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

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.

 

 

Yellow Pages

It is interesting how the connection of ideas flows sometimes. I was looking this article about a beautiful tree-house and I could not image where the article was taking me.

Image from inhabitat.com

Apparently Yellow Pages, only in USA, prints 500 million of directories a year and it has been estimated that these directories account up to a 5% of total landfill waste. That is crazy!

Some of us are so concerned about the construction waste and the consumption of energy in poorly designed buildings; but how easy would be to cut that 5% of waste? Or save the 9 million of trees harvested? Or all the clean water used along the production process?

Moreover, who really use those ‘books’? We have google now. I would propose that maybe older people keep receiving them, but after having asked for the new copy. I do not think that the majority of us use them any more, so let the people decide if they want them or not, and if they do, they just need to call and order a copy for free.

I believe that this would be a easy and quick solution but some people could argue: what would happen with all the jobs liked to that industry?

That is another story…Being sustainable is not easy!

Maybe a cradle to cradle thinking could help. Yellow pages as compost for our veggie patches?

Green Star

For some time now I have been reading and listening different complains about rating tools. Some say that their point system is influenced by different lobbies (a kind legal corruption?) and some scholars argue that they have a big deficiency in assessing passive design and other problems.

I believe that they have been a good first step, a tool that general people can use and apply but, now that I am dealing at work with the process of Green Star, I really think that it has become a huge business. I do not remember the actual data but just to register a building to be assessed you have to pay tens of thousands of dollar. That is insane.

Also, the majority of the systems assessed are related to energy consumption (nothing new), so to achieve a good rating it is necessary to work hard with the engineers and convince them that a passive solution is a good solution and that, for instance, it can reduce the amount of HVAC needed.

I think that working side by side with all the consultants is a really good thing, but I am really disappointed for Green Star after dealing with it.

Where are we going?

Some time ago I read some books of Marvin Harris. I do not remember in which one he was talking about how humans have evolved or progressed from gathers and hunters to our actual society.

At that time it was very shocked to realize that each big change in the human societies has repeated the same patterns. Boom (abundance of resources and food, growing of the population), Decadency (some elites consume too much, the rest start to live in very bad conditions, social crisis), Collapse (lot of people die because the lack of resources and food), New model (a new social and economical model emerges).

Now I really think that we have to concentrate our efforts in research and ´design´ how we want our next model to be. I really think that we are in Decadency times and that we will not be able to avoid Collapse, but we can really try to minimize its effects. We are wiser and more capable than ever before so why do not dream and work to create a better future, a better society, a better world?

Why a dense city is not the panacea?

My first reaction when I read Michael Neuman´s article was rejection. I have grown in a dense city, Madrid, and that for me was one of the most sustainable ways for a city.

My second reaction was confusion. MN explained that Barcelona (very similar in urban configuration to Madrid) was one of the most sustainable cities in the world in terms of density and urban structure.

Now I can understand that not every density is sustainable and that many dense cities are in fact no sustainable at all. So, how to built a sustainable dense city? How to densify existing urban structures?

I believe that the answer is linked to sociology, anthropology, urban design, architecture, biology, economy and a lot more. You cannot build the same city in Vietnam or Chile, Spain or Finland. Social structures, climate, traditions, location,…all should be considered when designing cities and I guess that schools and real practices do not considered some of them at all.

Retrofitting Suburbia

http://ed.ted.com/lessonhttp://ed.ted.com/lessons/ellen-dunham-jones-retrofitting-suburbias/ellen-dunham-jones-retrofitting-suburbia

About 50% of the population of Earth is living in urban areas and the forecast for 2050 grows til 70%. On the other hand lots of cities have spread out in low density models that are not sustainable any more (they never were) but, moreover, they will be unlivable when the energetic crises occur.

How to improve all the spread suburbs is going to be one of the main issues in the following years and this video presents solutions applied already in Atlanta that can be an example to follow in similar situations. Increasing the density of the areas in the suburbs close to public transport is one of the solutions to make the actual model more efficient.

Not only is needed a more dense residential but the introduction of a mixed of uses in each node. I imagine a radial structure based on the train lines supported by concentric links by, maybe, bus lines when the train is not available. The train stations would be great nodes or smaller nodes where offices, retail and social activities would take place. And these nodes would be surrounded first by a high or medium residential ring (with a commercial ground floor) and then the existing low dense residential.

This model would be a better model than the actual, for example in Sydney, but it is a model that can not be repeated until the infinite. We need to stop the urban sprawl, we need to stop the population growth, we need wild nature, space for agriculture, rural landscapes.

Globalized Architecture

One of the biggest problems in the built environment is that schools do not teach passive design, build for the place, local strategies, materials and techniques.

After the WWII architects around the world have designed and built similar architecture for very different environments and cultures, and I think that is wrong.

I think this project is a good example of a positive solar city but still is following this new globalized architecture. Lets start building for and with the place!

Good passive design, bio-climatic architecture within a place, a culture. Lets use local materials as far as we will be able, lets build for the people that is going to live and use that spaces.

The problem is that maybe people prefer globalized architecture.

Footprint

I have calculated my footprint in several websites. Here, here, here for Australia and Spain, and here.

My footprint varies from 1.5 to 4.4 for Australia depending on the web, and from 1.44 to 4.4 taking the same quiz for Spain or Australia (I have to say that my life here and there is little different, but not much).

These results only give me one conclusion. The quizzes are good for realizing that we are consuming lots of resources but they are absolutely not accurate.

There is a thing that makes me angry: most of them assume that you have a car as they do not ask if you have it, but just how much distance do you travel with your car. And there is not the option to answer NONE!

Another thing is that the majority of the answers are not objective but highly subjective. How much is some? For me, eating some meat can be having it three times a year, but for someone else can be three times a week.

Anyway, I did my footprint. I have confirmed that I use more than I should, but I am very disappointed on how the quizzes are done.

What’s Sustainability?

For me, sustainability is to maintain de cycle. The life cycle on Earth.

We are not owners of the world, we are not the most important species here, we are just one that has taken advantage of its situation and has forgotten how to live in harmony with its environment.

Have we been living in harmony until recently?

Some people think that the problem has been the Industrial Revolution but I think that we have not limits until is too late. Humans do not are used to prevent but to be sorry.

On the other hand, human beings usually finish improving our situation at the end, so I still have faith in the future.

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