Are we seriously facing up to the issue of a world without oil? | Nov 8th at 9:59am
Jiang Wu, Deputy director General of Shanghai Urban Planning Administration describes building new cities to service Volkswagen and General Motors. Millions of people in a new city living in new towers building new cars.
Then they built a new city around a new harbour to handle the new bigger ships to send more goods to the rest of the world. The entire system is based on energy, primarily coal and oil.
I’m scared.
Clive Doucet describes how postwar development was so different from prewar. His vision of the future is the vision of Ottawa of his past, where the cops take the bus, where there are local farmers markets, walk to the pub, walk to the store, where the first thing you do is use your feet, not your car. While his presentation was a typical politician’s “all about me” , he was the first speaker that actually nailed what might be the crux of the solution- to look back to how we built our cities before oil.
I am encouraged, but doubt that one can build versions of downtown Ottawa to accommodate a billion Chinese.
I think of my walk down Philadelphia’s Chestnut Street. It is narrow, designed before cars. The older buildings have tall windows that all open. Many of the stores are vacant, and many of their upper floors appear to be too. A few are being converted to loft apartments, but there is a lot of space here. There are stores that could be reopened, upper floors that could be converted, adapted and renovated; there are roofs that could be inhabited or covered with solar collectors. There are parking lots that could be farmed.
Or the residential areas like the one shown above. Narrow lots, big windows, natural air conditioning provided by big old trees.
There is a lot of excess capacity here and as the recession does its work there will be more. There is excess capacity all over America, but it isn’t on the table. I wish there had been more talk about it.
Lloyd Alter has been an architect, developer, inventor, and builder of prefab housing. He now writes for TreeHugger and Planet Green, is an Associate Professor at Ryerson University teaching sustainable design, and has written for Azure and Ontario Nature magazines.
