by Rand Herz

(via)

Tianjin is on fire.

At the center of the blaze is the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City (SSTEC), a joint-venture between Singapore and China, which aims to herald a new era of sustainable urban development. The eco-city is part of a long-term goal to transform a 30-square-kilometer piece of previously underutilized urban land into a fully-functional urban enclave, and to spark the movement in China to ‘green’ its rampant industrialization.

SSTEC was the main topic of discussion at the recent “Tianjin Eco-city Cleantech Focus,” a three-day conference in September co-hosted by the eco-city’s investment and development company and the Cleantech Group, an industry leading market-intelligence firm. I attended the conference along with an eclectic assembly of international and Chinese businessmen in sustainable urban development industries. The conference, televised nationally in China, and in Tianjin, was by no means small beans. Heavyweight developers from across Asia threw in support and resources, including Chinese real estate giants Shimao, Vanke and Vantone; Mitsui Fudosan, Japanese real estate; Farglory, a Taiwanese real estate corporation; Keppel, a Singaporean marine group; Sunway, a Malaysian conglomerate; GEMS, a network of international schools; and Ayala, a Filipino conglomerate. Everyone came together to discuss ideas on a green economy, eco-city development theory and practices, urban technical integration in eco-cities, green corporate social responsibility and eco-city culture and spirituality.

As with many other eco-cities, SSTEC’s major challenge is in adapting a region previously unsuitable for a sustainable urban center into a fully-functional ecologically-responsible urban area. Prior to groundbreaking, the Tianjin port area was moderately-industrialized urban sprawl. Transforming a small part of this region into a low-carbon ecologically friendly urban zone is a monstrous task.

The catch lies in the blurry definition of what an eco-city actually is; what is appropriate, acceptable and ecologically responsible within a wide range of sustainability indicators? Globally, a question mark still hovers in clean technology circles over what is and what is not an eco-city. Indeed, how far must urban planners go in order to develop a metropolitan area with enough measures of sustainability to warrant recognition as an ecologically friendly area? The SSTEC is trying to tread this very wide line, to bridge the traditional urban industrial fossil-fuel-heavy model and the radically innovative concept of a zero carbon city. Unanimously, proponents of the SSTEC trumpet its green features, such as low household water consumption, large areas of public green space, and low per capita domestic waste generation. While the figures trumpeted by developers are by no means carbon neutral, and not nearly as high as expectations set by previous eco-city projects; their manageability make them attainable, and their presentation has made the entire Tianjin area incredibly sexy for investors and businesses looking to operate in the Bohai Economic Rim.

There are still issues though. At the Cleantech conference I spent a lot of time mining for detailed opinions from those present about “how” the SSTEC project would actually get built. I noticed a common thread of an apparent lack of action to much of the official discussions. Much time was spent in discussion of brilliant ideas, grand plans and the wonderful life everyone will have once construction is completed and residents move in. Painfully little was given to discussing what is going to happen, how it is going to happen, and who is going to do it.

Many see the SSTEC project as another in a long line of similar projects that have failed to meet expectations: Masdar in Abu Dhabi, Dongtan in the Yangtze Delta, Clonburris in Ireland. These cities all suffered from goals set too high and project managers lacking in technology and knowledge capital. They failed to meet deadlines and struggled to cope with the conversion of environments with low human carrying capacity to sustainable urban areas with high carrying capacity.

A minority of anonymous conference attendees expressed the heavily critical view that the SSTEC exists simply as a trendy method of attracting venture and development capital from the blossoming community of investors supporting projects focusing on sustainability and renewable energy. While this thought may or may not be running through the heads of the powers-that-be, green business is certainly commanding attention and investment in business circles around the world.

Following early September’s World Economic Forum meeting and the SSTEC conference, Tianjin is now set to host the United Nations Development Program’s climate conference, with expected attendance around 3000. While the successes and failures of eco-cities, and the SSTEC, have yet to be determined, the Bohai Economic Rim’s is all but written in the stars. With plans for the region’s economic outlook booked, Tianjin will certainly continue to be a hot growth region for the People’s Republic.

Rand Herz is a young American currently working at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui as an English coach.

