Ecocities Emerging
To support humanity's transition into the Ecozoic Era
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Ecocity Builders
March 2010
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Greetings,
Welcome to the March 2010
edition of Ecocities Emerging, an initiative of Ecocity Builders and the
International Ecocity Conference Series.
For many years, Ecocity
Builders has been focusing on designs for the built environment appropriate to
particular very local places, while at the same time exploring the principles that underlie all communities in their basic physical organization.
We've taken very seriously that there are general principles that apply to healthy cities, towns and villages; in times long ago, now,
and into the distant future.
Complex living
organisms have compact three-dimensional forms. This is a result of the ratio
of surface to volume of any complex entity, minimal lengths of channels of
internal supply, information, recycling and waste (veins and nerves of animals,
and streets and electric wires of cities compare well, for example) and various
energy balances within and in relation to that living system's environment.
Cities in their local and planetary environments have a great deal to compare
productively with complex living organisms and ecologies and in their planetary
balances of water, air, soil, ocean currents, geography and climate. Forget
this at our peril. Perhaps better stated, since we often act as if we never knew it
in the first place, we absolutely must start thinking about it now, and acting upon this knowledge immediately.
Sincerely,
Kirstin
Miller and Richard Register for Ecocity Builders
339
15th Street, Suite 208
Oakland
CA 94612 USA
www.ecocitybuilders.org
Keeper of the International Ecocity Conference Series
ECOCITY MEDIA
Posts, projects and people
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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.
Maybe one day all cities
will be ecocities.
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MONDAY, MARCH 22, 2010
Should Bikes And Cars Be Treated Equally?
"YES" says US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood
With all the attention last week focused on extending the surface transportation law and Federal Aviation Administration programs, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's announcement of a major policy change regarding the way bicyclists' needs are treated in the transportation planning seems to have received little notice.
"People across America who value bicycling should have a voice when it comes to transportation planning," LaHood wrote on his Fast Lane blog March 15. "This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized. We are integrating the needs of bicyclists in federally-funded road projects." LaHood's blog post includes recommendations for how states and communities can accomplish this, such as "treat walking and bicycling as equals with other transportation modes" and "set a mode share target for walking and bicycling."
LaHood called the new policy a "sea change," but is it a good one? Should non-motorized modes of transportation be treated as equal to other modes, particularly when modes like driving and mass transit are at least partially, if not primarily, self-funded? Or is it the essence of DOT's evolving 21st-century mission to give people more mobility options that, according to LaHood, are relatively fast and inexpensive to build, are environmentally sustainable, reduce travel costs, improve safety and public health, and "reconnect citizens with their communities"?
-- Lisa Caruso, NationalJournal.com
Read the replies to this article, including posts by Rep. Earl Blumenauer D - Ore, Members House Ways and Means Committee
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Note: Ecocity Builders will be a facilitator of the eco-communities track at this upcoming forum in Brazil. We will be showcasing the International Ecocity Standards project and efforts and will conduct a series of workshops to further develop the Standards with participants of this event.
2020 Global Climate Leadership Forum
Breakthrough Thinking, Innovations, and Networks In the Emerging Climate Economy
Salvador, Brazil, May 27 -30, 2010
The 2020 Global Climate Leadership Forum is being convened by the Brazil 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign, Globo TV, and the Roberto Marinho Foundation, sponsored by Braskem and a consortium of corporate and industrial groups, and supported by the Government of Bahia State and the city of Salvador.
The site of the conference will be an eco-resort on the Bahia coast built by Braskem as part of its campaign to plant millions of new trees in the Brazilian Atlantic forest as part of its effort to reduce global warming. The theme of the conference is around green technology, eco-communities, climate finance, and media and education within the context of seeking to discern a post Copenhagen strategy of how to best deal with the climate crisis. Several hundred Brazilian private sector, government and civil society leaders will be present and 50 -- 75 international participants. There will be extensive media.
This initiative is important in light of the fact that the net result of COP 15 was essentially to bring to a close the era of the Kyoto Accords and the attempt to get the nations of the world to all agree on common goals, fair financing, and a realistic timeframe in reducing CO2 emissions. The only agreement to emerge seems to have been a commitment to share information, with each nation now basically on its own and free to set its own goals, timeframes, and standards. This means that particular nations can now set the pace and establish climate leadership both independently of and with each other.
This runs the obvious danger of course of a slackening of the pace in addressing the climate crisis that is getting worse with each passing day, but since this seems to be the post Copenhagen reality, what is essential moving forward is to discern where the energy is and where climate leadership is emerging. The most dynamic climate leadership seems to be coming from Brazil and China -- Brazil because it has made the boldest commitments by far to reduce CO2, and China because it is taking the lead in developing green/clean technology.
