In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy the issue of New York’s vulnerability to flooding has stepped to the forefront of media concerns. And rightly so. With a mountain of scientific data indicating the future holds increased threats from global warming, a coastal city like New York can ill afford to ignore the problem of flooding. But while the dramatic scenes of storm surges and the wreckage left in their wake are what stay in people’s minds, New York has long dealt with a less conspicuous flooding problem brought on by annual rainfall.
In the natural world soil plays a vital role in stormwater retention. One of the problems facing a city as heavily developed as New York is that it is almost completely paved over so there is no topsoil to provide stormwater retention and rainwater simply runs off the surface asphalt into the storm drains. When those drains are filled to capacity during heavy rains not only does the water pool in low lying areas, but it also floods the sewer system (to which the storm water system is connected in what is called a Combined Sewer Overflow system, or CSO) which then overflows into our rivers and streams.
The city has been diligently working on an inconspicuous and cost-effective solution first proposed in the PlaNYC document of 2007 to use green infrastructure to combat this problem. As the name implies, green infrastructure utilizes the natural properties of plants and soil to retain water so that it doesn’t overtax the storm system. New York receives about 44 inches of rain a year, and as a consequence of changes in global weather patterns noted above, rather than being spaced out evenly, those 44 inches are starting to come in punctuated periods of more extreme weather. This is not only worse for the storm system but also for plants as temperate weather shifts to extremes of flood and drought, which is always harder on the environment. The Green Infrastructure initiative was created to figure out a way to retain at least 10% of this runoff in order to reduce flooding and pollution in specific areas of the city so as to meet federal water quality standards in problem areas like Jamaica Bay and the infamous Gowanus Canal, to name a few. And the way it accomplishes this is primarily through the use of bioswales and greenstreets.
Think of a bioswale as a large planter buried in the street. It acts as a small cistern, strategically placed to follow the street grade to maximize its effectiveness, catching rainwater as it runs from an area of high elevation to low elevation. The soil in the bioswale soaks up the water like a sponge where it is captured, stored, and released in a controlled manner through infiltration into the surrounding soil, evaporation, and evapotranspiration (a combination of evaporation and being used by the vegetation).
An important aspect of the bioswales is that they aren’t designed to be simply function as storm water retention. They are active microenvironments for the vegetation that gets planted there. Some of these plants are chosen mainly for their hardiness or resistance to pollution and flooding, but many are quite beautiful. Consequently the neighborhoods in which they are built will see an increase in property values and habitability due both the functional and aesthetic value of the bioswales. They provide benefits in other ways as well by adding shade from the trees as well as cooling the area in the summer heat through evapotranspiration. In addition, the green infrastructure initiative is actually working in conjunction with the Million Tree initiative, so wherever a bioswale is slated to be built it will include a tree.
During the planning stages a neighborhood will typically be sited for well over a hundred bioswales, but various zoning restrictions such as proximity to stop signs, parking meters, bus stops, fire hydrants, catch basins, existing trees, as well as surveying results and soil samples, and will typically winow this number down by about 60 to 75 percent. That’s still a lot of bioswales; enough to have a definitive impact on water retention as well as the beautification of the neighborhood. Each bioswale can capture about 250 cubic feet of water per rain event.
The other major green infrastructure program is greenstreets. Whereas bioswales are relatively small, about 20×5 ft (typically twice as big as current tree planters) greenstreets are considerably larger averaging about 2,000 square feet. (One greenstreet captured 25,000 gallons of water during hurricane Irene). Bioswales are also constructed on sidewalk space, whereas greenstreets are constructed in underutilized street space. Greenstreets serve the same purpose as bioswales, only on a larger scale and they are also equipped with scientific monitoring equipment to measure things like rainfall, temperature, evapotranspiration, windspeed, pollution, etc, all in an effort to continually improve the effectiveness of the design of green infrastructure through continual monitoring and feedback.
The Green Infrastructure Unit of the Parks Department also works with local people to get a better idea of what they want and how best to serve the neighborhood’s needs. For private property owners it’s possible to apply for a grant to install green infrastructure on your property, and the city also has an adopt a tree program where anyone can become a certified tree pruner taking care of your own swale. The hope is that by encouraging such civic participation the benefits of the program will reach a wider audience and it’s also been shown that trees that have been adopted live longer and are healthier.
