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Ecocities Emerging
To support humanity's transition into the Ecozoic Era
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June 2009
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Welcome to the June 2009 edition of Ecocities Emerging, an initiative of Ecocity Builders and the International Ecocity Conference Series.
This edition of Ecocities Emerging is dedicated in memory of cosmologist and Earth historian Thomas Berry, who passed away on June 1st at Wellspring home in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Over his 94 years as a historian of the Earth and its evolutionary processes, Thomas Berry contributed many valuable insights and observations to help guide the human perspective. Perhaps not one of his more poetic quotes, but the fulcrum on which the fate of humanity, nature and evolution itself teeters is as follows: "Nature's economy is primary, human economy derivative."
Described in Newsweek magazine in 1989 as "the
most provocative figure among the new breed of eco-theologians," Berry was
among the first to say the earth crisis is fundamentally a spiritual
crisis. He believed the only way to effectively function as individuals and
as a species is to understand the history and functioning of our planet
and of the wide universe itself, like sailors learning about their ship
and the vast ocean on which it sails. "It takes a universe to make a
child," he said, adding that he was "trying to establish a functional
cosmology, not a theology."
We acknowledge Thomas Berry's significant contributions to the intellectual capital of our species and thank him for enriching and warming our lives and the lives of thousands of others. We will miss him very much.
Mr.
Berry's vision of the Ecozoic Era -- an emerging epoch when humanity
lives in a mutually enriching relationship with the larger community of
life on Earth -- was, is, and will continue to be the inspiration for
the Ecocities Emerging initiative.
In the next edition of this newsletter we will include a longer article describing the impact Thomas Berry has made on the ecocity movement.
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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? Our role in exploring ecocities is to clarify a vision of cities that can. And then go out and build them. There is
no way to be certain we will succeed, but our position is that there's no time to just 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
Organized by Yildiz Technical University, Ecocity Builders and Parantez International
Photo by Dick Osseman
Speakers include:
Richard Register - Ecocity Builders, USA
Wang Rusong - Chinese Academy of Science, China
Ken Yeang - Bioclimatic architect, London-Malaysia
Suha Ozkan - World Architects, Turkey
Agni Vlavianos-Arvanitis - Biopolitics, Greece
Arnold J. Goldman - Chairman and Founder, BrightSource Energy, Inc., Israel - USA
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Stragegic Development for Restoration -
Beyond Environmentalism vs Smart Growth at San Francisco Bay
by Richard Register, President, Ecocity Builders
 A lesson for the world: neither today's incarnation of environmentalism nor what's usually taken to be "smart growth" is right. Or rather, both are partially right and partially wrong. Here's the story; its lesson applies not only on the edge of the ocean near sea level, as in San Francisco Bay, but everywhere people build cities, towns and villages. Ecocities: one stop shopping for all your solutions!
DMB Associates out of Scottsdale, Arizona has teamed up with Cargill Company on a proposal to develop 1,433 acres (580 hectares) of tidal zone wetlands in San Francisco Bay. The exact location is in Redwood City on the west side of the bay fifteen miles (24 kilometers) south of San Francisco. DMB and Cargill want to build homes on 44% of the area, create recreational space on 31% and save 25% of the wetlands they impressed for salt production decades ago. Presently the Cargill Company is using the area to evaporate salt for the market. They will either develop it or continue harvesting salt, they say. They call their proposal for development "the Saltworks 50-50 Balanced Plan."
Architect and New Urbanist Peter Calthorpe has defended the project in the San Francisco Chronicle Insight Section, Sunday, June 14, as smart growth and the only practical way to preserve any of the land or waters in question, depending on low or high tide. He didn't say whether he had the job or was just promoting the cause of smart growth and New Urbanism.
In the same issue of Insight David Lewis, Executive Director of Save the Bay, has called the proposed project an "arrogant whopper." He wants to save all the acreage for eventual restoration to natural and historic tidal action, pointing out that San Francisco Bay provides habitat and climate modification that maintains 500 species of wildlife. He points out that "healthy marshes keep pace with modest sea level rise by building up sediment and establishing vegetation creating buffers against raising tides."
