Human being is contradictory.
We are living in a world which “an exercise machine assembled in the United States may contain rubber belts form Malaysia, chemicals from Korea, motors from China, adhesives from Taiwan, and wood from Brazil”, while we cherish the memory of “the traditional city buildings in which studios sit over family homes, which sit over offices, which sit over shops, bring life to the street”. At the same time we are trying to find a way living on Mars someday. We know “to make people better off requires no new theories, and needs only common sense”, but things are far more complicated than that so more and more theories are being produced.
Developing and Conquering are our instincts. From last week’s readings we know that all media are extension of human body. We are too eager to extend. Rogers’s planning for Lu Zia Sui sounds so good for the city of Shanghai, but “whether Shanghai will pursue any of these sustainable strategies is open to question.” In front of the economics and technology accelerating, people always neglect the long-term benefit, that is how Houston has been built. We produce, consume, and waste. To realize “there is very little that you actually consume” is important, but which more important is to execute the sustainable strategy. The good thing is that after developing to a certain degree, people will aware the importance of sustainability, which is happening in western countries right now.
The position of design is ambiguous. On one hand, designers are asked to design all kind of production used to be consumed, for contemporary use, and will be “away” as we know. On the other hand, people argue design should be sustainable and decrease the waste. In the cowboy developer economy designing a building is just because it is cheaper and simpler than to maintain an old one. It is sad for an architect to aware that “City…are nothing less than over grown prisons that shut out the world and all its beauties.” We thought architects are beauty creators. Since things have already happened, unavoidable, it is time for architects to put sustainability on the top of the design list.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Sustainability
William Ogle
SUSTAINABILITY
The book Natural Capitalism discusses sustainability as a necessary idiom of the future that can be achieved through an intelligent dovetailing of our desires into new processes. The beginning of the chapter lays out a cogent analysis by Donella Meadows of society’s view of sustainability into four categories of blue, red, green and white. These categories represent the free marketers, socialist, environmentalist, and finally the synthesizers. Interestingly we find out that the four positions taken are all correct, however are simply studying the problem through different lenses. This holistic understanding becomes the major framework for the chapters thesis of natural capitalism. The book goes on to show how simplistic problems consist of hidden variables that require a broader understanding such as the fall of the Soviet Empire correlating with the fall of the California’s economy. Essentially the authors recognize the multitude of problems facing the sustainability of the worlds future and have an optimistic view that, through the collaboration of many unlike parties, natural solutions will come to be. This is made apparent in their statement of what might be said in the future as historians look back that stating that “the private sector has taken its proper place as the main implementer of sustainable practices, simply because they wok better and cost less.”
While the authors of Natural Capitalism looked at an approach that would be a synthesis of many opposing parties, Richard Rogers in his book Cities for a small planet feels that the sustainability of a our future will rely on intelligent urban design planning. Both books acknowledge that the worlds finite resources will eventually be consumed at an exponential rate by a mushrooming population unless a completely new intelligent paradigm is established. Rogers believes that our world is not sustainable because of the inefficiency of our swelling cities which are a result of poor planning choices. He goes on to describe cities as the “parasites on the landscape-huge organisms draining the world for their sustenance and energy: relentless consumers, relentless polluters.” The people are no longer guilty of the mass consumption of resources, but rather it is the mega-city. Later he describes the sources of the poor planning as stemming from developers working in zones rather than what Rogers describes as a “compact and overlapping approach.” Finally he blames the automobile for the largest inefficiency of our cities and advocates his compact overlapping approach to increase foot traffic and curb car use. Much of Rogers argument for sustainability deals with reestablishing the urban community and efficiencies of cities.
SUSTAINABILITY
The book Natural Capitalism discusses sustainability as a necessary idiom of the future that can be achieved through an intelligent dovetailing of our desires into new processes. The beginning of the chapter lays out a cogent analysis by Donella Meadows of society’s view of sustainability into four categories of blue, red, green and white. These categories represent the free marketers, socialist, environmentalist, and finally the synthesizers. Interestingly we find out that the four positions taken are all correct, however are simply studying the problem through different lenses. This holistic understanding becomes the major framework for the chapters thesis of natural capitalism. The book goes on to show how simplistic problems consist of hidden variables that require a broader understanding such as the fall of the Soviet Empire correlating with the fall of the California’s economy. Essentially the authors recognize the multitude of problems facing the sustainability of the worlds future and have an optimistic view that, through the collaboration of many unlike parties, natural solutions will come to be. This is made apparent in their statement of what might be said in the future as historians look back that stating that “the private sector has taken its proper place as the main implementer of sustainable practices, simply because they wok better and cost less.”
