Yule Heibel’s Post Studio © 2003-2009

Better gold through green

It seems everyone is going green, or will be. Today I went to Victoria’s UDI (Urban Development Institute) luncheon to hear Terasen Energy Services‘ Gareth Jones present “All About Geo-Thermal: Learning from Local Projects.”

Some basic take-away points: unless I severely misheard, British Columbia prices for energy (or electricity) will rise 80% in the next 10 years; the best place to make inroads in meeting the very ambitious greenhouse gas reductions (which are nearly as ambitious as Europe’s) set by the BC Liberal Party is in communities/ municipalities; and the best places to get the best bang for the buck in alternative energy is in dense settlements, whether multi-family complexes (including highrises and townhouse developments) or densely settled neighborhoods.

Other points: we in BC often think that we get most of our energy/ electricity “from hydro” (i.e., from hydroelectric power projects, therefore from “clean” water-driven sources), but we actually import 15% of our electricity from out-of-province, and those imports are “dirty” (typically derived from coal-fired plants). In addition to that little wrinkle, only 21% of our total energy needs in BC are met by electricity in the first place (and of that 21%, remember that 15% aren’t “clean”). The remaining 79% are met by natural gas (another 21%), other fossil fuels (can’t remember the exact number – I think it was around 20%?), wood (another 16%), and other sources. Alternate sources are at present but a small, very small piece of the pie.

There was more, and it all deserves a longer blog post or article, for which I’ll have to dig out my notes and do some research. What struck me today was the sense of urgency that came across in Jones’s presentation: that we really don’t have a lot of time to sit on our hands in pursuing alternative energy – not least because an 80% rise in costs will really do a number on the economy. It would probably make the current recession look like a walk in the park.

Jones encouraged all the developers, builders, and planners and politicians at the luncheon to explore the myriad ways that the provincial government and Terasen Energy Services are trying to make alternative energy production (and consumption) more commonplace.

Meanwhile, there’s more to research and think about: Living buildings and how they’re cost-effective, for example.

Next week, there are two events scheduled in Victoria – first, at the University of Victoria on June 3, Jason McLennan, CEO, Cascadia Region Green Building Council will speak on The True Costs of Living Buildings, and the next evening (June 4), a less formal event showcasing some examples will take place at the Burnside-Gorge Community Centre. (I have to admit that after hearing Gareth Jones explain the benefits of density when it comes to installing alternative energy both for new and retrofitted buildings, Jason McLennan’s homepage photo disturbs me. It’s of an isolated single home – a converted church even? – in the middle of nowhere, which is probably the most large-footprint lifestyle, in environmental terms, that privileged westerners can choose. Perhaps his home is environmentally sustainable, but it’s still not a great model in the sense that it’s not anything we should strive for. Ok, end of sour aside.)  (Update, 5/27: If readers click through to the comments on this post, they’ll see Eden’s comment, which corrects my assumption about the photo. It’s actually not a private home, but the barn of a sheep farm. That’s really good to know, because the myth of the self-sufficient yet large single-family family home on a large property – a “green” variant of the suburban lifestyle – exerts a strong and unsustainable pull, which I prefer not to see strengthened. Thanks, Eden, for the additional info!)

And since it pours when it rains, there’s an out-of-town event I’d love to be able to go to: The Seattle Architecture Foundation will lead a tour through South Lake Union, called LEED: It’s Not Just for Buildings Anymore:

SLU’s close proximity to donwtown’s and existing transportation lines are the foundation for a successful sustainable neighborhood. Community design focusing on adaptive building re-use, alternative transportation, storm water management and other sustainability techniques is revitalizing the neighborhood adjacent to Seattle’s urban core.

SLU was accepted into the USGBC’s LEED-ND Pilot (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design – Neighborhood Development) program, and is one of the first existing neighborhoods anticipated to receive LEED certification.

Catherine Benotto and Ginger Garff from Weber Thompson and Katherine Cornwell and Jim Holmes from the City of Seattle will explain how great neighborhoods are created. Highlights of the tour include the Terry Thomas Building, the redesign of Cascade Park, the street car maintenance facility and an exploration of the master plan for Terry Avenue.

