WorldChanging

There are three interesting conferences coming up in the design world this month (see below for details). If you are planning to go to any of these events (or even some others we haven't yet heard of), please consider submitting a "Reader Report." We'd love to get your 'inside scoop' and learn more about all of the cool, innovative projects and ideas likely to be presented at these conferences. Please email me at amanda@worldchanging.com if you'd like to contribute a report!

ASLA Annual Meeting: Friday–Monday, September 10–13 in Washington, D.C.
More than 6,000 landscape architecture professionals from across the U.S. and around the world will gather in Washington, D.C., September 10–13, to earn up to 21 professional development hours, to enjoy the fellowship of our profession, and to reconnect with the fundamental elements of design.

The talks and education sessions that I would love to learn more about include: "Landscape Architecture and Public Health"; "Green Roofs for Healthy Cities: Advances in Living Architecture"; "Redefining Water Management: Landscapes and Buildings Under Water "; and "Global Exchange: The Best Sustainable Codes, Standards, and Policies."

The Designers Accord Seattle Town Hall: Thursday, September 23 at 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm, in Seattle, WA
The Designers Accord is a global coalition of designers, educators, and business leaders working together to create positive environmental and social impact. This town hall meeting is your chance to join fellow Seattle designers who care deeply about these issues, and share in the discussion of how we can make designing in sustainable ways a reality in our region.

Topics of discussion include: mapping the design process towards sustainability; the role of design in sustainability; and collaboration.

Green Building Festival 2010: Wednesday–Saturday, September 22–25, 2010 at the Direct Energy Centre in Toronto, Canada
Sustainable Buildings Canada is pleased to present the 6th annual Green Building Festival. Join us for 3 days of speakers, training and building tours along with IIDEX/Neocon, Canada's premier architecture and design expo.

The seminar titles I find intriguing in the schedule include: "Sustainable Development: Policy, Planning and Infrastructure"; "Contemporary Architecture in Toronto - Past, Present and Where Are We Going?"; "Innovation through the Lens of Transparent Communications"; "Life Cycle Costing for Greenbuilding Design"; "SMART GRID Taking Our Cue From Nature"; and the "Design Panel on Sustainable & Healthy Communities."
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And of course, don't forget to register for Worldchanging's upcoming event on October 1: FUTURE CITY!

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For some examples of past "Reader Reports" see these posts in the Worldchanging archives:

• Reader Report: Skoll Social Forum | Grace Augustine, 19 Apr 10
  
• Reader Report: Low-cost Clean Tech for Rural Communities | Baskut Tuncak, 25 Feb 10
  
• Reader Report: Investing in a Bright Green Future | Lisa Chacón, 29 Apr 09
  
• Reader Report: Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship | Kristin Hayden, 1 Apr 09
  
• Reader Report: Notes from Greenbuild 2008 | Morgan Greenseth, 15 Dec 08
  
• Reader Report: Sustainability On Campus and Beyond at AASHE 2008 | Xarissa Holdaway, 4 Dec 08
  
• Reader Report: Solar Innovation in Costa Rica | Max Levin, 23 Oct 08
  
• Reader Report: Linking Cities and Climate at The Third International CEU Conference | Faith Cable, 16 Oct 08
  
• Reader Report From the World Cities Summit | Zufan, 18 Jul 08

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(Posted by Amanda Reed in Green Building at 5:30 PM)

Melting and thinning ice in the Arctic has proceeded so rapidly that new sea routes are opening up, infrastructure is being imagined, and countries like Canada are working to assert their sovereignty in the north...

Last year, Beluga Shipping became the first shipping company to transport goods through the 'Northeast Passage'; two ships, escorted by a pair of Russian icebreakers, traveled from South Korea to Siberia via the newly broken up NE passage. Now, the sea is ice-free enough in the summer that it is projected to become a regular shipping route as early as next year. As a mark of this change, the Northeast Passage has even been renamed the "Northern Sea Route." Charlie Jane Anders has the story at io9: "2010 Will Be Remembered as the Year the Arctic Ocean Became a Trade Route"

The MV Beluga Fraternity and MV Beluga Foresight traveling through the Northeast Passage, July 2009. (Source: The Boston Globe)

In addition to the new Northern Sea Route (the NE Passage), the 'Northwest Passage' is closer to becoming a viable shipping route connecting the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. As the image below shows, the Northwest Passage was already ice-free in the summer of 2007.

(Image Source: NASA; Credit: Jesse Allen, using data obtained from the Goddard Land Processes data archives (LAADS))

As these Arctic shipping routes open up and Arctic communities become more connected to larger networks of distribution, local economies will likely change and new infrastructure will be needed to support a transition of goods distribution from air to shipping, as well as support growths in population. Infranet Lab explores the design challenges of this transition by looking at one conceptual design proposal for the community of Igloolik: "Frozen Cities/Liquid Networks: (air)Port and Infrastructural Autonomy"

The following project, developed by Amrit Phull and Claire Lubell, in the Frozen Cities/ Liquid Networks studio at the University of Waterloo, examines how new infrastructure can be produced in the Arctic that allows for the transference from air to shipping logistics and, while doing so, addresses the issue of food production and coastal erosion in the Arctic. It questions how remote coastal communities throughout Canada’s Arctic can establish self-sufficiency in anticipation of economic and environmental fluctuations. As stated by Lubell and Phull:

"The proposal seeks to provide a hard infrastructure which responds to the immediate needs of the community, but is also the root of growth in a context where change in landscape, resources and community occurs at varying speeds. In particular the project examines the potential development of Port Churchill as well as a major international port in the Northwest Passage and how this can create a network of small ports, at existing communities, along the west coast of Hudson’s Bay."

Rendering of New Infrastructure Typology in Igloolik by Lubell and Phull. (via Infranet Lab)

Canada has been preparing for an ice-free Arctic and asserting its sovereignty for a few years (the military operations in Resolute Bay were announced back in 2007), and this week Anita Dey Nuttall at the Edmonton Journal published an update on Canada's plans in the Arctic: "Canada Stakes a Claim to Arctic Power, Influence"

As the Canadian military exercise Operation Nanook 10 drew to a close this week and Prime Minister Stephen Harper travelled in Canada's North, the federal government made two key announcements that sum up the country's main Arctic priorities.

Both the statement on Canada's Arctic foreign policy and confirmation of the location of the long-awaited High Arctic Research Station in Cambridge Bay place Arctic sovereignty and Arctic science at the heart of Canada's resolve to exercise power and influence in the circumpolar region and indeed in the wider international community.

Added to this, the formal apology to Inuit last week for the government's controversial High Arctic relocation program in the 1950s suggests hope for a new chapter in relations with Inuit communities and organizations.

[...]

As climate change makes the Arctic more accessible, and as energy companies assess the oil and gas development potential in Canada's northern territories, the gaps in Canada's infrastructure in the North, both civilian and military, have been brought into sharp focus. This underscores the urgent need for Canada to organize and augment its defence, civic and scientific facilities in the North to enable good governance and responsible stewardship -- key pieces in exercising its sovereignty in the Arctic. Responding to this, recent moves by the government have therefore included plans for investing in new patrol ships, the building of a berthing and refuelling facility in Nanisivik, expanding the size and capabilities of the Canadian Rangers, and establishing a new Canadian Forces Arctic Training Centre in Resolute Bay.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited Operation NANOOK 10 on August 25, 2010, a major sovereignty exercise conducted by the Canadian Forces, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian Coast Guard and other government departments and agencies in Canada’s North. (via Prime Minister of Canada Website)

For more on the new Arctic Research Station mentioned above, see Hannah Hoag's story for Nature News: "Canada Picks Site for Arctic Research Station"

After months of deliberation, the Canadian government has chosen Cambridge Bay — a hamlet midway along the Northwest Passage in the country's far north — as the site for a world-class Arctic research station.

Once built, the station will house scientists all year round, giving them a modern space to study Arctic issues, including climate change and natural resources. It will host conference facilities and laboratories for research on marine biology and geophysics, provide ecologists with the space to do long-term ecological monitoring in aquaria and greenhouses, and give researchers in the health and social sciences a base for their studies.

Cambridge Bay, a hamlet in Canada's far north, is marked by the red point. (Image via Google Maps)

Related stories in the Worldchanging archives:

• Preparing for an Ice-Free Arctic: Part 1 - China's Growing Interest in the Thawing North
  
• Preparing for an Ice-Free Arctic: Part 2 - The Commercial Lure of Melting Ice
  
• Preparing for an Ice-Free Arctic: Part 3 - Charting Political Waters

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(Posted by Amanda Reed in Climate Change at 3:30 PM)

We need a better understanding of the 'environmentalist's paradox' - Why is human well-being improving globally when our environmental woes appear to be worsening all the time?

by Leo Hickman

We hear lots of concerned chatter these days – not least, here on this site - about peak oil, peak water, deforestation, resource depletion and the like, but a popular riposte offered by those doubting such concerns is something commonly referred to as the "Environmentalist's Paradox".