While the authors of Natural Capitalism looked at an approach that would be a synthesis of many opposing parties, Richard Rogers in his book Cities for a small planet feels that the sustainability of a our future will rely on intelligent urban design planning. Both books acknowledge that the worlds finite resources will eventually be consumed at an exponential rate by a mushrooming population unless a completely new intelligent paradigm is established. Rogers believes that our world is not sustainable because of the inefficiency of our swelling cities which are a result of poor planning choices. He goes on to describe cities as the “parasites on the landscape-huge organisms draining the world for their sustenance and energy: relentless consumers, relentless polluters.” The people are no longer guilty of the mass consumption of resources, but rather it is the mega-city. Later he describes the sources of the poor planning as stemming from developers working in zones rather than what Rogers describes as a “compact and overlapping approach.” Finally he blames the automobile for the largest inefficiency of our cities and advocates his compact overlapping approach to increase foot traffic and curb car use. Much of Rogers argument for sustainability deals with reestablishing the urban community and efficiencies of cities.
Sustainability
Architecture 209X, Spring 2007
Words and Cities: The rhetoric and meaning of statistically improbable phrases
Nicholas De Monchaux
Qing Wang
Sustainability
The readings recalled me Fuller’s article. Both of them think our living condition in a large ecological system. There are complicated systematic connections related with each component in this system. The relationship of these connections might be still ambiguous, but the certainty of the connection reminds us that we couldn’t neglect this anymore. One following thought after this systematic thinking is sustainability. Once men realize every single behavior they did will affect the much larger system. They have to reconsider what they did in their ordinary lives for centuries and reevaluate the cities they had once built for honor and power. The city expands and contains more people. The city becomes the place of mass production and mass consumption. In the globalization, the resources of the whole earth are transported into cities and consumed by the cities and finally become the waste. More importantly, the resources are not infinite and the speed and amount of resources that cities consume exceed the speed they can regenerate. The cities in the developed countries are struggling with what they have done already. The sustainable strategy is a make-up for those cities, but is the solution when the moment city expands, which happens in many developing countries.
The Revolution Will Be Designed
“Cities have never contained so many…” begins Richard Rogers. (Rogers, 27) One could end this sentence with an ‘x’. Cities have never contained so many variables. Slums, cars, dollars, corporations, lattes, networks, hybrid cars, systems, people! As situation normal reaches its entropic conclusion, we will need a systems view to deal with so many variables and design the next urban revolution.
“[T]he Industrial Revolution as a whole was not really designed.” (McDonough, 18) McDonough argues that the form of the modern city is largely resultant from a singly focused world view. Inherent in his language and argument is an argument for a systemic view of cities and infrastructure that values resources as much as profit, rejecting what he calls the ‘cradle to grave’ mentality. A parallel can be seen between the development of and problems now facing mono-cultured farming and the modern city. “The single-minded cultivation of one species drastically reduces the rich network of “services” and side effects in which the entire ecosystem originally engaged…The GDP takes only one measure of progress into account: activity.” (McDonough, 35) An infrastructure devoted to one thing, profit, and the terrible reality of how common it is, is elucidated in Kwinter’s horrifying descriptions of Houston.
Rogers argues for a reactive systems design of the Compact City. “The creation of the modern Compact city demands the rejection of single-function development and the dominance of the car….The whole premise of the Compact City is that interventions trigger further opportunities for efficiency.” (Rogers, 38,50) These further opportunities become new variables, and provide feedback. We need recognize the ideal city as an emergent system to be able to design it. “Sustainable Compact Cities could, I contend, reinstate the city as the ideal habitat for a community-based society.” (Rogers, 40) Much of the reading was focused on the pressing need for this utopia to be sought, a need invoked by the growth of slums, the pollution and alienation of the car, or the contamination of everyday items. McDonough argues that these are necessary results of a flawed design. “The waste, pollution, crude products, and other negative effects that we have described are not the result of corporations doing something morally wrong. They are the consequence of outdated and unintelligent design.” (McDonough, 43)
This can, on one hand, sound fatalist, but on the other empower us to change the design. Rogers reminds us that "computer modeling [brings] together the complex matrix of criteria that make up the modern city.” (Rogers, 52) Rogers also refreshingly reminds us that all politics, including natural politics, is local. “Tackling the global environmental crisis from the vantage point of each city brings the task within the grasp of the citizen… [T]he dense city model need not be seen as a health hazard. This means we can reconsider the social advantages of proximity, rediscover the advantages of living in each other’s company.” (Rogers, 33) The example of Curitiba shows that preserving all types of capital, natural, human, and social, within the confines of the city not only leads to richer civic life, but prompts the local citizens to invest more into their community.
