On Location: A Tiny Victorian Cottage

A home doesn't have to be big. New York Times; On Location: A Tiny Victorian Cottage

Questions From a Worker Who Reads

Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished
Who raised it up so many times? In what houses
Of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished
Did the masons go? Great Rome
Is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song
Only palaces for its inhabitants? Even in fabled Atlantis
The night the ocean engulfed it
The drowning still bawled for their slaves.

The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Did he not have even a cook with him?
Philip of Spain wept when his armada
Went down. Was he the only one to weep?
Frederick the Second won the Seven Year's War. Who
Else won it?

Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors?
Every ten years a great man?
Who paid the bill?

So many reports.
So many questions.

("Fragen eines lesenden Arbeiters" - translated by M. Hamburger in Bertolt Brecht, Poems 1913-1956, Methuen, N.Y., London, 1976)

Ecological mosquito killer

As you already know, I also have a huge fascination of the order Araneae, spiders, small and large. A friend, also a hobby enthusiast, told me about this very interesting thing, combaning arachnology, environmentalism and human health in a low risk, low investment and natural way.

The thing is about malaria. The ecological mosquito killer; a jumping spider from Kenya and Uganda, Evarcha culicivora. They kill up to 20 mosquitoes in rapid succession. Scientist now knows that this spider likes the smell of sweaty socks, meaning good news for malaria areas. Call for it with your smelly footwear and then.. let it work in your home.
Read the article from yesterday's BBC news here; Mosquito-eating spider likes smelly socks

What environmentalists do- for real

It seems many times, as people think environmental issues is just another problem in the world. My questions to those people is then; what would man be without his environment? Proved by this statement, everything man does are environmental issues.

An environmentalist is then, someone who cares about environment, but as much as environment, also about man's happiness and ability to continue to have a decent life.

Checklist for an environmentalist's action would be;

• food which is low-resource produced as organic, vegan, rich in nutrients, locally produced and seasonal food
• a lifestyle which is low-resource produced as buying clothes and things which is long-lasting and often good quality, use things as long as it is possible, second-hand shop, borrow things which is not needed daily, and share
• ethic shopping as fairtrade, no animal testing, no endangered species, no pollution, no waste of water
• activities which does not require so much resources; cultural, art, historical, theater, music, most sports and outdoor activities and handcraft
• transportations mostly by walk and bike or longer with train

All these things can be hard, when this society does not help us too well to make those choices. We need to think all the time in every situation, how to deal with it.

Some call it voluntary simplicity, a choice to live a life with less needs, a more free life. But is it? And can we say that it is free to choice anything out there, like a shopoholic? We all have our ideals, and groups we would like to be identified with. Our surroundings says so. People says so. Environment says so.

People around the planet dream to live like we do, but they can't. They never will. We are out of resources before that.

To be an environmentalist is to have a dream for a better place. The mission for the environmentalist is to find the way there.


Read more
Environmental awareness: attitude or action?
Ecological modernization vs Ecocities
What's wrong with the human society?
Making the consistency of ideas
The perfect society
Creations of groups and exclusion of others

Chris Jordan pictures some shocking stats | Video on TED.com

Chirs Jordan shows with photography how scale can make a different on small choices.



See more from Chris Jordan, especially the exibition Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption  (2003 - 2005) and a distinguishing exhibit of another way of seeing things in the Year of the Tiger, 2010 in the exhibition of Running the Numbers II: Portraits of global mass culture (2009 - 2011).

Reviving New York's rivers -- with oysters!

"Architect Kate Orff sees the oyster as an agent of urban change. Bundled into beds and sunk into city rivers, oysters slurp up pollution and make legendarily dirty waters clean -- thus driving even more innovation in "oyster-tecture." Orff shares her vision for an urban landscape that links nature and humanity for mutual benefit". (from TED.com)





Similar posts;
Delicious healthy "fishfarm"
Ecosystem services- a lesson about
Wales captures carbon emissions

Moving without car

I grow up without a car. We took the bus to viola lessons, ballet class, walked to school and went by tram to visit my mother. Our holidays spent in the archipelago with grandma was a fast one-hour trip by car and then we move it not before going home again. My father never had a driver's license, even if he "drives" a whole orchestra almost every day in his work as a conductor. Never did I have one, or any of my seven siblings, except of one, my father's youngest. He was tired of the bus, same bus my dad took every day, year around to get to work. Now my brother lives in the middle of the city, in a walking distance to his work. And his car is in my garage.

