Comments on: What is a city of the future?

By: steve raney

steve raney — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 01:50:10 +0000

I research the places with the world’s highest per capita driving, US suburbs. Here’s a “city of the future paper” I put together. This was an output from a US EPA “collaborative sustainability network” grant:

Title: Efficient Edge Cities of the Future

ABSTRACT: A “story-format” roadmap is provided to reduce edge city per-capita energy consumption by 50%. The roadmap provides an integrated vision combining: multimodal transit, ridesharing, demand management, land use, market forces, policy, technology, and paradigm re-thinking. Changing away from an autocentered, petroleum-based lifestyle represents a lifestyle change, but not a sacrifice.

Web and GPS cell phones help create a “comprehensive new mobility” system to make green transportation seamless and hassle-free. “Paid smart parking” reduces solo commuting by 25%. “Low Miles residential communities” foster green culture, where residents help each other to reduce carbon dioxide. This green culture is created using the same powerful sociological marketing principles that drive consumer society. Housing preference policies are used to select new residents who will travel less and use green transportation. Two-car families sell one car. As the real-estate gradually changes, asphalt-dominated superblocks are transformed into walkable, New Urbanist locales. Walking, biking, electric scooters, and Personal Rapid Transit enable more than 50% of trips (commute, errands, recreation, etc.) to be made without driving alone. Each of the nation’s 200 35,000-employee edge cities can be transformed into huge transit villages of two square miles or more. Through this simple step-by-step plan, you’ll save money, shed pounds, meet neighbors, hang out in more lively places, and pay lower taxes.

Full paper: http://www.cities21.org/ TRB_Efficient_Edge_Cities3.pdf

Oh, and I work for the company building the London Heathrow ULTra PRT system: http://www.ultraprt.com/cms/

Note also that Arup designed the ULTra Heathrow guideway.

By: Justus

Justus — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:11:05 +0000

Tons and tons of info and interesting leads on the city of the future on Worldchanging.com – one of the most widely read sustainability blogs in the world. (Executive Editor Alex Steffen is interviewed in the Earth 2100 show.)

By: Susan Kraemer

Susan Kraemer — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:14:29 +0000

I am a big fan of this One Planet Town being literally recycled out of an industrial park in Northern California to house a few thousand Americans in a one planet lifestyle.

By: Sam

Sam — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:25:50 +0000

Is it politically helpful to talk about the coming century as “the most dangerous in [the earth's] 4.5 billion history”? I ask that not as a skeptic who doesn’t appreciate the dangers of methane bubbling up from the permafrost and methane clathrates in the ocean. I am asking it because most of the people who don’t read blogs like this one but who have a vote just like we do may take it as typical “extremist” hyperbole, and simply dismiss it, just as they dismiss talk about the Rapture or other apocalyptic scenarios. Some of them who do read will also point to other “natural” extinction events, and say something like “Que sera, sera,” these things happen and there’s not much we can do about them. Snowball Earth was a pretty dramatic example, although it didn’t happen in a century or two, as was the Permian Extinction. In fact, I have had people point to those events or events like them. When I reply to them that it wasn’t human activity that caused those earlier events, they tell me that it is the height of “arrogance” for me to suppose that human activity can have such a drastic effect on the earth. And of course that climate doesn’t change that quickly, it will be thousands of years before such things might happen, if they happen at all. I try to tell them about evidence of abrupt climate change, but they appear to be incapable of digesting the possibility (as, to be fair, was most of the scientific community until the last couple of decades).

Just ruminating here, I guess. I’m rarely sure of how to talk to skeptics who are not so much bound and determined to have that mind set, but who are (usually sensibly) conditioned to dismiss apocalyptic chatter, and are turned off by it.

By: Laurence Aurbach

Laurence Aurbach — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:31:41 +0000

Jonathan Arnold's animation is outstanding. The short video Built to Last is a hoot and just about as good. For more along those lines, check out Steve Price's visualizations. I'm afraid NREL's vision of a carbon-neutral neighborhood leaves a lot to be desired. It's almost completely devoted to local alternative fuels production, with very little attention paid to the neighborhood planning and design elements that will reduce energy demand. Nothing wrong with local alternative fuels production, but the priorities should be better balanced. Energy-efficient neighborhoods have great access to a wide mix of land uses and jobs, compact layout, comprehensive walkability, extensive transit and bike networks, and lively and active streets. Also, not unimportantly, the NREL vision is so ugly that no one would voluntarily live there.

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:42:53 +0000

The Village Homes development in Davis, CA deserves a mention. A great situation.

By: Rick Covert

Rick Covert — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:31:55 +0000

Here’s another look at the future and it airs tonight on ABC 9:00 PM eastern time and 8:00 central time. It’ takes a look at what is in store for civilization if we do nothing and if we take effective action. You can already play some of the video.

Earth 2100:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Earth2100/

http://abcnews.go.com/ Technology/ Earth2100/ story?id=7678011&page=1

By: paulm

paulm — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:43:30 +0000

What the future looks like
http://www.guardian.co.uk/ science/ 2009/ may/ 26/ future-planet-earth
As the planet faces the most dangerous century in its 4.5bn-year history, astronomer royal Martin Rees looks into his crystal ball

[JR: Not dire enough by far!]

By: Chris Winter

Chris Winter — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:29:07 +0000

This is only tangentially relevant, but I don’t see a better thread to post it in.

Tonight at 9 (8 Central time), ABC TV will present “earth 2100,” described as a “graphic novel” recounting the life of a 91-year-old woman named Lucy who was born on 1 June 2009. (The name of the planet is not capitalized in their teaser.)

Interleaved with this narrative, I am given to understand, will be mini-lectures by real scientists.

I have my doubts about how good this will be, but it’s probably worth watching.