Reburbia

PHOTO BY ALEX MACLEAN

Deadline approaching for this design competition focusing on re-inventing the suburbs. I'm hoping for some really interesting results, especially from the scores of architects waiting out the recession.

What I think a lot of these suburb re-invention efforts miss — as forward-thinking as they are — is a serious consideration of the culture of suburbs. We're now at a point where generations have lived their entire lives in the suburbs, thereby shaping the worldview and social relationship to landscape for millions. Why would we assume this can be 'un-done?' I'd be interested in seeing how architects might play on the bits of resistance (suburban farming trends) and absurdity (a 'new' 7-11 built in the parking lot of an abandoned 7-11) that crop up in the suburbs, and leverage those as cues for re-inventing the suburban cultural landscape from the ground up.

From the site:

Dwell Magazine and Inhabitat.com are pleased to announce the first ever Reburbia competition: a design competition dedicated to re-envisioning the suburbs.

With the current housing crisis, the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, and rising energy costs, the future of suburbia looks bleak. Suburban communities in central California, Arizona and Florida are desolate and decaying, with for sale and foreclosure signs dotting many lawns. According to the US Census, about 90% of all metropolitan growth occurred in suburban communities in the last ten years. Urbanites who loathe the freeways, big box stores and bland aesthetics stereotypical of suburbia may secretly root for the end of sprawl, but demographic trends indicate that exurban growth is still on the rise.

In a future where limited natural resources will force us to find better solutions for density and efficiency, what will become of the cul-de-sacs, cookie-cutter tract houses and generic strip malls that have long upheld the diffuse infrastructure of suburbia? How can we redirect these existing spaces to promote sustainability, walkability, and community? It’s a problem that demands a visionary design solution and we want you to create the vision!

Calling all future-forward architects, urban designers, renegade planners and imaginative engineers:

Show us how you would re-invent the suburbs! What would a McMansion become if it weren’t a single-family dwelling? How could a vacant big box store be retrofitted for agriculture? What sort of design solutions can you come up with to facilitate car-free mobility, ‘burb-grown food, and local, renewable energy generation? We want to see how you’d design future-proof spaces and systems using the suburban structures of the present, from small-scale retrofits to large-scale restoration—the wilder the better!

More informed feel less personally responsible for global warming

Interesting results from a recent study.

Despite the growing scientific consensus about the risks of global
warming and climate change, the mass media frequently portray the
subject as one of great scientific controversy and debate. And yet
previous studies of the mass public's subjective assessments of the
risks of global warming and climate change have not sufficiently
examined public informedness, public confidence in climate scientists,
and the role of personal efficacy in affecting global warming
outcomes. By examining the results of a survey on an original and
representative sample of Americans, we find that these three forces—
informedness, confidence in scientists, and personal efficacy—are
related in interesting and unexpected ways, and exert significant
influence on risk assessments of global warming and climate change. In
particular, more informed respondents both feel less personally
responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global
warming. We also find that confidence in scientists has unexpected
effects: respondents with high confidence in scientists feel less
responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global
warming. These results have substantial implications for the
interaction between scientists and the public in general, and for the
public discussion of global warming and climate change in particular.

Personal Efficacy, the Information Environment, and Attitudes Toward
Global Warming and Climate Change in the United States
Kellstedt, P.M., Zahran, S., and Vedlitz, A. (2008). Personal
Efficacy, the Information Environment, and Attitudes Toward Global
Warming and Climate Change in the United States. Risk Analysis, 28(1),
113

"Ready-Fire-Aim:" Wal-Mart's Latest Move

Wal-Mart unveiled its new Sustainability Index last week, and everyone seems to agree that it's a bold move. According to Joel Makower, the company admits that this is just an attempt to get something rolling, and that they hope the effort will evolve.

Here are the questions they'll be asking of vendors:

Energy and Climate

1. Have you measured your corporate greenhouse gas emissions? (Y/N)
2. Have you opted to report your greenhouse gas emissions to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP)? (Y/N)
3. What are your total greenhouse gas emissions reported in your most recently completed report? (Enter total metric tons CO2e, e.g. CDP6 Questionnaire, Section 2b – Scope 1 and 2 emissions)
4. Have you set publicly available greenhouse gas reduction targets? If yes, what are those targets? (Enter total metric tons and target date; 2 fields or leave blank)

Material Efficiency

Scores will be automatically calculated based on your participation in the Packaging Scorecard in addition to the following:

5. If measured, please report total amount of solid waste generated from the facilities that produce your product(s) for Wal-Mart Inc for the most recent year measured. (Enter total lbs)
6. Have you set publicly available solid waste reduction targets? If yes, what are those targets? (Enter total lbs and target date; 2 fields or leave blank)
7. If measured, please report total water use from the facilities that produce your product(s) for Wal-Mart Inc for the most recent year measured. (Enter total gallons)
8. Have you set publically available water use reduction targets? If yes, what are those targets? (Enter total gallons and target date; 2 fields or leave blank)

Natural Resources

9. Have you established publicly available sustainability purchasing guidelines for your direct suppliers that address issues such as environmental compliance, employment practices, and product/ingredient safety? (Y/N)
10. Have you obtained 3rd party certifications for any of the products that you sell to Walmart? If so, from the list of certifications below, please select those for which any of your products are, or utilize materials that are, currently certified.

People and Community

11. Do you know the location of 100% of the facilities that produce your product(s)? (Y/N)
12. Before beginning a business relationship with a manufacturing facility, do you evaluate their quality of production and capacity for production? (Y/N)
13. Do you have a process for managing social compliance at the manufacturing level? (Y/N)
14. Do you work with your supply base to resolve issues found during social compliance evaluations and also document specific corrections and improvements? (Y/N)
15. Do you invest in community development activities in the markets you source from and/or operate within? (Y/N)

Some have already shot holes in this plan, accusing Wal-Mart of avoiding key social sustainability issues like labor rights, but Makower points to some promise for Index over time, including a publicly available database:

"Walmart already is talking with Microsoft about creating an open-source database and tools to make information about companies and products accessible; no doubt, for consumers there will eventually be an app for that.

And Walmart has made it clear that they don't want to own this. They want it to live within some credible entity that will continue to develop and deploy the Index. (The company isn't beyond starting its own nonprofit if it isn't able to find one that suits its needs.) And the company is working to bring in other companies -- Best Buy, Costco, Kroger, and Target have been part of the conversation -- to adopt the Index, too, creating even more purchasing power in the marketplace."

What Can Health Care Teach Sustainability?

The problems facing health care are in some ways not dissimilar to those of sustainability. After reading Atul Gawande's recent article titled "The Cost Conundrum" in The New Yorker, it seems that both systems would benefit greatly by incentivizing collaboration and quality over exploitation, resource depletion and profiteering.

The medical models Gawande points to as promising include:

• Enable collectives that reward participants with savings from their actions
• Shift regulatory burdens from individual to group (malpractice, fines, etc.)
• Penalize those who don’t form collaborative collectives

Although getting Congress to cooperate with large shifts in regulatory approach in this way seems daunting for health care due to the huge lobbying interests in the game, these strategies might actually prove to be more realistic in environmental regulation, where players (NGO's, energy companies, etc.) are increasingly witnessing the benefits of cooperative action. These strategies would need to sit comfortably alongside traditional enforcement approaches, but incentivizing cooperative models would seem to go much further than protectionism has taken us. These solutions would also need to go beyond cap and trade models (which continue to privilege individualistic behaviors), and into areas of shared liability and tangible penalties for not collaborating.