When I was in my first school grade, school linked us together in "walking teams"- we had to wait for some other kids to walk to school or home. I had two walking friends. They lived in the same neighbourhood and I lived in another. Sometimes they had to wait for me, sometimes the other way. When we got a little bit older we started to bike to school. And it was the same team. By walking to school took us around 45 minutes. By bike maybe 20. We had a great walking and bike path to school seperated from cars, along nice houses and gardens, with safe pedestrian crossing.

A few times in life, I've been addicted to a car, for example when going to ride horses, anyhow I live in a walking distance to a stable where I live now (not in the countryside) so reason is not that they are unreachable without a car. Other times are when heading to the recycling center (paradoxically) and when to move from one place to another. One time when I had to move, we drove all the way through Finland to reach North Sweden in a big GMC van, in which we also had to sleep in (trip was a great memory) but other times I just took my things with a small push cart, but that was at that time while package was small. As older we get, as more things we have. Bookshelves, sofas, desks, kitchen tables, paintings, books, millions of shoes and clothes and things (not so easy to take on the train anymore, even if that have happen).

Recently I bought skis to enjoy some of the nice snow we got in the country. I been to Olso in Norway with them, and I've been at the tram, bus, subway and train with them now several times. They are a bit big and with another ordinary travel bag besides the skis, I'm a bit clumpsy and big, all of me. But besides that, I really enjoy travelling like this. It's just me and my bags. When I reach my distination, I can just walk away. No extra bags, seaching for a parking lot, find money to pay or anything. It's just me.

In Oslo, when prepare for skiing, we just took our ski shoes on in the apartment, took the skis under the arm and walked to the subway. When reached our distination, we walked 10 meters and then off we went! Soo relaxing. Soo much freedom. We were not the only ones in Oslo doing this. It was, were I lived, almost like an alpin village with people carring skis alover.

Another way of doing without a car or bus, train or tram would be to bike or run. After a whole life without any special exercise I started with running. What I found out in the summer was a trail  from my brother, all the way in the forest to my ordinary running trail. It is almost 10 km in the forest and it is a beautiful forest, with a spectacular view in the end, seeing over the city and I can almost see all the way to the ocean. To combine time when you have to move in some sort of a way, with excercise is not just environmental correct but time saving! To take the bus to my brother takes me 45 minutes sometimes one hour. To run, around one hour. So, combine, and I save a lot of time. To not talk about to save the unpleasure to change bus three times, miss the crowd and to have my own decision where to go and how fast. If you are lucky to have a shower at your work, this is the inspiration video for you; take your legs to work.

In the utopian future, we live in a world without cars. Cars should just be for transportation of gods and work situations where cars are the only choice, think investigations of environment, construction of infrastrucure and sorts like that.

If a society would be built up in this way, would it take the freedom away from people?! Hold that question for a while.

Take a look at the site parking lots to see what you can do instead of parking lots. Another fun site is walkscore, where you can try your own street and see how "nice" it is to walk on. In a project in Falun and Borlänge, two small towns in middle Sweden, you can be a part of theirs winter project called the "winter biker" to lead more people to use their bikes in the wintertime. The project is held from the municipailty and give participants winter tires, saddle cover and a cyclocomputer to reports their travels. See more about the project here at their homepage vintercyklisten. A similar way of encourage people to drive less is a project in Belgium were environmental organisations and local stores promots peoples daily shopping by bike; every time you drive your bike to the store you got one stamp, and when you got 8 of them you can order a bike bag from the designer Walter Van Beirendonck. See more about that project at http://www.belgerinkel.be/ (in Flemish).


Terrible without a car? Terrible with? You deside, but most important and not to forget; The shortest distance between two points is achieved by moving those points closer together. I.e we need to change the way we build communities.


More from this blog:
What happen to the ferries
New York, car free plaza
Low density, high density
Bike lines and bike roads
These cars
Theme; public transit
Let’s build cities for people (not cars)

The secret Life of Things

Ecocity buildings all around

Some girls are enjoying the green roof in a summer day of 1926 in Berlin

Fukuoka Prefectural International Hall, Japan. From the architect Emilio Ambasz. See more info from this project at greenroofs.com

 Nanyang Nniversity in Singapore. See another green roof project here; Stunning Green Roofed High School by Off Architecture.

