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Air Date: Week of April 18, 2008

Jaime Lerner is the three-time mayor of Curitiba.

Curitiba, Brazil’s model sustainable city, was largely the brainchild of Jaime Lerner. As three-time mayor of the city, he created a rapid transit bus system, increased the amount of green space, and encouraged children and adults alike to recycle. Jaime Lerner joins host Steve Curwood in the LOE studios and says all cities have the potential for environmental success.

The Tangshan region near Beijing will soon be home to a new ecological city with one million inhabitants.

Under Major Diaz's leadership, several green initiatives the City of Miami that have been implemented in recent years include:

• Citywide Tree Master Plan: Resulting from a unique coordination between then city and county, the Plan will be used as a framework to coordinate efforts to restore and enhance the City’s tree canopy with a goal of a minimum of 30 percent tree canopy coverage, City-wide, by 2020.
• Smart Sponge: The installation and maintenance of the Smart Sponge on City Hall property and throughout the city. The Smart Sponge is a device that is installed inside storm water drains to trap debris, oil, pollution, bacteria, pathogens and trash from entering waterways.
• Green Fleet Program: A resolution has passed directing the City Manager to establish a Green Fleet Program to assure that the city is purchasing, leasing, or obtaining the most energy efficient vehicles and vessels possible.
• In partnership EcoMedia, an environmental media company, the City has worked on other initiatives including City Hall Energy Efficiency Project, the Miami Green Lab, the Miami BayWash Program and the Miami Tree Canopy Initiative.

For a list of the City of Miami’s Sustainability Initiatives, click here.

"Green Collar Jobs" have gone mainstream. Obama endorses it. And a plank in the Democratic Party Platform calling for green collar jobs would solidify it as Democratic Party policy. Even if that expectation is premature, the popular reception of this program is a remarkable achievement for what began only a few years ago as an under-reported campaign uniting a few progressive labor leaders and some politically astute environmentalists. Despite its popular appeal, or maybe due to it, "Green Collar Jobs" lacks clear definition. The term arose from the groundbreaking, alliance between labor and environmentalists to create a massive national effort to "jump-start" an alternative energy program. They modeled it after John Kennedy's well-funded Apollo Project to get an American on the moon, fast.

(link to rest of article)

There may be one or two things as important for humanity’s future, but nothing is more important than ecocities.

If human beings are stressing planet Earth to the breaking point, and we are, it is because of our vast numbers and our enormous rates of consumption of resources and production of wastes in the process. This stands as something broadly accepted in a world of climate change, the coming end of cheap energy and collapsing species diversity on a global scale.

But what is most often missed is the design and layout of our built environment of cities, towns and villages. Could we build cities that actually enrich soils, promote biodiversity and stabilize climate while creating a more beautiful human environment than ever seen before and one harmonious with the natural world as well? That’s the promise of ecocities and in China some of the most important efforts in exploring cities are underway in places such as Wanzhuang Ecocity Project in Langfang. There we see the strategy of “leading by government, operating by market” which means that there needs to be a design of the incentives to assist and enable the design of the physical thing itself, the physical city as an ecocity.

First, just how important are cities? We have been hearing for some years now that “this year more than half the people in the world will be living in cities.” The figures keep shifting because the data gathered by the United Nations simply accepts and uses the various nations’ wide ranging definitions of what constitutes cities. But what is important to notice is that probably 90% or more of us – almost all of us – live in either cities, towns or villages and at all those scales our built community can be either designed upon the foundation of ecological understanding or without it. In other words, ecocity design relates to practically all scales of development and, if it were applied across those scales would be a solution of sufficient power to preserve and restore the health of the whole planet.

Second, how well recognized is the fact that ecocity design holds this enormous potential for health and happy solutions to crucial problems? Practically not at all! We are dealing with something almost a complete secret when the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Bali in December, 2007 fails to mention the largest things human being create when debating solutions to global heating. Not a word was said about city form or urban design. Certainly some of the world’s best scientists and most conscientious citizens and politicians were doing their best in all the ways they normally go about their work. But somehow they all missed the connection between the design, layout, planning and building of the largest creations of our species – cities – and their impacts on climate. If one kind of city puts out massive quantities of CO2, but a city built in a very different, ecologically informed way would put out one tenth as much, that is enormously important information. That building a different kind of city has this potential for good is simply an insight that is currently so new as to be almost unheard of. People have gotten used to the idea that an ecologically healthy city is an oxymoron, a self-contradiction. The fact that cities do pollute has completely obscured the fact that they can pollute much less, very much less by design – and perhaps the “waste” products of that better design could actually be used for benefit instead of cast off as damage to land, life and society. We have simply not been paying attention to building the best we possibly could.