The argument goes thus: "Why, despite resource depletion and the degradation of ecosystems, is average human well-being improving globally?"

People such as Matt Ridley, author of the Rational Optimist, argue that environmentalists are needlessly downbeat about humanity's prospects. After all, we are a resourceful, adaptable, highly intelligent species more than capable of riding out any current concerns (if only we would de-shackle ourselves from free-market constraints).

As a counterpoint, we have the likes of Jared Diamond, author of Collapse, arguing that we should heed the lessons provided by failed civilisations of the past who extinguished themselves by over-exploiting their available natural resources.

The latest edition of the journal BioScience includes a fascinating paper which examines just this paradox. (hat tip: Scientific American.) "Untangling the Environmentalist's Paradox" (the PDF is available here free until it disappears behind a paywall in a month's time), co-authored by a team of scientists led by Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne of McGill University, lays out in detail the conflicting indices which underpin the paradox. The editorial introducing the article sets the scene:

Studies including the influential Millennium Ecosystem Assessment have concluded that the capacity of ecosystems to produce many ecosystem services is now low. Depletion of ecosystem services is expected to mean fewer benefits to humans, thus decreasing human well-being. Yet the composite Human Development Index, a widely used metric that incorporates measures of literacy, life expectancy, and income, has improved markedly since the mid-1970s in both rich and poor nations. The index correlates strongly with other measures of prosperousness. Some measures of personal security buck the upward trend, but the overall improvement in well-being cannot, it seems, be denied. Does this paradox mean that concern about ecosystem services is overblown?

The authors then present four hypotheses that might help to explain the environmentalist's paradox. Here is their summary:

1. Critical dimensions of human well-being have not been captured adequately, and human well-being is actually declining. Measures of well-being that suggest it has increased are wrong or incomplete. 2. Provisioning ecosystem services, such as food production, are most significant for human well-being; therefore, if food production per capita increases, human well-being will also increase, regardless of declines in other services. 3. Technology and social innovation have decoupled human well-being from the state of ecosystems to the extent that human well-being is now less dependent on ecosystem services. 4. There is a time lag after ecosystem service degradation before human well-being is negatively affected. Loss of human well-being caused by current declines in services has therefore not yet occurred to a measurable extent.

The authors effectively dismiss the first hypothesis, arguing that there is a large body of evidence to support the notion that human wellbeing is, on average, improving. As might be expected, the authors support the second hypothesis. With the third, they conclude that the available evidence suggests that the "decoupling" argument can't be supported.

But perhaps the most intriguing hypothesis – for me, at least – is the fourth. Can the environmentalist's paradox be explained away by the fact that there is a time lag between when we degrade our finite natural resources and when our well-being begins to be negatively affected? If so, what is this period of time likely to be? And will the transitional descent - when/if it finally begins - be slow or rapid? The answers to these questions will surely be key to working out who will ultimately prove to be correct out of the Diamonds or the Ridleys of this world.

When I think about this time lag I can't help but be reminded of the set-piece scene from the Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit cartoon, The Wrong Trousers. Gromit, Wallace's canny dog, finds himself having to lay track as fast as he can in front of himself to ensure the toy train he's riding on remains in hot pursuit of the jewel-thief penguin escaping with a diamond. (Go to 1:28 on this video.) Using this as a metaphor, can humans keep laying the train track in front of them fast enough to avoid a nasty derailment? Can we keep perpetually delaying our fall and decline? The authors of the paper seem to be suggesting that our chances of doing so are diminishing all the time as the world becomes increasingly globalised:

There is growing evidence of approaching resource collapses in certain regions of the world, but less is known about how system- or service-specific collapses may interact with one other and result in major impacts on global human well-being. Local or regional collapses may lead to cascading problems associated with forced human migration and resource competition, which could have global-scale effects on human well-being. Alternatively, market forces and trade rules could cause rapid destabilization in resource markets, leading to outcomes such as the multiple food, oil, and financial crises of 2008, which took the world by surprise. The global financial crisis of 2008 also demonstrates the connectivity of the global economy, and the capacity of globalized systems to undergo abrupt and surprising declines. Whether human well-being will suffer at the global scale will depend on how humans adapt to ecosystem degradation and its associated collapses over the next few decades…

Highly adaptable human societies have at times successfully staved off the effects of environmental degradation by importing ecosystem services from other regions, enhancing the supply of ecosystem services in some areas, exporting negative impacts to other locations, and making more efficient use of ecosystem services.

However, evidence suggests that future adaptation will be different and probably more difficult, as resources near depletion at the global scale. Previously available options for migration and translocations of resource use are increasingly constrained by the scope of human use of the biosphere.

As you might expect with any academic paper, there are the necessary caveats and calls for further research. As Timothy M. Beardsley, BioScience's editor in chief, says in his editorial:

"The authors' conclusions are limited by the geographically aggregated nature of their data, and BioScience will publish commentary on aspects of their analysis in a future issue. Yet the article clearly strengthens the case for research that integrates human well-being, agriculture, technology, and time lags affecting ecosystem services."

Agreed: it's certainly a subject that I for one would welcome much more nuanced, detailed research and discussion.

This post originally appeared on The Guardian

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Biodiversity and Ecosystems at 12:45 PM)

Editor's Note: A couple weeks ago we posted a piece by Alex Aylett reporting on Portugal's impressive percentage of renewable electricity supply. Below, we revisit Portugal's renewable energy success and explore how their planning policies helped them make such impressive gains in renewable energy production with a repost from Worldwatch...

by Alexander Ochs and Camille Serre

Typically, the Scandinavian countries and Germany have set the example in the European renewables field. Yet lately, a Southern country - Portugal - has attracted attention after delivering its National Renewable Energy Action Plan to the European Commission this June.

Portugal has made dramatic changes in its energy policy over the last five years under the government of Prime Minister José Sócrates. The country's installed renewable energy capacity more than tripled between 2004 and 2009, from 1,220 megawatts (MW) to 4,307 MW, and renewables now represent roughly 36 percent of electricity consumed. Portugal currently ranks fourth in Europe in energy production from renewables.

Of course, Portugal benefits from favorable conditions for renewables: a strong wind resource, great hydropower, good tidal waves potential, and a high sunshine rate. After the country removed several dams in recent years, Sócrates' government has focused instead on wind power development, under most conditions the cheapest renewable energy source after hydropower. With more than 600-percent growth in wind energy production between 2004 and 2009, Portugal now ranks sixth in Europe in total installed capacity and third in capacity per capita, behind only Denmark and Spain. Some even expect Portugal to overtake its neighbor Spain in per-capita wind energy production as early as this year.

Additionally, Portugal is starting to exploit its solar potential. A photovoltaic (PV) power station located in Moura, operative since 2008 and expected to be fully completed by the end of 2010, will count among the world's largest solar farms. But despite a great progression of installed PV capacity in Portugal (from 1 MW in 2000 to 75 MW in 2009), solar power still lags far behind wind's installed capacity of 3,353 MW. Portugal also deploys other renewable energies, albeit at a much smaller scale. Biomass and biogas represented 3.2 percent of total consumed electricity in 2009, and the world's first shoreline wave power plant has been operating since 2005 on the island of Pico in the Azores, with 400 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of capacity.

How did Portugal assume such impressive leadership in the clean energy transition? The key, as usual, lies in ambitious supportive policies. Prior to 2000, Portugal's transmission lines were owned by private power companies that had no interest in investing in renewables, as the deployment of these technologies would require radical changes in the grid infrastructure and therefore raise costs. To address this barrier, the government bought the lines and began adapting the grid to renewables requirements, including more flexibility and a better grid connection in remote areas to allow the production and distribution of electricity from small generators, such as domestic solar panels.

A combination of incentives was implemented to attract investors. Feed-in tariffs (FIT) - which guarantee producers of renewable energy a specified price for every megawatt-hour of power fed into the grid - were first introduced in Portugal in 1988 and have increasingly evolved into a highly sophisticated system with individual prices for each renewable energy source. The latest tariff stipulations, issued in 2005 and 2007, take into account environmental considerations, the level of technology development, and the inflation rate. The government also integrated new technologies such as Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) and tidal power into the system.

Today, all renewable energy sources in Portugal will benefit from the feed-in tariff for 15 years, and small hydro-power prices are guaranteed for 20 years. The tariffs vary from around 7.5 Euro cents (around 9.5 U.S. cents) per kWh for wind and hydro to more than 30 Euro cents (38 U.S. cents) per kWh for photovoltaic energy. Renewable heating and cooling is also supported under conditions by financial and fiscal incentives, largely for the benefit of small and medium-sized enterprises.