Futuristic pictures found at the web long time ago. Take a closer look by dubbel-click on picture.

A picture used for the book The world without us, from the author Alan Weisman.‘Warsaw Without Us’ was a cover piece commissioned by Focus Magazine in Poland from Mondolithic Studios.

Ecocity San Francisco by Richard Register. See his organisation's homepage Ecocity Builders for more.

I found a lot of pictures at Dezeen.com, some very similar to what a ecocity building could look like. BUT no ecocity building lives alone. The building itself have to to be very large on it's own to be a full city, something explained by Paolo Soleri in previous posts, or the building have to be connected to other buildings.

Cottages at Fallingwater by Patkau Architects

Training centre by Chartier-Corbasson

East Mountain by Johan Berglund

Composting Shed by Groves-Raines Architects

Spanish Pavilion at Shanghai Expo 2010 by EMBT

Trestles Beach footbridge by Dan Brill Architects

More about ecocity buildings and features in this blog;

Green roofs and green cities

Make'n a good feeling in the city?
Eco-town Amersfoort
Green walls
Animals in the city
Urban agriculture
Streets in greenery
Greening the streets
Garbage solutions
These cars and carfree cities
Interaction human-street
Bike lines and bike roads
Through Europe with one ticket

Pictures from South Germany
Example from Tübingen
Freiburg, The Green City
Le Halles, in Paris
Göteborg and Älvstranden in Göteborg
Green spots in Istanbul
Cars and ugly spots in San Francisco Bay Area
The city forest in Alingsås
The "ecopath" in Hjo
Hammarby Sjöstad in Stockholm
The Western Harbour in Malmö
Houses and green spots in Copenhagen
Terrace house and green spots in Warsaw
Green spots in San Francisco
Slope houses in the hill of Berkeley
The old bewery house in Skövde
Ecoarchitechture house in Uppsala
Why so ugly?
Public transit over the world

What is an ecocity? part 2
What is an ecocity?
Face of an ecocity
A city perspective in your own imagination
Living in the future with some examples

The Boverian house  (winter-garden greenhouse with apartments connected)
New York with car free plaza
15 examples of green cities
Vancouver EcoDensity Initiative
Plans for sustainable cities and ecocities

Ecoplans for Treasure Island, San Francisco

Shop 'Til You Drop: The Crisis of Consumerism

Great video about how the society make us consume more and more and more. See it here Shop 'Til You Drop: The Crisis of Consumerism


More on same theme;
We are all living in a dream
Personal reflection on why and how
Social construction of reality
To focus on the right things

Let’s build cities for people (not cars)

"I heard the great urban planner Paolo Soleri speak way back in 1965 about the benefits of a compact city designed for pedestrians—ie, humans—instead of sprawling, anonymous suburbs built for cars. I took his notions seriously.

[...]

In Soleri’s notion, the compact city was more like cities in Europe than those then spreading in a thin veneer across the United States. The car would be replaced as the primary mode of motorized transportation by the streetcar and the elevator.

If we could push the idea of the compact city of enormous variety—Soleri used the words “complexity” and “density”—the whole thing could run on something like a tenth of the energy, all renewable, and cover just a fifth of the land, compared to a sprawl city of the same population, making it possible to have nature and agriculture immediately next door. Just take the stairs or an elevator ride and you could walk or bike out in the country in a matter of a few short minutes.

[...]

Bottom line: we need a geographically smaller city, but that is possible only if we shift from two-dimensional design dependent on cars to a more three-dimensional city designed around the human body. The new city needs to grow upwards, not outwards.

[...]

Elsewhere, major district centers would become small cities or towns in their own right and neighborhood centers would become villages of varying sizes, each with its own character. Buildings would, on average, be higher, houses would be replaced by apartments and cars by bicycles, walkable streets, streetcars, and elevators. Pleasurable and beautiful places like rooftop gardens and restaurants, multi-story solar greenhouses and bridges with spectacular views connecting buildings would predominate, along with renewable energy and closed-in organic agriculture. It would be the start of a new green economy.

Such cities would be places to further the ecological health of human society and whatever we mean by “nature” on this planet. But, equally important, such cities would be places to grow and develop ever more “human” humans. Thus we help further both ecological health and our own evolution at the same time."