Seems to me that the South Lake Union walking tour would be a perfect complement to Gareth Jones’s presentation, but then again, Jason McLennan’s presentation is a lot closer to home…

Closed routine or open innovation?

While there’s much to be said for routine and regular habits, there are other times that require smashing the status quo.

I went to City Hall this morning, expecting to participate in a workshop/ presentation by city staff on the implications of BC’s Bill 27 on revenue earned by the city through DCCs (Development Cost Charges). DCCs are levied on developers to pay for infrastructure maintenance and upgrades, and Bill 27 allows municipalities to waive DCCs under certain conditions, specifically for projects that are “green” or socially relevant (affordable housing, for example). Bill 27 sets out to reward municipalities financially (with additional funding for infrastructure) if they achieve green or social goals.

Since council was running overtime because of lengthier-than-expected discussion of prior agenda items, the 11:00 a.m. workshop was delayed and delayed, …until I finally left shortly after noon because it seemed that all the key personnel that should be involved had somehow disappeared after calling an “in camera” meeting. I did come away with a ~60-page consultants’ report, “Development Cost Charges: Implications of Bill 27; Discussion Paper,” by Urban Systems (a Richmond BC firm). Skimming through their report, I gathered that the bottom line – which must have been derived at least in part from interviewing city staff – was: no impact, negligible impact, unimportant impact, do nothing, do the same old thing you were doing already.

I’d be understating if I said that I find those conclusions disappointing. I had an opportunity to leaf through the report with two friends who also came for the workshop (but left, as I did). As one of them put it, the report confirms the present modus operandus of staff, rooted in traditional approaches. For example, it might be the case that traditionally a city – any city – plans for X-amount of waste-water infrastructure based on projected population growth, and that it then budgets DCC revenue to meet those growth expectations. In that scenario, any reduction of DCCs is negative.

We could say that in the current climate (literally) of having to think differently and more flexibly, that’s the wrong approach. We could instead say that we need to meet a certain infrastructure target (determined on the basis of best environmental practices in waste-water management, on-site sewage treatment, and so forth – all of which, combined, actually take a load off the existing infrastructure, versus adding to it, even with additional population growth factored in), and then ask: “How do we best get there?” By waiving DCCs for those developments? Sure, and some of that is already in the existing laws. But additionally you want to create incentives for developers to go that route – so perhaps you have to create tax structures that pave your path to said goal.

The reason this is so crucial at this point is because British Columbia’s Bill 27 (followed up by Bill 44, “Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act”) is designed to reward those municipalities that achieve green targets by giving them more infrastructure funds, which in turn give cities the resources to enhance livability.

In other words, the province has created a state where municipalities can compete for infrastructure funding, receiving more if they show that they’re more green and socially responsible. While some municipalities might take this new incentive and run, run, run with it, Victoria is standing at the starting gate wondering what all the fuss is about. I almost get the impression we’re deciding to sit this one out.

It’s easy enough to understand the attitude, I suppose. After yesterday’s UDI luncheon and my “d’oh!” insight into the reactive nature of codes – building codes, but also all the codes related to infrastructure, too – I’m not surprised at how difficult it is to get an innovative spirit into any of this. As one of my friends put it, if you want to allow composting toilets, for example, you will generate many many many pages of changes to The Code, because at each micro-stage of implementation, there’s some kind of repercussion that has to be dealt with on yet another page of the Code Book.

And cities with constrained budgets will (justifiably) point out that they don’t have the resources – people and money – to look into all those changes.

So what’s the answer? The only thing I can think of is to crowdsource and open-source government. Imagine, if you will, if you put something like the building code or the codes around waste-water management online, like a wiki, and got people to run with it. There are experts – builders, plumbers, etc. – everywhere who, because of years of experience of working in the field, have micro-solutions to just about every problem, if you allow their disparate bits of expertise to aggregate. There are immigrants from countries where green building practices or green infrastructure solutions are further along than here, who could contribute. There is a huge pool of ideas and intelligence out there, distributed across the population. We need to tap into that.

But at present, city governments work from the premise of absence: no money, no staff, no resources. Meanwhile, there’s an abundance right outside the door, but it’s not captured or allowed in. And so we keep doing the same old things in the same old way, budgeting for the same old approaches, disregarding the slow-moving train wreck that our economy and city is shaping up to be.

