city – EcoSalon

The Insider’s Guide to Life: Pet Sounds

Sara Ost — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 16:42:41 +0000

ColumnPets and landlords should mix. Discuss.

A neighbor in my building has adopted a new golden retriever puppy, and it can yelp with the best of them. With my front door facing the lobby stairway, it seems I can’t go an hour without hearing a bark or a floppy tumble down the stairs for yet another walk around the block. Apparently, golden retrievers need lots of walks. The other neighbors have written complaints, the dog’s owner has penned anxious apologies and tacked these shaky handwritten notes above the mail boxes, and it’s only a matter of time before the big dogs are called in – the landlords – and it’s tough luck in rent city.

On this general topic, it strikes me that the common practice by landlords of banning pets outright is more than a little ridiculous. Living life as a human being is a cost that should be included in the rent. For many, life brazenly includes a dog or cat. Landlords have been advised and in most places are required to avoid discrimination on the basis of children, marital status, ethnicity and sexual orientation, even occupation, yet when it comes to man’s best friend, we’re still oddly submissive to residential stinginess.

Over the years, I’ve noticed something. Landlords who allow pets are just nicer people. They tend to view their tenants as human beings rather than irritations. And it works both ways. A friend who is a freelance editor has managed an apartment building for over a decade and has learned that people with pets often make better tenants. They’re more conscious, more responsible, and more mature – and that makes for a happy lease all around. The tendency is so pronounced, she’s actually come to prefer rental candidates who own pets, carpet be damned.

These are only observations, and there are exceptions, of course. The quiet, respectful grad school student slaving over his dissertation would have a hard time committing to more than the composting of a pizza box, let alone caring for a pet. And some pet owners are simply obnoxious (cue the There’s Something About Mary scene with the leathered landlady and her dog, although, fair warning for the uninitiated, you cannot unsee). But my friend gets a private kick out of the shock prospective tenants show when they learn the generous news. Pet sounds? Now there’s an album I can live with. I think it’s sad more people can’t.

It’s true that cats may scratch and dogs may bark. It’s true that we should maintain a reasonable level of care and concern for tenant safety and comfort, as well as heed the necessities of upkeep. Since I can already hear the libertarians and grumpy people sharpening their keyboards (The property rights! The lawsuits! The repairs! The falling sky!), let me say no one is advocating looking the other way at a pit bull puppy mill or even a trouble-making tomcat. Fines and deposits are wonderful things. But stop and ask an honest question. Knowing how much healthier and happier people are when they live life with an animal companion, do we really feel like celebrating fewer smudges on the paint as if it’s some sort of profit? Those walls will need repainting, anyway. It’s the law.

If we let the actuary tables have their way, I fear we’ll soon see even the amiable goldfish banned on the grounds of potential mildew. Perhaps we could ban toddlers – they throw tantrums. Or teenage girls – they throw everything. While we’re at it, middle-schoolers – they haven’t yet learned about deodorant. I’d personally like to request banning Creepy Guy with The Pants and The One Who Goes Through Your Recycling. Also, Mormons, just because. Even some houseplants can be perniciously aggressive. The possibilities are really endless, for you can never be too mean!

“I’m just so relieved that I finally found a place that would take a dog,” a friend, Amanda, recently told me after an exhausting apartment hunt. She said this in a tone of such apologetic gratitude, you’d think the woman hustles a team of Huskies for a living. Not the case, although I’m sure her Boston terrier would give the Iditarod his very best effort. They’re such earnest little guys.

No dogs, no cats, no pets, no love. It’s not as if I can’t understand why landlords make such rules, and I don’t think petitioning for pet rights in the rental code is the winning approach (although never say never in California). The No Pets Allowed rule is mitigating risk, it’s just that it’s also mitigating one of the nicer things about humanity, and that’s responsibility. Besides, there comes a time when your orchid’s capacity for emotional support reaches its limit. In the interest of making the planet a better place, or at least a little less surreal, I’d like to remind everyone that control freaks don’t change the world.

My neighbor’s guilt over his puppy plight doesn’t make it any less annoying. It is a disturbance, but so is Facebook. This is all part of life, and if I can live with a digital poke, whatever that is, I think I can handle a canine.

All this is to say, it’s never too early to start planning. This holiday season, show your appreciation and give your landlord a pet.

