R1: Reinterpreting sustainable architecture
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There are many approaches to the sustainability field within architecture. We all can agree that the field has a stronger presence within architecture within the last 50 years, but the concept of green design is less clear today than what it was as a simple term for encouraging long lasting human conditions within urban growth and beyond. There are six considerations that can reinterpret the original concept of sustainable architecture that can more accurately respond to the social trends within the field, all of which have merit and can be considered in conjunction with one another. They compete to mobilize the bias within the debate of a course of action based on a “logic that the designer approaches a problem from.
Eco technic uses technology as a catalyst for change, which is geared towards the future as a commercially viable alternative. They use more efficient materials, technology, and smarter approaches to create a utopian vision of the future. By responding to climate concerns through things like urban systems, building with passive designs and clean energy sources to reduce the negative impact of humans on the environment.
Eco Centric Logic tries to create a symbiotic relationship between ecology and an ethical framework of living and nonliving variables. The land ethic concept counters ecotechnic, and poses earth as a whole that humans are only one part of. The ideas of creating minimal ecological footprints and design strategies that try to resolve the waste and consumption of anthropogenic creations. One of the biggest concerns is creating independent buildings that don't depend on central infrastructure for basic needs, like water, electricity, and overall waste.
Eco Aesthetic logic tries to create a romantic view of the green future by emphasizing the creative individual and the senses that invoke a shift towards a new responsibility for architectural designs. It prioritizes the aesthetic appeal of the space through its expression. By changing the way we build to what we see as a better future, then it constitutes this logic.
Eco Cultural logic adheres to the belief that an international style is counterintuitive to ecologically conscious design and that using the local influences of the cultures there is a good start for design. The indiginous materials, vernacular building styles and historically rooted designs all should be considered ecological because the people there have evolved their traditions to disturb their environment as little as possible. The Heidegger's concept of identity creates a connection between the people and nature, and ones that respond directly to the microclimate that the location has.
Ecomedical focuses on the occupation of the buildings as integral to human experience, and so our habitats should contribute positively to our health and wellbeing. Building around diurnal and natural cycles, the building biology needs to address the occupants' physical, biological and spiritual needs to make our experience indoors a positive affect on our lifestyles, which cycles around organic experiences, color treatment, and natural air flow.
The Eco social aspect aims to create a community within their structure and design that formally brings people together, rather than compartmentalizing them into smaller and smaller environments. It fights off against alienation and the challenges of urban design to establish self-reliant societies, over the networks of industries and products that are necessary to sustain dense communities.
R2: landscape as infrastucture
The main problem with the post industrial landscape in America is the decay of the infrastructure and the overall lack of caution taken by prior generations of corporations and the lack of action taken by those responsible or in power.
1967 was a turning point for many of the policies that helped to backpedal on the overall trends that were leading up to that point. That was the year J. Kenneth Galbraith said that for the last century, since the start of the industrial revolution, land was not as important as capital and power, for the first time in human history. In this time period, there was a paradox of two paths: modern commercialization and the conservation battle of the natural world.
By this point, they didn't have ecological disasters like Love Canal or the Leslie St Spit, or even Chernobyl. But the fact that cities had no way of solving this issues due to a collapsed infrastructure, and had been lax in letting companies use and abuse the freshwater supply of the Great Lakes to the point where Lake Erie was declared a dead zone.
The ongoing collapse of the infrastructure was brought on by a series of global commercialization fallouts. De-industrialization and the mobilization of international companies led to countless issues. In Flint MI alone, when the labor collapsed after the assembly plants were all shut down, and the large businesses outsourced labor to cheaper alternatives, the “relentless globalization” and the wake it left led to population decline, rusted ruins and urban decay, and ironically, ecological regeneration from municipal abandonment
However, there are ways to rethink the issues. Mayor Jay Willaims of Youngstown Ohio proposed to de-urbanize and shrink the city to gut out the waste of the old city format. He deconstructed hundreds of miles of unneeded asphalt and systems to create a reduced and more centralized city that can be supported by the local population. Using land buybacks and banking techniques to finance, he ultimately used a system of zoning overlays as opposed to the typical mixed use housing with sparse underused green spaces to make the city more efficient and livable.