Related stories in the Worldchanging archives:

• A Climate-Neutral China | Alex Steffen, 28 Jun 10
  
• Is China Ready For Cap-and-Trade? | Cao Haili, 16 Dec 09
  
• Where are New Green Cities and How Can They Curb Asian Greenhouse Gas Emissions? | Warren Karlenzig, 14 Sep 09
  
• Will the Recession Derail China’s Slow Train to Sustainability? | Sam Geall 16 Jul 09
  
• China Begins Transition To A Clean-Energy Economy | Julian Wong, 10 Jun 09

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Urban Design and Planning at 12:00 PM)

Editor’s Note: Below, Worldchanging ally Emily Pilloton of Project H, shares her first-hand account of the flooding in Bertie County, North Carolina as a result of Tropical Storm Nicole. Pilloton’s Studio H program is based in Bertie County. While the Studio H shop and studio (where the high school design/build program is taught) survived major damage, many of the students’ and Pilloton’s colleagues’ homes, along with the majority of downtown Windsor, were flooded or destroyed. If you’d like to support their rebuilding project, or Studio H in general, please consider a donation. All donations are U.S. tax-deductible. Link to donate: http://www.studio-h.org/donate

by Emily Pilloton

At our favorite barbecue joint in our home base of rural Bertie County, North Carolina, my partner Matt and I often glance as we leave at the photo posted next to the door. The picture is an aerial shot of Bertie’s County seat, Windsor, where Bunn’s Barbecue is located. The town is home to just over 2,000 of the county’s 20,000 residents, and sits at just 23 feet above sea level. The photograph was taken in 1999, when Hurricane Floyd left the town underwater, homes destroyed, people displaced, downtown turned into a ghost-town. In the photograph, the roof of Bunn’s just barely sticks up from the flood water, like a lily pad. Randy, the owner of Bunn’s, along with many others in Bertie County, refer to Floyd as the “100 year flood.”

But recently, just 11 years after Floyd, I walked out my front door, stood on the front porch of my post-Civil War era home in downtown Windsor, two blocks from Bunn’s, and found myself gazing with a sigh at the same lily pad. Bunn’s Barbecue’s roof, along with the post office’s, bank’s, and about a dozen small town shop buildings’, seemed to be floating in a ten-foot-deep lake that literally appeared overnight. With Bertie County, and Windsor in particular, at low sea levels and lying at the intersection of three rivers that lead to the Albemarle Sound, it should have come as no shock to see the water rise over 14 feet in 36 hours.

As Tropical Storm Nicole passed over the East Coast last week, few people in Bertie County – the place where my organization Project H has relocated to launch Studio H, a high school design/build for community curriculum — thought it would be the next Floyd. But over the course of three days, we went from, “I wonder if school will be cancelled tomorrow” to “I wonder if we could swim to the grocery store.” Matt and I pulled out our camping gear, ran gallons of water through Brita Filters and stored it in buckets, and moved our most precious belongings upstairs. We counted ourselves undeservedly lucky that our house, along with only a few others, had been built just far enough off the ground that the water wasn’t ankle deep in our living room yet.

On Friday afternoon and into the evening, the National Guard pulled people from their homes and escorted them to the hospital on the outskirts of town in pontoon boats. We watched the news as a reporter from KCBS called out Bertie County as the single “hardest-hit” county on the East Coast. Matt and I found out that one of our students, AJ, had been evacuated, his house filled with water and probably irreversibly destroyed.

As a designer and builder, my instinct is to go out and fix things. But I found myself feeling helpless as the rescue boats sped by my front door, and instructed people to stay in their homes and be prepared to lose power, water and sewage. That sense of helplessness felt unnatural to me, and in realizing that, I felt for a moment like a spoiled brat. On Saturday morning, I spoke to our neighbor, who told me her husband was in the hospital in Greenville, an hour away, and all she wanted to do was to get in her car and go be with him. We lamented the fact that we couldn’t even drive 10 feet out of our own driveways. As the flood levels finally started to fall on Saturday afternoon, the sun came out and I felt guilty noting how beautiful the day was.

Natural disasters might happen unexpectedly, but we know they’re an inevitable part of life in a warming world. Yet to see a disaster unfold firsthand, not on television, not in the news, not even as a visitor to post-Earthquake Haiti, but as it happened to my house and my neighbors and my students, was a first for me.

My instinct, as a designer, is to think about prevention, and how to keep this from happening again. But economically and logistically for a poor and disconnected place like Bertie County, that may be a pipedream. My next instinct is to repair and recover, which will no doubt be a long-term effort. As our students come back to class, we’ll talk to them about what they need, what their families need, and what downtown needs to start over.