Great title for my letter-to-the-editor

I missed this when it was published on 11/13, but my letter in response to Les Leyne’s Times-Colonist column on the carbon tax (see my blog entry about it, Cracking cement: Industry and municipalities could work together) did make it into the paper.

The editor came up with a witty title for it: Cast a solution for cement pollution, and it was minimally edited (for brevity, I guess), so that’s nice.

Why am I blogging about it (again)? Because it’s important to keep solutions like this in the public realm, in front of people. Otherwise, we all climb back into our cozy (not!) boxes and carry on as usual.

Here’s the letter, as published:

Cast a solution for cement pollution
Times Colonist
Published: Thursday, November 13, 2008

Re: “Cement industry fears carbon tax squeeze,” column, Nov. 8.

Kudos to the B.C. Liberals for putting industry under pressure — not to destroy it, but to force it to innovate. It really is time for more creative thinking when it comes to environmental issues. Municipalities and industries need to step up, perhaps to collaborate.

Finding ways to sequester the carbon dioxide produced by cement production continues to be a contested holy grail for the industry. The “squeeze” of a carbon tax might actually make sequestration a more realistic goal.

A Nova Scotia company, Carbon Sense Solutions, recently claimed it has a process that sequesters all emissions from cement production by storing them in precast concrete products.

Our cement factories typically don’t also produce precast concrete products, but consider a scenario where there is more creative co-operation between industry and municipalities. In such a world it might make sense to add facilities that produce precast concrete products, if municipalities (which also need to meet carbon-neutral goals) found ways to use precast concrete (vs. concrete mix) for public works (roads, sidewalks, etc.) projects.

There will have to be a lot more innovative thinking, literally to disrupt traditional supply-chain setups. If the carbon tax “squeezes” industries and municipalities to embrace that disruption creatively and constructively, it’ll be a win-win for us all.

For more on the still-contested methods of carbon sequestering in cement making, see www.technologyreview.com/energy/21117/page1/.

Yule Heibel

Victoria

I’m also happy to know (via an email I got from Les Leyne in response to this letter) that he’s on the case, here and in other areas concerning the environment. Good to know!

Cracking cement: Industry and municipalities could work together

Les Leyne had an interesting article in today’s local paper, Cement industry fears carbon tax squeeze, which prompted me to write a letter to the editor in response. It seems to me that this problem offers an opportunity for some disruptive creative thinking, which could create a win-win situation for municipalities and industry.

Some key excerpts from Leyne’s article:

When Premier Gordon Campbell whipped together a carbon tax exemption for municipalities just in time for their September convention, the lineup formed quickly for similar breaks.

Assorted sectors of the economy have ideas on why they should get some help in coping with the carbon tax. The municipalities won their case because they have no one to pass the costs on to, other than taxpayers, who are already paying it in their own lives. So the municipalities’ carbon tax bill will be picked up by the province — if they promise to get carbon-neutral by 2012.

Leyne notes that one of the first industry groups to come forward was the cement producers, who claim that the carbon tax will chew up to 107% of their profits (quite the claim…).  The cement industry produces a huge amount of CO2, has to find a way to reduce its carbon footprint, and is crying about how the carbon tax is going to put them out of business.  Leyne notes, however, that European manufacturers have lived with a carbon tax regime for years, and are still doing ok.  So it’s really more about changing the industry’s mindset — maybe to something more like “yes we can,” as opposed to “no can do.”

Leyne writes that some of the greenhouse gases produced by the cement industry are “unavoidable”:

Cement is the powdery glue that holds concrete together when water is added. Making the stuff involves emissions. More than half of the emissions are unavoidable — breaking down limestone releases carbon dioxide. The rest of the emissions come from generating the heat used in the process, which is mostly done by burning coal. The industry is already paying the carbon tax on that fuel and claims a bill of $6 million since it took effect July 1.

I was reminded, however, of the MIT Technology Review article, A concrete Fix to Global Warming, which focused on how CO2, released during the production of cement, could be sequestered in cement products.  That means that instead of focusing on buying offsets and so forth, a better approach to reducing the carbon footprint for real would be to focus instead on incorporating CO2 sequestering methods into the manufacturing process.