We need to rethink the ways in which we approach the flow of the city. In a redefinition of what infrastructure was, there is a geo-economic approach that can be taken into place.
There are factors that have to be accepted moving forward. The waste offsets will always be generated in the economic processes. The globalization of the world is not going away, and neither is urban sprawl going to stop expanding. But within this system, there can be a balance between the economic and ecological needs of the city. The duality present can give people a long term vision for urban environments, and the immediate project needs that will arise.
The surface systems over time will need to change towards landscape as an operation, not an aesthetic. The author goes to argue how a shift towards new practises of rezoning, creating land use synergies, cooperation between opposing camps, and ultimately creating oneness between the urban and natural environment, but one that will be slowly growing and regrowing, as opposed to the cut and dry production that led to the collapse of the lived environment.
R3
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R4: Conservation Corridors
The field of landscape design needs to be considered in the realms of patches, corridors and a matrix. Wildlife, through their eating and habitat trends, modify their environment based on how they change within an agricultural matrix.
Conceptually, three main points, of buffer zones, linkages and core reserves or nodes. Noss and Harris found “nodes” allow for higher concentrations for life concentrated for diversity and management. The buffer zones allow for moderate human use and a place for “edge species'' to congregate. A linking corridor is made for migration and distribution of populations.
There are basic principles that guide how the wildlife. Patches, where there are larger reserves that are close in proximity to another, have several advantages. The larger reserves have a higher positive area effect, and lower edge effects of local extinctions, and increased diversity. They are better connected with linking corridors for increased habitats, and presence of conduits that can act as “walls” for barriers. They are also best unified because the reserve’s edges have fewer perimeters.
For corridors, the less fragmented it is, the better it can move organisms and bar outside organisms from over crowding the concentration of organisms . The wider is also better as it increases habitat functions and diversity, and it is better to be naturally connected rather than by intervention, so maintenance of these should be prioritized. The connections can be more than one and this provides insurance, and alternatives for species migration.
For a matrix, or the medium for species movement, need to be maintained, or else the food sources may be interrupted, and the species can have their nesting grounds threatened. As such, it is a critical part in maintaining competition in the resource market.
The structure can dictate the environment as well. Vertical structure has the forest structure of wildlife in different elevations as habitations. Horizontal structure is built around arranged but independent habitat types being intricately tied together, and species can go from wetlands, grasslands, to urban areas organically.
Scale factors, at regional, watershed and practice scale, need to be considered for habitat impacts. Regional scale corridors are loosely defined and allow for high biodiversity. They provide ways for keeping opportunities for survival and adaptation to change. They are narrower than reservas, but have been used by other species for movement for a long time. All of this contributes to ecoregions, air basions, surface geology and nearly a dozen other map levels in the same field of habitat research and GIS technology. It also can help with GAP analysis, where is maps the connection between habitats and vegetation composition.
At the watershed scale, where is can be miles fo less than one mile, the mapping levels can be used to define at one small scale. The conservation and practices are needs for corridors and the wildlife habitats manage snowfall, create terraces against wind and runoff erosion, as well as field borders and buffers to reduce competition from adjacent woodlands. And this also allows for management of lands to be more easily accomplished as well in provide maneuvering room and commercial products.
R5
In order to maintain the reproduction, survival and dispersal of avian species, we need to stop the rise of fragmentation due to urbanization. As such, our occupation of landscapes must be dedicated to reducing how fragmentation affects them in a landscape. Fragmentation increases the threats to species in the form of non-native competition, more exposure to predators or mortality, and increased disturbance from us as a species. Currently, agriculture displays more land than anything, followed by urbanization, but that is relative to the amount of vegetation that is in its area.
Urban development will not stop, so the best preservation technique is to establish corridors along native patches, or buffer those patches with native habitats to increase their size and interior area.