But beyond these two instincts, the lesson learned and the sentiment in the air is a kind of clarity that only comes when you are helpless enough to identify what really matters. It is a clarity that reminds you of the potential of human ability to be resilient, compassionate, and clever. And it is a reminder of the power of the analog, of eye contact and handshakes, of wood and metal, and food and water, rather than text messages and re-tweets. In the coming weeks, I hope to see Bertie County’s citizens breathe and reboot, and with a new sense of clarity, make smart decisions about our collective future. Already this morning, I’ve seen folks helping neighbors to hose down their furniture, and staring down the street at Bunn’s, asking how they might help Randy get his kitchen back to normalcy.

Stories on Project H in the Worldchanging archives:

• The Problem with Design: Imperialism or Thinking Too Small? | Alex Steffen, 15 Jul 10
  
• Project H Design Builds Playground for Learning | Geoff Manaugh, 23 Feb 09
  
• Compostmodern ’09 | Jeremy Faludi, 23 Feb 09

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Sustainable Design at 1:45 PM)

by Linda Norlen

Editor’s Note: We encourage “Reader Reports” — submissions from members of Worldchanging’s global audience who volunteer to write up their notes from conferences, workshops and other worldchanging happenings they participate in. If you’d like to contribute your own report, please email editor@worldchanging.com.

The Designer’s Accord Seattle Town Hall was billed as a shared discussion about ways to make designing sustainably a reality in Seattle. The evening was very full with four speakers followed by breakout sessions. Moderator Corbet Curfman, Sustainability Director of AIGA Seattle, kicked off the event, which was produced by AIGA Seattle, AIA Seattle, and IDSA Northwest on September 23, 2010 at the School of Visual Concepts.

No discussion of sustainability in Seattle can avoid the city’s biggest goal: to make Seattle the first carbon neutral city in North America by 2030.

Working towards that goal are Joe Brewer (a consultant who helps organizations improve by using ideas from cognitive and behavioral science) and Cameron Hall (an architect and urbanist).

The movement toward carbon neutrality fomenting in Seattle, Hall said, is growing bigger and bigger, and now embraces energy, land use, neighborhoods, transportation, food systems, zero waste programs, green careers, and youth. Hall’s own RACE TO ZERO CITY is a communication tool for Carbon Neutral Seattle.

“Is this Seattle’s moment?” Brewer asked.

Both Brewer and Hall believe designers play a role in working toward carbon neutrality. Good designers view things from a system-wide perspective; they have tools for research, analysis, and innovation; and they have the know-how to create things.

Brewer gave a lively pitch for Seattle Innovators, a grassroots group aiming to help drive action toward the 2030 goal. Brewer sees Seattle’s civic-minded, well-educated populace as a kind of “civic software,” one of the advantages that makes the Puget Sound region one of the “cool places” to live in the U.S.

Since any early mover gains a competitive advantage, Brewer thinks Seattle should build an “innovation engine” (like the TED talks or the X Prize) to spark interest and momentum toward its becoming the first carbon neutral city. To that end, Brewer and collaborators organized what they called “Building Day” last March to build tools for cross-sector collaboration; they plan another installment in the future.

Hall talked about the need for collaboration and collective action, and cited Umair Haque’s “The Builders’ Manifesto.” He also recognized the power of private action by pointing out that the 2030 Challenge was started by an individual, architect Edward Mazria. Another individual architect, Brian Geller, sustainability specialist at Zimmer Gunsul Frasca in Seattle, has enlisted both public and private stakeholders—major property owners/managers, city utilities, and other groups—to cooperate in large-scale energy use reduction within a new Seattle 2030 District.

Later, industrial designer Zac West spoke about the difference between “easy” clients and projects, which are predisposed to sustainability already, versus “hard” ones, who can only be convinced to take more environmentally sustainable actions if ideas are couched to them under different terms.
.
To win over such clients, West uses an approach he called “code switching.” Where he might normally talk about “corporate responsibility,” for a “hard” client he would refer to “brand legacy” instead. He listed several other switches in terminology for bridging gaps in values.

