PRINCIPLES OF URBANISM

[urbaniitism]

Living, restorative, and adaptive building design concepts are still in their infancy. Only a few buildings have achieved certification through the Living Building Challenge to date. However, these concepts are applicable to most building types as well as to landscapes, infrastructure, or community development.

By achieving Living certification status or Petal recognition within the LBC, projects can demonstrate that buildings can improve the ecosystems they inhabit. Projects that meet the requirements for a single category may achieve individual Petal designation. To achieve Living certification status, all imperatives must be met. LBC certification is based on ACTUAL, rather than anticipated, performance. Therefore, projects must be operational for at least twelve consecutive months prior to being evaluated. 

I think that this method of evaluating a building is more beneficial than the current standards determined by LEED certification. If every building that was built claiming that it improves the ecosystem that it is in went through this certification process then we would really know which buildings actually perform as intended. This would help us continue to develop green technologies to increase the rate at which these buildings are produced. 

[urbaniitism]

The loop is Chicago's center for creation, innovation and finance. Keeping this part of the city alive has been a constant struggle for city politicians. Working on a new plan called "Activate" a group of loop leaders is working to create a more beautiful and place-making environment for tourist, workers and those whom call the loop home.  Tasks such as Alleyway art exhibitions and pop-up parks are just the beginning of what could turn the cold concrete and steel into a setting for families and professionals alike.

[urbaniitism]

(Agropolis) Urban Agriculture – About the Happiness of Harvesting in the City

Agropolis - from the Spoon to the City, Jörg Schröder

  (full context)

It’s all about longing for green, about healthy, competitively-priced food, and about using urban brownfield sites for precisely these purposes. Urban agriculture is an important building block towards a better life for many cities, and signifies a little bit of autarchy in a globalised world. Examples from Berlin and Munich.

By Elisabeth Schwiontek A freelance journalist based in Berlin. Translation: Jo Beckett Copyright: Goethe-Institut e. V., Online-Redaktion August 2010 The Goethe-Institut is the Federal Republic of Germany’s cultural institution operational worldwide.

Excerpt:

“Today and every day: harvesting fresh vegetables and herbs, no kidding!” The sign is a few metres away from the roaring roundabout traffic on Berlin’s Moritzplatz and marks the entrance to the Prinzessinnengarten. Robert Shaw and Marco Clausen, bosses of the non-profit company Nomadisch Grün, are cultivating vegetables to organic standards on 6000 square metres of leased land. A year ago the land was still a brownfield site filled with rubbish, today pumpkins, radishes, potatoes and the community feel are flourishing there. The two garden founders could rely on the active support of their neighbours right from the start.

Robert Shaw: “We create the context for this place. The many and varied people who plant things here, do the weeding and watering, and chat together in the garden café bring it to life.” The young people of Kreuzberg explore the vegetable beds, active gardeners talk shop about potatoes, a teacher and her children come across immigrant women from Russia and Turkey who are experts at gardening. It’s from them that Robert Shaw – as a self-taught gardener – picks up the best tips for cultivating vegetables. Anyone can harvest and buy vegetables and herbs in the Prinzessinnengarten – people who help out regularly can do so at a particularly good price. But unlike traditional German allotments there are no individual plots, with one exception: schoolchildren and pre-schoolers look after their own beds from sowing to harvest.

Agropolis München

is developed and promoted by an interdisciplinary team of architects, urban planners and landscape architects, supported by sociologists, engineers and agronomists: Jörg Schröder and Kerstin Hartig in cooperation with bauchplan).(With spatial concepts for urban agriculture and metropolitan food strategies for Munich, Agropolis won in 2009 the first prize of the competition Open Scale launched by the City of Munich. In 2010, Agropolis elaborated, for the City’s department for urban planning and building regulation, an expert report on Agropolis elements for Freiham; and organized in the context of the fifth Week of Architecture Munich the Agropolis picnic Freiham including the laying of the first herb garden on the premises. Agropolis initiated the school garden on the roof of Montessorischule at Balanstraße in Munich. Agropolis Munich was presented at the German Centre for Architecture in Berlin, the European Convention Green City in Milan and the Festival Communità – Architettura in Parma, Italy. With his drawing “2,040 m2”, Jörg Schröder had been invited to the German Pavilion “Sehnsucht” at the occasion of the 10th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.