Richard Register from Ecocity Builders writes at What matters. Read the full article here; Let’s build cities for people (not cars)

The long tomorrow

.

Got a tip about the comic The long tomorrow from a close friend after reading last post. The comic was made by Dan O'Bannon in 1975. Picture from the front page, showing the city in the ground.

Comic illustrated by Moebius and later inspired the movie Bladerunner. The city has several layers, where the ground is ontop of the roof. If this would be a sustainable city, we could see it as forests and small agriculture spots at the roofs, maybe some wind power and solar panels. Another interesting thing with this drawing is the seperation of cars and pedestrians and the many paths between buildings, this means that a city is not 2 dimentional, but 3. A very important feature in a future.

A real building, digged out from the ground. The building is used for living and as a studio for boat building and carpentry. Buildings like this is also good for biodiversity, but why not just for our inner peace and harmony. Some space to be private even with a lot of people living close or in same building.

Drawing from Richard Register. Close to both the other picure above. A close to everyday need. A city where creativity flows and happiness is all over. But cars has to stay outside.

A real building in the mountain. Very similar to next picture and the picture above in the dirt.

Drawing from Richard Register.

Paolo Soleri

See also:

Cappadocia, Turkey

Eco-city 2020

Plans is in Russia to build an underground city. The city could become home to up to 100,000 people. Read the article at independent.co.uk and see more pictures at AB ELISE, ltd

The eco-city plans looks very similar to Paolo Soleris' Babel and Arcosanti drawings. Is it time to see those things be built?!

Read more at this blog:

What is an ecocity?

A better kind of wrongness

Living in future

Antimaterialism in the nature of architecture

Face of an ecocity

Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement

The exhibition about how to make architecture more than just buildings is about to finish at Museum of Modern Art in New York.

One of the projects is the Metro Cables from a slum area in Carcas, Venezuela to other parts of town, a project very similar to what happened in Medillin, Colombia. Klumpner and Alfredo Brillembourg, architects of the project from Urban Think Tank recieved the Ralph Erskine Award in Stockholm, for their innovation in architecture and urban design with regard to social, ecological and aesthetic aspects.

Other projects showed at the exhibition are; a small primary school of Gando, Burkina Faso; Quinta Monroy Housing in Iquique, Chile; Innercity arts in Los Angeles; a Handmade School in Rudrapur, Bangladesh; the running project of Casa Familiar: Living Rooms at the Border and Senior Housing with Childcare in San Ysidro, California; Housing for fishermen in Tyre, Lebanon, the $20K House VIII (Dave's House) from Newbern, Alabama; Manguinhos Complex in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Transformation of Tour Bois-le-Prêtre in Paris, France and Red Location Museum of Struggle in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. See all projets at exhibition page.



Beyond the exhibition (from MoMas' homepage): Internet-based architecture communities such as the The 1%, urbaninform, and Open Architecture Network are forums for the dissemination and development of knowledge, expertise, and innovation among architects and other contributors. Open-source sharing—wherein concepts, proposals, and sometimes architectural plans and drawings (for built and unbuilt structures) are made freely available—is a common feature of these networks and a catalyst for the actualization of projects or the recycling or improvement of ideas. This in turn enables architects to respond efficiently to the needs of underserved communities. While their methods and results are varied, each of these three networks is founded on the belief that architecture and architects have a social responsibility that can be advanced and facilitated by the Internet.


More to read
A better kind of wrongness
Cities which have succeed
We can build a sustainable world, but we need to re-think
Better city, better life
Biocity
Living in future

Masdar city begins to take shape

The high technological and energy efficient city of Masdar has opened the first section (see pictures here). 28th of November 10 pod cars (link to prtconsulting.com and see video from Masdar here) started to run from the parking house to the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology. City would when its finished host 45 000 inhabitans and another 45 000 commuters. It was planned to be finished in 2016 but plans are delayed.

In Arabian Desert, a Sustainable City Rises writes New York Times

"Still, one wonders, despite the technical brilliance and the sensitivity to local norms, how a project like Masdar can ever attain the richness and texture of a real city. Eventually, a light-rail system will connect it to Abu Dhabi, and street life will undoubtedly get livelier as the daytime population grows to a projected 90,000. (Although construction on a second, larger phase has already begun, the government-run developer, the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, refuses to give a completion date for the city, saying only that it will grow at its own pace.)