This tactic of substituting terminology is meant to be distinct from green-washing; it’s not about creating fabrications, but rather about communicating in the client’s language

To illustrate the idea of “great design gone bad,” the Creative Director of egg, Marty McDonald, told a story of the branding of British Petroleum, in which its brand designers (Landor) and ad agency (Ogilvy & Mather) created an image of the company as being far more environmentally responsible than it ever was. In 1998–99, BP added a new tagline, changing the “bp” to lower case type and recasting it to mean “beyond petroleum” (a rather astonishing assertion for a company that as late as 2008 would still be producing 93% oil and gas, and only 7% renewables). Ogilvy & Mather created a supporting ad campaign that was only too effective: BP went from 4% public awareness to 67% and within 5 years was seen by the public as “more green” than any of its competitors. The strategy worked for about 10 years, but after the Gulf spill this year, no amount of public relations could undo the thousands of parodies of the BP identity on the web. There was even a fake Twitter feed (@bpglobalpr) that got thousands more hits than the real one. After relating this story, McDonald asked “what went wrong?” and analyzed how designers can avoid making such mistakes in the future.

All of the above issues and more were discussed in the breakout sessions with the speakers and event organizers; the result of which you can view by visiting the breakout groups’ wiki.

For more details about the event, see Core 77.

…
Linda Norlen is a design consultant, educator, editor, and writer. As Communications Director for AIGA Seattle, she recently developed the content for its new website. For two years she worked in Italy at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea.

She is an Affiliate Assistant Professor at the University of Washington. She also taught design and worked in college management at both Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, California) and California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). Before that Linda ran her own graphic design office in Los Angeles.

Image from the event via Core 77.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Urban Design and Planning at 10:30 AM)

From hunting gear to shoes, ancient artifacts once covered by ice are being unearthed in Norway. Now scientists face a race against time to preserve them

by Robin McKie

Norwegian archaeologists Norwegian archaeologists Trond Vihovde, left, and Elling Utvik Wammer use a GPS marker to register the location of sticks used in reindeer hunting from before the Viking Age. Photograph: Alister Doyle/Reuters

Archaeologists have gained an unexpected benefit from global warming. They have discovered melting ice sheets and glaciers are exposing ancient artifacts that had been covered with thick layers of ice for millennia.

The discoveries are providing new insights into the behavior of our ancestors – but they come at a price. So rapid is the rise in global temperatures, and so great is the rate of disintegration of the world’s glaciers, that archaeologists risk losing precious relics freed from the icy tombs. Wood rots in a few years once freed from ice while rarer feathers used on arrows, wool or leather, crumble to dust in days unless stored in a freezer. As a result, archaeologists are racing against time to find and save these newly exposed wonders.

A perfect example is provided at Juvfonna in Norway, where reindeer hunting gear used by the Vikings’ ancestors has been found littering the ground as the front edge of Juvfonna’s ice sheet has retreated. A section more than 60ft wide has disappeared over the course of 12 months, exposing several hundred artifacts. “It’s like a time machine… the ice has not been this small for many, many centuries,” says Lars Piloe, the Dane heading a team of “snow patch archaeologists”.

Bows and arrows, specialized hunting sticks – used to drive reindeer towards archers – and even a 3,400-year-old leather shoe have been found at the site in the Jotunheimen mountains, home of the “ice giants” of Norse mythology. These finds have been logged with a GPS satellite marker before being taken for examination. From these measurements, archaeologists reckon people using hunting sticks – each about a meter long with a flapping piece of wood attached by connecting thread – were set up about two meters apart. They then drove reindeer toward hunters who needed to get within 60ft of an animal to have a chance of hitting one with an iron-tipped arrow.

Such a hunt would require 15 to 20 people, Piloe adds, indicating that Norway had an organized society around the start of the dark ages, 1,500 years ago. “Our main focus is the rescue part,” according to Piloe. “There are many ice patches. We can only cover a few. We know we are losing artifacts everywhere.”

Similar discoveries have been made in glaciers or in permafrost from Alaska to Siberia. Italy’s iceman “Ötzi”, killed by an arrow wound approximately 5,000 years ago, was found in an Alpine glacier, for example.

Patrick Hunt, of Stanford University in California, who is trying to find where Carthaginian general Hannibal invaded Italy in 218BC with an army and elephants, says there is now an alarming rate of thaw in the Alps: “This is the first summer since 1994 when we began our field excavations above 8,000ft that we have not been inundated by even one day of rain, sleet and snow flurries. I expect we will see more ice patch archaeology discoveries.”

Just how many others will be lost to science is difficult to assess, however.

This post originally appeared on The Guardian.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Climate Change at 1:30 PM)

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