So where is this green infrastructure? Well there’s a chance you’ve seen the bioswales already but just didn’t notice them because on the surface they tend to look a lot like the street trees we’re all so used, only larger. And while they certainly beautify the neighborhood, they are designed to do so inconspicuously and unobstrusively. But don’t think these are just holes in the ground filled with dirt. From the stones that filter sediments to the soil bacteria that can actually break down hydrocarbon pollutants and render them inert, the external rustic simplicity of the design belies a complicated and highly engineered system of hydrological engineering, landscaping, and natural water filtration that has a definitive environmental impact while saving the city hundreds of millions of dollars in massive, unsightly, and noisy infrastructure projects. As the program develops, new solutions to unique problems are always being implemented and the green infrastructure itself is constantly evolving to become more efficient, more beautiful, and more cost-effective.
For a more in-depth look at this topic check out a lecture given by Nette Compton, Director of the Green Infrastructure Unit.
Energy storage is key to broader adoption of solar and wind power — to fill in when the sun sets, or the wind dies down. Come to a talk at the WNYC Jerome L. Greene Performance Space to hear industry experts describe the latest advances in this important technology. Hosted by: http://www.cleanecnyc.org/
Tuesday, February 5th, 2013 7:00pm-9:00pm, The WNYC Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, 44 Charlton Street, NYC
FREE live stream hosted by Greentech Media starting at 7:05pm.
Think of a big tanker truck full of gas — that’s approximately your personal budget. Not for today, not this year, but forever.
Columbia University physicist Klaus Lackner has received quite a lot of attention for his artificial “tree” invention that can suck carbon from the air a thousand times faster than real trees. The idea for the tree was originally inspired by his daughter Claire’s eighth-grade science project a decade ago, which involved extracting carbon dioxide from the air using a fish tank pump and sodium hydroxide. For his invention, Lackner also drew on the natural structure of one of nature’s most successful carbon absorbers — leaves. At Columbia University’s Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy, where Lackner is director, he and his colleague, Allen Wright, are still finessing elements of the “tree.”
Maria Ioshpa, a senior at Stuyvesant High School, spoke with Lackner and Allen Wright about the potential of this innovation in helping tackle climate change:
Let’s start at the beginning — how do we arrive at a need for air capture technologies like an industrial material that acts as an artificial tree?
Klaus Lackner:
Some people argue about how much CO2 we are really allowed to have in the air: should the limit be 450 parts per million? Some people say no, 350 ppm was already too much. Other people are still saying 450 is all right, maybe 550 is all right. And it doesn’t really matter what you think is all right, because once you’ve gotten to that point, the only way to prevent CO2 levels from going higher is to — for all practical purposes — stop putting CO2 in the air.
Why is that?
Klaus Lackner:
If you want to stop at 450 ppm, how many tons of CO2 are in the personal CO2 budget of the average person on the planet? It turns out, about 30 tons. Think of a big tanker truck full of gasoline or jet fuel which you may have seen in an airport next to an airplane trying to fill that up — that’s approximately your personal budget. Not for today, not this year, but forever — for you, for your children, and for your children’s children. So every time you go somewhere in a car, you fill it up out of that truck. Every time you fly somewhere you pull it out of that truck. Every time you have Thanksgiving and you have a turkey and turn on the gas stove, you have to take it out of that truck — and it turns out the average person in the US goes through a truck like this in five years. So our budget is gone in five years from now. The world’s budget is gone in about 30 years from now because most people don’t consume as much as we do. Some are a little more careful with it. Some are just too poor to consume it. So at the end of the day you have not much time left to stop.
(Klaus Lackner, Director of the Lenfest Center; video by Justin Strauss)
I know this tree creation isn’t magic, although it nearly seems that way. How did you come up with the concept, how does it work, and how much does it cost to operate?
Allen Wright:
The basis is a plastic leaf that has the property of being a vehicle for “air capture.” By air capture, I’m talking about the removal of carbon dioxide from ambient air; from the air outside. If you took all the CO2 out of a block of air roughly the size of a card table, you would just about fill a teacup. Our job is to remove that teacup’s worth of CO2 from any given block of air, concentrate it, and deliver it as a stream of pure CO2. This is different than the removal of CO2 from a concentrated source, such as the exhaust from a power plant or the exhaust pipe on a car.