Calthorpe is a well-known champion of New Urbanism and transit-oriented development. His designs are taken from the general arrangements of small towns in that era when towns were still cozy, say the 1940s, and there weren't enough cars or sprawl to give cars and sprawl the bad rap they get these days, as well they should for addicting us to oil and destroying the Earth's climate balance. They had the very temporary delusion in those days when almost everyone could own a car in the US yet nice towns were still with us that cars and cities could be development partners with mutual benefit. Calthorpe says growth is projected at 1.6 million new jobs by 2035 in the Bay Area assuming a healthy economy. It's far better, he says, to build his mildly compact New Urbanist kind of community to prevent the workers from settling 30 to 70 miles away in the Central Valley pushing out farmland and commuting enormous distances. He's right as far as that goes but he offers a very limited list of options: two.
There are a few problems with his proposal. The first is called Peak Oil and the relationship of sprawl to the real estate debacle we've seen practically destroying the banking world, almost the world as we know it. It is expensive (in many ways) to live over the hill from the Bay Area where the 1.6 million might choose to take up residence and commute. Wait until gasoline gets even more expensive as petroleum runs short in the near future and people discover the replacement fuels take far more money and energy to provide than the cheap energy that built the suburbs. The choice might be not to commute in to the Bay Area but to move jobs to where the people might be living on the fringe and moving to: the far side of the East Bay Hills. That isn't such a bad idea, if done in a particular way, and I'll get back to it momentarily.
Experts failed us
But also, who says that many people are coming here by 2035? The airlines didn't see 2009 coming. Neither did the geniuses in the banking system and regulatory agencies see the spectacular economic collapse of the last year. The assumption of healthy economy by the measures we have taken for granted for some decades now may be unsupportable well before 2035. It seems we may be moving into a period of two kinds of much less mobility: commuting great distances and people moving to places that have been economically strong but are getting weaker by the day. So there are more ways to see the situation than those given to us to choose from by Mr. Calthorpe.
Another problem with his proposal from the ecocity point of view is that the densities proposed are not that great, not really that urban and balanced in the sense that you can get around the proposed community in anything like the way real urban centers work to provide housing, jobs and great diversity of products and services at close proximity. Their objective in the Saltworks 50-50 plan is getting people out of their cars some of the time, not getting rid of their cars. Moreover there is something a little wasteful about encouraging people to own cars and not drive very much. Spend $35,000 then not do much about it? The New Urbanists are famous for what I call transit optional development but only the wealthier can afford the luxury to have a seriously polluting item and just not use it much - then feel righteously green in the deal. There's no hint that car free living is promoted at the 50-50 Saltworks. It might scare away customers. About that, Cargill and DMB Associates have a right to worry. If no one comes to buy they loose a lot of money.
But might they not - and Calthorpe too - promote the next step up from New Urbanism, which would be ecocity building? New Urbanism was a step in the right direction but they took it 25 years ago and are still stuck with the same line. With today's multiple crises maybe now is the time for a little more thorough and imaginative thinking on the subject - and some promotion (which developers always do anyway) for a much better yet project.
Of course David Lewis at Save the Bay thinks any building there is "Wrong Thinking" - the title of his opinion piece - from the get-go. I tend to agree because, as with the much larger piece of land also owned by Cargill and put up for possible sale to developers in 2002 - 16,500 acres (6,677 hectares) - the deal was stopped despite Cargill's identical threat and guess what? Cargill did sell it to state and federal wildlife agencies and the marshes are in the process of being restored. Now in 2009, however, there is little money for that kind of purchase, so that variable has changed.
Another variable that's changed is climate change. There is close to universal agreement among scientists in the field that we are well into a period of global heating and rising seas. The assertion by Lewis that wetlands can keep up with "modest" sea level rise seems a bit dated when you stop to give this a second thought. There is nothing modest about the predictions of the vast majority of scientists. Does this mean the San Francisco Bay is going to get much larger? Does this mean we will have to give up a good deal of low-density development along the shoreline getting new and higher wetlands in the deal as well as a larger water surface? We are obviously going to dike out the rising sea where investment and density are very high, as along the San Francisco waterfront. But who wants to pay for defending the fringe of Newark, California? Where's that?! Does rising water also then mean we can actually afford to build on, say, one half or one quarter of the land that will be newly covered by water in the not so distant future and come out way ahead in restoration of both wetlands and bay surface and volume while building too? Not only does ecology suggest we need to study more variables than we used to take for granted but climatology suggests yet even more variables into the future. One would think, then, we really should start taking a very broad perspective if we hope to develop in a way that is genuinely sustainable for this ever faster moving target called the future.
My very modest proposal is this: Given rising seas, why not take the opportunity to solve coastline development problems in a way that solves kindred design problems for all cities and towns everywhere? Maybe there are principles that prevail throughout. (There are!) One stop shopping for all your solutions you might call it, just one of many is the solution for development on low coastlines. That might sound overly ambitious but in fact makes sense, as you will see.