The European Commission plays a decisive role in setting targets for each Member State via its 2009 Renewable Energy Directive. Portugal is expected to reach a 31-percent share of renewable energy in its gross final energy consumption by 2020. Also, the European Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) encourages participating countries to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases and therefore move from fossil fuels to renewables, by requiring energy producers and energy-intensive companies to meet strict carbon dioxide emissions targets and to purchase additional permits for overshooting them.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Portugal became a net power exporter last year, delivering a small amount of electricity to Spain. Inspired by these good results, Portugal set more ambitious targets in its National Energy Strategy (ENE 2020), adopted by the Council of Ministers on April 15. The country now aims to reach a 45-percent renewables share in its electricity production by the end of the year, and a 60-percent share by 2020.

The main focus of Portugal's renewable policy will remain on wind power, a dynamic industry that represents a source of revenue and creates green jobs. The electricity operator Energias de Portugal even invests in wind farms located in the U.S. Midwest.

Prime Minister Jose Socrates' government wants to improve the reliability and efficiency of Portugal's renewables supply. Renewable energy production is often challenged by natural flows-including the common criticism that the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow, even in Portugal. By the end of the year, the government will set up a system to monitor on-going energy demand and potential supply from various available renewable sources.

What is driving Portugal to undertake such changes? One factor, of course, is the fact that the country does not possess any noteworthy fossil fuel resources, as illustrated by 2007 IEA data. Yet in 2005, the bulk of Portugal's gross electricity was generated by three fossil sources: coal (32.7%), natural gas (29.2%), and oil (18.9%). The country is therefore heavily dependent on imports that place a high toll on the national budget - amounting to 86 percent of spending in 2006, according to the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC). In its ENE 2020 strategy, Portugal aims to reduce fossil fuel imports 70 percent by 2020 and cut its energy import balance 25 percent, saving some US$2.55 billion.

In order to address initial local conflicts due to the financial costs of intense development of wind power plants, a unique mechanism has been set up. Under the current feed-in tariff legislation, municipalities that host wind farms benefit from additional financial support in the form of a 2.5-percent share of the monthly remuneration paid to local wind project operators.

Overall, the IEA's Shinji Fujino tells the New York Times, "So far, the [renewable energy] program has placed no stress on the national budget."

Alexander Ochs is director of the Climate and Energy program at the Worldwatch Institute and Camille Serre is a research intern with Worldwatch. They can be reached at aochs@worldwatch.org.

Photo courtesy Richard Gillespie: Portugal’s countryside has been dotted with new wind farms, increasing wind energy production by 600 percent from 2004-2009.

This article originally appeared on Worldwatch's ReVolt blog.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Energy at 11:30 AM)

Heather Blanchard, Noel Dickover and Andrew Turner from Crisis Commons visited the Berkman Center Tuesday to discuss the rapidly growing technology and crisis response space. Crisis Commons, Andrew tells us, came in part from the recognition that the volunteers who respond to crises aren’t necessarily amateurs. They include first responders, doctors, CEOs...and lately, they include a lot of software developers.

Recent technology “camps” – Transparency Camp, Government 2.0 Camp – sparked discussion about whether there should be a crisis response camp. Crisis Camp was born in May, 2009 with a two-day event in Washington DC which brought together a variety of civic hackers who wanted to share knowledge around crisis technology and response. The World Bank took notice and ended up hosting the Ignite sessions associated with the camp, giving developers a chance to put ideas for crisis response in front of people who often end up providing funds to rebuild after crises.

The World Bank wasn’t the only large group interested in working with crisis hackers. Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft came together to found the Random Hacks of Kindness event, designed to let programmers “hack for humanity” in marathon sessions around the world.

While these events preceded the earthquake earlier this year in Haiti, that crisis was the seminal event in increasing interest in participating in technology for crisis relief efforts. A crisis camp to respond to the Haitian earthquake involved 400 participants in five cities and pioneered 13 projects. Over time, the crisis camp model spread to Argentina, Chile and New Zealand, with developers focused on building tools for use in Haiti, Chile and Pakistan. Blanchard explained that the events provided space for people who “didn’t want to contribute money – they wanted to do something.”

The camps had some tangible outcomes:

• I’m Okay, a simple application that allows people to easily tell friends and family that they’re okay, in an emergency situation, was developed at Random Hacks of Kindness
  
• Tradui, an English/Kreyol dictionary for the Android was developed during the Crisis camps
  
• Crisis camps also developed a better routing protocol to enable point to point wireless between camps in Haiti, writing new drivers in 48 hours that were optimized for the long ping times associated with using WiFi over multi-kilometer distances

Perhaps the most impressive collaboration to come from the Crisis Camps was work on OpenStreetMap for Port au Prince. Using satellite imagery released by the UN, a team created a highly detailed map, leveraging the work of non-programmers to trace roads on the satellite images and diasporans to identify and name landmarks and streets. As the map improved in quality, the volunteers were eventually able to offer routing information for relief trucks, based on road damage that was visible on the satellite imagery. A convoy would request a route for a 4-ton water truck, and volunteers would use their bird’s eye view of the situation – from half a continent away – to suggest the safest route. Ultimately, the government of Haiti requested access to the information, and Crisis Camps provided not only the data, but training in using it.

The conversation turned to the challenges Crisis Camps have faced in making their model work:

• About 1/3rd of the participants are programmers. The others range from the “internet savvy” to those with complementary skill.
  
• Problems and requirements are often poorly defined
  
• It’s challenging to match volunteers to projects
  
• There’s a shortage of sustainable project management and leadership
  
• Projects often suffer from undocumented requirements and code, few updates on project status.
  
• Little work focuses on usability, privacy and security.
  
• Code licensing often isn’t carefully considered, and issues can arise about reusability of code on a licensing basis.
  
• Projects can be disconnected from what’s needed on the ground
  
• Disconnection happens in part because relief organizations don’t know what they want and need and are too busy to work with an untested, unproven community
  
• Volunteer fatigue – the surge of interest after a disaster tends to dissipate within four weeks
  
• There’s a lack of metrics and performance standards to evaluate project success.

The goal is to move from a Bar Camp/Hackathon model to a model that’s able to build sustainable projects. This means bringing project management into the mix, and asking hard questions like, “Does this project have a customer? Is it filling a well-defined need?” It also means building trust with crisis response organizations and groups like the World Bank and FEMA, who can help bring volunteer technology groups and crisis response groups together.

Crisis Commons see themselves as mediating between three groups: crisis response organizations like the Red Cross; volunteer technology organizations like OpenStreetMap; and private sector companies willing to donate resources. Each group has a set of challenges they face in engaging with these sorts of projects.

Crisis response organizations have a difficult time incorporating informal, ad-hoc citizen organizations into their emergency response plans. There’s a notion in the crisis response space of “operating rogue” if you’re not formally affiliated with an established relief organization… which further marginalizes volunteer tech communities. Many CROs have little tech understanding, which means they aren’t able to make informed decisions about collaboration with technical volunteers. In a very real way, crises are economic opportunities for relief organizations – that reality doesn’t breed resource sharing, which in turn, gets in the way of sharing best practices and lessons learned.

Volunteer tech communities frequently don’t understand the processes used by CROs, and frequently fail to understand that there’s often a good reason for those processes. While VTCs provide tremendous surge capacity that could help CROs, if there’s no good way for CROs to use this surge capacity, it’s a waste of effort on all sides. At the same time, tech communities inevitably suffer from the “CNN effect” – when crises are out of sight, they’re out of mind, and participation slumps. This is particularly challenging for managing long-term projects… and tech communities have massive project management and resource needs. Finally, successful VTCs can find themselves in a situation where they have a conflict of interest – they’re seeking paid work from relief organizations and may choose to cooperate only with those who can support them in the long term.

Private sector partners are usually participating in these projects led by their business development or corporate social responsibility divisions… while cooperation with the other entities often requires technical staff. Response organizations are often the clients of private sector players – the Red Cross is a major customer for information systems – which can create financial conflicts of interest. And working with large technology companies often raises intellectual property challenges, especially around joint development of software.

Meeting with a subset of crisis response organizations, Crisis Commons understands that there’s a need for long term relationships between tech volunteers and relief organizations, tapping the innovation power of these charitably minded geeks. But this requires relief organizations to know what solutions are already out there and what are reasonable requests to make of volunteers. And volunteer organizations need to understand the processes CROs have and how to work within them.

The hope for Crisis Commons is to become an “independent, nonpartisan honest broker” that can “bridge the ecosystem and matrix the resources.” This means “translating requirements of the CRO to the crisis crowd, helping the public understand CRO requirements,” and the reasons behind them. This could lead towards being able to set up a service like “Crisis Turk”, which could allow internet savvy non-programmers to engage in data entry tasks during a crisis.

