Tag Archives: urbanism

California has big dreams — and they’re stuck in traffic.

by LauriBuzacott Posted on November 30, 2018

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When environmentalists want hope, they often turn to California, a state taking strong climate action and promising even more, all while maintaining a robust economy. But the state is also a home of car culture, high-schoolers cruising down mainstreet, lowriders parading, and Angelenos telling each other how to take the 10 to the 405. It’s built on a foundation of squat, sprawling development connected by jam-packed freeways.

And, according to a new report, California is dreaming if it hopes to achieve its climate goals with all that driving. The state is “moving in the wrong direction” when it comes to transportation, its biggest source of emissions, according to the California Air Resources Board, a state agency.

Californians are driving more, burning more gas, and spewing out more pollution from their tailpipes. That’s because the state has failed to take the kind of actions needed to get people out of their cars. By 2030, the state wants to get greenhouse gases 40 percent below 1990 levels. And outgoing Governor Jerry Brown has set a far tougher goal: Making the state carbon neutral by 2045.

But if the Golden State can’t scrap its car culture, California won’t meet its 2030 goals, according to the agency’s report.

“California will not achieve the necessary greenhouse gas emissions reductions to meet mandates for 2030 and beyond without significant changes to how communities and transportation systems are planned, funded and built,” the report said.

The state is still spending the lion’s share of transportation dollars on building and maintaining roads for cars. It’s also been unable to build enough housing near jobs, forcing workers to make long commutes to far flung developments.

California has plans to build more apartments in walkable neighborhoods and improve transit systems, said Ella Wise, a policy advocate for the nonprofit group, ClimatePlan. “We need to translate those plans to action on the ground,” she said. “That’s not what’s happening, yet.”

In 2008, California passed a law requiring communities to upend their land-use and transportation plans to reduce pollution and stem climate change. But nothing much changed. California is just as sprawling and traffic-choked as it was a decade ago.

This isn’t a problem that can be solved by Tesla slashing prices on its Model 3s. The report found that even if the number of people buying zero-emission cars soared 10 fold, Californians would still need to drive less to meet the state’s climate goals.

“We know what we need to do,” Wise said. “This is about healthier communities, safer streets, and more equitable access to jobs. It’s about real people and real lives.”

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California has big dreams — and they’re stuck in traffic.

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In 1949, a Physicist Proposed Using Skyscapers And a Roof to Control NYC’s Climate

by caringk63 Posted on December 27, 2013

Image: San Antonio Light via Paleofuture

Long before we started worrying about global climate change, people were wondering how they could control the climate of major cities. Wouldn’t it be nice, they thought, to have a climate-controlled metropolis? No scorching summers, no freezing winters…just a nice pleasant time, all year round.

In 1949, Archibald Montgomery Low, an engineer and physicist, proposed a plan to keep New York City nice and temperate. It involved putting a giant roof over the entire city. He wrote about the plan in San Antonio Light, saying:

CLIMATE “TO ORDER” — One of the things to come, Professor A. M. Low points out, is likely to be the weather-controlled city. Using the famous New York skyline as a “model,” the artist’s conception, above, embodies some of the best scientific thinking of our time. “Roofs” like the one pictured may be constructed over cities and linked to skyscrapers to provide scientific control of weather. Open cross section of “roof” shows weather experts busy controlling temperature, etc.

This isn’t the first time someone has proposed something like this. In 1952, the Edwardsville Intelligencer ran a piece envisioning our climate controlled future, as Matt Novak at Paleofuture quotes:

Weather-conditioned” communities in the future are perfectly feasible, according to a professor of architecture.

Ambrose M. Richardson of the University of Illinois announced that his graduate architecture students already are working on a model of plastic pillows, helium-filled and joined to make a mile-high floating dome.

Next spring Richardson intends to try the idea with a small dome covering about an acre of land.

He said the next step may be covering 10 or 15 acre areas such as football stadiums and baseball parks. Larger domes – made of thousands of transparent pillows each only a few feet square – covering whole communities would be only a step away.

Obviously, roofing New York City—or really any major metropolis—isn’t exactly feasible. Today, we’re more focusing on keeping the global climate from running away from us than on keeping the citizens of New York nice and comfortable.