We are exited to see what will comes from this. As I earlier mentioned, in the post A very beautiful place to live, it may not be that easy to create a sustainable city, if considering social and economical sustanability and not only the ecological part.

More updated news from Masdar can be read at ArchDaily.com and more about the plans at Masdarcity.ae

Consensus Design

No 'ecological' places for people will be sustainable unless people want to live there, want to maintain them, imprint them with care. We tend to care for things to which we feel connected, and not for once where we don't. The more levels of connection, the deeper is our relationship[..] Beauty cannot be built on disrespect- that's what makes for ugliness[..] The better buildings are matched to people and place, the better they will be care for [..] It is this relationship focus that is essential to any really sustainable building

-Christopher Day with Rosie Parnell (2003), Consensus Design- Socially inclusive process, p 32-33

Make It Happen

A call to action from the international youth at the climate talks in Cancun.

Credits: knowstudio.com & BunkerFilms.com

Changing paradigms

The animated version missed some important cores from the lesson with Ken Robinson. I think they were very interesting and I post them here:

• The genius level of divergent thinking of 1500 kindergarten kids was 98 %, when they re-tested them again years 5 later, then it was 32%, and again 5 years later; 10%. They also tested two hundred thousand adults. Their result was 2 %. This shows interesting things. One is that we all has this capacity. And a lot of things happens with these kids when they grow up, a lot; one things is that they become educated.

• Human organisations are not like mechanisms... Human organisations are much more like organisms. They dependent upon feelings, and relationship, motivation, value, self-value and a sense of identity of the community. You know the way you work in an organisation is deeply effected of your feeling for it.

• Not far from Las Vegas, is Death Valley, the hottest place in America. In the winter of 2004 it rained. And the spring 2005 it was a phenomen, the whole floor in Death Valley was coted by spring flowers. What it demonstrate was that Death Valley wasn't dead. It was asleep. Right beneath the surface were there seeds of growth, waiting for conditions. And I beleive it is exacly the same way with human beings. If we create the right conditions in our schools, if create the right insentives, if we value each learner, for them self and properly. Growth will happen.

• Changing Paradigms is to go from a industrial way of look at education to see it more organic.

          Industrial                       >  Organic

• Utility    >   to be    >  Vitality
• Linearity      >   to be    >   Creativly
• Conformity      >   to be    >   Diversity
• Standardisation      >   to be    >   Customization

Interested to see the real lecture? See it here at PSA, Ken Robinson- Changing Paradigms.

Changing civilisation

Jeremy Rifkin  -The Empathic Civilisation

Sir Ken Robinson - Changing Education Paradigms

A lot more to see at RSA

"For over 250 years the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has been a cradle of enlightenment thinking and a force for social progress. Our approach is multi-disciplinary, politically independent and combines cutting edge research and policy development with practical action. From their homepage RSA.

Role Play an Environmental Conflict

• Dozen of role stimulations at the Program on Negotiation's educational resource center. The PON Clearinghouse develops and disseminates role simulations and other interactive teaching exercises as well as books, educational videos, curricular packages, and scholarly working papers.
• Trouble in Tortuga! A Role-playing Simulation Game for Teaching Environmental Conflict Resolution. By Kirk Emerson, Hal Movius, and Robert Merideth Udall. Center for Studies in Public Policy The University of Arizona August 1999

Tips from the book Environmental communication and the public sphere, Robert Cox, 2006. And same chapter about conflict resolution through collaboration and consensus;

"What do environmentalist believe we have in common with the Yellow Ribbon Coalitation? We believe that we are all honest people who want to continue our way of life. We believe that we all love the area in which we live. We believe that we all enjoy beautiful views, hunting and fishing and living in a rural area. We believe that we are being misled by the Forest Service and by large timber, which controls the Forest Service, into believing that we are enemies when we are not. (quoted in Wondolleck & Yaffee, 2000, Making collaboration works: Lessons from innovation in natural resource management, pp, 71-72)

Move people to build a better world?

At Pulau Gaya, an Island outside Kota Kinabalu, Borneo the Kampung Lok Urai people lives. The island is protected and the people with a population of 6000- 8000 lives in stilt houses along the beaches (see more pictures close here at Evan Hwong's page).

The area has no sanitation and the crime level is high. The people have to drive 10 minutes by boat to sell and buy things in the city.