All of the articles argue that the response to the environmental crisis lies in greater understanding of the systems and infrastructures of the city. Only by admitting more variables, and understanding the ecosystem of the city can we design the next revolution.
“[T]he Industrial Revolution as a whole was not really designed.” (McDonough, 18) McDonough argues that the form of the modern city is largely resultant from a singly focused world view. Inherent in his language and argument is an argument for a systemic view of cities and infrastructure that values resources as much as profit, rejecting what he calls the ‘cradle to grave’ mentality. A parallel can be seen between the development of and problems now facing mono-cultured farming and the modern city. “The single-minded cultivation of one species drastically reduces the rich network of “services” and side effects in which the entire ecosystem originally engaged…The GDP takes only one measure of progress into account: activity.” (McDonough, 35) An infrastructure devoted to one thing, profit, and the terrible reality of how common it is, is elucidated in Kwinter’s horrifying descriptions of Houston.
“[Houston] is arguably no real city at all but is rather a loose confederation of industrial profit centers that together form an ethereal web of shared infrastructure and economic and statutory partnerships... Houston’s entire logic and raison d’etre is as a profit center, and as such it remains the experimental model for nearly all other developing cities in the world.” (Kwinter, 547)It seems that to design healthy cities, we have to accept the idea of Natural Capital, and operate from the view of the ‘whites’. Social, natural, and financial capital need be regarded as equal variables in a systemic world view. “Just as businesses are beginning to see the loss of natural capital or ecosystem function as harmful to both their short- and long-term interests, they may also come to realize the social inequities are harmful to their interests as well.” (Hawkens, Lovins & Lovins, 318)
Rogers argues for a reactive systems design of the Compact City. “The creation of the modern Compact city demands the rejection of single-function development and the dominance of the car….The whole premise of the Compact City is that interventions trigger further opportunities for efficiency.” (Rogers, 38,50) These further opportunities become new variables, and provide feedback. We need recognize the ideal city as an emergent system to be able to design it. “Sustainable Compact Cities could, I contend, reinstate the city as the ideal habitat for a community-based society.” (Rogers, 40) Much of the reading was focused on the pressing need for this utopia to be sought, a need invoked by the growth of slums, the pollution and alienation of the car, or the contamination of everyday items. McDonough argues that these are necessary results of a flawed design. “The waste, pollution, crude products, and other negative effects that we have described are not the result of corporations doing something morally wrong. They are the consequence of outdated and unintelligent design.” (McDonough, 43)
This can, on one hand, sound fatalist, but on the other empower us to change the design. Rogers reminds us that "computer modeling [brings] together the complex matrix of criteria that make up the modern city.” (Rogers, 52) Rogers also refreshingly reminds us that all politics, including natural politics, is local. “Tackling the global environmental crisis from the vantage point of each city brings the task within the grasp of the citizen… [T]he dense city model need not be seen as a health hazard. This means we can reconsider the social advantages of proximity, rediscover the advantages of living in each other’s company.” (Rogers, 33) The example of Curitiba shows that preserving all types of capital, natural, human, and social, within the confines of the city not only leads to richer civic life, but prompts the local citizens to invest more into their community.
All of the articles argue that the response to the environmental crisis lies in greater understanding of the systems and infrastructures of the city. Only by admitting more variables, and understanding the ecosystem of the city can we design the next revolution.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Sustainability is an attempt to provide the best outcomes for the human and natural environments both now and into the indefinite future. It relates to the continuity of economic, social, institutional and environmental aspects of human society, as well as the non-human environment. It is intended to be a means of configuring civilization and human activity so that society, its members and its economies are able to meet their needs and express their greatest potential in the present, while preserving biodiversity and natural ecosystems, and planning and acting for the ability to maintain these ideals in a very long term. Sustainability affects every level of organization, from the local neighborhood to the entire planet.
