I (heart) NY - the original green zoning

yep. its actually just a problem when you think suburban - http://www.observer.com/2009/zoning-sustainable-city

The real lesson here isn't that urban is the answer, its that change and policy must be responsive to reality, and in a world where the speed of change keeps increasing - its time to increase the speed of zoning to keep up with what we are actually experiencing - a radical shift towards diversity, information, and collaboration on a scale we have never seen before to repair the system we have created that is destroying the planet.

Sustainability will be about a million small solutions to a big problem, and big change from subtle changes in knowledge and cultural understanding. Like the internet, our human response to restore the ecosystems and economies, protect the poor and the endangered, and discover new ways of living and celebrating being human will be diverse, sometimes conflicted, but i believe ultimately successful at uniting us - perhaps not in a way anyone would have imagined before.

Zoning and planning need to be visionary now - but not static, or totalitarian, like the failed zoning systems of the past and present. The vision will constantly evolve and be flexible enough to accommodate new technologies, economies, climate change, and other unexpected realities, but it cannot remain a dinosaur of stagnation it has been the last 50 years.

its time for something new.

David Holmgren is pretty much the man.

After listening to this guy on YouTube, i have concluded that this is a guy who really has thought about this and has put his thoughts to practice in his life - something that in my mind always lends credibility to theory.

Here David goes over how he sees suburbia as actually being ideal for permaculture / sustainable agriculture as it already has 'irrigation' infrastructure and houses dispersed in the landscape can utilize impervious surface area to harvest more water, even in drier climates for better growing potential. Or maybe that last part of the sentence is my idea, but this is pretty awesome stuff.

He puts together a myriad of ideas that have surfaced in the last 10 years of my sustainable urban planning research. This guy doesn't really have the 'credentials' to be talking urban planning, but he is on the ground, in the trenches getting it done - so sometimes this brings a certain wisdom.

I was cheering while watching this by myself, given how he kept putting forth concepts that have been in my head for so long and was literally what i have been putting forth from the pulpit for a while! I love this guy!

you need to watch this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTYe8WloF1U

Passive Houses use Dirt

found a cool passivehouse website - its a residential project going near Bratislava, Slovakia. It uses euro ventilation systems with local clay walls, brick, and timber for a combination of rad performance with low embodied energy and high potential for reuse of materials - some cool details for you architecture nerds out there--

check it - http://passivehouse.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html

Seattle is better than Boulder

Well you liberal, so called green minded boulderites, Seattle now has a new zoning ordinance designed for small scale implementation of affordable housing and diversification through backyard "cottages" or second dwelling units being allowed. Horray! with seemingly simple rules, these structures would be much like Boulder's ADU or OAU program but probably easier to get - which means less barriers to creatively addressing the affordable housing and economic issues facing our building industry in a way that doesn't promote sprawl....

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/411769_cottages02.html?source=rss

On another note, the REBURBIA competition is complete, and while i didn't do an entry due to my workload, i found this series of sketches to be pretty rad and general informative and inspiring --
http://www.re-burbia.com/2009/08/04/sprawl-building-types-repair-toolkit/