In another neighborhood we have to deal with the other side of the coin. Here is some picture of a so-called "good neighborhood" in US.

 

Alameda, San Francisco Bay Area. Suburban sprawl, but compare it to the picture below.

Same map scale as above, Springfield outside Washington DC. An area for around 1000? We can count the houses. High way to the right.

                                   _______________________________

"the high speed rail project will conserve 1 million acres of environmental lands and cause 44% less land to be consumed. How does a train running down the middle of I-4 do all that? The answer is by "compact development" aka "smart growth", aka "New Urbanism", aka "Traditional Neighborhood Design", aka "Transit Oriented Development", aka "Livable Communities", aka "Sustainable Development." These are all names meaning the same thing: they are anti-suburban, high-density dwelling design concepts that are part of the UN's Agenda 21 and will make single family home ownership for our posterity unattainable. Cost is not the only factor with high speed rail. Statists are using these central planning schemes to combat "man-made climate change" and is a land grab to convert private lands to federal control. 

said the Chairman at the Tampa 912 Project. Read more about Tea party against Sustainable development and American Dream Coalitation.

Almost same map scale as above, Fittja, outside Stockholm, Sweden. A neigbourhood for 7500 people. Subway is located in the middle. Is it this they do not want to have?

 

More from the article at Mother Jones;

"If sustainable development is fully implemented, she says, "This basically will turn us into a Soviet state."

In the tea parties’ dystopian vision, the increased density favored by planners to allow for better mass transit become compulsory "human habitation zones." They warn of Americans being forcibly moved from their suburban dream homes into urban "hobbit homes" and required to give up their cars and instead—gasp!—take the bus to work.

                          _____________________________________

Isn't it time to build cities where people want to live? Where it is as same good to live in a close-to-work apartment as in a close-to-nature suburban house? Because it is close to both work and nature.

Isn't it time to build cities where people can live, even if they are poor or rich? Where you can choose to have a small apartment or a big? Because both options are there.

Isn't it time to build cities which take care of sanitation, and car pollution? Where no-one needs to live in the shit? Because cities should be a good place to live.

You might also like to read:
Examples of cozy cities under Journeys
Upon Equality
Französisches Viertel
Vauban
Heart of the world

Better city, better life
Some Americans are getting as mad as hell (The Economist)

Ecology of architecture

So in architecture, as in music, it is not the sound of the note alone or the sum of the notes which creates music, but the experience of their interrelations; i.e., the perception of subsequent events while still being aware of those immediately preceding.

"Visual objects are not as static as we might carelessly think they are. Actually they have life. They have life because their existence are complementarily interrelated to and influenced by each other; because they are subject to transformation due to the transfusion between brightness and darkness, and because they are experienced by life." The above statement also reinforces the imprtance of not looking at objects in isolation for their own sake. The cuts must be seen as the most active parts of the environmnent which reveal those tensive and compulsive energies.

-From Architecture as environmental communication, 1984, Asghar Talaye Minai1, p. 175 . Quote ia referenced to the book Art, Science, and Architecture; Architecture as a dynamic process of structuring matter-energy in the spatio-temporal world, 1969, same author.



You might also be interesting in;
architecture as environmental communication
Upon architecture
Antimaterialism in the nature of architecture
What is an ecocity?
A whole new world view

Safe daycare building

They solved the problem of burnt kindergartens in Alby, Stockholm, by building one all-metal. The grass is artificial turf and the outer courtyard is guarded by camera.

Cracks in your concrete? You need ‘BacillaFilla’

From the Press Release 12th of November 2010. Joint project instructor Dr Jennifer Hallinan explains:

“Around five per cent of all man-made carbon dioxide emissions are from the production of concrete, making it a significant contributor to global warming

A bacteria that can knit together cracks in concrete structures by producing a special ‘glue’ has been developed by a team of students at Newcastle University.

The genetically-modified microbe has been programmed to swim down fine cracks in the concrete. Once at the bottom it produces a mixture of calcium carbonate and a bacterial glue which combine with the filamentous bacterial cells to ‘knit’ the building back together.


