Saturday, October 28, ELEVENTH ANNUAL WATERSHED ENVIRONMENTAL POETRY
FESTIVAL, 12 to 6PM, Berkeley City College, FREE. Ecocity Builders will
be hosting a panel: "Ecological Design and the Poetry of
Place--Strawberry Creek Downtown" with Kirstin Miller and Richard
Register of Ecocity Builders, poet Lewis MacAdams of Friends of the LA
River, and Gus Yates of Citizens for a Strawberry Creek Plaza. For more
information and festival schedule, visit www.poetryflash.org.
December 3-7, The 6th International Ecocity Conference, Bangalore,
India. Previous conferences were held in Berkeley CA, Australia,
Senegal, Brazil and China. This conference will focus on ecocity
applications for Bangalore and other cities, towns and villages in
India. Side trip to Auroville after the conference. For more
information, visit our website: www.ecocitybuilders.org.
March 20 - May 8, 2007, "The Ecological City Structure," taught by
Kirstin Miller, Program Director for Ecocity Builders, at U.C. Berkeley
Extension in San Francisco. This course emphasizes the organizing
principles of ecologically healthy cities. We explore such topics as
ecozoning; sustainable development strategies; the restoration of
watersheds, urban agriculture, and natural systems; and a cooperative
framework for successfully addressing larger organizational systems. In
addition to the weekly lectures and discussions, students form working
groups to study topics in depth.
Ecocity World Summit?the 7th International Ecocity Conference, date TBA,
(late 2007 or early 2008), San Francisco Bay Area, USA.
*Articles in this edition of Ecocity Builders' eNewsletter are all by
Richard Register. Longer articles have links.
Chungqing and the Three Gorges Dam
In a chapter long ago, Rusong Wang, a youthful but leading ecologist at
the Chinese Academy of Science, was dispatched to the site the
government was considering for a big new dam in the Three Gorges region
of the Yangtze River. His mission, back then in the early 1980s, was to
assess the ecological impacts of a dam at that location. He returned to
say such a dam would be very destructive and he advised against the
project. There would be massive dislocation of people, many extinguished
species and landslides of saturated earth to make many places anywhere
near the reservoir uninhabitable. The government sent in their
equivalent of the US Army Corps of Engineers. ?We can build such a dam,?
they said and it was done.
In the latest chapter, I went to Chungqing just three weeks ago to the
?Ecopolis 2006 Conference,? convened by that same Rusong Wang. It was my
second time in the city in three years. I didn?t know how far the dam
was from the city. I?d assumed it was way downstream ? about 350 miles
downstream it turned out. But until I saw an enormous map at a very
special museum I didn?t realize the reservoir?s waters would be lapping
almost at the very doors I was standing next to, right there at the
confluence of the Yangtze and Jailing rivers. I had just seen a model of
Chungqing, the largest model I?ve seen in my life, perhaps quite
appropriately since Rusong and many others in China claim Chongqing, at
32 million people, is the largest city in the world. Strangely, I?ve
never seen it on any of the lists of the megacities of the world. Odd
for those of us outside of China keeping track of such things to have
lost track of 32 million Chinese people. The model filled the floor of a
room half the size of a basketball court surrounded by ground floor and
balcony levels for viewing. Covering most of its hilly rolling landscape
was a forest of high rise buildings like several Hong Kongs going on and
on across a vast area.
Turning to a smaller but in its way equally impressive map on one of the
walls I saw the various levels of the water behind the Three Gorges Dam
for this year, the year after next year and the projected completely
full stage, each delineated by a different colored string of lights,
marking as it were the high tides. To my surprise ? in fact I felt kind
of shocked ? on this map the eventual lake backed up all the way into
Chongqing. But that is precisely where the map ended: at the suburban
edge of the city. Frustrating.
Maybe the authorities didn?t want to emphasize the fact that the lake
made it all the way up into Chongqing. According to the map?s row of
lights for the 2010 level, red lights at that, it appeared that still
water would be just sitting there at the level of the highest flood
levels on the Yangtze ? or higher. Of course no one would dare flood
such a city, I thought, though the dam is flooding out 1.5 million
villagers. Slamming such a problem in the face of 32 million urbanites
with cell phones and e-mail connections would be quite another story. It
might prove to be an eco-wake up call of some scale. We?ll see in a
couple years.