In the long term, Crisis Commons might emerge as an international forum for standards development and data sharing around crises. Building capacity that could be active between crises, not just during them, they could direct research projects on lessons learned from prior disaster relief, could build a data library and begin preparing operations centers and emergency response teams for future crises. Some scenarios could involve managing physical spaces to encourage cooperation within and between volunteer tech teams and providing support for future innovation through a technology incubation program.

---

Starting from the shared premise the Crisis Commons founders presented us with – “Anyone can help in a crisis” – the discussion at Berkman focused on the structure Crisis Commons might take. The goal behind a “commons” structure is to be able to be an independent and trusted actor in the long term, to be able to be objective source of tech requirements, and to be able to bring non-market solutions to the table. But the founders realize that this is an inherently competitive space, and that volunteer organizations might find themselves in conflict with professional software developers in providing support to relief organizations, or with relief organizations if volunteer organizations began providing direct support.

It’s also possible that another player in the space could compete with Crisis Commons in this matchmaking role. Red Cross could develop an in-house technology team focused on collaborating with technology volunteers. Google could use the power of their tech resources to provide services directly to relief organizations. A partnership like Random Hacks of Kindness could emerge as the powerful leader in the space. Other volunteer technology organizations – Crisis Mappers, Strong Angel – might see themselves providing this bridging function. FEMA could start a private-public partnership under the NET Guard program. What’s the sweet spot for Crisis Commons?

One of our participants suggested that Crisis Commons could be valuable as a developer of standards, working to train the broader community about the importance of standards, and on the challenge of defining problems where solutions would benefit a broad community.

Another participant, who’d been involved with several Crisis Camp events worried that “the apps, while neat, never really made it into the field,” suggesting that the problems raised are real, not theoretical. It’s genuinely very difficult for tech volunteers to know what problems to work on… and hard for relief organizations under tremendous pressure to learn how to use these new tools.

This, I pointed out, is the problem that could prove most challenging for Crisis Commons in the long term. When crises arise, people want to help… but it’s critical that their help actually be… helpful. Clay Shirky told the story of his student, Jorge Just, who’s worked closely with UNICEF to develop RapidFTR, a family tracking and reunification tool. It’s been a long, engaged process with enormous amounts of time needed for the parties to understand each other’s needs and working methods… and it’s easy to understand why it might be difficult to convince volunteers to participate to this depth in a project.

I offered an observation from my time working on Geekcorps – I meet a lot of geeks who are convinced that the tech they’re most interested in – XML microformats, mesh wireless, cryptographic voting protocols – are precisely what the world needs to solve some pressing crisis. Occasionally, they’re right. Often, they’re more attached to their tech of choice than to addressing the crisis in question.

As such, the toughest job is defining problems and matching geeks to problems. At Geekcorps, it often took six months to design a volunteer assignment, and a talented tech person needed to meet several times with a tech firm to understand needs, brainstorm projects and create a scope of work, so we could recruit the right volunteer. While that model was expensive – and ultimately, made Geekcorps unsustainable – I think aspects of it could help Crisis Commons find a place in the world.

I ended up suggesting that Crisis Commons act as:

• a consultant to relief organizations, helping them define their technical needs, understand what was already available commercially and non-commercially and to frame needs to volunteer communities who could assist them
  
• a matchmaking service that connected volunteer orgs to short term and long term tech needs, preferably ones that had been clearly defined through a collaborative process
  
• a repository for best practices, collective knowledge about what works in this collaboration.

Unclear that this is the right solution for Crisis Commons or the road they’ll follow, but I came away with a strong sense that they are wrestling with the right questions in figuring out how to be most effective in this space. Very much looking forward to discovering what they come up with.

This post originally appeared on Ethan's blog My hearts in Accra.

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(Posted by Ethan Zuckerman in Communications and Networking at 11:00 AM)

Looking back one, two and five years ago today on Worldchanging:

2009
Solar Panels To Boost Property Prices
Joe Romm argues that "as peak oil kicks in and the reality of human-caused climate change becomes painfully clear, energy efficiency, geothermal heat pumps, solar panels and the like will increasingly be seen as a desirable if not essential elements of a home, like an up-to-date kitchen, rather than just a cost...”

2009
If It Makes Money, It's Not a 'Cost'!
A vintage Worldchanging essay where Alan AtKisson writes that when it comes to spending money on the environment, it's not a cost -- it's an investment...

2005
XAccess
Jamais Cascio reports on the non-profit XAccess, which makes a cargo-bike add-on available at low or no cost to in the developing world...

Other recent "look backs":
August 31
September 1
September 2

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Energy at 10:30 AM)

Michael Eliason and Aaron Yankauskas, of Brute Force Collaborative, have a great case-study up on a recently completed 'Passivhaus' housing project in the Lodenareal complex in Innsbruck, Austria

Developed by Neue Heimat Tirol and designed by architekturwerkstatt din a4 with team k2 architekten, the new building will provide well designed and highly energy efficient homes for low-income residents:

Pushing for low-tech solutions, low operation and heating costs, and energy independence – Neue Heimat Tirol sounds like an incredible organization to work with. These strategies allow them to work with some stellar architects, producing quality buildings for those that might not otherwise be able to afford it. The Lodenareal complex is expected to save an astonishing 680 tons of CO2 per year. This is an area where Passivhaus really shines – nearly achieving 2030 Challenge now, at costs slightly more than code minimum buildings. We predict that larger housing estates meeting passivhaus will become the norm, as cities and developers realize significant cost savings can be achieved through these schemes.

Those are some impressive stats! Click here to see the full case-study and learn more about the construction assemblies and heating systems, as well as find more images and links to further information on the project.

For another good case study by Michael Eliason and Aaron Yankauskas, see: "Freiburg: A Model of Sustainability"

Photos by Christoph Lackner; via Brute Force Collaborative

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(Posted by Amanda Reed in Green Building at 1:30 PM)

Grist has a new series of interviews up on people who are working to change America's food system in inspiring ways. Yesterday they posted an interview with Gene Fredericks that is worth a read; it introduces Fredericks's new venture: Big Green Boxes.

Big Green Boxes aims to bring a new, high-tech, and sustainable approach to feeding the city. The main idea is to re-use vacant warehouse spaces and fill them with fish ponds, waterfalls, and edible greens and herbs to provide year-round fresh and affordable produce in a closed-loop nutrient cycle. As Fredericks describes it:

It's a new business that will transform unused warehouse space into year-round indoor growing centers. We'll use hydroponics and aquaponics, along with advanced low-energy lighting techniques and vertical growing methods, to produce the very freshest leafy greens for local consumption regardless of climate.

Our goal is to be a sustainable and profitable business that provides tasty, preservative- and pesticide-free fresh food, grown in the community for the community; that creates new jobs; revives some neglected real estate; and offers some pretty interesting educational exposure to green technologies.

What makes Big Green Boxes different from many other urban agriculture projects is its high-tech business approach:

Well, I look at Big Green Boxes as a high-tech business. But it's a very different one from large-scale farming, which has turned into a high-tech business by growing produce in huge volumes far from the end consumer, and which uses technology to modify, preserve, package, transport, and store their produce. BGB could change that. By using a combination of very new and very old technologies, local communities can grow their own fresh produce year round.

Additionally, BGB will take advantage of innovations in lighting, daylighting, alternative energy generation, water collection, and composting to make their growing spaces more energy efficient than greenhouses....with even more efficiencies expected to develop over time:

Ten years ago, Big Green Boxes was not economically or technologically feasible. Now it is. And, as the price of the equipment goes down, the price of oil and water go up it becomes more and more desirable. I know we are creating a somewhat artificial growing environment, and I don't ever expect that we'll replace outdoor seasonal growing, that's not our intention. But in the dead of winter and height of summer we can offer an alternative to sending fresh produce on a 1,500-mile pilgrimage from the fields to the table. Which has to be a good thing!

Read the full interview for more on BGB, including a description of their 'aquaponics' growing system.

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(Posted by Amanda Reed in Food and Farming at 12:00 PM)

Looking back one, two and five years ago today on Worldchanging:

2009
The Cruel Cost of Clunkers
Suzie Boss reports on the hidden social cost of maintaining clunker cars and how one innovative non-profit, Bonnie CLAC, is working to improve the lives of low-income families by getting them reliable, fuel-efficient vehicles...

2009
Free Data. Big Picture. Very Cool.
Which countries are healthiest, wealthiest and most educated? The Gapminder knows...

2005
The Human Storm
Jon Lebkowsky reflects on the social chaos of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath and the painful lessons the storm and the human response to it, can teach us about the kinds of planning and preparation needed to respond to future catastrophic 21st century weather events...

Other recent "look backs":
August 30
August 31
September 1

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Climate Change at 10:00 AM)

The time to act on climate change is now. In that light, a new campaign called FOUR YEARS.GO. has been started to inspire action towards a more environmentally sustainable and socially just planet in the next four years. As they say in their introductory video (see below), the campaign is not a new organization, rather it is a new goal for every organization and for every person to work together in a short amount of time for a better future. Their mantra? "The next four years will determine our planet's next 1,000." So GO!