Understanding the Darwinian fitness of the species and how our actions may affect them, like if we were to artificially create a corridor that does not collide predators much more with prey than they did before. For effective management, we need more sufficient data on how each one interacts with the other, and this often requires a regional perspective. Dispersal is critical to a garments diversity of populations, and the acknowledgement of pathways for how that drop in populations can occur is extremely important.
For avian species, natural selection oddly factors ones that are local and use the resources in their environment directly. However there are many factors that go into the fluctuations of their numbers. It can potentially increase the parasite and natural predators. Because of those uptick, the pressure on nesting and on the ability for new generations to have a foothold. The introduction of exotic species, like house cats, into the mix creates uncontested predators. The dispersal barriers that we introduce, like roads and buildings, interfere with the abilities of the bird groups to disperse, but in subtle ways that can diminish the population over long periods. Also the lack of ground cover and ecosystem processes are also interfered with by humans.
s to how to restore the functions of an urban landscape to coincide with the ecological functions, they suggest as many as 15 of these solutions. Increasing the foliage height diversity makes cover more available for life, and maintaining the native vegetation and deadwood allows for burrows and nesting to occur near to food sources, like grub, food and mammals. You need to manage the buffer zone surrounding the matrix as well as the fragment itself and the design of those buffers should be able to protect the native population from pollutants, predators, and even humans, so that we cannot interfere with the reserves of land for breeding and nesting. The closer the matrix is to the native habitat that is fragmented, the better, and keeping outside predators, like cats, out, is essential. It is best to discourage open lawns on the public and private properties as this will deteriorate the biodiversity, soil quality, and growth of life. Municipalities should financially support these owners who do this through tax breaks or tax write offs.
Integrating urban parks and native habitats together is a genuine way to get the best of both human and natural life flourishing, so long as they are located with ideal location. Fragmentation is likely to only increase, and as it does, we need to have considerations on which species are thriving. Difficult decisions need to be made in order to protect the regions and be in conjunction with the national reserves and fragments. We also need to have more accurate monitoring systems in place to gauge the diversity of the birds and species in the area, whis can include mist netting and color banding to note movements. To develop a new educational paradigm, and to establish a new generation of people that accurately are able to guide the conservation of these species.
R6
There are two prevalent views today for the average conservation strategy: The resourcesist and the restorationist. The social ecologists are the more radical of the two options, with the finger being pointed at our inner culture and our social structures. This is asking for a new form of ecology that looks towards human arts and the imagination for creative solutions. The author uses Avatar as an ideologically satisfying way to depict a paradise of natural beauty, but also contrasts it with the importance of urbanization as a whole.
A lifescape maps aims to show the dominant design approach for the urban landscape.
R7:Form follows Flows
Using urban infrastructure as a predictor for rapid climate change effects is more commonly being used. More so in the couple of years, designers and planners have had a keener interest in the form multifunctionality and dynamics of spaces rather than the single use model used before the 1990s. The aesthetic goals of these spaces are designed often to be functional as well, contrasting the early model again by being supportive of the greater ecology.
There has been a growing trend of people moving out of the suburbs and back into urban life, as the average number of people per household has also declined. The emergence of humans in urban settings, as shown graphically in the text, shows a direct correlation between itself and sea level rise, stemming from glacial melts. The applied landscapes of the farmlands however are vulnerable to drought and disaster related relocation
There is a need for greater infrastructure that meets long term needs related to climate change. The rise in sea level is connected to major cities like Venice and Shanghai. Some urban forestry groups are focused on how to plant their trees to combat and last beyond sea level rise.
Two approaches to this issue include the British approach of just in time mentalities, and these approaches can involve dumping money at the problem only when it becomes clear that this is the case. The dutch approach works to anticipate these problems in order to create long lasting solutions without large loans being taken out and impacting the community as hard.
A great example of a moderating solution was the sand engine in the netherlands. It uses millions of cubic meters of sand to create a barrier for the land and will also naturally erode to create habitats and seed further growth. It is a win-win for both the natural and urban parties.
The conclusion for contemporary design here is that designers will not always be correct in their solutions. They must engage with the broader public and engage with their designs that can be real problem solvers for people and the environment, and represent true sustainability.