It also occurred to me that at the upper end of such lakes, the flowing
water slows down and drops its sediment. Silt builds up turning still,
muddy waters into marshes, then meadows. The dredging would be a
nightmare, wouldn?t it? I asked Rusong, convener of our conference on
behalf of The Ecological Society of China and the Scientific Committee
on Problems in the Environment (SCOPE), the very man who explored the
project in the early 1980s.
He said yes, that will be a very big problem but in addition ? and
people are not talking about it ? is the fact that when the water stops
rolling along, when it arrives at the lake and virtually stops, much of
the pollution from 300 factories, dozens of quarries and dozens of towns
up stream, estimated at one billion tons of effluent per year (says the
Water Technology Net web page) will float to the surface right there in
the city. Oooooops!
Another interesting technicality emerges with a 350 mile-long lake: it
is not level. This too was a surprise. All those little molecules of
water and fragments of detritus trying to squeeze past one another,
trying to attain ?level? actually don?t pull it off. Such long lakes, it
turns out, are higher at the upper end. If the official eventual
elevation over sea level of the Three Gorges Reservoir is 175 meters
(574 feet) just behind the dam, at the upper end of the lake it could be
a dozen or more feet higher. Either it will not fill up to designed
capacity to spare the city, reducing its electricity producing capacity,
or it will flood portions of the city closest to the lake. Chongqing is
hilly. How about Rusong?s predicted landslides? Would they occur there too?
Another problem: It turns out that the dam is already removing sediment
so effectively that at the delta of the Yangtze on the East China Sea
the nutrient level at the base of the food chain has fallen off
precipitously and the fishing industry is suffering sever production
losses.
Yet another problem: less silt means an eroding coastline in the delta
region. The new ?ecocity? called Dongtan being designed by Arup, the
English design and development company (I wouldn?t call it an ecocity
because it features cars for the elite and a categorically imposed eight
story height limit) is planned for the largest island in that delta. It
has been slowly getting larger through silt accretion. Not any more! In
the last two years, with the dearth of sediment coming down the Yangtze,
those low lands are beginning to be washed away by the sea.
The issue behind this idea is that us people on this here planet, with
our capacity to think, should be able to sit down and devise a strategy
to reverse global heating, stop the destruction of the biosphere through
species extinctions and build a home for our civilization (cities, towns
and villages, their support systems and attached technologies) that
serve humanity while actually enhancing the health of natural systems
rather than being the chief engine of biological and climate
destruction. Why not? It could be done, given that we can in fact think,
and often compassionately and with real skill in applying effective
solutions to almost anything. But will we do it, try it or even clearly
conceive of it?
That?s what Lester Brown?s ?Plan B? is all about, and that?s what Al
Gore in his 1992 book, ?Earth in the Balance,? had in mind with a
?Global Marshall Plan,? an attempt to establish such a strategy for
surviving and thriving and getting on with it in full health and vitality.
But I think we need a new approach and a new name. Maybe it?s time to
synthesize that past thinking on the subject in the last decade or two,
reshape it some, and activate.
?Plan B? sounds too stiff and needs to shed its baggage of some serious
contradictions. It needs to be seen as more accessible, less part of the
processes of the remote elite or bureaucrat struggling so tediously for
precision that masks political intent. It just doesn?t grab the
imagination or stir the soul.
?Global Marshall Plan? is too tied in with past history and specifically
with American control of that process. American history and even its
role in the recovery of Europe after the Second World War is not
universal enough in the full swath of human history and the drama of the
approaching collapse of not just civilization but much of nature
herself. What will happen if we continue on the path of ?Plan A? ?
business as usual, with all it?s oil guzzling, wars and pollution is,
essentially, taking down a whole planet.
About the contradictions, the random ?grab any solution that comes down
the pike and go for it? which celebrates the ?better cars? won?t work.
It carries within it its own seeds of self- destruction. As our old
friends of Ecocity Builders will know, we believe that promoting
?better? cars will prolong the disease of sprawl, providing a rationale
for more of the same with only small modification. Brown?s Plan B
promotes more cars, if ?better,? and thus worse cities. We need to
correct this contradiction.
Instead, we need prioritization here. We need to do ?whole systems?
thinking. If we do we will come up with something I believe would best
be called the ?Biophilia Strategy.?