President Lula has recently signed into law a bill passed by a strong majority of the Brazilian Congress to reduce CO2 emissions by just under 40% by 2020, which includes a commitment to reduce deforestation by 80% by 2020. China is making developments in green technology a national priority. China is spending as much or more on greentech as it does on its military and hundreds of billions of dollars annually on renewable energy and grid infrastructure improvements. By 2013, greentech will account for 15 percent of the Chinese GDP. By 2020, China will increase its wind generating capacity twelvefold and its solar generation is projected to increase 20,000%. There are also significant developments at the sub national level in numerous countries and in a spectrum of disciplines.
These demonstrations of climate leadership are what we believe most of us could rally around in the aftermath of Copenhagen: we should all be reducing our CO2 emissions as much as possible; and our greatest priority must be to create a climate economy and radically develop clean green renewable technology and energy.
The purpose of the Salvador Forum is to examine how innovative leadership can emerge to create international connections and collaborations in the development of climate economies, green technology and eco-communities, and how energetic progress can be made on the critical issue of climate change outside the COP regime while of course supporting this process entirely.
If we can get traction in these areas and among the nations willing to take climate leadership, while continuing to focus on the over-all goal of significant reductions in CO2 by 2020, making as many partnerships as possible as we move toward our goals, we will be well served.
For further information on the Forum themes and participants: http://2020climatecampaign.org/
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Join Ecocity Builders!
Kirstin Miller, Executive Director, in Huaibei, China
Join us and help rebuild cities in balance with nature.
Ecocity Builders and our network of members -
- Pioneer ecological concepts in urban transportation, landscape design, policy, and planning
- Engage with communities, government, and industry leaders in designing thriving neighborhoods
- Convene movers and shakers in urban and regional planning and community building at our International Ecocity Conference
Ecocity Builders nurtures great visions for healthier cities - for people and nature alike - and provides practical tools for building them. We are a nonprofit organization, and donations are tax-deductible. All levels receive a subscription to the newsletter, special invitations to meetings and events, updates and more.
Ecocity Builders is seeking interns. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area and have 5-10 hours a week of time you would like to contribute to our efforts consistently, please let us know. We are looking for interns to assist with our various local and international projects and initiatives. We are a small office with a lot going on; we work quickly and as efficiently as possible. Ideal interns are self sufficient and capable, good communicators and flexible. If you are interested in joining us, please send us an email with your hours of availability, your areas of expertise and your contact information. Some of the expertise we're looking for includes: organizing and facilitating a lecture series, researcher for our standards project, secretarial and project assistance, grant writing and research, planning assistance for our events and fund raisers, design work, web development. Please send your inquiries to Kirstin Miller: kirstin@ecocitybuilders.org.
CLICK HERE TO JOIN
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Car Free Journey
by Steve Atlas
Do you find yourself thinking,
"It's great to talk about driving less or even being car-free? However,
that could not work for me. I need my car."
I have to confess that, for too long,
this has been true for me. Even though we live 10-minutes walk from a
bus that
operates nearly 24 hours every day, it seemed much easier to get in the
car and
wherever I wanted or needed to go. I told myself that, very soon, I
would take
the bus downtown and do some sightseeing.
Then, I became 65 and eligible for
Medicare. (I still cannot believe it.) Suddenly, the cost of a monthly
transit
pass dropped from $64 to $16.50. A day pass for people 65 and older is
just
$1.20-instead of the normal $3.60. Since I am officially "retired"
(even though I do my writing and other freelance work from home), I
began
thinking of how I could use the bus to save time and money.
On Monday, March 1, I decided to take
the bus to a nearby shopping mall-one where I always have had trouble
finding a
parking space. Taking the bus eliminated this problem. However, I have a
confession to make.
I never got to the mall (except for a
sub at Subway later). When I got off, I discovered a small shopping
center that
I had never noticed before. (I focused on finding parking at the mall and
shopping there to have time for "distractions.") Within that
courtyard were a used bookstore and a CD store. I had so much fun
exploring
those two stores that I did not even consider shopping at the mall.
Yet, if I had not gotten out of my car
and taken the 20-minute bus ride, I would never have discovered these
two great
places. Could that also be true for you? Take time to use your local bus
or
other public transit. Keep your eyes peeled for something new. You may
discover
stores, parks, or other unexpected delights.
The next day, I took an express bus to
Penn Station-home to Amtrak and commuter trains. My reason was a strange
one. I
wanted to get some money from an ATM located there. Before, I had never
considered that possible because of traffic and the high cost of
parking.
Now, for just 40 cents, (the extra
charge for an express bus)-instead of several dollars, I had a pleasant
trip to
the station, got my money, and took the bus back home. Perhaps, you know
of
places you would like to go, but do not because of traffic or the high
cost of
parking. Public transit offers a convenient and affordable alternative.