The industry is worried it’s being driven out of business:

“Surely to God you weren’t trying to put us out of business when you came up with the carbon tax,” McSweeney told politicians.

Liberal MLAs had no response. But privately, the government doubts the claims of peril.

The presentation was almost identical to one the industry made in Europe several years ago. But carbon taxes were imposed widely there, and the impact was minimal.

Government also discounts worries about competitors outside the province. With just a handful of big companies in the world, it’s not a competitive industry. And cement has to be produced close to where it’s used. (pg.2 of article)

So what’s in that MIT Technology Review article to help with this problem?  Well, part of the problem from my point of view is that, as per Leyne’s remarks, most of the emissions are unavoidable and that you’re upping the ante by burning coal to create the needed heat for processing.  The implication is that there’s nothing in the manufacturing process that let’s you shift the equation, yet the Technology Review article (see particularly page 2) suggests there are plenty of people working on different ways of sequestering the CO2 that’s released.

Which means that this is an industrial process ripe for new thinking and disruption, and the municipalities could jump into the breach to kick-start the process.

Which brings me to my letter, written out of frustration over the slowness of adaptive and innovative strategies by municipalities here, even when our provincial government is kicking them (as per Bill 27).  Here is the letter I wrote:

Kudos to the BC Liberals for putting industry under pressure — not to destroy it, but to force it to innovate, because it really is time for more creative thinking when it comes to environmental issues.  Municipalities and industries need to step up, perhaps to collaborate.

It’s known that finding ways to sequester the C02 produced by cement production continues to be a contested holy grail for the industry.  The “squeeze” of a carbon tax might actually be the opportunity to make sequestration a more realistic goal.

A Nova Scotia company (Carbon Sense Solutions) recently claimed that it has a process that sequesters all emissions from cement production by storing them in precast concrete products. Our cement factories typically don’t also produce precast concrete products, but consider a scenario where there is more creative cooperation between industry and municipalities.  In such a world it might make sense to add facilities that produce precast concrete products, if municipalities (which also need to meet carbon-neutral goals) found ways to use precast concrete (vs concrete mix) for public works (roads, sidewalks, etc.) projects.

There will have to be a lot more innovative thinking, literally to disrupt traditional supply-chain set-ups.  If the carbon tax “squeezes” industries and municipalities to embrace that disruption creatively and constructively, it’ll be a win-win for us all.

(For more on the still-contested methods of carbon sequestering in the cement-making process, see http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/2…)

No idea if the paper will publish it, but here’s hoping for creative innovation from industry and municipalities.

Diigo Bookmarks 05/27/2008 (a.m.)

• Prefab-ulous: New Development in England Goes Up Green — and Fast

  Brief article by Andrew Blum about Oxley Woods, a development of “90 eco-friendly homes, with 55 more planned to fill its seven acres.” The key aspect? They’re all pre-fab, relatively cheap to build, can be built quickly, and have in-built green features.

  If Canada had a federal housing plan/ strategy, this would be something the Feds (and the Province) could take a closer look at. It sounds like it could be a reasonable (if partial) solution to our affordable housing crisis.

  tags: andrew_blum, wired_magazine, prefab, green_buildings, green_technologies, oxley_woods, affordable_housing

• “L.A. vision: a towering sign,” by David Zahniser (LA Times) – Astani Enterprises Inc – Annotated

  File this under “life imitates art”? There’s a fascinating battle happening in LA over whether or not Sonny Astani, businessman and developer, should be permitted to install a new kind of LED-generated image, 12 stories above the street and 14 stories tall, on the side of his 33-story condo building currently under construction in downtown LA.

  The inspiration? Opening scenes in Blade Runner of downtown LA, showing “a skyscraper-sized advertisement portraying a Japanese woman smiling before popping a snack into her mouth. Astani says an image, such as that of a flying sea gull, could now even travel from one building to the next.”