Wikipedia
This may be the first time that I look for a definition of a word in wikipedia and it is able to encompass the main concepts covered in the readings. The definition is clear despite the broadness of the ideas it defines, and one understands the different scales and depth the processes are implemented. Is the ability to define sustainability in such a manner a resultant of a growing consensus in society as to the functioning of our “spaceship”? Paul Hawken in Natural Capitalism would say so. He suggests that despite the different colored interests groups, (red, blue, green, and white), and the different competing industries, that a general consensus of the world’s path is growing. “What is remarkable about this period is the degree of agreement that is forming globally about the relationship between human and living systems…Now they are being joined by the deeper voice of international organizations and companies, large and small….Never before in history have such disparate and independent groups created common framework of understanding around the world” (pg. 321-322). He describes that framework as a comprehensive and complex system full of interconnections in which natural capitalism plays a key role. If we were to compare the notion of natural capital to a term that Buckminster Fuller would have used it would be Space Ship Earth’s manual. Hawken argues that the groups and organizations taking on the task to create a user’s manual are the world’s new capitalist. “Arguably they have now become the world’s real capitalists. By addressing such issues … they are now doing more to preserve a viable business future than are all the world’s chambers of commerce put together” (pg. 315).
During my daily activities I came across something that related very much to Roger’s writings in Sustainable cities. He stresses the concept of “compact city” as a new model for future cities, basing that through the proximity of resources as being more efficient and healthier. He looks at transport, energy sources, and a sense of community. I was confronted with this idea of proximity today when walking to Wurster I came across the selling of produce from community gardens, and a huge flyer with the red words of sustainability were plaster on their tarp billboard. The idea was that they were selling high quality produce at a cheap rate. They were local growers and using natural methods to harvest their crops. Also because of their location less energy was used to get the products to the people resulting in situation that benefited consumers and the environment.
sustainability_liwen
Sustainability
Hawken, Lovins and Lovins’ article on Natural Capitalism is both a very informative and perhaps logical reading of what is to come in the face of a capital driven economy that is obsessed with results on a purely statistical level.
What is very successful about Hawken, Lovins and Lovins’ article is the way upon which the authors reinvent connotations of the word capitalism. When one thinks about capitalism, often negative images of giant ruthless yet efficient corporations come to mind, very reminiscent of Kwinter’s manifestation of Houston, Texas. However, as brought up in Natural Capitalism, the running out of natural recourses available has caused previously perceived evil multinational corporations to reconsider their futures when what is described as 'natural capital' becomes limited. Thus upon taking into account the opportunity costs imposed by the diminishing natural resources available, companies are now reassessing what was once the traditional means of making profit – as advertised by current worldwide trade policies. What companies are looking into now, besides capital gain through resource exploitation is the need to take what Hawken, Lovins and Lovins’ calls ‘natural and social capital’ into account.
However despite the innovative yet highly optimistic outlook the authors present (‘for the first time, employees’ activities at work are fully and directly aligned with what is best for their children and grandchildren at home’) which is plausible since the environment is finally taken into account with a certain degree of seriousness, both Hawken’s (and Lovins and Lovins’) and Gumuchdjian’s articles fail to take into account the informal sectors of work that is currently one of the most problematic paradigms of our time, as manifested by Mike Davis’ Planet of Slums . In our current Post-Fordist society, (Marx’s) alienation coupled with deliberately permeable borders between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries, namely the relations between the US and Mexico, mean that the labor force responsible for much of the extensive yet rapid productions for many formal sectors, such as the construction (i.e. day laborers) or fashion industries (i.e. sweatshops), is much attributed to that of the informal sector, workers that are not registered citizens and thus cannot enjoy the spoils of being in the group which Hawken considers as 'social capital'. When Hawken, Lovins and Lovins’ mentions great hopes in ‘rebuilding human capital and restoring natural capital’, one cannot stop but question what exactly this human capital embodies.
Hawken, Lovins and Lovins’ article on Natural Capitalism is both a very informative and perhaps logical reading of what is to come in the face of a capital driven economy that is obsessed with results on a purely statistical level.