On this blog, you might also like;
Wales captures carbon emissions
Delicious healthy "fishfarm"
Ecofriendly kitchen
Ants
Beetles and other small animals
Epigynes and male palps; views from the spiders
Ecosystem services- a lesson about

Personalized Energy | MIT

“On advice he received from Kurt Vonnegut: He told me, 'stop worrying about the planet dying. When you have a big organism and you become irritating to it, the immunological system just kicks in and kills the invading organism'. And he assured me that we have just become so irritating to the earth, she'll just kill us. Which makes me happier. It says that there is something much bigger than us, which we forget about the earth. And she is much more powerful than us. She'll get rid of us if we don't take care of her

Daniel Nocera




"Nocera’s goal is to make each home its own power station, with photovoltaic arrays on the roof feeding the catalytic reaction that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. Some of these elements are still pricey or unreliable -- in particular, fuel cells and photovoltaics are troublesome -- yet he envisions villages in India and Africa not long from now purchasing one of his basic systems for $800. While Nocera acknowledges his critics, he views them as institution-bound naysayers: “I always say when the scientists stop fighting, then you’re screwed.”  MIT World

Theme; Bridge the city!

A brige connects two residental houses in the area of Vauban, Freiburg, Germany.

A old path between two old houses in Breisach, Germany

One of Richard Register's main point, differ the idea of ecocities with all other sustainable city plans; that an ecocity is about the connections in the city; pathways, roads in different levels, squares at the roof top, or in the middle of the house makes a city in several layers, not just streets and buildings.

Richard Register's sketch of the bridges between houses and squares at the roof top, with trees follow the building all way up.

 Katarinahissen and Gondolen, Stockholm.

From a modern church to another building, New Brisach, France.

Christiania in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Pedestrian street under the train bridge, Paris.

Cultural center in Alby, Stockholm.

Buildings of today are not connected because they have different owners, a friend told me. "And, he continued, I don't know if I want my neighbor in my apartment!" now he pointed at the apartment at 12th floor in the other building; a man walked around, turned the lights on and off, opened and closed the windows, sat down, did it all over again, for hours.

How will the safety and security operating in a city with more layers and more connections?



Previous themes;
Green roofs and green cities
Make'n a good feeling in the city?
Green walls
Animals in the city
Urban agriculture
Streets in greenery
Greening the streets

Garbage solutions

The importance of people

Share some of the writings from different interesting courses in University over the years. Here's a summary from the course Governance of natural resource management, Dep. of  Urban and rural development, SLU dec 2008.


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"We protect our forest better than government can. We have to. Government employers don't really have any interest in forests. It is a job for them. For us it is life

Agrawal tells us the story in the book Environmentality (2005), of how people change their minds about environmental issues in Kumaon. He call it "making the subjects", which is when people get involved in the decision making they become more aware. The investigation in Kumaon indicate a significance of awareness connected to the presence of a forest council. Villages which had not a forest council were less willing to protect their forests. Important institutions like this is similar to what Ostrom discuss in the Ostrom's theory on the common property and her eight principles.

But with this said, local management of natural resources does not guarantee sustainable development! Other circumstances such as lack of favourable policy environments, social capital and competence can interrupt such initiatives (Sandström, 2008). Agrawal adds to this that the creation of governmentalized localities and the opening of territorial and administrative spaces in which new regulatory communities can function are important for the decentralization of environmental regulation to the locality (often called community-based conservation). 

Today's modern nature conservation approach often;

• give state officials (the experts) the prerogative to define what is valuable to conserve
• establish and support institutions for nature conservatism
• exclude other
• focus on preserving biological values and down playing on other values; cultural, economical and spiritual

Instead, theories about community based governance means that the local people have;

• Better knowledge of local conditions
• Greater ability to enforce rules, monitor behaviour and verify actions
• Better flexibility and adaptability to change rules according to changes in ecosystems
• Higher sense of responsibility over the natural resource that surrounds the community

Socio-historical approach to natural resource management and
 Adaptive-governance of social-ecological systems

Agrawal shows in his book a continuously historical example and is so a good example to discuss in the Socio-historical approach to natural resource management, which tends to argue for the need of theoretical perspectives, in which the emergence of natural resource management arrangement is explained by historical narratives, networks and context (Sandström, 2008). 