[urbaniitism]

Regenerative Cities ; Agropolis – Petropolis – Ecopolis

A particular quote that rang true for me by Herbery Girardet:

“Cities take resources from nature. The new challenge is for cities to find ways to continuously help regenerate natural systems from which they draw resources.”

“Towns and cities need sustenance for their people and this requires elaborate ecological and economic systems. In his book ‘The Isolated State’ the prominent 19th century economist Johann Heinrich von Thünen described the way in which human settlements, in the absence of major transport systems, are systemically tied into the landscape surrounding them through various logically arranged modes of cultivation.4 In fact, they have an  active, symbiotic relationship with it: they also assure its continuing productivity and fertility by returning  appropriate amounts of organic waste to it.” Herbert Girardet on the Agropolis"

“The industrial revolution caused a virtual explosion of urban growth that continues to this day. Steam engine technology enabled the unprecedented concentration of industrial activities in urban centres. Cities increasingly cut the umbilical cord between themselves and their local hinterland and became global economic and transport hubs. This process has undermined local economies, as new modes of transportation have made it ever easier to supply food, raw materials and manufactured products from ever greater distances. Cities are no longer  centres of civilisation but of mobilisation, with access to global resources as never before.

The modern city could be described as ‘Petropolis’: all its key functions – production, consumption and transport are powered by massive injections of petroleum and other fossil fuels. But there is ever growing evidence that the resulting dependencies are ecologically, economically and geopolitically untenable, particularly because the fossil fuel supplies on which modern cities depend are, most definitely, finite.” Herbert Girardet

“The new task facing of urban planners, civil engineers and managers, in close cooperation with the generalpublic, is to create spatial structures that satisfy the needs of city people whilst also assuring their ecological and economic resilience. We need to provide secure habitats that allow us to move about our cities efficiently, and we want them to provide pleasant spaces for work, recreation and human interaction. We want urban environments that are free from pollution and waste accumulation. But we also need to get to grips with the impacts of cities beyond their boundaries” Herbert Girardet

[urbaniitism]

35th Street Site - Looking at the Past

In getting a feel for what is important for this site to become, it is also important to look at what this site has been in the past.  Looking at satellite imagery from over the years reveals an interesting history to not only the immediate site, but the area as well.

2014

As it is today, the site is along 35th Street, between the Metra tracks to the west and the mixed-use development to the east.  It is currently the only remaining undeveloped lot in the immediate area.

2007

If we look back only seven years ago, we see some interesting similarities as well as differences.  While the nearby mixed-use developments and new street grids are partially completed, the site seems to be the location of a somewhat-permanent looking structure.

2005

Two years earlier, this structure is still present while the surrounding area was undeveloped; a stark contrast to the present-day state of this area.

2002

Yet another shift in developed vs. undeveloped, the site was again unoccupied, while its surroundings were seemingly utilized.

2001

Finally, 2001 images show that the site was part of a contiguous complex of affordable housing structures.

Looking Ahead...

Considering that this site was most likely an example of slum areas that were razed to create more mixed-use areas, it is important to recognize how this surrounding development that exists today has helped to revitalize the area.  A similar intervention from the UrbanIITes may be just what this site needs!

[urbaniitism]

Many cities like LA, Chicago and Detroit have started the Green Alley initiative. It has been estimated that alleys add up to more than 19 million miles in one city alone! For long, alleys have been used to store our garbage cans, houses the rats, a shortcut access for drivers, but have done nothing to contribute to our environment. The Green Alley Initiative was created as a form of sustainability for cities. They would beautify the alleys, create permeable roads for runoff storm water and possibly expand wildlife habitat. For many big cities, it's hard to be sustainable with new emerging technology, mass production and the need for harsh contaminants and toxins that affect our air. With this initiative, it gives the city additive miles of greenery, creating a strive for a better future! http://nacto.org/docs/usdg/green_alley_programs_planning_for_a_sustainable_urban_infrastructure_newell.pdf #iiturbanism #urbansustainability #greenalleys #la #liza

[urbaniitism]

What is Wrong with Suburbia?

When the topic of energy efficiency comes up, everyone points the finger at the American suburbs. “The suburbs are menacing,” they say. “Suburban living is selfish," they say. But when you ask the question, “Why?” the answer normally has something to do with the fact that many suburbs waste too much energy. People suggest solutions such as movement from suburban living to urban living, explaining that it is more energy-efficient and that density is better for the environment--but before we start suggesting “solutions” we should ask ourselves: "What is the real problem?”