The campaign is still in its infancy, but it's powerhouse creative team, led by Wieden+Kennedy, the minds behind Nike's "Just Do It" campaign and Lance Armstrong's "Live Strong" yellow bracelet campaign, should help the campaign gain a wider audience and develop more tools for facilitating action. If you'd like to pledge your support, share your stories, or read other people's actions, click here.

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(Posted by Amanda Reed in Movement Building and Activism at 1:45 PM)

For those who – like me – missed the news on Monday: the world's most well known climate change skeptic has done a dramatic about face.

Bjorn Lomborg's 1998 book “The Skeptical Environmentalist” has been a pillar for critics of climate science and policy. He has made a high profile for himself by taking a strip off of pretty much anyone – from the media to the IPCC – who has called for rapid action on climate change. But on Monday in an exclusive interview with The Guardian, he called climate change "undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today" and proposed a global carbon tax to help address the issue.

If that all seems a bit fishy, it's worth remembering that Lomborg never argued that man-made climate change was a fiction. His point has been that, if you do a cost-benefit analysis, dealing with climate change is just too expensive. You get more bang for your buck by focusing policies and money on poverty, disease, and development aid. These in the end give you more immediate positive returns both in terms of human welfare and the environment.

"Energy Miracles" Part 2
Lomborg isn't the first high profile figure to shift his focus from global inequality to climate change. In February Bill Gates announced that the new mission of his foundation (whose core focus is on development and disease) would be to reduce human carbon emissions to zero by 2050. At the time that was a surprising and inspiring move. As was pointed out earlier on WorldChanging, simply by saying “zero carbon by 2050” Gates has helped mainstream what is really our only sensible target. Lomborg's new position may have a similar impact.

Also like Gates, Lomborg is calling for a dramatic investment (to the tune of $100bn per year) in research and development of new renewable energy technologies – an argument that he makes in more detail in an upcoming book. (Gates proposed a $10 billion-a-year U.S. government R&D program to pursue “energy miracles.”) And like Gates, I'd say, Lomborg has (again) got his priorities wrong.

More Results - Less Sex Appeal
Looking for a silver-bullet breakthrough energy technology is romantic and adventurous. But the boring truth is that what we need to focus on right now is market and regulatory barriers.

Not so sexy, I know. I'd rather be driving a Tesla roadster too. But as it stands, new energy technologies enter the market at a snails pace. Royal Dutch/Shell estimates that it takes “25 years after commercial introduction for a primary energy form to obtain a 1 percent share of the global market.” As Joe Romm, excellent climate blogger and energy expert, argued in response to Gates -- we just don't have that kind of time. Rapid effective action depends on getting existing technologies into the market as quickly as possible. It's from that point that practical experience drives innovation and costs really begin to drop. (See Romm's full post for a detailed look at this).

Pushing Deployment: North & South
For those of us working closer to the ground on these issue, the need to focus on getting rid of barriers to implementation is no surprise. Established technologies and established institutions can have a lot of inertia – especially in a sector like energy where the market and infrastructure already in place heavily favours outdated carbon intensive energy sources.

The extensive subsidies and financing options available in the US (but not in Canada) for home efficiency and renewable energy are one example of a way to deal with that. Municipal programs in cities like Berkeley and Portland offer other paths. Passing comprehensive federal clean energy legislation would be another.

But there is another reason why Lomborg's narrow focus on research makes little sense. Energy poverty, the lack of access to affordable reliable energy, is a key factor that keeps people in poverty world wide. Energy availability influences everything from health, to educational performance, to economic opportunities. From an urban perspective, the search for reliable access to energy is one of the factors that drives people into informal settlements around cities in some of the world's poorest countries.

A rapid roll-out of renewable energy technology is an affordable way to provide durable infrastructure to these communities. The push to deploy renewable energy in developing countries has been led both by governments and NGOs; two inspiring examples can be found in the Indian Solar Cities and Barefoot College programs.

There, just as much as in North America, what we need to focus on is doing more with what we've got -- and quickly.

This post originally appeared on Alex's blog openalex.

Photo of Bjorn Lomborg via The Guardian

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(Posted by Alex Aylett in Climate Change at 11:45 AM)

Looking back one, two and five years ago today on Worldchanging:

2009
The Rights of Future Generations
Alex examines the rights of future generations and wonders in what courts those rights might be defended, and how...

2009
Manifesta: Caring for Fungi and Pollution
Regine Debatty reviews two artistic architectural works at the Manifesta biennale that both explore waste residue...

2005
Smart Sprawl
Jamais Cascio reflects on Walter Siembab's idea of "Smart Sprawl," a networked approach to re-imagining and restructuring suburbs and cities...

Other recent "look backs":
August 27
August 30
August 31

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Imagining the Future at 11:00 AM)

The New Security Beat is on a roll of late, most recently running this short interview with Iraq’s first Minister of the Environment, Mashkat Al Moumi:

NSB: Iraq’s water minister recently called the water infrastructure situation “a threat to national security.” Would you agree with that assessment?...

MM: I definitely agree with Minister Latif Rasheed on his analysis. The lack of proper infrastructure to supply water aggravates the population against the government. The water supply situation was critical when I was in office. For example, according to the Ministry of Water Resources only 32% of the Iraqi population enjoys access to safe drinking and 19% enjoys access to a good sewage system.

Stories like these are really bringing home the point that environment, development and security issues are so intertwined in many cities as to be essentially the same issue (though we still address them with professional-silo-defined solutions).

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Water at 5:45 PM)

Cities need to plan for the future now by developing infrastructure and communities that make them resilient, rugged and adaptable to planetary changes. Coastal cities are particularly vulnerable to increased flooding from larger storm surges and sea level rise. And, as Bruce Stutz noted last year, "adapting to this reality has become a key part of future planning for London, Rotterdam, St. Petersburg, Tokyo, and Seattle, as well as low-lying cities across Asia" and New York City. Here's another waterfront city that is taking future-adaptive urban planning seriously: HafenCity.

HafenCity is marked by the red dot adjacent to Hamburg, Germany and along the river Elbe. | (Image captured with Bing Maps)

HafenCity, or Harbor City, is a new city quarter under development in the old harbor of Hamburg, along the river Elbe. It is one of the largest inner-city rebuilding projects in Europe and has been in development for over ten years already, with completion expected around 2020-2030. I'm not breaking any news here, yet I somehow had not heard of this development until I read this recent interview with Kristina Hill in which she lays out three design strategies for responding to climate change - protect, renew, and re-tool - and says that the 'protect' category of adaptive action is exemplified by the HafenCity development:

Hamburg...will allow flooding, but designed a major new part of the city to be resilient to high water, with water-proof parking garages, a network of emergency pedestrian walkways 20 feet above the street, and no residential units at ground level. Even the parks in this new Harbor City district are designed to withstand battering by waves and storm surge, either by floating as the waters rise, or by incorporating lots of hard surfaces that only need to be washed off when the waters recede.

Intriguing! I immediately started scanning the Net to learn more. Since HafenCity is such a large and long standing development project - it features building, bridge, and landscape designs from over 700 architects, including powerhouse names like Rem Koolhaas, Herzog & de Meuron, and Behnisch - it was easy to find well illustrated articles that discuss the development's architectural projects and overall sustainability features, but coverage of its water adaptation design strategies, with illustrative images, was sparse. This post is an attempt to remedy that lack. By looking through the development's official website, scouring Flickr, and exploring a selection of the architecture, landscape architecture and engineering firms' websites, I think I've been able to pull together a serviceable attempt at a visual case study of HafenCity's future-adaptive urban design strategies.

BASIC LAYOUT

Physical model of HafenCity looking east, with the new buildings in the development modeled in a light wood tone. Hamburg proper is connected to HafenCity by bridges to the north, and is primarily modeled in white. The old harbor warehouse district, Speicherstadt, runs east to west between Hamburg and the new HafenCity development to the south, and is primarily modeled in the darker wood tones. The new iconic concert hall, Elbphilharmonie, is visible as a translucent form above a darker wood base on the far right, and at the end of the pier. | (Image courtesy of Flickr/m.prinkle)

This diagram shows what parts of the HafenCity development have already been completed or are under construction, and which sites have been allocated or are ready for allocation. | (Image captured from page 2 of the PDF "HafenCity Hamburg Projects March 2010: Insights into Current Developments")

A diagram of the districts in HafenCity. | (Image captured from page 7 of the PDF "HafenCity Hamburg Projects March 2010: Insights into Current Developments"; titles enlarged to be readable here)

FLOOD PROTECTION >>> 5 Levels of Public Space
HafenCity and Speicherstadt lie to the south of the main Hamburg dike and are therefore susceptible to flooding. Rather than build new dikes, the developers incorporated other flood resilient and adaptive infrastructure into the actual construction of the roads, buildings and public spaces with the intention of both controlling flood waters and providing residents with waterfront access:

The intensive reciprocal interaction between land and water can be regarded as unique, for HafenCity will not be surrounded by dikes, nor cut off from the water. With the exception of the quays and promenades, the total area, i.e. streets, parks and development sites will be raised to 7.5 to 8 meters above sea level. This creates a new, characteristic topography, also maintaining access to the water and emphasizing its typical port atmosphere. ("HafenCity Hamburg Projects March 2010: Insights into Current Developments" [PDF], page 5)

Essentially, HafenCity has five occupiable public levels:

On the water: Floating docks are accessible at sea level, which changes twice daily:
The pontoons of the Traditional Ship Harbor provide a...level of urban perception which rises and falls with the tide. Since the water level of the River Elbe varies twice daily by more than 3 meters, depending on the ebb and flow of the tide, perception of the quarter is constantly changing. The relationship here between water level, quay walls and edges, pontoons, watercraft and buildings is continuously shifting.