This is the latest installment in your editor’s new column for 2011, The Insider’s Guide to Life, exploring topics such as media, culture, sex, politics, and style. If she’s got the strength for it, there will be more to come. Cheers and spellcheck!

Image: Mingo.nl

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17 Living Roofs: The High Tech Future of Architecture

Mike Sowden — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:27:09 +0000

We’ve always thought we had roofs covered. They had to be barren, hostile places the rain and the wildlife slid from before they could do any damage. Nature had no place on our roofs. Except – we couldn’t have been more wrong. A green roof may required a little extra engineering behind the scenes, but it’s far better than its non-living counterparts for regulating house temperature, filtering out pollutants, scrubbing the surrounding air, controlling stormwater run-off, absorbing sound and many more factors that impact our quality of life. A green roof is a healthy roof.

Green design is an enormously popular trend in modern architecture. Take a look at these 17 examples – some in place today, and others still on the drawing board. We may have got it wrong in the past, but we’re certainly making up for lost time.

ACROS Fukuoka, in Fukuoka City, Japan. 35,000 plants, 76 species – and the city’s best view from an office window.

Art and Exhibition Hall roof garden – Bonn, Germany.

Chicago City Hall – the coolest place to be, thanks to this $2.5 million rooftop garden (not open to the public – the 11-storey drop might have something to do with this).

California’s Academy of Sciences (SF) is covered in rolling hills – the perfect place for students to grab their lunch in the sun.

Looking like the ultimate vegan pizza, the Pennsylvania State University’s Center for Green Roof Research is a department that practices what it preaches.

Marriott Hotel, Victoria, BA. Keeping an underground car park cool in the summer, toasty-warm in the winter.

The forwarding link isn’t working, but this rooftop garden (wherever it is) found on This Girl’s Gone Green is an extraordinary achievement – it grows crops!

This design by architect Hoerr Shaudt graces the roof of 900 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago. A haven of natural tranquility, 10 floors up.

After a long, hard day in the School of Art Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), what more cathartic way to unwind than to walk all over it?

This idyllic spot may look terrestrial, but it’s a thing of the air, roofing Toronto’s Mountain Equipment Coop.

The Waldspirale in Darmstadt, Germany, is all about being unique. It doesn’t look like any building you’ve ever seen. Every one of its 1,000+ windows is different – ditto for all the doorhandles. And running along spiraling rooftop is a tree-lined garden (the wald or “wood” in its name).

Turfed roof near Gol, Norway. In days past, this sight would be grounds to condemn your neighbors as the laziest people on the planet. Now they’re obviously the cleverest (although we’re a little worried about that bowing roof).

Vancouver Public Library, Canada. Beautiful, useful, and definitely out of bounds – note the lack of protective barrier around the edge.

And now to more speculative matters. This proposed village for Heden, a sleepy cityblock in Sweden’s Gothenburg, has more than a touch of Hobbiton about it…

…as does this proposal by designer Friedenreich Hundertwasser.

Should green roofs be built to be scaled on foot? The designers of this proposal for the 2007 Fit City 2 conference in New York certainly think so – and there’s a good reason for thinking they’re right.

And finally – this example looks as speculative as they come. But it’s reality: the blueprint for the Vancouver Convention Center, currently expanding rapidly in time to host the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. The 6-acre living roof will house a whopping 400,000 varieties of native plant life – Inhabitat has a closer look here.

More information: Green Roofs (what else?)

Each week here at EcoSalon, the editors choose a post from the archives that we think you’ll love. The original post can be found here.

Images: hans s / metaefficient / Deutsche Telekom / NREL / California Academy of Sciences / Inhabitat / Treehugger / pnwra / food2gro / trendir / Nanyang Technological University / sookie / Hundertwasser / IGPOTY / Terri Meyer Boake / Kjellengren Kaminsky Architecture / Ecogeek / Archidose / Inhabitat.

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Where Cities Are Taking Us: 10 Urban Eco Trends

Mike Sowden — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 18:38:13 +0000

If you want a glimpse of our world in centuries to come, stroll round a city. Dystopian-mongering pessimists will now be holding their heads in their hands and groaning. Can we blame them? Urban areas are too commonly associated with poverty, pollution, neglect and a brutalizing of the environment for the sake of a fast buck. Pretty? Only from high up.

But that’s the old model of city life. Crocodile Dundee wasn’t too far off the mark when he said cities must be friendly because so many people want to live together. They’re the biggest physical expressions of our social nature on this planet. They’re filled with people, every one of them an individual – and so in these eco-conscious times where everyone can step up and contribute, cities are where things happen.