When you look at the answer to why suburbs are deemed “bad," the problem revolves around its lack of energy efficiency, not the fact that each person has an individual plot of land. Architects have the responsibility to make smart, energy efficient designs with which everyone can be happy. The easy way out for many architects is to simply say, “Everyone should move to the city because it has a higher energy efficiency than suburbs and it’s a great place to live." However, this is a lazy statement that architects make without taking into consideration the possibility of making suburbs more energy efficient. Rick Harrison, an architect who designs for energy efficient suburbs, however, is an example of an architect who has taken the initiative to create one of these smart, energy-efficient designs that allows for people who want a private house away from the city to live comfortably as well as responsibly.

Taking into consideration the topography and how it can be most efficiently utilized, Harrison creates suburban towns to be efficient--not through the use of windmills and solar panels, but through clever design. For example, with fewer roads and intersections, the action of stopping and re-starting cars is minimized: "coving," an ingenious strategy which Harrison discovered and currently utilizes, is based on the topography and streetscape, using designs of different setbacks for each residential space.

More information about Rick Harrison and his design can be found at http://www.rhsdplanning.com/

[urbaniitism]

http://groundlab.org/portfolio/groundlab-project-deep-ground-longgang-china/

TYPE: International Competition

CLIENT:  Shezhen Planning Buerau

DATE: March 2008

Deep Ground is GroundLab’s winning entry for the international design competition for Longgang Centre and Longcheng Square. The project deals with the regeneration of 11.8 Km2 of the urban fabric in the centre of Longgang, north east of ShenZhen in the Pearl River Delta, with estimated population of 350,000 and 9,000,000 m2 of new development. The project radically expands the scope of urbanism in order to deal with the contemporary challenges of modern China: through the concept of ‘thickened ground’ multiple ground datums are fused to foster intuitive orientation and connectivity. The polluted and neglected river will become an ecological corridor, whilst the existing Urban Villages are retained to form nucleus-es to lend identity, vitality and human scale to the new development.

[urbaniitism]

Nanhu: Farm Town in the Big City Jiaxing, China

Project Statement

Sprawling megacities around the world are overtaking arable land to accommodate increased spatial demands. The larger these cities become, the further agricultural landscapes are forced away from the people they sustain. This project brings innovative hybrid agricultural and urban typologies into close dialogue at the crux of two major metropolitan cities. An infrastructural overhaul will treat heavily polluted water as it flows through the site, and will establish a new paradigm for modern agricultural living.

Project Narrative

“Beautiful hand sketches. These opportunities in China can make such an impact on how to grow food within proximity of the city. With the scale of all these components, the stitching of the water beds in supplying water is compelling. The dense housing is also bold. This shows the research and development possibilities for agriculture.” —2012 Professional Awards Jury

Agricultural land in China is often wiped clean of all previous historic or cultural significance to make way for urbanization. As the nation struggles to house the influx of urban migration, agrarian life is marginalized. However, current trends indicate that people are craving a reprieve: the health effects of industrial pollution are being felt, wealthy populations are spending money on organic food, and the intensity of massive dense cities can be crushing and overwhelming. Nanhu presents a cultural shift at the intersection of urban and agricultural life in China through the creation of a dense urban village and the retention and enhancement of existing farmland.

Nanhu is currently a tapestry of small farms and canals on the edge of Jiaxing, a city of three million people in the Yangtze Delta. Jiaxing is located between Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Suzhou, a region with a population near 80 million. A new high-speed rail line enables travel from Jiaxing to Shanghai and Hangzhou in twenty minutes and positions Nanhu to be both a bedroom community and destination for metropolitan residents seeking a break from intense urbanity.

An extensive canal network, abundance of water, flat land, and fertile soil give Nanhu potential to be a model agricultural center of food production for the surrounding mega cities. However, the site faces three major hurdles: under-utilized efficiency in agricultural land organization, a stagnant and polluted canal system, and a rural population density which is too low to be sustainable in this location in China.

The design challenges the notion of typical rural-to-urban land transformation to instead create a model for integrated new city development. The design takes advantage of the site’s agrarian economy, proximity to transit, and urban amenities to create a village that is compact, walkable, and tightly-knit, yet has easy access to open space and maintains an agricultural character.