This photo shows the Traditional Ship Harbor at Sandtorhafen. | (Photo: ELBE&FLUT; Source: HafenCity Hamburg GmbH)

Waterfront Promenades: Embankment promenades for walking and cycling are at 4 to 5.5 meters above sea level.

This photo shows a waterfront promenade in the Dalmannkai district. | (Photo: ELBE&FLUT; Source: HafenCity Hamburg GmbH)

This photo shows a waterfront promenade and the Vasco da Gama Plaza in the Dalmannkai district. These pathways are popular routes for bikers and walkers, and bring people right to the waters edge. | (Photo: Daniel Barthmann; Source: HafenCity Hamburg GmbH)

This photo shows a waterfront promenade in the Dalmannkai district with the higher street level and building plinths visible in the background. | (Photo: ELBE&FLUT; Source: HafenCity Hamburg GmbH)

Terraces: The Magellan and Marco Polo Terraces provide the largest public squares in the city, and creatively transition the public thoroughfares from the waterfront promenades to the street level.

Panorama of the Magellan Terraces. | (Photo by Roland Halbe; via Enric Miralles - Benedetta Tagliabue | EMBT Architects)

Aerial view of the Marco Polo Terraces looking north. The terraces face west towards the evening sun and descend in gradual steps to the water. | (Photo: T. C. Kraus; Source: HafenCity Hamburg GmbH)

Streets: All streets (and buildings) are built on artificially raised, flood-protected bases at around 7.5 to 8 meters above sea level.

This photo of a promenade in Dalmannkai shows all levels of public space, from water, to waterfront, to street level; it is clear how much higher the street level is than even the waterfront. A section of the raised plinth on which the streets and buildings sit is visible as a decorated wall in the mid-ground of this photo. | (Photo: T. C. Kraus; Source: HafenCity Hamburg GmbH)

The flood-protected base of the Headquarters of Germanischer Lloyd building, in the Brooktorhai district, stands out dramatically in the water. | (Image via gmp-architekten)

Above the streets: In addition to the street level, there are higher elevations of occupiable space, some public and some private. A new public plaza is being built at 37 meters above sea level as part of the new Elbphilharmonie.

This rendering shows the design of the new concert hall, Elbphilharmonie, with a public plaza occupying the space between the old Warehouse A structure and new glass building above. | (Rendering: © Herzog & de Meuron; via Elbphilharmonie website)

The 'above the streets' level of the private realm is also characterized by residential units, which all start at one-story above street level.

This photo shows residential units overhanging a waterfront promenade in Am Sandtorkai/Dalmannkai. The building plinth wall is visible on the left; street level and the first floor of the buildings start at the top of the white portion of the wall. Residential units begin one-story above street level, and here, appear over two-stories above the waterfront promenade. | (via Flickr/iPhotography)

LEVEL CHANGES: Water-to-Street with Terraces, Old-to-New with Bridges and Stairs;

Because HafenCity has so many different levels of public space there are many interesting points of interaction between levels. In HafenCity quarter proper, the terraces are the sites of the most dramatic places of transition. They link the waterfront to the streets above; stepping up from sea level (0 m), to promenade level (4.5 m) to street level (7.5 m).

A view of the Magellan Terraces in Am Sandtorkai/Dalmannkai. | (Photo: ELBE&FLUT; Source: HafenCity Hamburg GmbH)

Another dramatic point of level change occurs between the old historic district of Speicherstadt and HafenCity along Am Sandtorkai street. While all the streets in HafenCity that are south of Am Sandtorkai are raised at 7.5 to 8 meters above sea level, Am Sandtorkai remains at its historic level. In consequence, bridges and stairs are necessary to navigate these level changes.

Photo shows the dramatic difference in street levels between Speicherstadt and HafenCity proper. | (via Flickr/madle-fotowelt.de)

Birds eye photo looking west up Am Sandtorkai | (Photo via Bing Maps)

These photos show the Am Sandtorkai street that runs between the old Speicherstadt district (right) and the new Am Sandtorkai district (left). The street itself is at the historic level of the Speicherstadt, but the new new buildings in Am Sandtorkai are elevated on flood-secure plinths. The top image shows the street in dry conditions and the lower image shows it in a flood. | (Top image captured from page 13 of the PDF "HafenCity Hamburg Projects March 2010: Insights into Current Developments." Lower image via HafenCity Hamburg; © ELBE&FLUT)

Another photo of Am Sandtorkai street during a flood. The doors of the "flood gates" to the lower levels of the buildings, where much of the parking garages are located, are visible at the base of each building. | (via Miniatur Wunderland)

The bridges and stairs along Kibbelstegbrucke are a particularly striking example of how Speicherstadt and HafenCity come together.

Kibbelstegbrucke | (Birds eye photo from the east, looking west via Bing Maps)

Bridge and stairs on Kibbelstegbrucke | (via Flickr/Eichental)

The Kibbelsteg bridges are also an integral part of the safety infrastructure of HafenCity. As the bridge engineers note:

In order to make the new areas of the HafenCity accessible to fire protection and first aid services, there is a need for a new network of pathways at 7.5 m above sea level. The Kibbelsteg bridges connect this network to the high tide protected areas of the inner city, crossing the Zollkanal, the Brooksfleet, and the “Am Sandtorkai“ street.

Kibbelsteg Bridge | (Image captured from page 48 of the PDF "HafenCity Hamburg Projects March 2010: Insights into Current Developments")

CONCLUSION
HafenCity reveals one approach to tackling future-adaptive urban development. The raised roadways and buildings, water resilient surfaces, floating waterfront promenades, terraced landscapes and bridges all work together as important infrastructure and create an architecturally vibrant district that connects residents to the waterfront -- while also making the whole area resilient in the face of more frequent flooding.

In addition to its water adaptive design strategies, HafenCity exemplifies many other sustainable urban planning ideas. It is dense, walkable, bikeable, served by public transit, and full of multi-use buildings and public spaces. Much of the land was formerly brownfields and has now been cleaned and developed. Additionally, the historic character of the area is honored: many buildings in the neighboring Speicherstadt area have been refurbished (see the International Maritime Museum for one example); and some buildings in HafenCity proper, like the new concert hall, adaptively reuse existing buildings.

I'm very excited to learn more about this project and I'd welcome reader feedback from any of you who've visited (or even live there!). Is the project as great as it seems?

Did anyone attend the recent "Watercities in Transition" conference where HafenCity was presented as an example of flood resistant urban design? Please let me know what you learned in the comments below!

...

Note to local Seattlites: If you're interested in waterfront design, mark your calendars for Wednesday, September 15! The four shortlisted teams working on designs for reshaping Seattle's waterfront will present their designs to the public that evening from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. at Benaroya Hall.

...