More from Smithsonian.com:

The Origins of Futurism
The Jetsons and the Future of the Middle Class

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In 1949, a Physicist Proposed Using Skyscapers And a Roof to Control NYC’s Climate

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America’s Chinatowns Are Disappearing

by ztx6uu6c Posted on October 11, 2013

Image: Dan Nguyen

When was the last time you took a trip to Chinatown? You might want to head there soon, because they might not be around for much longer. According to the Asian American Legal Defense and Education fund, Chinatowns all over the United States are being squeezed into smaller and smaller areas due to gentrification. At Wired‘s Map Labs blog, Greg Miller breaks down this break-down. Based on the maps, Boston has it the worst:

According to Census records, the percentage of the population that claims Asian heritage in Boston’s Chinatown dropped from 70 percent in 1990 to 46 percent in 2010. New York and Philadelphia’s Chinatowns did not see big change either way by that measure during the same time period, but in all three cities the proportion of homes inhabited by families and the proportion of children in the population dropped considerably. To Li that suggests that multigenerational immigrant homes are breaking up — or moving out.

To figure out the composition of these Chinatowns, volunteers went out and surveyed what types of restaurants, businesses and residential properties were in the area. Restaurants in particular are good barometers for a neighborhood’s service to immigrants. In other words, more Asian restaurants means a more robust Chinatown. But as the survey found, other restaurants and shops are moving in quickly.

The very existence of Chinatowns are a product of discrimination—immigrants created these communities to live in because they were excluded from pre-existing ones. And that tradition continues today, according to Bethany Li, author of the report. But with pressure from condominiums and high-end shops from all sides, many Chinatowns are slowly shrinking. While communities are fighting back, Li’s report says that without help they’ll be pushed out again:

Without the fights against unfettered development led by members from groups like the Chinese Progressive Association in Boston, Chinese Staff & Workers’ Association in New York, and Asian Americans United in Philadelphia, these Chinatowns would likely contain even more high-end and institutional expansion. City governments removed and replaced working-class immigrant residential and commercial land uses in each of these Chinatowns.

Bonnie Tsui at Atlantic Cities breaks down what some of those actions might be:

What’s to be done? Recommendations include allocating public land and funds for low-income housing development and retention at a more reasonable proportion to current high-end development; supporting small, local businesses to offset rising rents, given the symbiotic relationship with residents; prioritizing public green spaces; and engaging community organizations, residents, and the larger satellite communities to maintain Chinatowns as shared cultural history and home to working-class immigrants.

For many, Chinatowns are an attraction to a city, and many cities boast about their robust cultural neighborhoods. But they might not be around for much longer.

More from Smithsonian.com:

The Many Chinatowns of North America
San Francisco’s Chinatown at night

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America’s Chinatowns Are Disappearing

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Watch How America’s Lands Changed From Forests to Fields

by MayeskiLatouf679 Posted on August 19, 2013

From 1700 to 2000, the evolution of American anthromes. Photo: Erle Ellis

In the maps above, Erle Ellis, a professor of geography at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, has mapped the “anthromes”—the concept is similar to a biome, but based on humanity’s effect on the landscape—of the United States. Cities are red, woodlands are green, wild land is gray, croplands are yellow, and rangelands are orange. While biomes are used to classify the world’s various ecosystems, as an acknowledgement of the human influence some researchers, including Ellis, have turned to thinking about anthropogenic biomes—”a matrix of human-altered croplands, pastures, towns and cities…’anthromes’ for short,” explains Ensia magazine.

The U.S. spans a huge range of biomes, from temperate humid to Mediterranean, with deserts hot and cold and a cap of boreal forest (both humid and semi-arid). But humans have amassed a huge amount of control over our environments. Here, we’ve used Ellis’ images to showcase how land use in the U.S. has evolved over the past 300 years. You can see woodlands turn to croplands, wild lands turned to expanding rangeland, and cities sprout where none existed.

More from Smithsonian.com:

How The Fukushima Exclusion Zone Shows Us What Comes After The Anthropocene
What is the Anthropocene and Are We in It?

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Watch How America’s Lands Changed From Forests to Fields

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The International Cronut Wars Are On

by Aaren Smith Posted on July 31, 2013

Photo: WynLok

The cronut combines everything that is delicious and unhealthy about both a donut and a croissant. Created a few months back by a New York pastry chef at the Dominique Ansel Bakery, it consists of flaky, buttery croissant dough, folded into a classic donut shape and deep fried, then—as if that weren’t enough—injected with some sort of luscious cream and topped off with icing. Lines of people desperate to try one have formed two hours before the bakery opened.