At the same time why not get systematic about slowing global heating and even opening up the discussion about cooling the planet back down a bit. Most scientists say it can't be done - give up. Roll over and play dead. But, nobody has tried yet. Absurdly ambitious? Well, cities are absurdly big, flat and damaging right now so maybe it's not so absurd as it seems at first glance. We need some gigantic thinking for a gigantic set of problems.
Interestingly the starting point in solving these problems is where cities started. In Mesopotamia in the Civilization of Sumer, the city of Ur in present day Iraq, first seriously large city in history, 50,000 to 65,000 variously estimated at its peak, was build on artificial fill. That was around 4,800 years ago. When the Euphrates flooded the city must have been a fantastic place to be, with a vast sea of water flowing past, as if the city were a great ship. That was a "compact" city, a pedestrian city and it simply rose above the flood. With the millions of acres dedicated to cars today, there is no way to raise cities designed for cars on fill, or Calthorpe's transit-optional cities designed to lull car drivers into a kind of 10% consciousness on the subject. The proposed 50-50 Saltworks project, though more compact than flat out sprawl, still consume far more acreage per person than a real city of higher density and functional diversity.
The Korea Connection: Strategic Restoration through Development
My thinking about development for strategic restoration began with a trip to Korea for a conference on the DMZ - "on" in both senses as subject matter and literally on the DMZ in that both North and South Korea cheat a little and fudge their way into the zone slightly as sites with good prospect present themselves. Our meeting was at a lookout post on a ridgeline a hundred yards or so into the DMZ on the south side. The post was equipped with a very large meeting room walled in Glass on the three sides looking to North Korea and east and west into the DMZ. There I shocked my environmentalist hosts by proposing that a small city should be built in the DMZ, which after 55 years as a habitat for animals and place of rare plants was considered by environmental crusaders as as holly as it gets. My point - which applies to the San Francisco Bay and many other places - was this: If at a pristine place of nature (not at Cargill's "Balanced Plan" site at the moment, but potential there) it's probably better than OK to sacrifice a little and develop if it is exactly the right thing being developed and if at the same time more, say three or four times as much, land and/or waters, is given over to undisturbed natural environment. That right thing to develop would be a much needed ecocity model development, and the story that it's going into a pristine location provides the shock value to wake people up to pay attention. One step back and three or four steps forward.
Further, my point was then in Korea and now in this article that we don't have a clear idea of what to build. Peter Calthorpe is better than negative or neutral on the subject but got stuck 25 years ago. He's stuck on the ever so bor-ing architecture seen coast to cost with his low to mid rise four story height limit missing the really exciting potential of ecocity architecture. Check out the DMB website for the Saltworks project and see the ever so comfortable and casual architects' upper middle class figures strolling about admiring several different views of green and bay without any imagery of a vital town center or building with any imagination in it featured: life as passive recreation. Calthorpe is missing the ecocity's radical pedestrian accessibility in three dimensions. Where are the multi-story solar greenhouses, tall buildings terraced for public accessibility so that citizens and visitors can look out to the beautiful views from the buildings instead of always where the animals should be on the shoreline only? Where are the rooftop gardens justified in their relative expense by many users' pleasures? Where are the bridges between buildings, grand pedestrian alleys, gallerias and interior hallways like the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul with beams of light falling through skylights into dramatic interiors buzzing with life, interior streets without stress, noise, poison and threat of physical harm from cars? Such cities could be small cities or towns and they don't all need to be stuffed into the San Francisco Bay area. They could be created in the California Great Central Valley, shrinking back in that location from sprawl development toward their own vital centers, becoming full spectrum real towns and cities in their own right rather than bedroom communities ghost towns by day when their population is gone over the hills. They could become magnets of care, affection and investment in "mixed uses" and the "balanced development" the Saltworks project claims to promote.
If by accident of historical disastrous miscalculation, which was the building of suburbia and the burning of enough oil to keep it going, we have wrecked the climate system of a whole planet, we are now at a point where we need models of how to develop to reverse the phenomenon. The answer is to always restore much more land and waters than we consume in the development process. For every infill there must be a more than equal and opposite unfill development. Strategic development for restoration -that's the potential at the Cargill site. And what to build, not just there, but everywhere, is the compact city that is dense enough that it can be lifted by artificial fill and never flood. This is exactly what New Orleans calls out for - or at least should - and is not getting. It is exactly what would make coastlines safe from tsunamis. And the compact city with a small enough physical footprint to be raised on artificial fill would have to be the city of pedestrians assisted by bicycles and transit. That's the lesson for all cities everywhere. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area we could be showing the way to run cities on one-tenth the energy and one fifth the land the US behemoths now consume and leading the way in multiplying vastly the land and waters restored for not just biodiversity but farming too.