Ecocity 6
After a heart-wrenching postponement of the Sixth International Ecocity
Conference in Bangalore India due to the July 11th bombings of the
commuter rail service in Maumbai, the rescheduled event is moving
forward, with a launch on December 3. New security policies have been
established and the government and our hosts seem satisfied that all
will be secure and run smoothly.
I?m very much looking forward to doing some planning for future work in
India with our enthusiastic and hard working host, Rajeev Kumar, and
looking at establishing a more firmly organized international effort
among past organizer/activists of our international ecocity community.
Rusong Wang, who I feature in my China report herein, is also planning
on being there. Jeff Kenworthy will be there too. He is probably the
world?s premier expert on the relation between city form and structure
and such crucial factors as energy, pollution, transportation modes and
design.
I?m looking forward to meeting Debra Efroymson after much e-mail
communication, who represents the Canadian aid program to developing
countries called Health Bridge. She will be speaking at Ecocity 6 about
pedal powered transport in the world?s future and is bound to cover some
of their other programs in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Vietnam for
combating smoking and delivering various other health services. Then
there will be several European ecological engineering speakers and many
speakers and important policy makers and planners from India. We will
wind up with a trip to Auroville to see this historic ecologically tuned
town near Pondicherry, India whose pioneers reforested hundreds of
degraded acres of land and attracted thousands of dedicated pilgrims of
alternative lifestyle over the last 40 years.
For more information, see our web page: www.ecocitybuilders.org. Would
love to see you there!
Ecocity World Summit
This summer in correspondence among the past key conveners of the
international ecocity conferences, our local ?Relay Committee? received
authorization to host the Seventh International Ecocity Conference in
the Bay Area, which we are going to be organizing as the Ecocity World
Summit. Early planning is now underway. Though we have considerable
preliminary work to do before bringing this effort before the public, we
are now confident we can move forward with strong resolve. This then is
an advance announcement to our own members and friends and a first call
to ask if you?d like to help and become involved.
The dates we are looking at are mid November or early December 2007 or
Spring 2008. Currently we are debating venues in San Francisco, Oakland
and Berkeley.
Our conferences always cover a wide range of themes from architecture to
environmental activism, from energy policy to restoration strategies,
from social justice issues to rebuilding after disaster ? we want to
spotlight New Orleans, for example, a particularly troubled place with
immense potential to teach the world how to rebuild for the future
should it?s leadership embrace ecocity strategies. As a major theme we
will be addressing the connection between urban design and the problems
and solutions of global heating, species extinctions and the coming end
of cheap energy, especially oil. Few people draw that connection well,
if at all. We need to wake them up.
That?s where the really big conservation solutions lie, in reducing
demand radically ? and where pieces of the whole strategy for thriving
on this planet can become best organized for everything cities do best.
If you are interested in receiving updates for the Ecocity World Summit,
please let us know. kirstin@ecocitybuilders.org
Downtown Berkeley at the Future's Crossroads
The University of California has selected and the City of Berkeley has
spoken, and if they do not exercise a change of course soon, they will
lose one of the best opportunities anywhere for leading the world into a
sane and healthy 21st Century.
The remarkable thing is that the University is charged with training the
leaders of tomorrow and yet is not assessing tomorrow clearly in its own
development planning. Similarly the City claims to be ? and is regarded
by many in other parts of the world to be ? a leader in imaginative and
progressive policy. In regard to urban design it absolutely is not. But
more about that soon.
The development site in discussion comprises land on two blocks between
University Avenue, Oxford Street, Center Street and Shattuck Avenue in
downtown Berkeley, California. On the southern of the two blocks there
is a one story Bank of America Building, a parking lot, a three level
parking structure and a University printing press building with a blank
face to the street. On the northern of the two blocks in question the
University owns about half the property. The site is a truly
extraordinary one, with its Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Station and
the University of California Berkeley Campus just one block from the
BART Station. On average about 10,000 people walk that route every day,
which is an educational opportunity, albeit unconventional, for waking
people up to new perspectives. Also, it is a small portion of the city
with a rich mix of ?land uses? from housing nearby to offices, jobs,
commerce, education, entertainment, good food--many necessary
ingredients of social and economic vitality close together. In addition,
Strawberry Creek is buried just a few yards south of the site and ready
for bringing back to the surface from its underground dungeon as a
symbol and actual small part of the natural environment crucial for
people to honor at this time in history. The potential is nothing short
of stunning for a project that could capture the imagination of the
world and leadership for those able to grasp the opportunity.