Here are 10 urban trends that will shape of the cities of tomorrow.

Keep The City Buzzing

Bees are on the wane, and we have no idea why. Entire populations are dying or disappearing as part of the baffling phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Bad news in itself, but the sting in the tale is that without bees, many of our staple crops are doomed. While scientists search for the answers, the urban backyard remedy is obvious – and here’s how it works. Bee hives only need a little land to thrive – and you’d be following in the footsteps of committed enthusiasts like Scarlett Johansson and Samuel L Jackson. Further incentive needed? One word: honey.

Urban Growth

Escalating food prices, and all that land out back? Put the two together and turning your place into an edible garden is a no-brainer. But even if you’re squeezed into a concreted corner or you’re halfway up a towerblock, there’s still room for some horticultural creativity. Agricultural skyscrapers are on the rise (as it were) but while city-planners develop a coherently green strategy, it’s all about self-expression. Snake some vines over your balcony or up the wall. Let your potted plants grab onto windows and railings. Make your city come alive!

Up Where The Air Is Green

But whatever is done in the vertical is being done tenfold in the horizontal. Green roofs have captured the urban imagination like no other eco-craze, and it’s not hard to see why: they’re beautiful, they have a deeply practical element, and…did we say how beautiful? Of course there are new architectural challenges that come with having tons of topsoil and greenery piled on your ceiling – and there’s the usual amount of half-hearted bandwaggoning. (Yes, Astroturf is cheating). But wouldn’t it be nice to have a little less of the “concrete”, a little more of the “jungle”? I bet the local wildlife would think so.

Seed-Bomb It Back To The Stone Age

If you’re heartsick of seeing drab, neglected patches of municipal land blighting your neighborhood…you could be a guerrilla gardener waiting to join the green revolution. “Fighting the filth with forks and flowers”, these law-skirting folk are on a mission to bring budding life to every corner of our cities by any means possible. They sneak out at night with seeds and trowel, beautifying furiously before daylight exposes their efforts to the cops, or they plant greenery while hidden in full view. Sound like your kind of thing? Sign up here (you rebel, you).

Cleaning The Streets: Electric Cars and Friendly Rides

It’s been on the horizon for years (far too many of them) but now the electric car is starting to make headway in the place it’s best suited for – the urban grid. Where else is it practical to build recharging stations at the kind of density that suits the electric car’s shorter range? Ah, but that’s changing too – some of the models on our 2009 roundup hold enough juice to compare favorably to their gas-powered counterparts. These admirable advances aside, do you really need your own car? If not, and if braving the public transport isn’t an option, grab a lift with someone else – because urban carpooling is here to stay.

Commute Yourself Slim

In the convenience-drugged city of tomorrow, the only sweat you’ll break is when you’re deciding which button to push. Utopian dream? We say: urban nightmare. We spend our day in the thrall of convenience technology…and then heads straight to the nearest super-expensive gym to compensate. With modern life in full swing, who needs The Onion? Luckily there are architects who recognise the danger and, like Nintendo, are sneaking gyms into our lives without us realising. Their thinking is: why consume electricity when calories can be burnt instead? So the urban fabric gets a healthy makeover, like the much maligned stairwell. Cars are zoned out of existence and replaced with their human-powered counterparts (saving you cash in all sorts of ways). Parks and paths are expanded, and everywhere can be reached by a sidewalk. Healthy commuter, coming through. For specifics, check out the New York City Department of Design + Construction’s Active Design Guidelines.

One for Me, One for You…

My mum has a logistics problem. Thanks to some absurdly prolific fruit trees, her freezer is permanently half-full with surplus she has to freeze or it goes to waste. What she needs is a local fruit exchange – a social network (online and offline) that collects and distributes surplus produce for the good of the neighborhood. Take San Francisco’s version, Neighborhood Fruit, working like a foodie’s version of Freecycle – the goods are there for free, you collect them yourself, and first come is first served. If you like free food (ie. if you have a pulse) or want to reclaim your freezer, find your local fruit exchange…and if there’s none at hand, why not start one (pdf)?