Such strategic thinking also enters the realm of rethinking climate change solutions. If we can roll back sprawl to small dense areas of ecocity development then the city can leave room for massive tree planting inconceivable without such change. How about radically reducing deaths in car accidents? How about pleasant streets where the smells, noises and threat of injury and death is non-existant because cars simply aren't there? How about cities that just rise up and let the waters rise around them, that provide enough housing, jobs and everything else that we can just withdraw from sprawl, car and oil addiction and just get on with being healthy? One stop shopping for all your solutions. We can do it if we just think about it but haven't yet. There's no time like the present.
Richard Register can be reached at ecocity@igc.org.
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Paolo Soleri 90th Birthday Celebration at Arcosanti
Paolo Soleri has dedicated his life
and his creative and personal
resources to the construction of the Arcosanti project. Over Paolo's
birthday weekend, June 19-21, we will celebrate all that has been
accomplished and
the decades of lived experience Arcosanti represents. It will be a time
for reunion and reminiscence and to experience Arcosanti's unique
capacity to foster the Urban Effect.
www.arcosanti.org
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Car-Free Journey
by Steve Atlas
Four Reasons to Go Car Free on Your Next Vacation
(Editor's Note: While these tips and reasons are about vacations at the beach, they also apply to other types of vacations.)
"There must be a better way," you tell yourself as you start planning your one-day, weekend, or week-long, trip to the beach. You know the ocean, gulf, or maybe a great lake, will be beautiful, and (if you choose the right location) warm.
But filling the car up with gasoline that costs more every year, trying to beat the crowds of other drivers who are also "escaping" to the beach, fighting congestion and "parking lot waits" on roads to the beach, and then paying $5, $10 or more for parking at the beach makes you wonder if it's worth all the trouble.
Fortunately, there is a better and less expensive way to enjoy a beach vacation. You can leave your car at home, or-at your hotel, and walk, bicycle, or use public transportation to avoid delays, eliminate traffic congestion, save money, and have more fun.
Here are four compelling reasons to leave your car at the hotel, or-even better-at home:
Reason 1: Save Time and Money
The Way it is Now
These days, gasoline costs between $2 and $3 per gallon, often more at resort areas. Turning on your car's air conditioner uses your gas up even faster. How much more will gasoline cost when you take your vacation? Are there highway, bridge, or tunnel tolls?
If you are still working, chances are that you will leave for the beach on a Friday, and return home Sunday. But, thousands of other drivers are doing the same thing. How much fun are traffic delays, highways that seem to turn into parking lots, and congestion that stays with you for most of your trip?
If the beach is more than a day's drive, you could fly to a nearby community and rent a car. But, how much expense will the car rental (plus insurance) add to your trip?
When you arrive at your hotel, you probably want to drive to the beach. Many beach
communities and state parks charge parking fees.
"read on"
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Urban Village, Shenzhen Style
Posted in Asia Pacific, Public Space by Desmond Bliek
The rapid urbanization of Shenzhen since 1980 has generated a contemporary landscape dotted with a series of urban villages, enclaves of buzzing urbanity and street life situated on land owned by Shenzhen's original rural residents. These areas house much of Shenzhen's floating population of workers from across China.
The local farmers or fishers who are now the village landlords have usually completely re-arranged their village space, which is increasingly hemmed in by commercial or residential high-rise projects. Shenzhen's urban villages are typically a fabric of tightly packed ten to fifteen storey walk-up apartment buildings, with ground floor commercial, arranged around a very permeable street grid, punctuated with the odd public space or market. There are usually some fairly spacious main streets, but most of the buildings are accessed through a warren of alleys and pathways, most less than two metres wide, that wind their way between the buildings. Amazingly, there's still some commercial activity within the maze-such as informal bicycle repair shops or very small canteens.
While they have struggled with a poor reputation in Shenzhen, and in other Chinese cities in which the phenomenon occurs, urban villages are starting to be perceived as islands of vitality, street life, and holdouts of traditional culture in the sea of modernity that is Shenzhen. One village in Shenzhen's Futian district, Shuiwei, is even being targeted for tourism, while many others are falling under the scope of the somewhat ominous-sounding Urban Village Renovation Project.