Scales of Agriculture

China’s farming practices are presently very inefficient in comparison to other countries with modern agricultural techniques and technology; China receives low agricultural outputs from high labor inputs. This inefficiency contributes to low pay for farmers and a way of life that cannot compete with the allure of urban areas. This design effectively increases farmland productivity by introducing economies of scale, increasing product values, and promoting a variety of development densities.

The organic farm will be both a new productive agricultural job base and a source of healthy and sustainable foods. Visitors will be able to observe and appreciate food cultivation and the agricultural process. New farming products will include specialty items such as herbal medicines, fragrances, and flowers, which are products with higher monetary returns that will raise the economic profile of the modern farmer.

Agricultural endeavors range from large-scale organic specialty food production to farms that cater to tourism, family farms, and community garden plots for all to access. This diversity will attract different people and interests while forming a precedent of agricultural innovation in the region.

Hydrological Innovation

The success of the project depends heavily on addressing existing degraded environmental conditions by introducing treatment wetlands and reorganizing a historic canal network that will allow residents and visitors to directly engage with the water.

As it exists now, the on-site canal network includes many dead-end segments and disconnected waterways, causing water to stagnate and depreciate in quality. Moving ahead, dead-end canals will be removed, and the system will be reconnected to allow for better flow and circulation. Water will be collected from an upper stratum of the existing canal along the western edge of the site to avoid accumulated sediment, before entering the treatment wetlands. The entire wetland cleaning process will take place over an eight day period. After exiting the treatment wetlands, the canal water will be high quality — suitable for agricultural irrigation and boating. The canals will be integral to the village’s ecological storm drainage and water treatment. Stormwater run-off will be intercepted and treated by biofiltration landscape infrastructure before entering the canals. Rainwater from rooftops will be collected for landscape irrigation within the blocks. Greywater from sinks, showers, and washing machines will be reused as a supply for toilets and non-agricultural irrigation.

Once reconnected, the canals will be used for water transport by boat and the edges and banks of the canals will have pedestrian pathways that will serve as a circulation network. By cleaning the water, the entire site will be poised to meet international organic certification standards and in turn increase the financial and ecological value of the land.

Parks and People

Nanhu will be a hybrid development combining China’s agricultural heritage with its present urban lifestyle. With an intended population of 37,000, Nanhu can house its agricultural workforce and serve as a bedroom community for commuters to Shanghai, be a modern agricultural weekend retreat from city life, and be an all-encompassing village with urban amenities within an agricultural framework.

Large parklands span a range of uses, from boating and strolling pavilions to viewing of fabricated and restored wildlife habitat. There will also be neighborhood parks, corridors along the canal network, and intimate gathering spaces within individual residential blocks. Smaller open spaces will serve the immediate neighborhood and provide amenities such as play fields, small plazas for gathering or exercise, and places for rest and relaxation in an outdoor setting. Through agricultural tourism and the ecological improvements explored on the site, Nanhu will become an educational attraction for the greater Shanghai region.

China needs a model to inform the process of land conversion with a sustainable and meaningful approach. Nanhu answers this pressing question by illustrating how to integrate a compact urban village with productive agricultural landscapes. The new relationship is an example of how urbanization can increase the productivity of the land and improve environmental quality through technology and education while embracing the agrarian qualities to create an authentic place that retains residents and attracts tourists alike.

http://www.asla.org/2012awards/276.html

[urbaniitism]

Points of Debate: Slums

Here are some progressive qualifications for improving slums architects should take into consideration:

Good health should be included in quality of life

Happiness should be included in quality of life

Happiness and good health alone are unquantifiable and attempts to quantify them provide the roots of neoclassist speculation

Quality of life should be of paramount importance when designing for any city, suburb, or slum

Good design should presently adhere to transition from poor environment to good environment, which facilitates quality of life

The question is not presently how to makes cities immune to slums

The question is how to advocate for better living conditions, opportunities, and improved quality of life overall

The question is not to enforce a way of life, it is to transition between a lesser quality of life to an improved one

[urbaniitism]

Urban design creates a huge impact on the quality of life. Urban design has the ability to renew urban areas and control the development of new communities. It starts to break down what is quality of life and how it impacts its own context. As architects, we must take into consideration all the factors necessary to determine what type of urban design is required to achieve maximum quality of life. 

[urbaniitism]

January 1, 2014 6:07 am

China’s manufacturing growth slows as demand for exports weakens

"Growth in China’s manufacturing sector slowed for the first time in six months in December, dragged down by weak demand for Chinese exports, according to an official purchasing manager’s index. If the slowdown continues next year and growth drops below 7.6 per cent it will be the slowest since 1990 when China faced international sanctions in the wake of the Tiananmen massacre."