Third, why haven’t we been moving much more quickly toward ecocities? I’ve been wondering why something that sounds so good – cities designed on the measure of the person, rather than the machine, cities designed to leave room for nature in all its glory, cities to enrich soil as is done in China in a number of other countries in an older kind of agriculture that recycles organics thoroughly, cities conserving energy so well that only a modest flow of energy from the sun or wind could power the whole thing – have not been developed right along with all the other clever humans inventions. For more than forty years I’ve been working on ecological city design, and there have been others in the field too, but practically nothing until very recently has been built, and then on a small scale, as just a building here or there or a small part of city.

Lately we have been recognizing healthy “ecological” patterns in the essence of a much older way of building cities, as we see in the model of old European cities, Nepalese large towns, and traditional villages of compact design in China and around the world defining streets and bringing the full variety of mutual services close together. Why haven’t we earlier extracted the basic principles and techniques from the many pieces that seem to indicate where we should be going? Why has only recently Curitiba, Brazil assembled enough pieces of good layout and design that people are beginning to bring the picture into focus? It would seem strange that Dongtan, now said to be the “first ecocity” could actually be the first or something close to a first when we could have been building right for decades or even centuries. Maybe most important, is there something in the way we are building cities that makes it very difficult to actually progress toward cities good enough to be a positive ecological presence on Earth, a built environment in harmony with the natural environment?

I think there is an answer to this puzzle and it is that we have not been looking at things in their true proportion and we haven’t been exercising imagination fully. We stop thinking halfway to the answer.
Regarding proportionality, for example, the car is a key player in shaping contemporary cities – and disastrously. There is good theoretical basis for seeing the automobile as intrinsically extraordinarily damaging to urban health in simply noticing that the average car is approximately 30 times as heavy as the human body, ten times as fast and about 60 times as big in volume. Designing for something that overbearing in cities has been a mistake few are willing to face. Attempts at making cities healthier come up against desires for speed and bridging distances that have only been possible in an age of very cheap energy and machines that muscle their way across town while completely redesigning it. That’s one big problem in the way.

Another is a notion exemplifying lack of imagination and unwillingness to think through options more thoroughly. That problem exists even in many of the best of European towns and taught in architecture and city planning classes and that notion is that “good urbanism” doesn’t have nature in it. Why not? Who says? In what form and design? Why the lack of imagination here? This idea, embodied in, for example, the compact “walking streets” of old Europe and Asia and the squares and plazas with no plants at all and only pigeons for wildlife, or parks with 100% grass and non-native plants is an idea that has been around for so long it is taken as some sort of rule without thinking through how a much better relationship to nature could be even better urbanism, enriching urban life even more. It’s time to wake up – before nature strikes back for our lack of attention to her.

Another notion is “human scale” in cities – meaning small and often tagged to a four or five story height limit – though many people in China and larger cities everywhere take the notion much more realistically. The benefits of compact, three-dimensional form with real diversity of facilities and services means people can walk and take bicycles and transit very easily, saving enormous amounts of energy, land, time, material investment and money. There is a core of truth to the notion of human scale as small scale but it exists in a dynamic with the larger scale, which is a human product too, and which can be designed very differently than we see generally expressed now. For example, the vital pedestrian city could be one with many taller buildings with terraces linked by bridges, with large sheltered interior passageways on the scale of cathedral interiors, with sunny public space arranged around small waterways and native plants attracting native birds to high places.

I’ve seen people move small steps in the right direction and stop, satisfied that they have arrived. They, for example, might recycle better and buy an energy saving automobile, but they still live a long way from work and their friends and drive anyway. I’ve seen them freeze up the city, opposing any new “density” in already existing neighborhoods or resist adding diversity of services and jobs to a neighborhood, clinging to the segregating single uses of zoning that helped the car scatter the city of car dependent and cheap energy dependent distances. But in projects now being planned in China, such as Dongtan and Wanzhuang, the notion of “access by proximity” – being close to a wide variety of what you need in the city is finally taken seriously and will be the world model for our fast approaching future when cheap energy is gone forever.
But even there, what is missing is going for the full spectrum ecocity now. We need to be thorough. We need to see all the parts connected and understand that to have a better car actually makes a worse city because it perpetuates the same anti-ecocity form with all its excesses. It is time for imagination to explore the whole notion in its fullness. Only then can we get beyond the compromises and the habits of stopping way short of... cities that actually enrich soils, promote biodiversity and stabilize climate while creating a more beautiful human environment than ever seen before and one harmonious with the natural world as well.