Serving the Needy (With Servings)

Gone are the days that it’s acceptable for shops to chuck unused food away at closing time (and having worked as a barista for a certain worldwide coffee chain, I’ve seen my fair share of that). While up to a third of household groceries still go into the trash, restaurants are acting rather more respectably by offering up their output to local charities and nonprofit organisations, or directly into the hands of the homeless on the street. Check out the National Restaurant Association’s food donation work, and their guide to doing it (PDF).

It’s Cheaper Online (or, How We Killed The High Street)

Here’s a phrase to fill a shopkeeper with dread: “No, I won’t buy it here, I’ll get it on eBay / Amazon /Craigslist”. Online retailing is gargantuan business, simply because it’s usually the way to pick up the best goods from anywhere in the globe at the best price. Is it green? With minimal packaging and low overheads, you’t think so – except it’s also the quickest method of wiping out profits for urban retailers and for killing small traders. (Even the big ones aren’t safe – take the fate of Borders UK.) However, counter that with the fact that they’re billion-dollar recycling machines that often do a lot of good.

No matter your view, the bottom line is that online retailing is on the rise – and shopping is changing forever.

Neighbors are a Big Deal

But why spend money at all? Before money there was bartering, and thanks to the people-connecting power of the Internet, it’s firmly back in fashion (although we wouldn’t say “money is dead” – merely looking a bit peaky). If it fits through the post, it’s being swapped: books, DVDs, clothes, gadgets, plant seeds and tons more. Yet cities are where this is taking place in person, exchanging goods and services and reinforcing social bonds. Bartering binds people together.

And for the more intrepid barterer – why not trade homes with a complete stranger?

Each week here at EcoSalon, the editors choose a post from the archives that we think you’ll love. The original post can be found here.

Images: telmo32, NNECAPA, axiepics, bbjee, ubrayj02, frankh, emrank, Alex E. Proimos, eHow and paul(dex) busy @ work

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Encouraging City Growth: Urban Farming Grows Up

Scott Adelson — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:43:37 +0000

When I first started hearing the term “urban farming,” I’d think about either my grandparents’ stories about war-time “victory gardens” or of some crumbling dystopian city full of hungry citizens doing whatever they could to endure society’s epic demise. The former image was one of coming together for the cause, growing cukes in city lots to support “our boys” “over there.” The latter was all sci-fi survival, doing what you can with what you got, staving off impending doom.

Turns out, the advent of today’s urban farming movement is in very much in response to both of these veins. Consider that by mid-century, the human population will increase by about three billion people and nearly 80 percent of us will live in urban centers. It’s been estimated that if farming practices continue as they are, the amount of “new” land needed to grow food to feed all these people would have to be 20 percent larger than the size of Brazil. Already, parts of the developing world are facing of water and land shortages, so we’re talking pretty high stakes here. As we recently pointed out, the push for urban farming is here, and it’s here to stay. And the movement continues to grow up. Literally.

The idea for “vertical farming” resulted from a classroom challenge made to students by a Columbia University teacher of environmental sciences and microbiology. Professor Dickson Despommier asked his class to figure out how many Manhattanites they could feed a 2,000-calorie daily diet to – growing food on the island’s 13 acres of usable rooftops. When the answer came back to be about two percent of the 50,000 city dwellers, Despommier posited growing food vertically, inside multi-story and high-rise buildings. The students took it from there, eventually creating Verticalfarm to spread the idea.

Though the project began in 2000 (we actually gave it some coverage a couple years back), the concept’s finding some new traction in the media, at least, with a recent piece in Smithsonian magazine’s 40th Anniversary issue, and Despommier’s new book, The Vertical Farm: The World Grows Up, soon to be released.

There are many advantages to this approach, according to Despommier and his team. For starters, there’s year-round crop production, no weather-related failures, all food can be grown hydroponically with no herbicides, pesticides or fertilizers, and you get the elimination of agricultural runoff by recycling black water. As for its impact on regular old “horizontal” farming, the method would provide for the return of existing farmland to nature, which is always a plus. Add fossil fuel-free food production and even feeding methane from composting back into a city’s electrical grid and, well, maybe they have something here.

Not everyone’s convinced that such an approach makes sense, and some say that cost and resource issues make the efficiency of such grand-scale endeavors to be no more than pie in the sky thinking. But the facts on the ground remain regarding populations, pollution and climate issues being on a collision course scheduled to meet up sometime in the not-too-distant future. It’s never too early for creative thinking. Especially when we’re going to need some unique solutions to, perhaps, get us off the ground.