From another point of view at the Kumaon case I can see that the theory Adaptive-governance of social-ecological systems (Folke, 2005) is in a way Agrawal's thoughts because this theory have its ground in the thought that we should improved understanding of the dynamic of the whole system, not detailed knowledge. A strategy for dealing with rapid change, reorganisation in that change and strategies for dealing with uncertainly and surprises is keywords in the adaptability governance. The governance should also be self-organizing meaning increases in complexity without being guided. This is somehow happening with the sanction rules in the Kumaon example, when the knowledge about who the monitoring person is, is a barrier initself for breaking the rules for others.

The Adaptive governance of social-ecological systems also give high trust to communites; society or community have a memory of knowledge about how to handle crises and change, and this knowledge is essential for that community, and have to be protected before it disperse in the next generation.  


Past crises is future policies.

In the Kumaon example and in Ostroms theory there are special rules for different areas, because of their history and special care, all places cannot be treated and governed in the same way. In a Socio-historical approach this is what happening when the rights and regulations emerged over time (Johnson, 2004). In the Adaptive governance approach, the scientist or expert is one of several actors and the system is based on multi-stakeholder. Co-management and flexibility is important. Also important is to have a leadership in the process that can build trust, make sense, manage conflicts, link actors, initiate partnership among actor groups, mobilise broad support for change, compile and generate knowledge.

The Adaptive governance theory is relatively new and is probably very good to have when dealing with effects of climate change in the future. In the other hand, you may have a ground like that in Common property theory or Agrawal's three points (see above) before applaying it. The adaptation for a society can also be found in Ostrom's second principle: rules should be based on local conditions. As a villager you can participate to change the rules (third principle), and the nestedness in different levels (principle eight) is near to the Adaptive management approach. Kumaon have some  in common to the Adaptive management approach, but Common property theory is even easier to compare to the case.

Agrawal talks about the phenomena as environmentality (inspired from the famous philosopher Foucault's later work on governmentality which refers to how to see on and think about environmental politics) in which he include (p 229 in Agrawal, 2005) parts of Foucaults thoughts about power;

• formation of new expert knowledge's
• the nature of power- efforts to regulate social practice
• the type of institutions and regulatory practices that exist in a mutually productive relationship with social and ecological practices and can be seen as the historical expressions of contingent political relationship
• the behaviors that regulations seek to change, which go hand in hand with the processes of self-formation and struggles between expert or authority based regulation and situated practices

Other cases of interest

The Kumaon case is very similar to the case in Kalix, North Sweden (Kustringen with help from Gaia Foundation); the citizens felt that they protect more, create employment, could do it cheaper, build competences, are together, rebuild ”by-laws” and are a resource for other. Agrawal is mention at least some of them, as more protection and that local community management is cheaper. In the case of Kalix, there was a lack of communication with higher incentives like the state and county administrative board but in the case of Kumaon is seems to have been different. In the Kalix example they created a one-to-one relationship between each forest council and state officials, they create unequalities between state and locality. Instead in Kumaon the villages get the rights to management the rules by themselves.

Only when villagers saw the forest as theirs and the condition of forest as depended on their actions would they begin to follow protectionist strategies (Agrawal, p 123).

  
Agrawal started some interesting thoughts about the communication in natural resource management. It is in the nature of various form of knowledge that is always potentially under dispute. Regulation always demands new knowledge (p 226). Beliefs and knowledge are developed through practice,

”environmental practice.. is the key link between the regulatory rule.. and the imagination that characterize particular subjects”

says Agrawal (p 167). We can never forget that it is people we deal with in the end- not institutions. Talking the role of the other is important even from the county administrative board to accually see the local residents. Community as a group of people with similar interest have something that connects them, and if we want to be the good communicator we have to find this connection. How the shaping of institutions, politics and subjectives plays a role in ecological practice needs a greater elaboration and analys. 




References:

Agrawal, A. (2005). Environmentality. Technologies of Government and the Making of Subjects. Durham and London. Duke University Press.

Folke, C. Hahn, T. Olsson, P. and Norberg, J. (2005). Adaptive Governance of Socio- Ecological Systems. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Vol. 30, Pp 441-473.

Johnson, C. (2004). Uncommon Ground: The ‘Poverty of History’ in Common Property Discourse. Development and Change 35(3) pp. 407-433. Blackwell Publishing. Oxford.

Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action pp. 90-102. Cambridge University Press, Cambrige

Sandström, Emil (2008) Reinventing the commons. Doctoral diss. Dept. of Urban and Rural Development, SLU. Acta Universitatis agriculturae Sueciae vol. 2008:48.