Poo2Loo

Behind this bizarre video there is a great UNICEF campaign in India supporting poo-free streets. Here their web and Facebook. In addition, UNICEF has an international campaign to provide toilets not only in India. Here.

2.5 billion people around the world do not have access to a safe and clean toilet. In India, half of the population has to do it in streets and surroundings. This is not only a huge health issue,  but a security issue as well. Every year, thousands of girls (women and children) are raped, and sometimes murdered after, when they were going to the ´toilet´. Here one of the latest cases.

In developed countries the sustainability is now focused on how to consume or need less energy, and sometimes materials, but in other countries there are bigger issues, issues that involve health and security. Big developing countries, such as India or Brazil, where big cities are growing rapidly but where simple actions can have a life-changing result should be the main objective of international programs.

If we want a sustainable and democratic world we should start being democratic with the people living in it.

 

Image from facebook.com/poo2loo

Climate Change

Some people argue that Climate Change does not exist, they are called Climate Deniers and there are some interesting webs that list the most famous or important of them. Here and here for instance.

The problem is that these deniers are generally supported by big companies and industry lobbies that are directly related to great CO2 emissions. So it is in their convenience to misinform the general public.

Even if this influential and powerful group of people is trying to present studies and data to prove their beliefs, the reality is that all the new studies presented by the IPCC or the US Global Change Research Program, for instance, found that the Earth is warmer than before and that this will produce consequences in the global climate.

Global Change has released their findings in a report last month and some of their graphs just talk by themselves:

Global Temperatures and CO2 Concentration

Natural & Human influences on Climate Change

Past & Projected change in Global Sea Level Rise (1ft=33cm/4ft=1.20m approx)

Past & Projected Sea Ice Decline (RCP=Representative Concentration Pathways)

Acidification of Oceans

Its projected changes with a rapid emissions reduction:

Global Temperatures

Annual Precipitation

Its projected changes if the emissions increase in the actual trend:

Global Temperature

Annual Precipitation

I think that the findings are scary because I do not trust in a big change in a short-term and the consequences will transform our world, our life. We are going to live in a changing world full of challenges.

*All graphs and images from nca2014.globalchange.gov/report

Johannesburg Ponte City Apartments

Interesting video and article about this skyscraper in Johannesburg.

This building was built for South-African ´whites´ but for different reasons it ended becoming a place of criminality. Recently some interventions have transformed it into a new and safer place and new occupants are going to live in there.

Image from dilemma-x.net

This kind of situation is when Social Sustainability becomes essential. How people live around buildings is important in terms of security, opportunities or equity.

Making better cities and buildings can contribute to improve not only neighbours but people´s life, and that is a responsibility, a responsibility that is not taught enough at schools or universities.

Image from geoarchitecture.wordpress.com/

How to measure sustainability?

This is a question that keeps popping out.

We actually know how to measure economic activities, growth, health, education, life expectancy, infant mortality, toxicity,… We can measure two of the pillars of sustainability (economy and environment) good enough, I would say. We can measure the health of an ecosystem, the danger of extinction of its biodiversity and so on.

Economist have lots of indexes to measure how a country is doing in terms of wealth and scientists are more accurate every day in detecting problems in ecosystems and wild environments. Also urban environments can be analysed in physical and economic terms.

The problem arises when measuring the social part, the third part of a holistic point of view about sustainability. How do you analyse traditions? How do you measure the happiness of the population? How do you categorise lifestyles?

I suppose that you could measure the happiness of the population. But how do you measure a subjective term as happiness? Maybe with depression or suicide rates or the grade of satisfaction with the government, social services and environment (cities in this case but natural as well in others).

Social Sustainability. burnaby.ca

Pedestrians, Bicycles & Cars

I think that the first cities where designed by and for pedestrians, these cities were walkable and made for being occupied. Now, these cities are a nightmare for drivers.

Bragança.

After the invention and democratisation of cars, the design of cities has been subjugated to this machine. Cities are designed and modified in order to become car-friendly; and people, meaning pedestrians or cyclists, have been relegated.