Posted by Paul DeMaio on the Bike Sharing Blog

Another NPR story states that the UAE's motivation behind the project is not only for environmental reasons, but to benefit the country's image as well.

The city in the beginning stages of construction.

The Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (TREC) is an initiative campaigning for the transmission of clean power from deserts throughout Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. The DESERTEC Concept was founded in 2003 by The Club of Rome, the Hamburg Climate Protection Foundation and the National Energy Research Center of Jordan, and is being researched in cooperation with the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

The DESERTEC Concept of TREC is to boost the generation of electricity and desalinated water by solar thermal power plants and wind turbines in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and to transmit the clean electrical power via High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) transmission lines throughout those areas and as from 2020 (with overall just 10-15% transmission losses) to Europe.

Flyover of Dongtan, China.  Dongtan is a new ecocity planned for the island of Chongming, near Shanghai, China.

The technical amendments in AB 3034 clarify construction and financing requirements for the $9.95 billion dollar bond measure, which will be on the November 2008 statewide ballot. The bill also prioritizes construction segments based on financial readiness and ability to leverage local, federal, and private funds.

Prior to passage on the Assembly floor, two Assembly committees, Assembly Transportation and Assembly Appropriations approved the measure without any negative votes.

Judge Quentin Kopp, Chairman of the California High-Speed Authority commented, "The strong vote on the Assembly floor reflects increasing vitality and enthusiasm for high-speed rail in California. Despite past vicissitudes, the Assembly's overwhelming vote demonstrates California's purposeful progress in providing 200 mile per hour train service from southern California through the Central Valley to the Bay Area and Sacramento."

AB 3034 will now move to the California State Senate for approval.

Vote was taken on May 30, 2008

(Video overview of the proposed CA High Speed Rail project)

At the end of the Ecocity World Summit 2008, Conference Director Kirstin Miller read a declaration. The text is as follows:

The San Francisco Ecocity Declaration

An ecocity is an ecologically healthy city. Into the deep future, the cities in which we live must enable people to thrive in harmony with nature and achieve sustainable development. People oriented, ecocity development requires the comprehensive understanding of complex interactions between environmental, economic, political and socio-cultural factors based on ecological principles. Cities, towns and villages should be designed to enhance the health and quality of life of their inhabitants and maintain the ecosystems on which they depend.

Ecocity development integrates vision, citizen initiative, public administration, ecologically efficient industry, people's needs and aspirations, harmonious culture, and landscapes where nature, agriculture and the built environment are functionally integrated in a healthy way.

Ecocity development requires:

1. Ecological security - clean air, and safe, reliable water supplies, food, healthy housing and workplaces, municipal services and protection against disasters for all people.
2. Ecological sanitation - efficient, cost-effective eco-engineering for treating and recycling human excreta, gray water, and all wastes.
3. Ecological industrial metabolism - resource conservation and environmental protection through industrial transition, emphasizing materials re-use, life-cycle production, renewable energy, efficient transportation, and meeting human needs.
4. Ecoscape (ecological-landscape) integrity - arrange built structures, open spaces such as parks and plazas, connectors such as streets and bridges, and natural features such as waterways and ridgelines, to maximize biodiversity and maximize accessibility of the city for all citizens while conserving energy and resources and alleviating such problems as automobile accidents, air pollution, hydrological deterioration, heat island effects and global warming.
5. Ecological awareness - help people understand their place in nature, cultural identity, responsibility for the environment, and help them change their consumption behavior and enhance their ability to contribute to maintaining high quality urban ecosystems.

Key actions needed:

1. Provide safe shelter, water, sanitation, security of tenure and food security for all citizens and with priority to the urban and rural poor in an ecologically sound manner to improve the quality of lives and human health.
2. Build cities for people, not cars. Roll back sprawl development. Minimize the loss of rural land by all effective measures, including regional urban and peri-urban ecological planning.
3. With “ecocity mapping” identify ecologically sensitive areas, define the carrying capacity of regional life-support systems, and identify areas where nature, agriculture and the built environment should be restored.  Also identify those areas where more dense and diverse development should be focused in centers of social and economic vitality.
4. Design cities for energy conservation, renewable energy uses and the reduction, re-use and recycling of materials.
5. Build cities for safe pedestrian and non-motorized transport use with efficient, convenient and low-cost public transportation. End automobile subsidies, increase taxation on vehicle fuels and cars and spend the revenue on ecocity projects and public transportation.
6. Provide strong economic incentives to businesses for ecocity building and rebuilding. Tax activities that work against ecologically healthy development, including those that produce greenhouse gases and other emissions. Develop and enhance government policies that encourage investment in ecocity building.
7. Provide adequate, accessible education and training programs, capacity building and local skills development to increase community participation and awareness of ecocity design and management and of the restoration of the natural environment. Support community initiatives in ecocity building.
8. Create a government agency at each level – village, city, regional, national and international – to craft and execute policy to build the ecocity and promote associated ecological development. The agency will coordinate and monitor functions such as transportation, energy, water and land use in holistic planning and management, and facilitate projects and plans.
9. In policy at all levels of government and in the decision making bodies of all institutions – universities, businesses, non-governmental organization, professional associations and so on – address in the plans and actions of those institutions specifically what can be done through the institutions’ physical design and layout relative to its local community to address global heating, the coming end of fossil fuels and global crisis of species extinctions.
10. Encourage and initiate international, inter-city and community-to-community cooperation to share experiences, lessons and resources in ecocity development and promote ecocity practice in developing and developed countries.

