Let your senses guide you

Hans Makart (1872–79) Die fünf Sinne

Senses, touching, hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, our five senses which make us human.

What about those feelings of right and wrong? Often we feel directly what we want to do.

Scientists mean that we use our brain better if we exercise. Why?

What is it to have a conscience?

To have a concern about other people and nature is often something questioned. Why isn't it the opposite?

Why is it so that we have so much feelings, but always need to have a common sense to prove what we mean when talking to others?

And is it so that all is now logic to us, but because of the lack of our senses to issues, we do not care? Use your senses, let them guide you

Bolivia: Fighting the climate wars

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 10 April 2011

John Vidal reports from La Paz where Bolivians are living with the effects of climate change every day. Their president has called for an urgent 50% cut in emissions - action that is essential for the country's survival.

Clean up Estonia

Remembrance

INTERACTION MAN TO MAN
Symbolic interactionism assumes that man is social, and with, in constant exchange with his surroundings that shapes us as human beings. The individual human being can integrate with others but also himself. This means that the individual at every moment, can be active in defining the situation they are in. What makes up the individual situation is for the individual a result of interpretations of the current situation. When people are described as active creatures who respond to their surroundings, it is also assumed, to understand human behaviour we must focus on social interaction, human cognition, the defined situation, time frame, and the active nature of man. The view of ourselves is how we perceive ourselves through our environment. We are responsible for this interpretation when we create our perspective within us. "The world does not tell us what it is, we actively reach out and understand it and decide what to do with it". Different backgrounds (value/belief) and systems underpinning the way we perceive the world around us and with what tools we read and process our impressions influence the individual interpretations of our self, situations, and reality as a whole.

INTERACTION TO OUR WORLD, “BALANCE”
Underlying of the concept of sustainable future is the conviction that everything in the world is interdependent. We are all part of interconnected systems of humans and nature. These systems change over time, and have more than one equilibrium position. Various feedback loops make the system dynamic and can even lead to chaotic changes. To have a system that, can take some interference and does not not alter it’s state drastically is the key to sustainability (resilient thinking). Adaptability when living in such a system is to have an understanding of not only details but of the whole system, to have strategies for rapid change, knowing how to reorganize after any change and have strategies for dealing with uncertainty and surprises (adaptive approcach). Sustainability is based on the three concepts of ecological, economical and social sustainability. These are called the three legs of sustainability. The legs are seemingly in a conflict with each other and must be discussed and understood to be balanced. One can also infer that if the ecology is in balance, the economy would be in balance and therefore the social meanings. Or simply told, if the ecology of society is taken into consideration it would be good even for people in the long term. But, to get to the point that we can think of ecology, we must begin by arranging the individuals and talk about the problems. Thus, the process towards a sustainable society is only as important as it’s definition (Hallberg and Ljung, 2005).

.. IS THERE A TRUTH OUT THERE?
Objects are constituted of whatever people indicate or refer them to be (Blumer, p 68). People do not see reality as it is, but they interpret what they experience and form a picture of reality. We use perspectives. Each social science brings a perspective on human beings. In each case, reality, as it is, is not open for us.

If—

If, by Rudyard Kipling (1895)

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with triumph and disaster

And treat those two imposters just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breath a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

-------------

Hear and see it in a modern touch here; Typography: IF by Rudyard Kipling from George Horne on Vimeo. Compare to what you thought in the first place. Ask yourself what pictures, music and other peoples thoughts can do to our own, and, in what way they do.

Nonviolent Communication

Practical summary of Mr Marshall Rosenberg's revolutionary theories about NONVIOLENT COMMUNICATION: how to communicate, raise children and live together without violence, without punishment, without reward. From scribd.


Nonviolent Communication

Postcards From The Future

How will the future look like? How shall we live?

See London in a possible future with climate change, climate immigrants, higher population and more povertry at Postcards from the future

Upon education

"The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn't need to be reformed -- it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardize education, but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions."

— Ken Robinson (The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything)

Ken Robinson has been discussed in earlier posts about Changing paradigm and Changing civilisation. Is then Robinson in conflict with Salman Kahn from Khan Academy.org? In my meaning he is also doing education more inspiring for kids. Here's a new TED on personal education and how to humanize classroom and that- with technology. The technology makes it easy to overlook for teachers on how kids are doing, they can see how much time the student put on their studies, and they can make sure that the students gets the help they need, to get the ground for future life.

Biophilic cities

Book tips

In the Game

Commute 2 hours a day, drink a lot of coffee and meet around hundred people per day.

I admitt, I'm not used to it, but I'm in the big working holic society. I don't do it for the money or for the fun, but to test myself. The environmentalist is on the last mission, the teaching experience. I teach upper elementary school (ages 11-16) in Math, Science, Social sciences, English and Swedish. The school call me in the early morning and tell me what to do in the day, as a substitute teacher when the ordinary is sick. I have approximatly one hour to prepare for a lession. And when there, I need all the attention from the students, and I call tell you, it's very tricky to do so.

In my school, the kids have their own computer, they got it from the school to write and find information. They use it for facebook, games, youtube and whatever comes into their minds. And they run around, one jumped out from the window, they play music loud and they test the limits in all directions.

The huge test started last week. The ultimate test to make unmotivated and not interested people to work for a purpose.

Teaching in this kind of a way is not about knowledge or deliver information, this is only inspiration and a challenge to find ways and methods to make as little time as possible for the students to do other things, not in purpose for school. This experience is about efficient learning in action. Practising all knowledge from environmental communication. Making the people to find their own will to do something. Asking the questions as they can answer. Because they already have a lot of knowledge, a lot of ideas how to make things work.

I learn from them. They still not learn too much from me. But what I do is to help them find their own motivation and potential. They have it.


I guide them throught out the hour of class;

• I start every lession to tell them who I am and why I'm there. I tell them what to do the next 40 or 50 minutes and I tell them what time the class is over
• I give them time to get into the subject. If, like in the swedish class, they have to make a review of a book, they tell in pairs what they remember about it, or from the religion class, talk in pairs what they did last time, or in english class, tell another student in english what they did over the weekend, or in natural science, what they know about acid conditions
• a next step here should be to share a bit in class, where we are and again what to do next hour
• time is limited and they have to work, what to do to engage them to want to work? answer questions, of a mix of reading and writing, and some help from the teacher..

In a class where I will be the teacher in the two different subjec, 8 times in two weeks, we made a little get-to-know-each-other exercise. We took away the tables and sat in a ring on the chairs. I asked them what they wanted to do. They told me they wanted to present themself to me, and when they said their name, they also told what they like to do and that with a movement of the activity. It was really fun, we got tennis players, animal lovers, one sailer and a WOW player. We laughed some and then we could start the lession, still in the ring, to talk about the New Testament and what they knew about Jesus. They talked, they smiled, we got the connection. We also splitted the ring and started to work as a "normal class" again. And they really worked.

I have no idea how to make this in a math class, with big boys who has to make the class misarable for the other or how to inspire more on how to make a movie review more than suggest some different angels to start from. But I think we certainly do something. And that is not by "ordinary lectures", which, I believe would be without any attention at all.


More about:
Communicate the future of mankind
The disadvantages of lectures
Learning by doing
More teamwork less competition

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.

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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)