Government boost

"The world's second-largest economy expanded 7.7% in the October-to-December quarter, from a year ago. That was slightly down from 7.8% growth in the previous three months.Despite that some analysts have warned that its pace of expansion may slow this year.For their part, policymakers have taken various steps to try and sustain China's high growth rates.For their part, policymakers have taken various steps to try and sustain China's high growth rates."

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b7e1cf86-729f-11e3-bff7-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2uZHwKBu6

[urbaniitism]

RECONSTRUCTION ALLOWING FOR REINTEGRATION

As unquestionable as the rebuilding of the World Trade Center has been for the healing of New York City since 9/11, the healing at street level has arguably been slightly overshadowed by the rising of the new skyscrapers on the complex.

THE PAST

Built between 1960 and 1980, the original World Trade Center required the pre-existing buildings on the site to be demolished.  Though this is not an uncommon practice for constructing new buildings, the establishment of the WTC "super-block" is something that had never before been done at such a scale.  In some ways, the cutting off of the street grid which had been in place since the Commissioner's Plan of 1811, was detrimental to the circulation through the area; especially with a street grid as compact and dense as that of Lower Manhattan.

THE PRESENT

Despite the devastation of 9/11, the reconstructing of the World Trade Center complex has allowed for the reestablishment of much of the original street grid.  This, when opened, will provide new thoroughfares and increase accessibility between the buildings on the site.

THE CONTROVERSEY

As we can see in the above picture, access to the street lanes which run along the east end of the complex will be restricted to visitors to the WTC.  While the proponents of this barrier support it due to security concerns, its opponents argue that it will not allow for the city to ever fully heal from the scars of 9/11.  In many ways, the rationalization of the barrier makes sense, however, it is worth arguing how much the grid will actually be revitalized/reintroduced if an entire street lane will end up being cut off again.

As it is today, the lanes in question are behind fences due to construction on the site.  Pictured above is Three World Trade Center, which will rise to more than seventy-five floors when it is completed.  Along this street, it is joined by Four World Trade Center, the World Trade Center Transit Hub and Two World Trade Center.  While security is a valid concern, especially concerning this complex, it is also important that the grid be revitalized by restoring the connectivity between this seemingly-isolated complex of the past

[urbaniitism]

NYC Digital Infrastructure and Roosevelt island Project

  NYC government research for developing digital infrastructure that put Roosevelt island Cornell campus project. This project is related to grow the population of Brooklyn and preventing the pack condition of NYC.

City Council has approved Cornell’s two-million-square-foot tech campus planned to break ground in 2014 on New York’s Roosevelt Island. Masterplanned by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), the ambitious carbon positive campus will offer housing for 2,000 full-time graduate 

students, world-class education facilities, a hotel, a corporate co-location building, and more than an acre of public open space. Construction will commence with the first, state-of-the-art academic building that will be designed by Thom Mayne, founder of Morphosis, who will incorporate the latest environmental advances, such as geothermal and solar power, to achieve net-zero energy for the landmark structure.

http://www.archdaily.com/370910/council-approves-cornell-s-net-zero-tech-campus-on-roosevelt-island/

[urbaniitism]

Green Infrastructure for Asian Cities: The Spatial Concepts and Planning Strategies

A post-doctoral researcher of the Landscape Architecture program at Massachusetts University describes the global effort toward urbanization and green infrastructure (GI). No longer a mere national issue, landscape researchers and city planners around the world are now working toward solutions for not only cleaner air and water, and improved health, but of overpopulation, unregulated urban sprawl, environmental problems, and sociological issues. 

[urbaniitism]

JFK International Airport is a vital node in the regions infrastructure. As part of Jamaica Bay, it is also highly vulnerable to flood risk. Although the airport is capable of ‘taking care if its own problems’, there is an opportunity to leverage this asset to promote the common flood defense of the Jamaica Bay area. That means integrating the airport into a larger tiered defense system, and using the airport as a catalyst for growth; growth that will help fuel, and fund, the transformation of the area, and position Jamaica Bay as a future economic for New York City.

[urbaniitism]

Looking at what makes a good city...Great. Cities in Texas are changing the way urban designers are planning parks, ped-ways and land-use to create environments for the human scale. "Placemaking" is a movement for the quality of life of a cities citizens.