Resilient and Biophilic Cities

On October 26th I attended a lecture hosted by the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design, called Green Urbanism: Planning for Resilient and Biophilic Cities.  It was given by Dr. Tim Beatley, a professor at the University of Virginia.  He is a published author of many books on land use and sustainability, most recently Resilient Cities, Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change.   

    Dr. Beatley initially outlined his current focus to be one of understanding existing and possible strategies for cities and towns to reduce their carbon footprint as well as become more equitable.  He proposed that we look at our buildings like trees and our cities as forests, closing the loop of inward and outward flows.  In this spirit, most of the lecture highlighted strategies that he uncovered while researching two recent books, Green Urbanism, learning from European Cities, and Green Urbanism Down Under.  

Here are just a few of the strategies that Dr. Beatley discovered in Europe and Australia.  

• Copenhagen set the goal be Carbon Neutral by 2025 by exploring alternative energy sources and encouraging people to spend more time outside, as well as exploring ways to offset their carbon production elsewhere. 

 

• Almost every city in Australia has a Public Art Master Plan (examples here, here, and here) to encourage residents to get outside and explore parts of the city they might not otherwise visit.  In some cases they provide small grants to local artists to entice residents into alley ways.

• Brisbane Australia has facilitated the decoration of over 900 traffic signal boxes by local artists.

• Stockholm has invested into transit infrastructure so that stops are available before people even move into new flats.

• Public bike programs have become very popular in Paris (20,000 bikes) and Stockholm (6000 bikes) for both resident and tourist use.  Smart cards facilitate use and popularity has lead to additional infrastructure investment that encourages use of personal bikes as well.

• Barcelona has mandated that 65% of water heating be provided by solar hot water and outfits public buildings such as city hall with PVs to supply power to the grid.

• The Vauban development in Freiburg, the “Eco-Capital” of Germany, is a neighborhood facilitated by trams that is car free.  If you own a car it must be parked at a peripheral lot which costs over $20,000 at the outset. 

• Technologies are being implemented near Sydney to extract biogas solid waste for fuel and facilitate wastewater collection and reuse.

• In Australia Toy Libraries are common, at least one or two per city.

• Montreal has a rooftop gardening project, and a nonprofit that makes a “balcony kit” from recycling bins to help people grow their own food even with limited outdoor space.

• In the London Borough of Croyden a goal was set for the neighborhood to source 50% of their building materials in a 35 mile radius, which they did from a local municipal forest.  The urban city of Croyden is now FSC certified.

For more exciting innovations underway at home and abroad, refer to the books mentioned above, and look for Dr. Beatley's soon to be released film: The Nature of Cities.