LINKS OF INTEREST

Other 'sea-level rise' urban design projects:

• New York After the Seas Rise | Yale Environment 360, 19 Apr 10
  
• Sea Change 2030: Three First Prize Winners Re-Imagine Sydney Harbor for Rising Seas | Amanda Reed, 10 Aug 10

Selection of HafenCity websites:

• Developer: HafenCity Hamburg GmbH
  
• Master Plan: A revised Masteplan for HafenCity - Background and Goals
  
• Brochures and working papers on HafenCity: HafenCity Publications

Architects, Landscape Architects, and Engineers of HafenCity:

• Architects of the Magellan (2005) and Marco Polo (2007) Terraces, 2005: Enric Miralles - Benedetta Tagliabue | EMBT Architects and WES International GmbH Landscape Architects
  
• Architect of the Kibbelsteg Bridges: gmp von Gerkan, Marg + Partner
  
• Architect of the International Maritime Museum, 2008: MRLV Architects
  
• Architect of the Footbridge to the Maritime Museum, 2007: Dietmar Feichtinger Architects
  
• Architect of the Unilever House and Marco Polo Tower: Behnisch Architects
  
• Elbphilharmonie Concert Hall Project Team: Herzog and deMueron (architects), Hoehler + Partner Architects, ReGe Hamburg (developer)
  
• Architects of the Sandtorkai Promenade and Basements. 2002: Bendfeldt • Herrmann • Franke LandschaftsArchitekten BDLA

In case you missed them in the post above, here are most of the links I embedded in the text; in order of appearance:

• Applying Climate Foresight | Alex Steffen, 11 Aug 04
  
• Infrastructure for the Future We Want | Alex Steffen, 13 Feb 08
  
• Principle 14: Density, Compact Communities and Smart Growth | WorldChanging Team, 22 May 07
  
• Resilience and Ruggedness: Why Faster, Bigger and More Complex May Be Better | Alex Steffen, 10 Apr 10
  
• Adaptation to Climate Change and the Future of the IPCC | Balaton Group, 30 Nov 07
  
• Sea Level Rise: We Decide How Much | Sarah Kuck, 12 Dec 08
  
• Bracing for a Century of Rising Seas | Rob Young and Orrin Pilkey / Yale Environment 360, 14 Jan 10
  
• New York City Girds Itself for Heat and Rising Seas | Bruce Stutz / Yale Environment 360, 10 Sep 09
  
• To Protect, Renew, and Re-Tool: An Interview with Kristina Hill on Managing the Effects of Climate Change | Amanda Reed, 25 Aug 10
  
• Hamburg: HafenCity - Bring the City to the Water | Sustainable Cities (case study)
  
• Waterfront Living and Working: Hamburg's HafenCity | Falk Jaeger / Goethe-Institut e.V, May 2008
  
• HafenCity | (official website of the developer)
  
• HafenCity Hamburg Projects March 2010: Insights into Current Developments | (PDF)

Related stories in the Worldchanging archives:

• The Lessons of Katrina: Global Warming Adaptation is a Cruel Euphemism and Prevention is Far, Far Cheaper | Joe Romm, 31 Aug 09:
  If we won’t adapt to the realities of having one city below sea level in hurricane alley, what are the chances we are going to adapt to the realities of having all our great Gulf and Atlantic Coast cities at risk for the same fate as New Orleans — since sea level from climate change will ultimately put many cities, like Miami, below sea level? And just how do you adapt to sea levels rising 6 to 12 inches a decade for centuries, which is the fate we risk by 2100 if we don’t reverse greenhouse gas emissions trends soon. Climate change driven by humans GHGs is already happening much faster than past climate change from natural causes — and it is accelerating.
• Seven Meters | Jamais Cascio, 22 Mar 06:
  Flood Maps mashes up NASA elevation data and Google Maps, and offers a visualization of the effects of a single meter increase all the way to a 14 meter rise. The default increase of seven meters -- about 23 feet for those who avoid the whole metric thing -- is the amount the world's oceans will rise once Greenland's glacial ice pack melts completely. This melting is already underway, and is happening with startling speed.
• Information is Beautiful: When Sea Levels Attack | David McCandless / The Guardian, 23 Feb 10:
  ...in this diagram, I've tried to sum up all the current research on sea level rises. What will happen, when it will happen, and where the sea water is coming from.
• Environmental Restoration in the Age of Climate Change | Alex Steffen, 31 Mar 06:If we're going to bring Puget Sound back to health, we need to bring those shorelines back to health. To do that, People for Puget Sound, the Nature Conservancy and Trust for Public Land have teamed up to announce the Alliance for Puget Sound Shorelines, an effort to raise $80 million over the next three years to "restore and protect Puget Sound's ecologically rich shorelines and ensure they're available for people to enjoy for generations to come."

  This is good work. The challenge, though, is that the shorelines themselves are becoming moving targets. Already, global warming is changing Puget Sound, causing the water to warm and the sea to rise. Predictions for the future are even more alarming. "Business-as-usual will yield warming of 6 to 9 degrees F by the end of the century and...sea level will rise. The last time it was 5 degrees F warmer than now sea level was at least 80 feet higher," says James Hansen, NASA's chief climate scientist. Other studies suggest that without drastic action, we may have already committed ourselves to as much as a twenty feet of sea-level rise. Studies suggest that melting ice sheets alone are already causing the sea to rise at about a millimeter a year.

• Urban Resilience for Dummies, Part 2: Failing the Milk Test | Warren Karlenzig, 10 Mar 10:
  We can no longer manage and develop our communities with no regard for the limits of natural resources and ecological systems that provide our most basic needs.

  A shining alternative is metropolitan areas that have begun to plan for the future by building their resilience with economic, energy, and environmental uncertainty in mind: top U.S. metro locations include Portland, Oregon, Seattle, San Francisco, New York and Denver, and suburbs such as Davis, California and Alexandria, Virginia. These communities are employing some of the following key strategies that underpin resilient urbanism:

• The Future of Cities and Transportation: Learning from the Parable of the Horse | Amanda Reed, 2 Aug 10:
  "Bus rapid transit systems and "complete streets" are great. But to design urban transportation systems that are truly sustainable, we have to think much further ahead." So writes Mathias Crawford at the beginning of his new post up at GOOD titled "The Future of Cities and Transportation," in which he explores how to plan future cities that both address current needs and are flexible enough to adapt to changing technologies and behaviors. As an example of the dilemma urban planners face, he shares the parable of the horse...

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(Posted by Amanda Reed in Features at 2:30 PM)

An interesting idea by our friends at Bjarke Ingels Group to use a proposed new rail line to link Copenhagen and Malmö and their surrounding cities into a binational metropolitan area.

What I find compelling about these sorts of ideas is the possibility of taking new infrastructure and laying it over existing agglomerations of (often broken and unsustainable) places to make possible both radical innovation and intelligent infrastructural reuse. Whether this BIG idea has practical legs, and whether even something like this could do much to revitalize the ruins of the unsustainable in suburban North America, well, that's a whole different discussion altogether. For now, it's just gratifying to see someone thinking about change at the proper scale.

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Urban Design and Planning at 12:45 PM)

Looking back one and five years ago today on Worldchanging:

2009
The Lessons of Katrina: Global Warming Adaptation is a Cruel Euphemism and Prevention is Far, Far Cheaper
Joe Romm adds an update to his writing about climate adaptation and argues that there's still time for prevention, which is the better way to go...

2005
Patrick di Justo: Climate Consensus
Patrick di Justo, a New York-based science journalist, reports on the current state of understanding of the interactions between climate and ecosystems, and the efficacy of climate models...

Other recent "look backs":
August 26
August 27
August 30

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Climate Change at 10:30 AM)

by Katie Allen

Charity predicts more food shortages in Africa because of EU target to produce 10% of all transport fuels from biofuels by 2020

Cane cutter wields machete. Friends of the Earth says that biofuel crops, including sugar cane, 'are competing directly with food crops for fertile land'. Photograph: Juan Carlos Ulate/Reuters (via The Guardian)

European Union countries must drop their biofuels targets or else risk plunging more Africans into hunger and raising carbon emissions, according to Friends of the Earth (FoE).

In a campaign launching today, the charity accuses European companies of land-grabbing throughout Africa to grow biofuel crops that directly compete with food crops. Biofuel companies counter that they consult with local governments, bring investment and jobs, and often produce fuels for the local market.

FoE has added its voice to an NGO lobby that claims local communities are not properly consulted and that forests are being cleared in a pattern that echoes decades of exploitation of other natural resources in Africa.

In its report "Africa: Up for Grabs", the group says that the key to halting the land-grab is for EU countries to drop a goal to produce 10% of all transport fuels from biofuels by 2020.

"The amount of land being taken in Africa to meet Europe's increasing demand for biofuels is underestimated and out of control," Kirtana Chandrasekaran, food campaigner for FoE in the UK, said. "Especially in Africa, as long as there's massive demand for biofuels from the European market, it will be hard to control. If we implement the biofuels targets it will only get worse. This is just a small taste of what's to come."

A number of European companies have planted biofuel crops such as jatropha, sugar cane and palm oil in Africa and elsewhere to tap into rising demand. But the trend has coincided with soaring food prices and ignited a debate over the dangers of using agricultural land for fuel.

Producers argue they typically farm land not destined, or suitable for, food crops. But campaigners reject those claims, with FoE saying that biofuel crops, including non-edible ones such as jatropha, "are competing directly with food crops for fertile land".

ActionAid claimed this year that European biofuel targets could result in up to 100 million more hungry people, increased food prices and landlessness.

Natural disasters including floods in Pakistan and a heatwave in Russia have wiped out crops in recent weeks and intensified fears of widespread food shortages.

The United Nations has singled out biofuel demand as a factor in what it estimates will be as much as a 40% jump in food prices over the coming decade.