What is very successful about Hawken, Lovins and Lovins’ article is the way upon which the authors reinvent connotations of the word capitalism. When one thinks about capitalism, often negative images of giant ruthless yet efficient corporations come to mind, very reminiscent of Kwinter’s manifestation of Houston, Texas. However, as brought up in Natural Capitalism, the running out of natural recourses available has caused previously perceived evil multinational corporations to reconsider their futures when what is described as 'natural capital' becomes limited. Thus upon taking into account the opportunity costs imposed by the diminishing natural resources available, companies are now reassessing what was once the traditional means of making profit – as advertised by current worldwide trade policies. What companies are looking into now, besides capital gain through resource exploitation is the need to take what Hawken, Lovins and Lovins’ calls ‘natural and social capital’ into account.
However despite the innovative yet highly optimistic outlook the authors present (‘for the first time, employees’ activities at work are fully and directly aligned with what is best for their children and grandchildren at home’) which is plausible since the environment is finally taken into account with a certain degree of seriousness, both Hawken’s (and Lovins and Lovins’) and Gumuchdjian’s articles fail to take into account the informal sectors of work that is currently one of the most problematic paradigms of our time, as manifested by Mike Davis’ Planet of Slums . In our current Post-Fordist society, (Marx’s) alienation coupled with deliberately permeable borders between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries, namely the relations between the US and Mexico, mean that the labor force responsible for much of the extensive yet rapid productions for many formal sectors, such as the construction (i.e. day laborers) or fashion industries (i.e. sweatshops), is much attributed to that of the informal sector, workers that are not registered citizens and thus cannot enjoy the spoils of being in the group which Hawken considers as 'social capital'. When Hawken, Lovins and Lovins’ mentions great hopes in ‘rebuilding human capital and restoring natural capital’, one cannot stop but question what exactly this human capital embodies.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Sustainability
‘Cities for small planet’ shows Richard Rogers’s Lu Zia Sui district proposal articulated as a sustainable compact city. Advantage of compact city is described as interventions triggering further opportunities for efficiency. Fewer roads but more landscape and reducing the heat bloom of cities so ultimately reducing the waste of energy is the theory of the Lu Zia Sui in Shanghai project. Process of planning is made possible by computer modeling that brings together the complex matrix of criteria that make up the modern city. (Page 2) This term can be compared to description about Houston-“Houston’s development is uncommonly exposed to economic buffeting and fluctuation at all level from local and national to global. A city model generated by complete simulation with a development strategy vs a sprawling city with totally unexpected factors.
Economical factors which can not be under control would be a key difference in this circumstance.
Article ‘Natural capitalism’ focuses on ‘The resource productivity as a societal strategy between business and government’. Throughout color-code which is mentioned as matrix of four worldviews, authors try to exam system of capitalism. It might be slightly biased and narrowed as a way of reflecting a perspective among business, environmentalist and synthesist. Anyway, from that approach, this article refers ‘Natural capitalism’as the alternative. Natural capital is an opposite notion against manufactured capital. For advanced resource productivity, business should play a role as link creating production and distribution in order to balance between two capital systems.
Article ‘A Question of Design' is a question on which side design purpose has put since Industrial Revolution- not planned, but has a definite motive. It would valuable in terms of those specific, limited to the practical, efficient and linear goals of early industrialists which mentioned (page 24) in the article, is still a shared general assumption about the world. McDonough points out design solutions for a worse-case scenario, cradle to grave design, hostile force about diversity, measuring of progress with only economic activities and high-tech products composed of low-quality materials.
There is no perfect solution with the passed footprint. Like he said, only strategy for change is on site.
Economical factors which can not be under control would be a key difference in this circumstance.
Article ‘Natural capitalism’ focuses on ‘The resource productivity as a societal strategy between business and government’. Throughout color-code which is mentioned as matrix of four worldviews, authors try to exam system of capitalism. It might be slightly biased and narrowed as a way of reflecting a perspective among business, environmentalist and synthesist. Anyway, from that approach, this article refers ‘Natural capitalism’as the alternative. Natural capital is an opposite notion against manufactured capital. For advanced resource productivity, business should play a role as link creating production and distribution in order to balance between two capital systems.
Article ‘A Question of Design' is a question on which side design purpose has put since Industrial Revolution- not planned, but has a definite motive. It would valuable in terms of those specific, limited to the practical, efficient and linear goals of early industrialists which mentioned (page 24) in the article, is still a shared general assumption about the world. McDonough points out design solutions for a worse-case scenario, cradle to grave design, hostile force about diversity, measuring of progress with only economic activities and high-tech products composed of low-quality materials.
There is no perfect solution with the passed footprint. Like he said, only strategy for change is on site.
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