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Nations may form global CO2 market without U.N. deal
Fri Jun 12, 2009
By Timothy Gardner
Rich countries may act on their own to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by developing a carbon market they hope will lure in poor nations even if U.N. climate talks get bogged down, experts said.
Nearly 200 countries have been trying to reach an agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol on global warming with a December deadline at a meeting in Copenhagen approaching.
But there remains a large rich-poor divide. Developing countries want industrialized countries to make deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in the international agreement. Industrialized countries want poor countries to take on binding commitments.
To get past the differences, the rich world, including the European Union and the United States, may form a carbon market outside or parallel to the U.N. talks. Rapidly developing countries like China may be inspired to join the market to sell emissions offsets such as clean energy projects.
One reason such a development would be attractive "is because countries like the United States, and other countries like China, South Korea, and Mexico may very well do more on their own domestic binding agreements than in a binding international agreement," said Nathaniel Keohane, director of economic policy and analysis at the Environmental Defense Fund.
The largest polluting countries have never agreed to binding cuts in an international agreement. The United States pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol, which did not require big developing emitters like India and China, the world's top greenhouse gas polluter, to make cuts.
A McKinsey study this year found that financing new energy technology, efficiency and forestry projects to control global warming may take more than $260 billion a year by 2030,
"There's a growing consensus that in order to mobilize the capital you have to bring in markets in a serious way," Keohane told an Environmental Finance conference on Thursday..
A global market could fit in easily with the climate bill being debated in the U.S. Congress. The bill would allow U.S. polluters to purchase up to 1 billion tons per year of international offsets.
"Getting everyone to agree with everything (in Copenhagen) is going to be very difficult," said Peter Fusaro, a carbon trade expert at Global Change Associates.
"So I don't think the possibility of a market developing outside of the process is out of whack at all. I think it's very possibly an outcome."
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by David Gregorio)
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Landfill could be turned into eco-village in Hong Kong
View of Junk Bay and Chai Wan from Tseung Kwan O, Hong Kong.
A group of building professionals and former government officials have
teamed up to work on plans to turn a former landfill site into the
first eco-village in the Pearl River Delta.
The HK$700 million village in Tseung Kwan O will be the most
environmentally friendly holiday camp in the city and a showcase for
advanced "green" technologies.
Former chief secretary Sir David Akers-Jones, former director of
buildings Cheung Hau-wai, former Observatory chief Lam Chiu-ying and
the chairman of the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks, Nicholas
Brooke, have been appointed advisers for the project.
The idea of building an eco-village on the 68-hectare former landfill
site in Tseung Kwan O was first floated last year by the Professional
Green Building Council, a non-profit research and education institute
created by a group of building-related professional bodies. Tseung Kwan
O has three landfill sites. The one under discussion has been idle for
14 years. The proposal sees a financially self-sustainable village that
would have zero carbon emissions. It would be run by community
organisations rather than the government or big business.
Financial and technical feasibility studies are expected to be
completed this summer. This will be followed by lobbying for government
funding. Universities, green groups and the Youth Hostels Association
have expressed interest in the village.
"The idea of transforming a wasteland into a green village with unique
designs will help Hong Kong take a leading role in both environment and
creative industries in Asia," said council chairman Wong Kam-sing, who
is taking the project forward. "Families and organisations in the
village will have to obey the green rules. They could be given limited
access to water and electricity, which would inspire them to think
about green living."
The village will comprise five parks with village settlements,
showrooms and education centres on different themes - water, energy,
nature, waste and transport. Visitors to hostels in the "energy park"
would be able to try out various renewable-energy installations, while
those in the "earth park" would be invited to take part in organic
farming. The site - larger than the proposed West Kowloon arts hub - is
next to the Lohas Park residential project, which the MTR Corporation
is touting as a green development. The village is expected to take up
45 hectares and will be connected to the MTR. A nearby canal will be
revitalised for water activities.
The village would rely on two major income sources: rent and
consultancy services. Families staying in hostels would be charged
HK$500 a night, while non-profit organisations would be asked to pay to
hold events. A chance to experience a hi-tech green lifestyle and a
range of activities in the village is expected to be the main draw for
families.
It is to be managed by a board including community representatives and
professionals, and is expected to have 200 visitors per day and 400
housing units for a population of 1,200. The council proposes building
the village - only one-storey buildings would be allowed - in three
phases. The council hopes the government will fund the capital cost of
HK$700 million.
