Solara and Los Vecinos are affordable housing projects that were designed with the goal of net zero energy performance with a very small increase in the incremental cost per unit. The projects also have a number of other “green” features.
More information on Solara and a link to a case study is on the Global Green website here. Information on Los Vecinos and a link to a case study is here.
ARPA-E (the Advance Research Projects Agency-Energy) has launched a new interactive project map that allows users to identify ARPA-E funded projects based on a project location and project type. You can play with the map here.
There are a number of projects in the Bay Area in the following areas, among others:
Noelle and I had fun at Pecha Kucha in San Francisco at the SPUR Urban Center on June 21. For those unfamiliar with the Pecha Kucha format, each speaker has 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide. The format makes for a fun but focused look at what a wide range of professionals is working on and thinking about. Presentations are loosely organized around a theme. The theme this time was “Denser.”
Using my notes, I am putting together a set of posts that lists the presenters in order, along with links to their website (if I could find them) and any major thoughts I jotted down. For some presentations, I took a number of notes. Other presentations have fewer notes (maybe I was looking at the images more carefully?). All of the presentations were more interesting and beautiful than revealed by my notes and these posts.
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Julie Kim – Hot Studio
essay – “Why We Lie to Kids” – Paul Graham
suburban existence – capsule to capsule
organized chaos – systems for sharing space in dense areas
suburban promise – control enables freedom
2 symbols – house + car
urban reality – loss of control enables freedom
worlds colliding in “meatspace”, the real, physical, non-virtual world
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David Baker – Architect – David Baker + Partners Architects
crowded
hot & dirty
green
looking at density per square mile and the carbon footprint per person
Portland Pearl District full of 300 x 300 blocks
poem – “Lines in Potentis” – Ben Okri
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Gabriel Tan – Out of Stock Design, Singapore
members of the firm are from different countries, but find a way to work together online
umbrellas in internal gutter to drain
mix of handcrafts and mass production
very focused on flatpack furniture
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Antonio Roman-Alcalá – SF Urban Agriculture Alliance and Alemany Farm
“The Political Economy of Urban Land, and Its Relation to an Urban Agricultural Future”
farming and cities have co-evolved
our population is no longer “mostly farmers” – not directly tied to the land
what society values – highest-earning college majors vs lowest-earning college majors
can’t urban plan our way out of mining and destruction of rainforests
17th & Folsom = “future park” – park for kinds + urban garden
who gets to decide the best use of the land? the owner of the land or the community?
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Part 1 is posted here. Part 2 is posted here.
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Greentech Media discusses the ongoing infighting between the solar and energy efficiency sectors.
The coal industry costs more money than it creates in West Virginia.
Earth2Tech says we should all be watching the Texas smart meter market, not California.
Is Wal-Mart going green or greenwashing?
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You can read our post on Greenwashing here.
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Many older cities face increasing stormwater management issues. Today’s video was put together by the Philadephia Water Department’s Office of Watersheds and gives a pretty good overview of an integrated approach.
The city is trying to address combined sewer overflows through a combination of traditional infrastructure and “green” infrastructure as the city is continuously rebuilt and repaired over time. The main goal is to prevent so much water from running off all of the impervious surfaces in the first place. More information on the approach is here.
Zero Resource 