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Where Cities Are Taking Us: 10 Urban Eco Trends

Mike Sowden — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:38:36 +0000

Here are 10 urban trends that will shape of the cities of tomorrow.

Keep The City Buzzing

Urban Growth

Up Where The Air Is Green

Seed-Bomb It Back To The Stone Age

Cleaning The Streets: Electric Cars and Friendly Rides

Commute Yourself Slim

One for Me, One for You…

Serving the Needy (With Servings)

It’s Cheaper Online (or, How We Killed The High Street)

No matter your view, the bottom line is that online retailing is on the rise – and shopping is changing forever.

Neighbors are a Big Deal

And for the more intrepid barterer – why not trade homes with a complete stranger?

Images: telmo32, NNECAPA, axiepics, bbjee, ubrayj02, frankh, emrank, Alex E. Proimos, eHow and paul(dex) busy @ work

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Retrofits: New Online Game Launched to Play Up Green Renovation

Luanne Bradley — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:00:22 +0000

When you come in from working all day on the Farmville, check out Urbanville life in the new online game RETROFITS. Launched by the California software company, Autodesk, it features talking buildings that encourage players to learn the benefits of eco upgrades to our city dwellings.

As the makers see it, “Buildings are the number one source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S,” and we need to make buildings better with sustainable and energy efficient design.

“Don’t just stand there,” they tell us, “Play the game, post your high score, and invite your friends to compete – every little fit helps.”

In other words, follow the Farmville route to creating a cooperative green mentality.

More cooperation is needed on the part of architects, engineers, builders, designers and others in the housing trade. According to ArchDaily, a substantial 8 percent of all carbon emissions in America come from powering our buildings and experts say we can achieve half the goal of cutting down on those emissions 60 to 90 percent by 2050.

Want to get started doing your part? Play the game here and let us know how you like it.

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A Tree Grows in Michigan

Sarah Irani — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:00:42 +0000

Raze the roof for green.

I’ll let you in on one of my secret eco-dreams: to tear down dilapidated buildings and allow nature to recover the land. As it turns out, this just might be a new municipal strategy in combating urban blight.

The first site of this radical experiment? Flint, Michigan: a sprawling and impoverished, underpopulated city. At 34 square miles, Flint requires a lot of maintenance and upkeep (think: garbage trucks, road repair, electricity lines).

So, how to maintain a city’s integrity without the taxpayer base to support it? Just tear down the buildings and parts of town that are already on the decline. It’s “pruning the deadwood,” to put it in gardening terms. The idea is to raze decrepit buildings and replant them with trees or allow natural meadows to grow on the land.

According to Dan Kildee, the brains behind this project, nobody is being forced to move and people are being offered better homes in more maintained parts of town. The ones who choose to stay will simply have more natural areas surrounding their homes.

The U.S. government and various charities have approached Mr. Kildee and asked him for advice on how to proceed with this idea in other declining cities around the United States. Seems like “less is more” and “back to nature” may come together on a grand and tangible scale.

Image: Saquan Stimpson

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When Eco-Luxury Is a Stretch

Mike Sowden — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 12:00:44 +0000

You all deserve a night on the town – your favorite restaurant, your favorite wine, your best friends. Alas. It’s time for one of you to take the short straw – the one soberly marked “designated driver”.

Or, you can hire a limo – and you don’t have to sabotage your eco principles to do it! The green chauffeur industry is on a…roll. (Oh dear, that’s two.)

For example, if you’re in the San Francisco area, you could contact Bauer’s Worldwide Intelligent Transportation. Over 85% of their miles are eco-friendly (they use sustainable fuel sources in hybrid vehicles). Google use Bauer’s to shuttle 2,500 of their employees back and forth from Silicon Valley.

Everyone gets the long straw and a green conscience. It’s the perfect way to let your hair down for an indulgent night on the town. Driver!

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17 Living Roofs: the High Tech Green Future of Architecture

Mike Sowden — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:30:44 +0000

We’ve always thought we had roofs covered. They had to be barren, hostile places the rain and the wildlife slid from before they could do any damage. Nature had no place on our roofs. Except…we couldn’t have been more wrong. A green roof may required a little extra engineering behind the scenes, but it’s far better than its non-living counterparts for regulating house temperature, filtering out pollutants, scrubbing the surrounding air, controlling stormwater run-off, absorbing sound and many more factors that impact our quality of life. A green roof is a healthy roof.