Why would I say something as extravagant as claiming the opportunity is
one of the best in the world? Because the world is facing the largest
crisis in 65 million years and if the right thing is built there, that
particular development would constitute a major and early part in the
solution to that crisis. The most conspicuous symptoms of that crisis
are rapid global heating, which most people are conscious of now, and
rapid collapse of biodiversity, meaning species are going extinct at a
stunning rate. Things are fraying out rather rapidly as demonstrated by
the heat wave in western Europe in 2003 that killed 59,000 people and
Hurricane Katrina in 2005 that caused $200 billion in damage and
displaced 250,000. We need to learn and teach some lessons quickly.
Building better cities is the strongest literally physical leverage
point humanity has for dealing with that crisis and the site north of
Center Street in downtown Berkeley has potential for exhibiting the best
of what we might call ?rescue city planning.?
The crisis is a climate and evolution emergency, and the criticism I
level at the University is that it is not paying attention to this in
its planning, but could. Certainly in choosing the developer for the
Hotel/Conference Center and architect for the Museum Complex they have
made responsible decisions according to standard operating procedures.
Many very positive features for these projects are in discussion
including some ?green? elements and architect Toyo Ito?s past work is a
real inspiration and bodes well for the Museum Complex. But will anyone
in this planning process as it is unfolding press on to address these
larger problems?
Every once in a while something extraordinary happens because an
ecologically spectacular project, even if a small one, gets built.
There is a place that used to be a vacant lot, a portion of a parking
lot and closed section of 9th Street at the border of Berkeley and
Albany. In 1993 Ecocity Builders working with Urban Creeks Council and
Carole Schemmerling, who negotiated the permits to build, daylighted a
one block reach of Codornices Creek at the south edge of the married
student housing facilities for UCB called University Village. Ecocity
Builders has worked there for a two hours almost every Sunday since
then. Our philosophy: minimum but steady maintenance and maximum
biodiversity. It?s an extraordinary environment, with all sorts of
native plants, an orchard of 25 fruit trees, and countless insects,
birds, fish, crawdads, salamanders, gophers, compost pile with worms and
an occasional frog and red-sided garter snake.
Last Sunday, we saw one of the most spectacular visitors ever to arrive
there. It was a ladybug-sized beetle in radiant gold, varnished in a
kind of candy apple layer of sparkling tiny flecks of light. Truly as
stunning an animal as I have ever seen in my life, dead in a collection
or alive in the wild, this one of course alive ? in the urban wild. The
lesson here: built it and they will come. Don?t and they won?t.
By the way, it was a gorgeous spring this year draped in flowers due to
the long, long rains, and a bountiful summer with lots of fruit picking
down there. Join us any Sunday (but ones with medium to heavy rains)
between 11:00am and 1: 00pm, two blocks north of Gilman Street at 8th
Street, where 8th Street crosses the creek.
Buy "Ecocities" from Ecocity Builders
Most of the world's population now lives in cities. And in the short one
hundred years of building cities for cars, humankind is destroying the
basis for life on Earth as we know it. Now, with peak oil on the near
horizon, it is time to build cities for people, not cars. "Ecocities,
Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature" by Richard Register describes
how.
"...a wonderful account of how we can transform cities into places that
are not only sustainable, but which are a joy and an inspiration to live
in. "Ecocities" needs to be read not only for its intellectual
contribution to future city development, but also for how it speaks to
the heart about the true meaning of the city." ? Jeffrey Kenworth,
Professor in Sustainable Cities, Institute for Sustainability and
Technology Policy, Murdoch University
You can also mail your donation to Ecocity Builders, P.O. Box 697,
Oakland, CA 94604. Contact Kirstin Miller if you have questions:
kirstin@ecocitybuilders.org
--
Keith Johnson
Permaculture Activist Magazine
PO Box 5516, Bloomington, IN 47408
(812) 335-0383 http://www.permacultureactivist.net
also Patterns for Abundance Design & Consulting
also Association for Regenerative Culture
also APPLE-Bloomington (Alliance for a Post-Petroleum Local Economy) It's a
small world after oil. http://www.relocalize.net/groups/applebloomington
also Bloomington Permaculture Guild
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