The future (or actual) energy crisis will be a great opportunity to reconquer the city and start designing for people again. We need public spaces designed to be used and reconnect communities.

Apparently, cyclists have started already in New York. This NY Times article shows how NY city has lots of problems with accidents and how car speed is directly related to deaths in streets.

Deaths in Manhattan. nytimes.com

These deaths are produced for the collision of the car-friendly city with the most ancient ways of transport in urban areas. The speed of vehicles as well as the poor education of drivers towards the priority of pedestrians and cyclist versus cars is what is causing these accidents.

Now we need our governments and councils to act in order to transform our cities in more anthropocentric ones. We need to be re-educated in the respect for the citizens and its more fragile ways of transport around the city. We need spaces to move and stay safely.

Walkable and cycleable city in Minorca

Traditions

Traditional Festival of San Isidro, Madrid, Spain

I have been very interested in Social Sustainability recently. I have a really interest on how people and cities can evolve in a sustainable way and what makes a city socially sustainable.

I suppose that the fist idea would be: it depends. Depends on the kind of city, the kind of people living there (mono cultural, multicultural, cosmopolitan,…), the kind of environment that we found around the city, and so on.

I think a key issue would be to maintain and give to traditions the importance that they have and deserve. Traditions use to gather people and are linked to culture. They improve the sense of belonging among and keep a continuity along time that stays the same but  evolves at the same time.

As traditions I mean music, festivals, food, holidays and every activity that is repeated every year by locals.

In some cases these traditions sometimes become a tourist attraction and loose all its original meaning. As the Tomatina in Buñol or San Fermín in Pamplona, both in Spain. Old traditions become a product and they stop to be sustainable. Not only socially sustainable but environmentally as well.

Tomato Fight, Tomatina in Buñol, Spain. artsonearth.org

The affluence of people is so great in just a week that this small towns are not able to provide all the food or drinks (not only water but mainly alcohol) that they need, or to manage the waste that so much people produce.

In summary, these ‘in other times’ traditions are some how economically sustainable but the other two legs (society and environment) finish so damaged that it becomes a problem because people still want these festivals.

Obsolescence

The story is: one of my co-workers’ phone has died this morning. After a day of calls, she has founded that she should introduce her phone in water and say that it had felt down into the sink, so they can give her a new phone, instead of trying to fix it. Apparently fixing it would cost them more so they tell you how to trick the insurance. How crazy is that!

On one hand we have the programmed obsolescence on many devices; and on the other, the companies themselves suggesting how to avoid fixing them.

How much waste and useful (and expensive) materials we need to throw away? When is the system going to collapse?

I really think that the system, all of it, the economic, political or social side,…is not working at all. It’s philosophy is wrong.

You cannot design things thinking how long they are going to last and make them to break in a determined point. Or just produce waste and not be responsible of it. Or exploit other countries resources, destroying their environment and coming back to your country without responsibility.

 

Inter-generational and Intra-generational Equity

What is equity? It comes from Latin aequitās, from aequus, that means equal, that means (Collins, 2014):

1. identical in size, quantity, degree, intensity, etc; the same (as)
2. having identical privileges, rights, status, etc
3. having uniform effect or application
4. evenly balanced or proportioned

So, what are inter-generational and intra-generational equity?

These are one of the main moral issues when addressing sustainability. The moral duty that we should be equally with others. In this case other humans, but also with the flora and fauna of our planet.

Inter-generational equity makes reference to the most traditional definition of sustainability. Next generations should have access to the same quantity of resources and wealth than us. I would add that we, in the developed world, are using more that we should and need. So I believe that next generations will not use more or less that they need, so the majority will have more and the minority less. Hopefully we leave something left for everybody.

Intra-generational equity means that people around the world, developed or developing, should have the same resources and the same access to them. That means food and clean water as well. We know that this is not true right now and that the developed world is able to maintain its life style due to the developing one living or surviving with much less than us. That is highly unfair but we like our lives and no one wants to give up in its lifestyle.

