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

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/

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.

The Circular Economy

I dream sometimes with a world where every thing can be recycled or reused it. With a place where being green is not a lifestyle but the most normal and common thing.

I really like the idea of products that can be disassembled and which parts can be reused or became some kind of nutrient for the soil and help to produce healthy vegetables. (Like here)

I’m becoming somehow paranoid with all the toxic products that are in contact with our skin, that we breath or we eat or drink every day without notice. I’m really worried about what they can do to me, to us.

Surviving Progress

Speachless and little bit depressed after watching this documentary about human progress.

It’s not just the complexity of the problem or problems that we should face soon, but the trend that humans, we, are not used to stop our behaviour until is too late. Until we are back to the wall.

I’d like to be more positive, but today I just can see an end of cycle with lots of destruction, contamination and hunger.

And “when you got hunger, you got revolution”.

Garbage Island

These videos really impacted me.

How are we going to deal with all the garbage that we are producing? And what are going to be the consecuences of all the waste that we are generating?

The consumerism that the american lifestyle is selling us will end because fortunately there is a limit in the quantity of waste that we can generate as well there is a limit in resources.

But I ask myself, will be this end too ugly too live through it? How much harmfull our waste will be?

Goofy and the City

Curious first 1:30 minutes…

How since the ’40s the model was already creating problems.

The American model of spreaded city based on the personal transport and its individualistic lifestyle has had too much weight in this easily influenced world.

Nowadays this fruitless model is widespread and it is time to start fixing it.

 

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