  I have to admit this sounds really cool, but I can see why many factions in LA would oppose this, too. We’re all familiar with the really bright illuminated advertisements — even Victoria has a small version of one, installed outside the arena on Blanshard at Caledonia. It’s bright, too bright. But Astani proposes a much more modulated, artistic, and dimmed level of lighting. If the images could look as subtle — yet powerful — as Blade Runner’s, it could work, but there’s no garantee, that if permitted, subsequent developers would follow in that “artistic” style.

  Another aspect is this: the proposal, if it’s art, also calls into question just how intrusive public art should be in public space. Does it have a right to be so intrusive as to be impossible to ignore? Can I, as a citizen, be obliged to register public art — and admittedly, it would be impossible not to register this project?

  Is part of what captures my attention/ imagination regarding this project its uncanny fusion of subtlety and assault, packaged as visual stimulus?

  Another question: is this an art form that expresses a corporate and anti-pedestrian city (”…neighborhood anchored by Staples Center and L.A. Live, the hotel and entertainment complex that includes the recently opened Nokia Theatre”), fitting for LA where people don’t walk anyway (but just wait: it’ll show up soon enough on the very very pedestrian-friendly Las Vegas Strip)? I’m thinking of this in terms of Christopher Hume’s writings on Toronto, and the Leslie big box/ corporate redevelopment plans, which he has characterized (rightly, imo) as being anti-pedestrian and therefore anti-urban, too. But could anyone argue that LA is in any way anti-urban? No. So is this visual art / visual stimulus for a different kind of urbanity?

  tags: astani, advertising, billboards, outdoor_installations, public_art, public_space, los_angeles

• “The Web and Beyond: Mobility (1) – Adam Greenfield” – The Mobile City » Blog Archive » – Annotated

  Michiel de Lange reports on the CHI conference “The Web and Beyond: Mobility” in Amsterdam on 5/22/08, featuring Adam Greenfield (Everyware); Jyri Engeström (Jaiku); Ben Cerveny (Playground foundation, Flickr); Christian Lindholm (Fjord, Nokia). In this post, he focuses on Greenfield’s presentation. A key aspect that struck me was this observation by Greenfield: that ubicom / ubiquitous computing creates a new level of “ambient informatics,” and “information processing dissolves into behavior.” Greenfield’s example is the seemingly choreographed swish of a public transit user who swings her purse in front of the transit card reader, never skipping a beat, but shaped indelibly by the technology into certain movements.

  tags: adam_greenfield, mobile_city, ubiquitous, ubicom, technology

Diigo Bookmarks 05/24/2008 (a.m.)

• Transmaterial 2: To Redefine Our Physical Environment – PingMag – The Tokyo-based magazine about “Design and Making Things” – Annotated

  PingMag interview with Blaine Brownell, architect and sustainable materials researcher, whose focus is on green building.

  “From repurposed materials that act as surrogates, to recombinant ones that fuse several materials into a hybrid, making them stronger and more effective — Blaine points us to products that might shape our physical environment in the future.”

  Materials discussed include self-healing polymers inspired by biological systems, which can automatically heal cracks in buildings, for example.

  The article includes many other photographs / examples with descriptions of weird and wonderful bioneered and sustainable building materials.

  tags: pingmag, transmaterial, bioneering, biomimicry, architecture, technology, blaine_brownell, sustainable_materials

Suburbs, food deserts, and old-fashioned delivery trucks

As it happened, Christopher Hume’s follow-up story today in the Toronto Star on the Leslieville big-box debacle, Wal-Mart and the city an uneasy mix (which I blogged about here), made some points that coincided nicely with a story by Shannon Proudfoot, which appeared in yesterday’s Province (Vancouver), about food deserts in cities: Suburbs cause ‘food deserts’ in cities; People stranded in low-income neighbourhoods have little choice.

Let’s start with food deserts in cities. From Proudfoot’s article:

The migration of supermarkets to the suburbs has left some Canadian cities with “food deserts” in their most vulnerable neighbourhoods, according to new research that counters previous studies suggesting that phenomenon wasn’t happening in this country.

Residents marooned in these grocery wastelands — usually those who can least afford it — have no easy access to stores that stock fresh, affordable food, researchers say, forcing them to pay inflated convenience-store prices or eat junk food.