Obviously, this pastry bonanza could not remain a secret for long. Asia, the Wall Street Journal reports, is already all over it. Bakeries from Hong Kong to Singapore to Japan to the Philippines have already churned out their own versions of the sugar bomb snack—inspiring their own block-long lines of hungry patrons. Some of these shops added a distinctly Asian flare to the scrumptious dessert:

Different bakeries have infused local flavors into their versions. Wildflour Cafe has a dulce de leche option. Banderole, which is already selling hundreds of its croissant doughnuts each day, has green-tea flavored ones and even one with a kawaii, or cute, smiley face on it. The Sweet Spot’s rendition has crushed peanuts, caramel and custard. The end product resembles a mini-doughnut burger with a custard patty.

Even Dunkin Donuts—at least those in Asia—are jumping on the cronut bandwagon. Here’s Quartz:

In South Korea, an adaptation of Ansel’s recipe is now being offered by a global donut and coffee chain, rather than a local baker or domestic pastry chain. A Dunkin Donuts spokesman told Quartz that the chain introduced the “New York Pie Donut” this past weekend. Dunkin Donuts also launched a “Donut Croissant” in Manila a few weeks ago but has no plans to introduce them in the US right now. In South Korea, the pastries are being sold in the high-end Seoul neighborhood of Gangnam, as well as Jamsil and Myungdong.

The original New York creators aren’t feeling too threatened, the Journal reports, given that most of the competition abroad hasn’t sampled the real deal, meaning their version of the cronut is just visual interpretations injected with some imagination. Technically, imitators aren’t allowed to use the name “cronut” since it’s been trademarked by Dominique Ansel, Quartz points out, though China in particular has never given much heed to copyrights. 

More from Smithsonian.com:

Kolaches: The Next Big Thing in Pastries and The Tex-Czech Community Behind Them
Can Starbucks Do for the Croissant What it Did for Coffee? 

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The International Cronut Wars Are On

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A Museum in New York City Is Exhibiting Fragments of a Melting Glacier

by h0di80ju Posted on July 1, 2013

Photo: MoMa Ps1

For most people, seeing a glacier requires a visit to a foreign country or remote corner of wilderness. But not for New Yorkers, at this particular moment. Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has imported pieces of a crumpling, melting glacier from Iceland into a New York City art gallery. National Geographic reports:

Entering the gallery is an awe-inspiring experience. (This is especially true in the heat of the summer.) You are in the middle of a white, frigid room, surrounded by several glaciers scattered around seemingly at random. Each glacier has its own unique tint, shape, and character. Some are rhombic and upright, others curl like fists into the floor, and others are belly down on the ground, almost gliding, like stingrays. Colors range from pale blue to clear (the bluer the ice, the denser the glacier). Some were smaller than a porcupine, while others were larger than a black bear.

The glacier chunks came from Vatnajökull, the largest ice cap in Europe, which is actively melting. Eliasson and his friends only collected pieces of the glacier that had already fallen off, and they used cold containers normally reserved for transporting fish in order to bring the glacier pieces to New York. Each piece, they estimate, has been frozen for around 800 years.

In order to preserve the ice’s shape, NatGeo reports, the museum transformed a walk-in gallery into a freezer.

As some critics have pointed out, keeping the room sufficiently cool requires a lot of energy, although the air conditioner at PS1 is fueled in part by the museum’s recently installed solar roof panels. The temperature ranged from 5°F to 20°F on the day of my visit.

If Eliasson gets his way, however, the energetic costs of temporarily preserving the glacier will be worth it. His exhibition aims to educate people about climate change, with the ultimate hope that they will become more engaged in the issue after taking an up-close look at climate change’s effects.

The glacier can be seen at MoMA PS1 in Queens until September 2. After that, the ice will be relinquished to its fate, as a melted puddle.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Caleb Cain Marcus’ Photos of Glaciers on a Disappearing Horizon
Super High Res Photo of Mt Everest Shows Glacier Melt (But No Bodies) 

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A Museum in New York City Is Exhibiting Fragments of a Melting Glacier

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