Jaime Lerner, former Mayor of Curitiba, Brazil

If there is a Mr. Ecocity anywhere on the planet, it is without question our keynote speaker and former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil. Lerner is the architect planner who led the work to transform his city, starting in 1972, into a world model of ecological and social policies, designs and built projects. The chief architect of the Curitiba Master Plan, he was appointed mayor during Brazil's military dictatorship in 1971. When the nation returned to democracy, he was elected to two more terms. During his 12 years in office, Lerner devised many of Curitiba's innovative, inexpensive solutions to city problems. For example, to combat Curitiba's growing litter problem, he created more incentives for recycling, including exchanging bottles, cans and other recyclables for food. Lerner believed in implementing plans swiftly -- in just 72 hours, he converted several blocks of the downtown into Brazil's first pedestrian mall. Lerner's track record in Curitiba helped him gain the trust and confidence he needed to attain the governorship of his State of Parana from 1994 to 2002. Today, Lerner consults with cities on their plans for addressing long-term growth and sustainability. At the Ecocity World Summit he will be describing his new ideas for strategic intervention and course-correction in city development he calls “urban acupuncture.”

In this conference, Mr. Jaime Lerner will approach what in his views are the main issues concerning cities nowadays and their future perspectives, portraying them as important solidarity refuges.  Strongly supporte by concrete examples, it will focus on the role they plan in contemporary society, enhancing the meaning of design both in structuring urban growth and in the development project of a city, a state, a country.  It will also target mobility – stressing the importance  of public transportation – sustainability and identity as key areas for intervention.  The concept of “Urban Acupuncture” as a strategy to achieve effective results in the qualification of the urban environment will also be explored.

Jaime Lerner: www.jaimelerner.com

Shanfeng Dong – Chief Planner, Shanghai International Investment Company, (SIIC), Shanghai, China

Shanfeng Dong started his career as a chief architect and developer, and has become a recognized project leader in Beijing.  After initiating several sustainability projects in China in 2002, he began work on the first Eco-city, Dongtan, with SIIC just as the project was beginning. Shanfeng now manages 5 Eco-city projects for SIIC in China.  He has established a multi-disciplinary team for both project management and research during the city development experience.  He is greatly interest in delivering and incorporating culture and philosophy into the city environment and consequently set up a Cultural Planning team to research and implement those findings in Eco-cities.

Shanghai International Investment Company: www.siic.com

Carolyn Finney, Assistant Professor/Geographer at UC Berkeley

Carolyn Finney was born in New York and grew up on an estate where her father was the caretaker and her mother the housekeeper. She pursued an acting career for eleven years in New York and Los Angeles. But a backpacking trip around the world in 1987 changed her life. She spent the next five years traveling and living in Africa and Nepal. Carolyn returned to formal education in 1994 investigating women's issues in Kenya and women’s participation in community forestry management in Nepal. Her current research and teaching is in environmental science, policy and management and continues at Berkeley.

Berkeley Institute of the Environment: www.bie.berkeley.edu

Charlie Ricker, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Business Development, BrightSource Energy

Prior to joining BrightSource Energy, Mr. Ricker headed Texas operations for Growth Strategy Partners, a consultancy specializing in assisting companies develop and implement business strategies. His executive experience includes being co-founder of Orba Corporation, a successful developer, builder and operator of port facilities. Subsequently he was CEO of H.H. Robertson (UK) Ltd., Senior Vice President of Falcon Seaboard Power, a large independent power producer, and President of Millennium Power Group, which represented major power developers in South America. Charlie holds an MBA (Distinction) from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business, and a B.A. (Honors) from Millsaps College.

