Focus Magazine in Poland
When I went to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina one of the side stories that struck me most meaningful was that it was a surprising big shock to so many that their cell phones went down. No electricity to the cell towers meant everyone was suddenly out of touch, alone beyond the sound of their desperate voices, which don't get very far in a spread out urban layout called low-density development. For hundreds that meant something pretty profound: no rescue. A future of worrisome delivery of electricity (already experiences in growing, not shrinking numbers of black outs globally now) is also something that could define a world in the next Great Depression, so when you turn on your computer or those other devices we are becoming more and more dependent upon, don't think they are even more immortal than you are.
Contemplating the White House
So there I was two nights ago standing in front of the White House, a short walk from my hotel in Washington, DC., Pennsylvania Avenue blocked off with big barriers and bleachers under bright lights at midnight. The White House looked way forlorn, even lonely. The Great Wrecker might be asleep in there right now in there right now, I thought, feeling a bit short of friends and sorry for his legacy. (In fact he was in Bagdad dodging a journalists shoes and curses.) There was a harsh cast to the too-blue color of the security lights, cold and sad. Almost nobody was around but a couple walking a dog and another pair, all bundled up against the wind, just looking at the President's residence, appearing lost in thought or maybe just a little confused. Some police officers were standing by their cars. I said to one of them, "The inauguration is in front of the Capital, right? Why the bleachers here?" He told me this is where the procession from the Inauguration terminates, and then Obama moves in and the business of the new administration begins. "Who gets to sit in those bleachers?" I asked. "Certainly people more important than me," the officer replied.
Link to rest of article
Richard Register is President of Ecocity Builders and author of Ecocities, Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature.
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Car-Free Journey
by Steve Atlas
Car-free living is getting more recognition in the mainstream press.
Recently USA Today reported that even though gasoline prices have been coming down, a growing number of new transit riders are not returning to their cars.
Where To Retire Magazine Spotlights Car Free Cities
In its January/February 2009 issue, Where to Retire magazine has an article spotlighting "8 Terrific Places for Car-Free Living." In her Letter from the Editor, Mary Lu Abbott says, "We receive a number of letters from readers who want to relocate somewhere that they don't have to drive to everything, a walkable community. And with the gas prices fluctuating, it certainly can save money to leave the car parked and walk, ride a bike, or drive the golf cart someplace."
The 8 communities profiled in that article include: Lexington VA Middlebury VT, Daniels Island SC (in the Charleston area), The Villages FL, Green Valley AZ, Peachtree City GA, Bardstown KY, and Highland Ranch CO.
Several retirement communities, and some that are non age-restricted, offer golf carts to residents as a means of personal transport to get to locations too far away to walk to-without needing to drive. The Villages is one such community.
The only concern I had about the otherwise excellent article is that, like many mainstream publications, the writer did not consider public transportation worthy of even being mentioned as a means to live car-free. Still, Where to Retire deserves our thanks for addressing the issue of where to retire without needing to drive everywhere.
This month's spotlighted city is Tempe, Arizona
"read on"
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Ecocity?
What is an ecocity?
Article by Eero Paloheimo
(Below) An ecocity example by Eero Paloheimo
The
ecocity has already become a concept, a positive concept. Therefore,
there exists the danger that it will acquire political or commercial
connotations and so become a synonym for something good. Numerous
similar examples already exist, like sustainable development, welfare
state, democracy and freedom of speech. They are all rather vague
expressions that no-one can define precisely. However, everyone is
certain that they are all good. Unfortunately, use has rendered many of
their original literal meanings somewhat trite or commonplace, even
sometimes a travesty. This should be avoided. Once a concept
acquires a positive aura it is used in arguments to authenticate,
becoming a banal phrase, an indisputable argument. Its meaning
undergoes inflation and becomes increasingly imprecise. A similar fate
is threatening the concept of ecocity. Thus it is right to ask: What is
a real ecocity? And can there be an intermediate ecocity, a half-way
house? Let us start with the basic problem and basic aim. The
ecocity is one of the most important part solutions to the ongoing
global environmental crisis. It possesses two basic characteristics: 1. The ecocity makes economical use of natural resources - materials, energy, space. 2. The ecocity does not pollute the environment - land, water or atmosphere. These
two properties are rational. The emotional requirement is presented
already in Richard Register´s book "Ecocity Berkeley" (1987) and it
could be called a Happy Marriage of Nature and Man. I assume everybody
understands. Of the first two characteristics, the first is
related to the beginning of production and consumption, the second to
the whole of production and consumption, as well as the end of
consumption. These two criteria can be considered the categorical
imperatives of the ecocity as they establish the conditions for the
production of goods, traffic, land usage, building, energy usage and
the urban way of life. A radical ecocity is as different from the
traditional city as dogs are from cats. But then there are many breeds
of dogs. In all production and its sub areas we can progress
towards cleaner energy and product solutions, but if these solutions
are developed independently of each other, then their interactive
effects may remain unnoticed. This is why so many important factors
may be forgotten during the design stage of new products. In a real
ecocity, the aim is to introduce new technology simultaneously in all
solutions, and therefore their interactive effects are vital and should
be automatically taken into consideration from the very beginning. The
first ecocity will certainly not be orthodox, perfect. It will not have
zero-level emissions, and it will use natural resources because it does
not know how to recycle all materials. The quality of the city will be
evaluated according to certain basic criteria, indicators. Using these
we could talk of a fifty per cent ecocity. One such indicator would
show, for instance, how much energy is consumed. How much unclean,
carbon-dioxide producing energy is used per inhabitant? And how does
this compare to energy consumption in a traditional city? Link to rest of article
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