Soon, I plan to visit the National
Aquarium in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. The cost of parking is $16-$19 for
a day,
and close to that for just a few hours parking. (If you are fortunate,
you can
find an on-street meter for $1 per hour up to a maximum 4 hours, or walk
15-20
minutes for a are neighborhood parking space that actually can be
free-if you
can find a free space. Read on
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Green Light for Berkeley Downtown Pedestrian Plaza
Ecocity Builders' local project update
 At close to midnight Tuesday, March 23, Berkeley City Council voted (8-1) to endorse the Hood proposal for Center Street and directed city staff to work with nonprofit and community partners, Ecocity Builders and Citizens for a Strawberry Creek Plaza, to move the project forward and apply for upcoming funding opportunities.
Following over a decade of citizen-led advocacy and numerous public processes, the downtown Berkeley project can move forward beyond concept and into planning for implementation. "I am so excited that the City Council overwhelmingly approved Walter Hood's design as our plan for the improvement of Center Street, says councilmember Jesse Arreguin, one of the sponsors of last night's resolution. "This visionary proposal will not only help revitalize our Downtown but will bring nature into the heart of our city and will serve as a model for the region and the world."
The project is located at a prime opportunity site along the main pedestrian thoroughfare from the Downtown Berkeley BART station and the UC Berkeley campus, and is likely to attract funding for its myriad social, environmental, economic and infrastructure benefits to residents and visitors. "This is a key victory in this project's history," says Kirstin Miller, executive director of Ecocity Builders. "The project has the potential to catalyze economic development in the downtown area."
The project has gone through numerous rounds of public and planning processes, since it was first proposed to the city in 1997 and is consistent with official City of Berkeley planning and policy documents. The City Council has previously adopted policies in reference to the plaza in the 2001 Berkeley General Plan, 2004 Downtown Task Force recommendations, 2007 Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee recommendations, and the 2009 Downtown Area Plan.
Award-winning landscape architect, Walter Hood, in 2007 was commissioned to design the plaza, located on Center Street between Oxford Street and Shattuck Avenue in downtown Berkeley. Hood was responsible for designing the gardens at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in Golden Gate Park.
The Hood design calls for pedestrianizing the block - except for emergency and delivery vehicle access - to create a community gathering space integrated with major upcoming projects in the area, including the Berkeley Art Museum. Strawberry Creek will be partially "daylighted," or brought to the surface from its current underground culvert, for residents and visitors to enjoy and learn about creek ecology and the regional watershed.
Stay tuned as we move forward. Follow the project on Facebook at Citizens for a Strawberry Creek Plaza --become a fan!
Ecocity Builders' Heart of the City project page
More Center Street designs from Walter Hood/HOOD Design here.
Order Strawberry Creek at Center Street by HOOD Design and Ecocity Builders here.
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"The problem is
the present design of cities only a few stories high, stretching
outward in unwieldy sprawl
for miles. As a result of their sprawl, they literally transform
the earth, turn farms into parking lots and waste enormous amounts
of time and energy transporting people, goods and services over
their expanses. My solution is urban implosion rather than explosion."
-Paolo
Soleri
www.arcosanti.com
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The Wrong Kind of Green
by Johann Hari
This article
appeared in the March 22, 2010 edition of The Nation.
In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate
scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate, waiting to be
exposed.
Why did America's leading environmental groups jet to
Copenhagen and lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the
rainforests-and runaway global warming? Why are their lobbyists on Capitol Hill
dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as "unworkable" and
"unrealistic," as though they were just another sooty tentacle of Big Coal?
At first glance, these questions will seem bizarre. Groups like
Conservation International are among the most trusted "brands" in America,
pledged to protect and defend nature. Yet as we confront the biggest ecological
crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading
the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world's worst polluters-and
burying science-based environmentalism in return. Sometimes the corruption is
subtle; sometimes it is blatant. In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate
scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate, waiting to be
exposed.
I have spent the past few years reporting on how global warming
is remaking the map of the world. I have stood in half-dead villages on the
coast of Bangladesh while families point to a distant place in the rising ocean
and say, "Do you see that chimney sticking up? That's where my house was... I had
to [abandon it] six months ago." I have stood on the edges of the Arctic and
watched glaciers that have existed for millenniums crash into the sea. I have
stood on the borders of dried-out Darfur and heard refugees explain, "The water
dried up, and so we started to kill each other for what was left."
While I witnessed these early stages of ecocide, I imagined
that American green groups were on these people's side in the corridors of
Capitol Hill, trying to stop the Weather of Mass Destruction. But it is now
clear that many were on a different path-one that began in the 1980s, with a
financial donation.
Environmental groups used to be funded largely by their members
and wealthy individual supporters. They had only one goal: to prevent
environmental destruction. Their funds were small, but they played a crucial
role in saving vast tracts of wilderness and in pushing into law strict rules
forbidding air and water pollution. But Jay Hair-president of the National
Wildlife Federation from 1981 to 1995-was dissatisfied. He identified a huge
new source of revenue: the worst polluters.
