France just passed a new law that will require all new buildings in commercial zones to be covered with green roofs or solar panels.

Environmental groups hope to reduce the energy costs of commercial buildings while creating an urban jungle in the world’s most beloved city of progress.

According to The Guardian:

The law approved by parliament was more limited in scope than initial calls by French environmental activists to make green roofs that cover the entire surface mandatory on all new buildings.

The law will change the face of the urban landscape in France by promoting more urban greenery.

While solar panels have an obvious purpose, the benefits of green roofs are less well known. Not only do they beautify buildings and create space for community gardens, they have a number of other environmental benefits.

In the summer, green roofs retain 70 to 90 percent of precipitation and in the winter they retain 25 to 40 percent of precipitation. This reduces runoff and decreases the stress on sewer systems. The daily dew and evaporation cycle along with the light absorbed by vegetation, help to cool buildings down. Green roofs also reduce smog by slowing the distribution of dust and particulate matter.

According to Think Progress:

France has lagged behind other major European countries like Germany, Italy and Spain in solar power development. As of last summer, France had just over five gigawatts of photovoltaic capacity, accounting for around one percent of total energy consumption. Germany has nearly 40 GWs installed. France is heavily reliable on nuclear power for its energy, and nuclear generation in 2012 made up about 83 percent of the country’s total generation.

The combination of solar panels and green roofs create dual environmental tools. Both help reduce the power demands on the national grid, especially when temperatures peak in the summer time.

Green roofs are popular in Germany, Australia, and parts of Canada. Since 2009, Toronto has had a similar mandatory law for green roofs on commercial buildings. But they’re also gaining traction in the U.S. New York City leads the pack in green roofs and it’s home to the largest roof top garden in the country. James Farley Post Office is topped with a greening system that saves the massive post office $30,000 per year in energy costs. Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Portland are all home to a number of green roofs.

Related on EcoSalon

Gardening on the Roof: 15 Gorgeous Green Rooftops

17 Living Roofs: The High Tech Green Future of Architecture

Dirty Tactics to Block Residential Solar Panels

Image of a green roof from Shuttershock

The post French Law to Require Green Roofs or Solar Panels on New Commercial Buildings appeared first on EcoSalon.

A new infographic details municipal efforts to make cities more environmentally friendly.

With the definition of “green” still fuzzy when it comes to products, it’s even more difficult to measure the efforts of cities attempting to decrease their carbon footprint. What are water consumption policies like? How many cars on the road? What types of recycling programs and waste reduction efforts are underway? Are there any green building or alternative energy incentives?

HouseTrip set out to find out and measure the efforts of the world’s top “green” cities. Motivation for the project came from wanting to help draw attention to the importance of cutting global pollution generated by cities. With more than half of the world’s population now living in urban areas, cities are beginning to become leaders in environmentally responsible living. Data collected from the Siemens Green Cities Index and other sources provided the information to develop the infographic.

The inforgraphic shows which of these most progressive cities are doing what in the world of green: London, New York, Vancouver, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and Stockholm. So what are these cities up to? Just 44 percent of New Yorkers own a car, for example. Compared with 95 percent of the rest of Americans, that’s a pretty huge difference. Head over to Amsterdam and you’ll see more bikes than people—one bike for every 0.73 people in fact. Copenhagen is among the cities embracing the benefits of green roofs, with legislation requiring green rooftops on all new buildings, which will add 5,000 square meters of vegetation. Vancouver and Copenhagen recycle 55 percent of all their waste. Vancouver generates 90 percent of its energy from renewable resources; Stockholm is at 60 percent.

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

Images: HouseTrip

The post How Green is Your City? appeared first on EcoSalon.

image: Percita

Interest in urban farming has generated creative uses of space, with many rooftops turning into skyscraping gardens. And another trend is filling in green building tops: sod roofs.

While a food-producing rooftop’s payoff is pretty obvious (and delicious!), what are the benefits to one covered in grass, shrubs and flowers? Quite a few, according to Chelsea Green. “The temperature moderating effect caused by 5 to 6 inches of earth on the roof helps keep a house cooler in summer and warmer in winter, especially in extreme climates; 14 inches of decomposing straw will have the same effect while adding some insulation for a while. Such roofs are therefore a prime choice for cold-climate houses built with a high degree of insulation for maximum comfort.” There’s also the benefit of wind and noise protection: “A city house built with bales and covered with an organic roof will become a peaceful retreat at any time of day, even in areas with dense traffic. On particularly windy sites, such a roof anchors the house to the ground physically as well as visually.”

image: roger 4336

And while an edible rooftop or urban garden is more expensive and requires constant maintenance, a sod-covered roof can be particularly affordable and self-regulating. It can also extend the life of the roof and help mitigate storm runoff damage.

Sod roofs attract birds, who can help to keep pests away and, of course, bring you many moments of beautiful contemplation. Green rooftops can clean the air, which benefits you and your neighbors.

image: pnwra

Almost 10 percent of all of Germany’s rooftops are green and regulations in Tokyo, Toronto and Switzerland require specific sized roofs to be green. And here in the U.S., reports World Changing, Chicago has begun planning and installing more than 200 green roofs throughout the city.

Need some sod rooftop ideas? Here are a few favorites:

From Malung Hembygdsgård in Sweden.  

Norway has quite a few.

This site is full of gorgeous sod rooftops!

Apartment Therapy loves green roofs.

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

The post Redefining Urban Gardens: Greening Roofs with Sod appeared first on EcoSalon.

7 stories about cities working together to make their communities stronger and greener.