These conclusions are based on 40 years of data, and researchers found that the situation is getting worse, with “the poorest neighbourhoods …the most stranded.”

“If you think about a single mother with limited income without a vehicle — if you can’t hop in your car and drive to a supermarket, you must shop locally,” Gilliland says. “You’re going to be buying your groceries at local convenience stores.”

That forces people to pay an average of 1.6 times more for groceries, he says, perpetuating a financial “downward spiral” for those already in a precarious position.

Better-off urbanites are turning to Zipcar services (car sharing services), which they then use to make those big runs to the suburbs (and the big-box discount stores):

Now they use Zipcar for day trips out of the city or bulk-buying missions that are more convenient and budget-friendly.

“If you work during the day, get off and want to do a grocery run, the buses would be packed and I couldn’t imagine having to carry that many groceries on a bus for your entire family,” MacPhee says. “It really does come down to convenience.”

Proudfoot concludes with the researcher’s advice that city councils must boost population density in cities so that grocers will locate there, too.

But if the grocer is also a retailer like Wal-Mart, that can be a real problem for urban cores, as Hume’s article makes clear. This is where Hume’s common-sense suggestion to bring back the delivery truck comes into play. As he points out, it used to be the case that no self-respecting city person lugged home tonnage from a shopping trip …because the delivery guy would deliver your goods to your home within hours.

So, if you’re going to put a big-box store into a downtown, get rid of the acres of surface parking for individual cars, get public transportation in, get people to walk or bike in, and let the delivery trucks do the delivering again. The money saved on all that parking would surely pay for a small fleet of vans that ferry goods to their purchasers.

In Toronto, the opposition to this suburban monstrosity with an ocean of parking lapping up prime urban real estate is fierce. But Hume then adds:

One wonders how different the response would have been had SmartCentres announced that it intended to build the city’s first no-parking mall. Sounds ridiculous, but maybe not, on second thought. Already there’s a mall in San Francisco that has no parking. Why not Toronto?

From here it’s a short hop (’cause you’re not driving, see) to the idea of the delivery truck:

Then there’s that revolutionary concept known as the delivery truck. Remember that? There was a time when the big stores – Eaton’s and Simpsons – all had their own fleets. In those days, few shoppers even considered schlepping home anything larger than a breadbasket. And let’s not forget the IGA on Danforth at Pape, which to this day has no parking on its premises.

Clearly, the time has come to bring back the delivery truck, and Eastern Ave. could be a perfect place to start. Of course, the Wal-Marts would have nothing to do with such a concept, but being Toronto’s first green shopping centre, Wal-Mart wouldn’t be wanted anyway.

Shoppers would walk or cycle to the centre, make their purchases, then walk or cycle home. The goods would show up later. Now that’s convenience.

“We think delivery is a great idea,” says Smith, who also points out that, “this is a huge evolution for us. None of us has a lot of urban experience.”

The return of the delivery truck could also address the problem of “food deserts” in urban cores. There is enough density already if you include the people who can’t afford to drive to the store.

Here in Victoria, several of our core and downtown grocers deliver for free, same day, if you shop before noon or 2pm and your order is over $25. The liquor stores (non-government, that is) figured this one out, too: right below Market on Yates (”Your uptown downtown grocery store” is, I believe, their slogan) on View Street there’s Harris Green Liquors, which not only delivers, but takes orders for home delivery over the phone. Cheers, eh?

Above: Market on Yates delivery ad as seen on the website.

Left: Harris Green Liquor Merchants delivery truck.  They also use a regular       car…

Suburbs and their replicating ways

Two items about suburbia came across my horizon recently.

One is a USA Today report on Chinese delegations coming to the US to study planned suburbs: Modern suburbia not just in America anymore by Haya El Nasser (today, April 18), which has an ominous (to my ears) conclusion, although there’s a lot of interesting stuff before that. More on that in a moment.