Hair found that the big oil and gas companies were happy to
give money to conservation groups. Yes, they were destroying many of the
world's pristine places. Yes, by the late 1980s it had become clear that they
were dramatically destabilizing the climate-the very basis of life itself. But
for Hair, that didn't make them the enemy; he said they sincerely wanted to
right their wrongs and pay to preserve the environment. He began to suck
millions from them, and in return his organization and others, like The Nature
Conservancy (TNC), gave them awards for "environmental stewardship."
Companies like Shell and British Petroleum (BP) were delighted.
They saw it as valuable "reputation insurance": every time they were criticized
for their massive emissions of warming gases, or for being involved in the
killing of dissidents who wanted oil funds to go to the local population, or an
oil spill that had caused irreparable damage, they wheeled out their shiny green
awards, purchased with "charitable" donations, to ward off the prospect of
government regulation. At first, this behavior scandalized the environmental
community. Hair was vehemently condemned as a sellout and a charlatan. But
slowly, the other groups saw themselves shrink while the corporate-fattened
groups swelled-so they, too, started to take the checks.
Christine MacDonald, an idealistic young environmentalist,
discovered how deeply this cash had transformed these institutions when she
started to work for Conservation International in 2006. She told me, "About a
week or two after I started, I went to the big planning meeting of all the
organization's media teams, and they started talking about this supposedly
great new project they were running with BP. But I had read in the newspaper
the day before that the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] had condemned BP
for running the most polluting plant in the whole country.... But nobody in that
meeting, or anywhere else in the organization, wanted to talk about it. It was
a taboo. You weren't supposed to ask if BP was really green. They were
'helping' us, and that was it."
She soon began to see-as she explains in her whistleblowing
book Green Inc.-how this behavior has pervaded almost all the mainstream
green organizations. They take money, and in turn they offer praise, even when
the money comes from the companies causing environmental devastation. To take
just one example, when it was revealed that many of IKEA's dining room sets
were made from trees ripped from endangered forests, the World Wildlife Fund
leapt to the company's defense, saying-wrongly-that IKEA "can never guarantee"
this won't happen. Is it a coincidence that WWF is a "marketing partner" with
IKEA, and takes cash from the company?
Read on
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SAVE THE DATE!
August 22-26, 2011
Palais des congrès de Montréal, Canada
The first Ecocity World Summit
held in a northern climate city
DES DATES À RETENIR !
Du 22 au 26 août 2011
Website
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How to Make Cities Green?
- by Richard Register
I occasionally get questions in my mail for various purposes.
One fellow, Phillip McMaster who I met in China, is spreading through his
e-mail publications ideas about sustainable development. He had the question,
below.
Richard and his granddaughter, Stella Register
The second short response below was for the host at the conference I just spoke at in Changwon, Korea.
Phillip's question was simply: how to make cities green?
Answer: Get rid of cars.
Absolutely seriously!
It can't be done over night but can be
with resolute work steadily heading in that direction. It can be done and will
solve climate, employment, food security, death on highways, oil addiction and
many other problems all in one strategy. How? Support expanding city car-free
areas, convert car-streets to streets for people, replace asphalt with transit
and between-city rails, parking lots with parks and food gardens, parking
buildings with car-free housing and commercial buildings. Remove suburban
single-family sprawl development as it ages creating restored open space for
nature and agriculture - "Roll back sprawl!" Shift from scattered development
of mainly single separated uses to "balanced development" of higher density in
centers of mixed-use vitality. Replace design for hurry-up-and-drive lifestyle
for slow-down-and-relate-to-people-or-nature lifestyle.
Kelly Kim organizer of the Ghangwon Global Knowledge Conference
asked me to be ready for a brief, not to exceed five minute comment on the
first evening of the conference. He wanted a short abstract of that as well as
a powerpoint in advance of my talk, neither of which I've ever been asked to
provide before. Thorough conference planning! The objective for the very short
comment would be to advise in advance of studying the city at the conference
the local press and mayor on business and policy changes I'd suggest for the
city. He said just a couple short sentence would do. This was my abstract for
the short comment:
Beware of the craze sweeping the world, especially in China and India, for
automobile ownership and production - and building for them.
Instead look to bicycle, transit and ecocity design including beautiful public
open spaces like parks and plazas, restoration of nature and agriculture
immediately next to city buildings and ecocity architectural features like
bridges between buildings for great pedestrian access, rooftop and trace
gardens and conspicuous passive energy design like tall multi-story attached
solar greenhouses.
Richard Register is Founder and President of Ecocity Builders and the International Ecocity Conference Series. He can be reached at ecocity@igc.org
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Principal Features of an Ecocity
http://www.ecocityprojects.net/
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