The American Society of Civil Engineers tells us that the United States faces a deferred maintenance bill of $1.6 trillion; the World Wildlife Fund tells us that this country is consuming natural resources at 4.6 times the rate of replenishment; and a recent Allianz/WWF report on Tipping Points indicates that in Boston alone $462.5 billion of property value is at risk in the foreseeable event of a 26 inch rise in sea level by 2050.
As a country we are apparently unwilling to respond to these crises for a number of reasons: we don’t believe the science; we don’t want to pay for a remedy; or we don’t want to change our habits. The prevailing mood is expressed by the citizen who asks, “Why should I do anything for posterity, what has posterity done for me?” The psychology of this stasis is easy to understand: it’s all too overwhelming and depressing. In the interests of ushering in the new decade on a positive note, therefore, I have selected six snapshots of recent projects, large and small, from around the world as examples of what we might strive for in the coming decade.
New Cities
Hammarby Sjöstad is a new 500-acre city district developed on former docklands at the edge of Stockholm. With a mixed-income population of 20,000, the district has 9,000 apartments and two million square feet of commercial floor space, attracting a further 10,000 workers. Two thirds of the residents use public transportation. Energy is produced in district heating plants in the area fired by methane from the sewage plant and combustible waste sucked through vacuum tubes from apartment units. Food waste is composted into soil. This is what South Boston could have been.
The Masdar Initiative is a 60 million-square-foot walled city in Abu Dhabi designed to be “zero-carbon and waste-free,” a living experiment in solar powered, car-free urban sustainability. Watch this space for the development of new technologies for a post-carbon world.
Old Cities
In response to the threat of a nuclear power station being built close to the city, Freiburg, Germany, responded by re-inventing itself as Europe’s leading ecological community. The city has a three-pronged energy policy embracing conservation, the use of new technologies such as combined heat and power, and the use of renewable energy sources such as solar to meet new demand, instead of fossil fuels. Twenty years later the city is a major center of investment for new energy technology.
Benny Farm is a community in Montreal consisting of 187 units originally built in 1946-47, newly renovated and retrofitted on sustainable principles at neighborhood scale. A non-profit, community-run utility company oversees ownership, management and re-investment in sustainable construction for the energy, water and waste infrastructure. The project reduces greenhouse gas emissions, potable water use, the production of wastewater, and the production of solid waste through retrofitting, reuse and waste diversion.
Infrastructure
Montreal – even more of a winter city than Boston – launched its Bixi bike sharing program last May and now has 3,000 bikes and 300 stations around the urban core. Even better, Boston is about to adopt a similar program, to be launched in the coming year.
Finally, for those who have not yet visited Manhattan’s High Line, make it your winter vacation treat. The old elevated line weaving through the meat-packing district is now a park in the air. The gutsy old steel structure has been planked, planted, benched and seeded with indigenous grasses.
Most of these projects have been decades in the making. All have required bold imagination and political commitment. There’s no time to waste.