Bright Source Energy: www.brightsourceenergy.com

Peter Droege, World Council for Renewable Energy, Sydney, Australia

Peter Droege, is Senior Advisor, Beijing Municipal Institute for City Planning and Design, Steering Committee member, Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN), Conjoint Professor, School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Newcastle, Visiting Professor and Director, Centre for Sustainable Urbanism, School of Landscape Architecture and Planning, Beijing University and Chair, World Council for Renewable Energy (WCRE) Asia Pacific. He is also an author and public speaker on urban design, sustainable development and urban environment policies.  He is the author of the recent book on transforming the urban energy system from fossil to renewable, The Renewable City.

Epolis: www.ecopolis.com.au

Wulf Daseking, Director of Planning, City of Freiburg, Germany

Wulf Daseking has been the director of city planning in Freiburg, Germany, since 1984. For six years before that, he held a similar role at Müllheim/Ruhr. At Freiburg, Wulf is responsible for urban development, land development, landscape planning, master plan development and individual projects. He is an associate member of the German Federation of Architects, a member of the German Academy of Urban and Rural Development/Berlin and a member of the expert committee city planning of the German Congress of Cities. Wulf is also a lecturer in city planning at Freiburg University and at Darmstadt/University of Architecture

City of Freiburg: www.freiburg-home.com

Peter Head, Arup, London, England

Peter Head is a Director of Arup, the English design and engineering firm, and head of their project for Dongtan, a planned ecocity on an island near Shanghai. He worked at the forefront of steel bridge technology in his early career, leading to his current role as Chairman of the Steel Construction Institute. Peter is a Recipient of the Engineering Silver Medal for an outstanding contribution to British Industry. Asked by the Mayor of London to become a Commissioner on the newly formed London Sustainable Development Commission, he has been in that position since 2002.

Arup: www.arup.com

During the the busy Ecocity World Summit last week, Richard Register found a few minutes to record an interview with the BBC World Today, one of the most listened to programs in the world. If you missed it live, that's ok; we've got it here.

Richard Register on the BBC

Freiburg (Allemagne), Dongtan (Chine), Auroville (Inde) : autant de projets, parmi tant d’autres encore, a priori irréalistes, conçus pour la nature et le bonheur, et déjà colonisés par des dizaines de milliers d’habitants. C’est à la fin de ce mois qu’aura lieu à San Fransisco le sommet mondial des ecovilles, le World Ecocity Summit ! Complètement inscrit dans son époque, le sommet n’a qu’une ambition : sauver la terre grâce aux villes, aux éco villes bien sur. Parmi les conférenciers qui se produiront, le fameux Paolo Soleri présentera l’entreprise de sa vie : bâtie au coeur de l’Arizona, la communauté d’Arcosanti héberge des formations pratiques aux arts de la vie. Agriculture en permaculture, scuplture, céramique, ne sont que prétextes à faire fonctionner un quartier surgi du désert qui peu à peu prend l’allure d’un village pensé pour l’avenir. Concentré et efficace, il préfigure un usage rationnel des resources naturelles, selon les principes d’intégration dans une nature qui doit être bouleversée au minimum. Une entreprise qui s’affirme, avec un objectif d’accueil de 5000 habitants , comme une alternative durable au modèle urbain du “suburban sprawl”, ces fameuses banlieues tentaculaires qui envahissent, après les USA et l’Europe, toute la planète. Avec à ce jour une centaine d’habitants permanents et plusieurs dizaines de milliers de voyageurs par an, le site fonctionne… grâce aux revenus générés par le tourisme de masse…

A voir :

• New York Times : article et portfolio
• WorldChanging : article
• Site de la fondation Arcosanti

USA Today ran a national story naming the Ecocity World Summit as one of 7 things to do to "celebrate Earth Day". Click here to weigh in on their other 6 suggestions.

The Ecocity World Summit is hosting the International Ecocity Conference Series in San Francisco Tuesday through April 26. It features international speakers on a variety of topics, from sustainable development to protecting the planet (ecocityworldsummit.org).

Reid Ewing is a research professor and associate professor of Urban Studies and Planning. His study of sprawl and obesity has received sensational national media coverage. Ewing holds degrees in engineering and city planning from Harvard University and MIT. He is lead author of Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change. The book's central argument is that urban form is inextricably linked to climate. Low-density sprawl has been a principal contributor to North American climate emissisons. The oposite, compact development -- the kind that fosters less driving -- curbs climate change.

National Center for Smart Growth: www.smartgrowth.umd.edu

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-469467751657258060]

RIchard Register, on behalf of Fiona Ma, presented Jaime Lerner with an award of recognition for his accomplishments and influence on the State of California.

Here's video, followed by a 5 minute interview with Mr. Lerner.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2041365205853010730]

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