I really think that this is affecting the social environment in the sense that it is not any more the developing world who is suffering the lack of access to resources but also the, until now, developed one, as the south of Europe, is. Countries as Greece, Spain, Portugal or Ireland start to have problems of equity and access to social services of basic resources.

Plastic in our Food

I have already talked about the plastic islands in our oceans, but I have not addressed the issue that we could be eating plastic. This project is going to research how the waste in the oceans’ water goes into the food chain until we eat that waste, mainly plastic particles but also toxic chemicals and components.

The plastic that we use in everyday objects arrives somehow to the rivers and then to the seas and oceans. These plastic objects degrade there and when they are just particles are eaten (many times they are eaten before becoming particles producing the death of many birds, turtles and other animals) or drank by animals.

I would like to think that this polluted food is very democratic, but I guess that the most polluted  fishes would not finish eaten by wealthy people.

The new approach of this new study is about studying the plastic journey in order to develop new ‘plastic’ products that could be nutritious to the sea life and at the end of the chain for us, instead that very toxic and dangerous.

Hope this cradle to cradle approach has success because I really think that this is the philosophy that we should have.

Density Fallacy

“The key to building a healthy and green city isn’t putting wind turbines on the roof of a glass tower; the way to solving our housing crises isn’t handing the keys to the planning office to a bunch of living and dead economists. It is to build walkable and cyclable communities at the Goldilocks density: not too high, not too low, but just right.” Lloyd Alter  in The Guardian.

Time ago I wrote about the article of Michael Neuman, The Compact City Fallacy, and now I have found this article related with his ideas.

But what takes my attention here is: “walkable and cyclable COMMUNITIES”. We should design communities. It is not architecture, urban design or planning any more, we need sociologists, psychologists and a whole brunch of different specialists to design liveable and resilient communities.

We need to design places for people.

 

 

Poo2Loo

Behind this bizarre video there is a great UNICEF campaign in India supporting poo-free streets. Here their web and Facebook. In addition, UNICEF has an international campaign to provide toilets not only in India. Here.

2.5 billion people around the world do not have access to a safe and clean toilet. In India, half of the population has to do it in streets and surroundings. This is not only a huge health issue,  but a security issue as well. Every year, thousands of girls (women and children) are raped, and sometimes murdered after, when they were going to the ´toilet´. Here one of the latest cases.

In developed countries the sustainability is now focused on how to consume or need less energy, and sometimes materials, but in other countries there are bigger issues, issues that involve health and security. Big developing countries, such as India or Brazil, where big cities are growing rapidly but where simple actions can have a life-changing result should be the main objective of international programs.

If we want a sustainable and democratic world we should start being democratic with the people living in it.

 

Image from facebook.com/poo2loo

Climate Change

Some people argue that Climate Change does not exist, they are called Climate Deniers and there are some interesting webs that list the most famous or important of them. Here and here for instance.

The problem is that these deniers are generally supported by big companies and industry lobbies that are directly related to great CO2 emissions. So it is in their convenience to misinform the general public.

Even if this influential and powerful group of people is trying to present studies and data to prove their beliefs, the reality is that all the new studies presented by the IPCC or the US Global Change Research Program, for instance, found that the Earth is warmer than before and that this will produce consequences in the global climate.

Global Change has released their findings in a report last month and some of their graphs just talk by themselves:

Global Temperatures and CO2 Concentration

Natural & Human influences on Climate Change

Past & Projected change in Global Sea Level Rise (1ft=33cm/4ft=1.20m approx)

Past & Projected Sea Ice Decline (RCP=Representative Concentration Pathways)

Acidification of Oceans

Its projected changes with a rapid emissions reduction:

Global Temperatures

Annual Precipitation

Its projected changes if the emissions increase in the actual trend:

Global Temperature

Annual Precipitation

I think that the findings are scary because I do not trust in a big change in a short-term and the consequences will transform our world, our life. We are going to live in a changing world full of challenges.

*All graphs and images from nca2014.globalchange.gov/report