What is it you don’t understand about the title “Urban design after oil?” | Nov 8th at 1:04pm
It was the closing breakout session, trying to create manifesto for educating the next generation of urban designers. I attended the group discussing the fundamentals that urban design students need to know. There were many of them, from philosophy to to technology through ecology. But I was dismayed at how little attention was actually being paid to the issue of urban design after oil.
William Rees of the University of British Columbia got it, and tried to get some focus on the issue of the end of oil. A few others got it, and stressed the need for urgency and action. But most were less concerned about mitigation or adaptation than they were about more traditional planning issues. Some thought that the answer was more testing and monitoring of what they do to analyze what works and what doesn’t, on the assumption that we actually have the time to plan, build, occupy long enough to monitor. One even suggested that there is too much to learn in too little time during an urban design education to think about these things.
Fritz Steiner of the University of Texas suggests that universities last a long time but they take a long time to turn around; it can take years for them to adapt to change. Also, urban designers have a lot more on their plate than just oil and climate change, and a lot less power to change things than they should, given the importance of their role.
But until there is a fundamental awareness of the depth of our problems there isn’t going to be much of a change in the fundamentals of urban design education.
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.
Warren Karlenzig in San Anselmo, CA on Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 8:53pm
Thanks for posting on this.
I suggest we start by looking at what we have now, in American cities, for instance. Some have 55 % of residents using public transit (New York City), some have almost 0 % doing so (Arlington, Texas). Similar disparities exist with walking, biking, telecommuting rates in cities across the nation. There are huge differences in current behavior, infrastructure, employee paterns, sprawl, zoning. Only when we begin to examine where we are—statisically, philosophically, culturally, economically—and where we came from, can we make the move to such a future.
And much of the examinations should come from locals, because no one wants outsiders telling them what to do, and they probably understand how to address the situation better anyway.
Here’s a study that came out this week ranking cities in such categories, from these rankings it provides an overall ranking of city post-oil preparedness: SF and NYC came out on top and Jacskonville, Florida and Oklahoma City came out on the bottom: http://www.commoncurrent.com/publications.shtml
While no city is prepared for the peaking of oil, some are many times more advanced, and will make the transition with the least economic and social upheaval. The time to prepare is now. Our current economic crisis had its roots in exurban towns where foreclosures began in 2007, as people couldn’t afford the mortgage AND the $4-a-gallon commutes. The housing crisis then spread to all of housing market (except downtowns of cities with good public transit and walkability: NYC, SF, Washington DC, Chicago, Philadelphia), which is detailed in the report.