We love our cities – and while it’s easy to point to the negative environmental impacts of urban living, they’re less than half the story. From the 10 best cities for making their inhabitants feel healthy and happy to the subtle influences of city architecture on interior design, we’re fascinated by the impact of this most modern of social inventions, the urban sprawl. Here are seven examples from our archives of the fascinating things that happen when lots of people get together.

Human beings are increasingly an urban global culture. Take Africa: in 1900, less than 5% of this continent’s population lived in urban areas: today, it’s over 35% – and growing by more than 4% a year. Across our blue-green planet, more than 3 billion people cluster together in densely-populated forests of stone, metal and glass. We’ve always had this habit, but it’s only recently that we’ve developed the tools to really go to town.

Turning Cities In On Themselves: the Urban Eco Revolution

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 require 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.

17 Living Roofs: The High Tech Green Future of Architecture

Forget the days of mindlessly jumping in a taxi to go from point A to point B. Urban hiking is all about planning, executing and enjoying the journey, another great example of slow travel. According to the Urban Dictionary, urban hiking is “the exploration of diverse urban environments on foot.” Conservation and travel groups alike promote urban hiking, as it not only gets people outdoors and active, but also allows them to explore the ins and outs of urban landscapes.

The City Girl’s Guide to Urban Hiking

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 recognize 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.

Where Cities are Taking Us: 10 Urban Eco Trends

Turns out that this urban foraging thing is a bit of a movement. There are groups springing up all over the country – not to be confused withFreegans – a philosophy I support in principal, though you’ll never catch me dumpster diving. I prefer the idea of waste diversion before it hits the dumpster. Portland, Oregon has a network, Santa Fe has a map, LA has Fallen Fruit, San Francisco has a wild foraged food CSA.

The New Hunter Gatherers: Urban Foragers

Honking cars emit foul black clouds, skyscrapers blot out the sun, litter lines the gutters and healthy green space can be hard to come by. But in many of America’s biggest cities, these negative traits are being eclipsed by clean, efficient public transit, bike-friendly infrastructure, multiplying trees, reliance on renewable energy and a fierce pride in locally-produced products. Slashing greenhouse gas emissions and coming close to zero waste is no easy feat for a metropolis with a population of at least 250,000, but these 10 cities – from Boston to San Francisco – prove that sustainability is possible on the largest of scales, in good economic times and bad.

Hard Economic Times Be Damned: 10 U.S. Cities Make Their Own Green

Let’s meditate for a moment on how people really want to live – in aesthetically-pleasing, affordable homes with shared outdoor space, tree-shaded dead-end streets that keep the neighborhood cooler in the summer, save money on infrastructure, eliminate through traffic and create quiet and safe spaces for children to play and neighbors to meet. Spaces for ball games, picnics, gardens, vineyards, and orchards. Beneath the SUVs and strip malls, suburbia has a green heart.

New Urbanism and the Green Heart of Suburbia

Images: Ofer Wolberger for Popular Mechanics; ecogeek; brartist; telmo32; bentza; Tony the Misfit; Pear Biter and Mike Behnken.

The post From The Vault: Celebrating the Concrete Jungle appeared first on EcoSalon.

Rooftops as sustainable, functional and gorgeous green spaces.

Around the globe, more focus is being put on utilizing the vast square footage of the roof. People are creating private, green havens of relaxation or gardens that provide fresh, pesticide-free fruits and vegetables.

Take, for example, the rooftop pictured below.

Add a little green and watch it grow into Eagle Street Farm, an organic rooftop vegetable farm (image below) created by Goode Green, a New York City green roof design firm.

In some European cities it’s required by law that any new, flat-roof building have a green roof. The image below was taken in Stuttgart, Germany.

Green roofs and roof gardens act as natural cooling systems and help improve air quality. Basically all you need is a strong, waterproof roof with a good drainage system and plants with shallow roots. The roof garden below is at the Crosby Street Hotel in New York City.

And if you thought something so functional and sustainable couldn’t be plush and pretty, you thought wrong. (Image below is Chris and Lisa Goode’s (of Goode Green) downtown New York City residence roof garden.)

Look at these further 10 beauties:

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Goode residence, New York City.

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Rooftop garden, downtown Singapore.

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Private residence, Fifth Avenue, New York City.

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City Hall, Chicago, Illinois.

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California Academy of Science, San Francisco.

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Goode residence, New York City.

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Hospital rooftop, Basel, Switzerland.

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Private residence, Milan, Italy.

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St. Luke’s International Hospital, Akashi, Tokyo.

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Goode residence, New York City.

Images: vinczha, National Geographic, Goode Green, New York Magazine, HenryLeongHimWoh, New York Magazine, tomvw, Ian Muttoo.

Note: Top image is the Gary Comer Youth Center Rooftop Garden in Chicago, Illinois.

The post Gardener on the Roof: 15 Gorgeous Green Rooftops appeared first on EcoSalon.

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.

The post 17 Living Roofs: The High Tech Future of Architecture appeared first on EcoSalon.

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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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)?

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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).

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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.

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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

The post Where Cities Are Taking Us: 10 Urban Eco Trends appeared first on EcoSalon.

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?

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

The post Where Cities Are Taking Us: 10 Urban Eco Trends appeared first on EcoSalon.

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?)

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.

The post 17 Living Roofs: the High Tech Green Future of Architecture appeared first on EcoSalon.

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…

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

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Art and Exhibition Hall roof garden – Bonn, Germany.

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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).

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

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

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

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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!

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

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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?

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

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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).

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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).

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

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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…

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…as does this proposal by designer Friedenreich Hundertwasser.

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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.

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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?)

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.

The post 17 Living Roofs: the High Tech Green Future of Architecture appeared first on EcoSalon.