Estimates of how much land in Africa is being farmed by foreign companies and governments, either for food or fuel crops, vary significantly. The FoE report focuses on 11 African countries in what it sees as a rush by foreign companies to farm there. In Tanzania, for example, it says that about 40 foreign-owned companies, including some from the UK, have invested in agrofuel developments. It argues that such activities are actually raising carbon emissions in many cases because virgin forests are being cut down.

Lip service

The report concludes: "While foreign companies pay lip service to the need for 'sustainable development', agrofuel production and demand for land is resulting in the loss of pasture and forests, destroying natural habitat and probably causing an increase in greenhouse gas emissions." Sun Biofuels, a British company farming land in Mozambique and Tanzania and named in the report, criticised the charity's research as "emotional and anecdotal" and said that its time would be better spent looking into ways to develop equitable farming models in Africa.

Sun's chief executive, Richard Morgan, said his company's leasing of land in Tanzania had taken three years, during which 11 communities, comprising about 11,000 people, were consulted.

"I find it insulting from Friends of the Earth. Somehow it's indirect criticism of Mozambiquan and Tanzanian governments that they would allow this dispossession to take place," he said.

Morgan conceded that such a protracted process could raise expectations among local people of jobs and investment that could not be met, and said that it was often those negative testimonies that were collected by newspapers and NGOs. But he insisted that Sun was creating jobs where possible and that much of the biofuel production was destined for domestic markets in Africa rather than Europe.

"There's an opportunity here to get investment into local communities in an ethical way," he said.

In many cases, biofuel production was replacing or reducing illegal tree felling, Morgan added. "Tanzania has a large landless community felling forest land. If you give employment to those people as an alternative, there is a chance you can intervene commercially there in a good way."

Biofuel crops were being grown on land that was not intended for food production, he said: "Often we are growing trees on land already cut down for charcoal or in some cases tobacco. We haven't displaced anyone."

But FoE argues that "most of the foreign companies are developing agrofuels to sell on the international market". Its campaigners in Africa are demanding that African states should immediately suspend further land acquisitions and investments in agrofuels. Instead, they want to see fundamental changes in consumption habits in developed countries – be it making more use of public transport or adopting different diets.

Chandrasekaran said: "Biofuels is just a small part of what is happening. What needs to change are consumption patterns in the west. That means [eating less] meat and dairy, given more than a third of the world's agricultural land goes to feeding meat and dairy production. It also means [reducing] consumption of fuel."

This post originally appeared on The Guardian.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Food and Farming at 12:00 PM)

Reaching peak population as quickly as humanely possible is a pressing Worldchanging concern, but on the ground in poor countries, the concern is less about peak population than the demographic transition it takes to produce stable societies in an age of resource constraints. In a fascinating article, Richard P. Cincotta argues that for the 45 (out of 46) Sub-Saharan African nations with median ages under 25, that demographic transition appears to be stalling, for a variety of reasons, with implications for these nations, and the planet:

These age structures cut a familiar pyramidal-shaped profile of a population with a large proportion of young adults in the working-age population (greater than or equal to 42 percent), a rapidly growing school-age population, and high rates of workforce growth, typically exceeding 3 percent per year. These qualities tend to be associated with rampant unemployment, institutional failures, and political instability.

And here’s the bad news. Unless African governments and their development partners can stimulate quick reversals in fertility trends, the passing of two decades will only slightly modify this situation. According to the UN medium-variant projection, by 2030, only Botswana, South Africa, Cape Verde, and Djibouti are expected to have matured significantly beyond this conflict-vulnerable stage of the age-structural transition, leaving sub-Saharan Africa as the remaining epicenter of the “demographic arc of instability” (see map above for 2010, and below for 2030).

Figure 2. UN demographic projections (medium fertility variant, 2009) suggest that the demographic arc of instability will narrow dramatically during the next two decades. By 2030, sub-Saharan African countries will comprise about three-quarters of all countries in the arc (in red and pink). (via New Security Beat)

Matt Jones flies off on a riff about various things, including peak everything and the need to reconceptualize resource "peaks" themselves:

Going beyond PeakX: as a way of thinking = throw up hands and say hey-ho, that’s that then, isn’t everything complicated and terrible! Aren’t we wicked! There’s nothing to be done. How about ‘precious X’? ‘Resilient X’? ‘Chronodynamic design’ was something prententious that I wrote down a while back on a post-it, suggesting a Loewy-esque aesthetic celebration of an object’s resilience through time. Although at first blush, this might just be vernacular design – it might have legs as a more spectacular-vernacular. The High-Viridian Aesthetic. Moving beyond “Resource Constraints = design”, to source of ornament, cultural-invention, semantic-wealth. Charles & Ray Eames’s definition of the act of design still rings like a bell: do the best, for the most, with the least. Rhys, Raph and others work on Homegrown remains inspiring. I like Adaptive Path’s (at least that’s where I heard it first) conceit of ‘constraint-storming‘. Of course, most of the 1st-world isn’t even thinking about PeakX yet, and we don’t feel the pinch until we feel the pinch, so yeah. Anyway. I probably need to re-read “In The Bubble", and wear a “John Thackara Was Right” (hair)t-shirt…

Buzzword: Constraint-storming.

Alexis Madrigal makes some great points about mobile technologies, driving and the ways in which wireless communication actually undercuts the viability of car commuting:

This might seem like a trite bonus of city life. But I think it's more than that. Car time is wasted time, but commuting time doesn't have to be. Look at well-heeled Silicon Valley companies. They offer their employees cushy, WiFi-enabled buses for commuting. That first hour of the day, Apple and Google employees are banging out emails and getting ready for the day, not sitting in traffic carrying out a set of repetitive, low-level, and occasionally dangerous tasks to maneuver their exoskeletons southward.

We've covered a lot of this ground before, but Alexis nails it on the commute.

Image of World population density via Flickr / arenamontanus

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Resource - Planet at 11:30 AM)

Looking back one, two and five years ago today (give or take!) on Worldchanging:

2009
BIKE-O-RAMA: A Roundup of the Best in New Bikes, Bike Infrastructure, Blogs, Books and More
This roundup is a great resource of links to all things bike...

2008
Hot Japan's Cool Green Trends
Madeline Ashby reports on how Japan markets green tech and how other countries could follow their lead...

2005
Foresight in the Age of the Storm
Jamais Cascio reflects on Hurricane Katrina and says she was a reminder that climate foresight means more than imagining the worst and preparing for it...

Other recent "look backs":
August 25
August 26
August 27

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Transportation at 10:00 AM)

by Angie Schmitt

An aerial photo of an L.A. parking structure. (Image via Heli Photo)

New evidence connecting minimum parking requirements and sprawl is bolstering the argument for an overhaul of government policies related to much space we devote to the storage of cars.

A team of economists from the University of Munich recently released a study examining the effects of mandatory parking minimums on development in urban and suburban Los Angeles. The team found that parking minimums "significantly increase" the amount of land devoted to parking, to the detriment of water quality, pedestrian safety and non-automotive modes of transportation.

The report offers a critical piece of empirical evidence regarding the connection between parking minimums and oversupply. For writer Stephen Smith at Market Urbanism, the new research is compelling evidence supporting the work of parking reform guru Donald C. Shoup, whose book "The High Cost of Free Parking" examined the adverse effects of government policies that subsidize parking:

Although we at Market Urbanism are big fans of Donald Shoup’s work on parking minimums, we have to admit that rigorous econometric evidence that parking minimums mandate more parking than the market would otherwise supply has been a bit lacking. Randal O’Toole at The Antiplanner quite rightly asks to see empirical proof that parking minimums are binding. Tyler Cowen appears to have found this proof, in the form of paper posted online very recently which seeks to determine whether or not non-residential developers in Los Angeles County build more parking than they would in the absence of minimum parking mandates.

Randal O’Toole suggested that Shoup’s residency in Los Angeles might be biasing his research, since the City of Los Angeles is quite dense indeed. This study, however, uses a large dataset with data points from all over the County of Los Angeles, home to almost 10 million people, or over a quarter of all Californians. (Many more live in other dense areas, like San Diego and the Bay Area.) And in fact certain parts of the paper focus solely on suburban areas, and claim to be undercounting some of the denser areas where the discrepancy between what the market would choose and what the law currently dictates would be even greater.

The study ends up finding that at least half of all non-commercial properties have more parking than they would otherwise choose, and that the excess can oftentimes be quite large.

Market Urbanism has asked O'Toole, the libertarian analyst notorious for glossing over the role of government in promoting sprawl, for a response to the new research and has promised to update readers if they receive one.

This post originally appeared on Streetsblog.

Related stories in the Worldchanging archives:

• Free Parking Isn't Free
  
• Parking Policies Can Reduce Car Use
  
• Link Round-Up: Walkable, Dense, Smart, and Livable Streets and Cities

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Urban Design and Planning at 1:00 PM)