The other is another palpable hit from a couple of days ago by The Mobile City’s Martijn de Waal, Video as suburban condition. This blog post references an installation by Martijn Hendriks, also entitled video as suburban condition. As de Waal writes, Hendriks has compiled a loop of YouTube video clips showing teens “performing” (as it were) their selves — on suburban parking lots or in “the fluorescently lit aisles of strip mall supermarkets.” What de Waals observes is fascinating: the clips, he writes, aren’t “loose incidents” unrelated to one another, but “part of an ecosystem”:

Teenagers perform their identity, video tape it with their mobile phone or handheld camera and put it on Youtube. Other teenagers watch those clips and in their own distant yet almost similar suburbs re-enact or remix the performance. Japanese teenagers copy funny dances and supermarket gags from their peers in the US and the other way around.

The performances are then copied by other teens around the world. De Waal quotes from Hendriks’ site to explain how suburban places are imagined in these clips: “The videos show people performing in places that would normally lack all interest, like back yards, parking lots, roof tops and malls. (…) Each place, as ordinary as it may be, is re-imagined as a place for doing extraordinary things.”

What’s fascinating is how de Waal thinks this through in terms of the technology: video allows for a replication — a reproduction, actually — of the performance of that identity, and in that sense, we are talking about an ecosystem. A cardinal clue whether something is animate or inanimate is whether it can reproduce. Humans are using technology to reproduce memes, lifestyles, …and identities. This means they are alive.

De Waal writes:

These videoclips show that performers at spaces like parking lots and strip malls now do have a way to find an audience – although the interaction is not in real time and in real space. These spaces declared dead do seem to come alive and work in a way that is comparable to traditional city squares. At least in terms of processes of performance and identification.

Now… what I really like about this approach to the topic is that it honours and recognizes the vitality in the thing.

I don’t feel the same friendly way toward master-planning. And that takes us back to the USA Today, where the author (Haya El Nasser) describes a certain flavour of “master planning” that overpowers whatever those teens might get up to in those videos.

El Nasser’s article starts as follows:

A Chinese delegation from Beijing arrived in Phoenix last month and headed west to the Sonoran Desert, deep into suburbia. Its destination: a quintessential American residential development in Buckeye, one of the many suburbs dotting the sprawling metropolitan area.

It goes on to describe Sun City Festival, a 3,000-acre planned community. Do young people dance or “perform” on parking lots there, I wondered? Nope, this is for folks 55+ of age. The Chinese delegation was there to study how they might “replicate” (El Nasser’s word) that “community” back home in China.

If the kids are having sex, the planners are in the lab doing in vitro “fertilization” it seems….

Ironically, this push to plan is done for reasons of sustainability:

The push is on to inspire developing countries to do what more American communities are doing: steer away from sprawling, cookie-cutter subdivisions popularized after World War II and create sustainable communities that will not deplete natural resources.

That includes developments built around mass-transit stations to reduce reliance on cars and projects that mix homes and businesses so that people can walk from home to stores and other services.

That sounds good, but what does it feel like? Will there be dancing (or miming or performing) in the streets (or parking lots or aisles)?

I’m not defending the existing suburban places that the kids documented by Hendriks are filming (not at all), but I’m just a bit skeptical about the “planning” described in Nasser’s article — irrespective of my basic sympathy with its goals (to have livability, sustainability, all that good stuff — oh, and good design, too…).

I’m wondering, when all is said and done (planned!), how do you plan for something like YouTube, for example? We’ll always be using technology to enhance our replicating ways, and often on unexpected platforms. From the backseats of cars to the digital virus via YouTube, life will find a way…

In the meantime, though, by all means plan better, cleaner, more sustainable communities. It makes sense — sort of like more comfortable plush in the backseat upholstery?

You know eco-consciousness is mainstream when…

…it’s a major theme at Brazilian carnival.

Via PingMag – The Tokyo-based magazine about “Design and Making Things” comes this wonderful recap of Sao Paolo, Brazil’s just-ended carnival season. Season? According to Aroldo Cardoso Jr., who wrote the intro for PingMag’s entry, planning and preparation for carnival starts in July. It’s more or less an 8-month obsession, sort of like pregnancy (minus one month).

Go read the entry, but here are some photos of costumes, as posted on PingMag, with eco-themes.

First up, wind turbines!

Next, Ethanol!

And Biodiesel!, which looks a lot like Ethanol, but that’s ok:

And finally, because other species are endangered and need a “voice,” there’s Coral Reefs!