Liveblog
Correspondents Lloyd Alter (TreeHugger and Planet Green), Ryan Avent (Grist), Nate Berg (Planetizen), Andrew Blum (Metropolis and Wired), Randy Crane (UCLA School of Public Affairs) and Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson (New York Times Magazine, Architect, and Metropolis) bring you updates from the Re-imagining Cities: Urban Design After Oil symposium.
Symposium presented by the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design and the Penn Institute for Urban Research, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation.
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The Role of Urban Design | Nov 7th at 11:08am
Our first few speakers—Robort Socolow, David Orr, and Adil Najam—have all emphasized the scope of the climate challenge facing the planet. It’s difficult to overstate the size and the urgency of the problem, and still more difficult to overstate the extent of the disconnect between the problem and our willingness to act to solve it.
I appreciated a taxonomy of the challenge presented by Najam this morning. Climate change is, at bottom, a chemistry problem. Carbon has certain properties that, in sufficient quantities in the atmosphere generate nasty warming effects. The scientists figured this out, and just as easily determined the solution—emit less carbon. In came the economists to say that the problem was in fact larger than chemistry alone. Various emission reduction mechanisms are available, some of which are far more damaging or costly than others. At base, said the economists, this is an efficiency problem. But then came the climate policy experts to explain that in fact not all efficiency measures are created equal; denying fossil fuels to the world’s poorest, whether or not that’s what efficiency dictates, is a mistake. In the end, they said, this is an equity problem. And beyond that it is a sustainability problem; we must continue to grow our economy, so how can this be done sustainably?
But beyond these categories, climate change is fundamentally a political problem. The challenge, it has been made clear so far, is how to get people to solve problems that require fundamental changes in behaviors, many of which are quite popular. How, politically, can we make ourselves change?
This, to me, is where the importance of urban design becomes critical. It can be and should be the role of urban planners to figure out how to make the unpleasant pleasant. To make efficiency enjoyable and desirable. To make efficient, green urban living simultaneously affordable and popular.
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Framing the Problem | Nov 7th at 10:58am
Elizabeth Kolbert asks the question: How large and daunting is the problem we face? Being the great journalist that she is, she capably summarized the problem of climate change and carbon dioxide.
David Orr of Oberlin College knows his stuff too; he gave Elizabeth’s speech in greater detail. He reminded us how our cities were designed to run on cheap gas, and our cities will rise and fall on what we do with transportation.
It is the introductory session and the title is “Framing the Problem” but I begin to worry that this seminar was going to be two days of hockey sticks and wedges instead of urban design. We have heard the problem framed many times.
Then Adil Najam of Boston University framed the problem in a completely different way.
Najam said “facts, anyone can make up, but stories have meaning”. And he started telling stories. He asked us to imagine that we were from another planet, coming to write a report evaluating the earth. How would we describe the planet as a whole?
-an extremely poor country
-it would be a very divided country.
-it would be a very degraded country.
-it would be a very insecure country.
-it would be a poorly governed country.
-it would be an unsafe country.“If there is as an interplanetary travel advisory it would be to stay away from planet earth. Our world is a third world country. I wish the world was Sweden but it isn’t. The connectedness of environmental challenges forces us to confront otherwise neglected aspects of our global connectedness.”
“What started as an emission problem became an efficiency problem, then a policy problem and ultimately an equity problem. Which is the more moral molecule? the CO2 from powering the fridge in the Gobi Desert or the beer fridge in Maine? The molecule from burning gas in your SUV or for the cooking stove in India? It is no longer a debate about molecules or money, it is about people.”
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The World is a Third-World Country | Nov 7th at 10:41am
There is an incredible disconnect between urban policy and climate policy. Many people agree that there is a direct connection between the two—but we’re not there yet. Imagining the world as one country is an easy way to see how we’ve failed.
This is the hypothetical view of Adil Najam, of Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. “In some ways I don’t think you can understand the city if you’re too close too it,” he says at a morning plenary session of the Urban Design After Oil symposium at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s kind of like forests.”
If our world were actually one country, he says, it would be a very poor and troubled place. Income distribution would be incredibly out of whack, the overall state of our natural resources would be incredibly degraded, and there would be an extreme food distribution problem. Climate change would make the world dramatically insecure. The world would be like a third-world country.
And as we know, climate change policy in third world countries is hardly revolutionary. If anything, it is incredibly lacking. And if we are to look at this one-country world in the same light, our global climate change policy is similarly lacking—mainly because it doesn’t exist.
Another policy that doesn’t exist in this hypothetical one-country world is an urban development policy. David Orr of Oberlin College argues that we don’t even have an urban development policy for one of the actual countries in our world, the United States. Orr and Najam argued today that these are two areas that need broad-scale consideration in the frame of policy. But they are not separate worlds.
Najam asks “Can you have sustainable development without effective climate stabilization?” Simply stated, no. The relationship between urban planning and the effects of our urban areas on climate change are becoming incredibly clear to a wider range of professionals and laypeople. Building policies that address urban planning issues and climate change will need to happen soon, and ithese policies will have to be drafted together in a unified way. Maybe a good way to start that policymaking is by looking at the world as Najam’s single third-world country.
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Judith Rodin’s opening remarks | Nov 7th at 10:20am
Here are two quotes from today’s opening remarks:
In order for a society to flourish, there must be a flourishing city at its core.—Jane Jacobs
Progress always starts with bold ideas.—Judith Rodin
I like putting these two quotes up there and thinking about their overlap. Are we going to get the kind of flourishing cities we need with the ideas currently on the table? Let’s be optimistic and say: maybe. I agree with Rodin and think we need bold ideas. That being said—on my way to the conference today I was reading about the budget cuts in store for Philadelphia and wonder how we are going to improve this city given the financial crisis.
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What do we talk about when we talk about cities? | Nov 7th at 9:07am
The seats have just filled up for the opening plenary this morning, but before anyone started talking, I wanted to put out a question, the one I’ll be thinking about over the day: What do we talk about when we talk about cities?—much less cities after the age of oil. The shape of a plaza, the policies of a government, the formulas of a real estate developer? Is it a fear of change, or a desire for change? Is it about preserving the character of a neighborhood, or preserving the health of a planet? Cities have a lot of moving parts; today has a lot of speakers. There’s a Jane Jacobs line I’d never seen before posted on the wall of the exhibition accompanying the conference:
“Hundreds of thousands of people with hundreds of thousands of plans and purposes built the city. Only they will rebuild the city.”
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Planning for the Next Fifty Years | Nov 7th at 8:43am
Fifty years later, planners, architects and yes, even bloggers have gathered in Philadelphia again to look at the issues that will affect our communities in the next fifty years: Re-imaginging cities after the age of oil.
I will be reporting from the conference for the next two days, as will correspondents from Grist, Metropolis, Planetizen, the New American City and Wired.
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Welcome! | Nov 7th at 7:34am
Welcome to the first-ever live blog on Next American City’s Web site. We’re especially proud to be hosting such incredible writers as they document this event. But importantly we’re very very excited (at 7:30 no less!) about the offerings for today.
First up, an opening plenary with Elizabeth (or as my colleague who has met her says, Betsy) Kolbert. She’ll be talking with Adil Najam, Director, Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer–Range Future; Professor, International Relations and Geography and the Environment, Boston University and David Orr, Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics, Oberlin College. Their agenda: getting to the heart of this problem.
Stay tuned!