"It means each person in the city will just need to pay HK$100," said
Mr Wong, adding that the council could raise the start-up operating
cost of about HK$22 million.
A source at the Environment Bureau said it was looking at options for
the site. Other proposals include a soccer academy and a pet garden.
The chairwoman of the Legislative Council's Environment Committee,
Audrey Eu Yuet-mee, said a health assessment and a detailed
cost-benefit analysis should be made if the project needed public
funding.
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Colin Grant Weighs In
Colin Grant is Founder and CEO of Visible Strategies and is contributing a regular column in Ecocities Emerging. Colin is a Speaker at Ecocity 2009 in Istanbul.
As the EcoCities conference takes place in Istanbul this December, Copenhagen will be hosting the COP15 UN Climate Change Conference.
With spectacular evidence building daily around the world that IPCC projections of climate change have been, if anything, over cautious, this conference represents arguably the last chance to broker a meaningful world-level agreement to at least reduce the worst impacts of climate change.
Omens are not good. In previous articles in this series, I mentioned the 350 movement, www.350.org, based on NASA scientist James Hansen and his team's calculations that in order to conserve the conditions under which human civilization evolved, atmospheric CO2 must come down from its current level of almost 389ppm to 350ppm. At a recent conference in New York, Bob Corell from the Heinz Centre demonstrated software that allows users to analyze the likely impact of various climate plans. If you plug in the current negotiating positions of the major players, we would end up with 700 ppm CO2 by the century's end.
It looks likely that in Copenhagen, the US will allow China to remain in developing country status, exempt from binding commitments, encouraged to increase efficiency and reduce intensity but legally free to do as it pleases. Even if every other country in the world reduced GHG emissions to levels compatible with an end point of 350ppm, business as normal growth in China would cause us to overshoot where we need to be.
By the time we meet in Istanbul and others meet in Copenhagen, many of these deals will already have been brokered. The 350.org folks are arranging a global day of mass participation on October 24th to attempt to put pressure on national level politicians to create a legally binding framework that would put the first half of the 21st century onto a radically different trajectory from the current one. This would mean a ban on new coal powered electricity generation plants, (currently increasing by about one a week worldwide), and a steady phase out of existing ones. It would need a dramatic increase in energy efficiency, a major increase in the rate of introduction of new renewable energy, an explosion in urban and local food supply, an inter-city transportation revolution based around rail and a replacement of sprawl-and-car based living so endemic in North America with dense, mixed use transit, bike and pedestrian based living.
Sounds like the conditions for an "EcoCity" revolution to me. A couple of articles ago, I talked about the potential for the mayors of the cities who will be attending Istanbul 2009 to endorse a series of commitments and to ask their counterparts worldwide to do the same. Something like this has to happen if meaningful progress is to be made. The federal level politicians will never make this happen without major pressure from city leaders. The US "Cool Mayors" movement lead by Seattle's Mayor Nichols is a great start. How about taking it to a worldwide level by October 24th 2009? 350Mayors? It just takes one mayor to start the ball rolling...
cgrant@visiblestrategies.com
Link to more information about Colin Grant and his company, Visible Strategies, offering the world's most visually-engaging performance management and communications software, SEE-IT.
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Istanbul in December
Istanbul can be great in the winter especially if you are staying close to the actual tourist sites so that you are little affected by the weather. Weather is really a case of luck in December and you could have everything from beautiful clear days to rain. There are plenty of taxis so even if the weather is bad its very easy to get around as well as on the tram. From a hotel in the Sultanahmet district most of the main sites are about 10 minutes away so its wonderful to walk and explore.
Grand Bazaar, Beyazit side
Sahaflar, Secondhand Book Sellers Market
Near the Beyazit mosque and the entrance to the Covered Bazar is the
Sahaflar market, where the secondhand book sellers have their shops. It
is on the spot where in Byzantine times was the Chartoprateia, book and
paper market. Later the turban-makers and metal engravers took over
(Hakkaklar market, after the Turkish name for the latter). At the
beginning of the 18th century the book sellers moved here from inside
the Covered Bazaar. Great place if you like books (or cats: many cats
seem to have found a good home here).
More photos of Istanbul in December
Information about flats and room rentals in Istanbul
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Principal Features of an Ecocity
http://www.ecocityprojects.net/
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Click here for more information and to register for classes
in the Sustainable Design Program at UC Berkeley Extension.
Go Green with Berkeley!
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