Consider a situation in which someone is running an old coal power plant somewhere in the world that continues to put CO2 in the air, then what can we do to compensate for the power plant’s emissions? Well, air capture, and this material [holds up artificial pine branch] allows us to take the CO2 out of the air that they have put in.
Does it matter where the CO2 is being emitted? Do you need to set up these trees in the same location?
I think this won’t by itself solve the problem. Scrubbing CO2 from the air is one weapon in the arsenal; by itself it’s not good enough.
Allen Wright:
Actually, one of the reasons we want to remove carbon dioxide from the air is to capture emissions that are occurring in other parts of the world. It turns out that the atmosphere in the world is very well mixed. So if you put CO2 into the air in California, in no time at all that CO2 is very well mixed into the air and you can very effectively take it out of the air in New York City. Now, if you put a ton of CO2 in the air, and you remove a ton of CO2 from the atmosphere somewhere else, you have effectively eliminated the impact of that ton of CO2.
This material has a funny characteristic. In a dry environment (like in the summertime on a hot day, or in the desert), this has a very strong affinity for CO2; CO2 in the air wants to bind with the molecules on the surface of this plastic. In a wet or very humid environment (like it would be here in New York in the summer, or in the tropics), the humidity causes the CO2 to come off of this material and go back into the air.
Well, that’s really neat because that means all the energy we have to use comes from the evaporation of the water off of this as it dries. So, we take this material, which is full of CO2 from being out in the air, and we scrunch it up and put it in a tube, make it wet, and all the CO2 is going to come off of this material and into the gas stream. Then, we can suck that CO2 off and we can deliver it as a stream of carbon dioxide gas. So now we have this material that is wet and empty of CO2, and all we have to do is stick this outside, and if it’s dry outside, the water will evaporate off of this material, and it will revert to the state where CO2 can bind to it again.
And so, in essence, this is a CO2 pump: it takes CO2 from the air and pumps it and delivers it into this stream. This will work over and over for years and years.
(Allen Wright, Senior Staff Associate)
How many of the tree samples that you have shown me would be necessary to reduce significantly the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere?
Klaus Lackner:
Of those little ones, an awful lot. But you have an awful lot of trees too. So we figured out how to package them for a device which can collect one ton per day and that would fit into a big truck, into a shipping container. Such a unit can collect much more CO2 than your car puts out. You don’t put a ton of CO2 out in a day.
And you would need millions of those one-ton-a-day units, but that’s not so bad if you think about it: If you had ten million such units you would take back 3.6 gigatons of CO2 a year, and right there that’s about 10 or 12 percent of the world’s yearly CO2 output. That’s a pretty good start.
If the air capture units last ten years, then each year you have to build a million new ones to replace the old ones, creating a production line of one million units a year. Now the world is producing 70 million cars and trucks a year, so we can do manufacturing on that scale — we do that with automobiles already. So we could make this happen on a scale that is meaningful.
What’s fascinating is that your process and your invention can be seen as a potentially powerful investment if we put a price on carbon.
Klaus Lackner:
I do want to point out that we are working with a private company, Kilimanjaro Energy, which is actually trying to figure out whether there is a market for CO2.
Would the creation of these air capture devices be a sort of magic pill, making people less inclined to stop the production of CO2 because of it?
We have two choices: we make it totally expensive to contribute to the problem, so that people opt not to, or we pay for whatever it takes to avoid the problem in the first place.
Klaus Lackner:
It’s a complicated question. Will this tempt you to not deal with the problem? Let me turn this around: What other options do you have?
Furthermore, I think this won’t by itself solve the problem. Scrubbing CO2 from the air is one weapon in the arsenal; by itself it’s not good enough. Clearly there are other places where other strategies are more economical. If you had a power plant and you were to scrub the CO2 out of the power plant that would be much smarter. If you had power which didn’t make CO2 in the first place that would be very useful. But you do end up with some fraction of power that for a long time will emit CO2 because we have that infrastructure, and because it’s actually very difficult to get rid of liquid fuels.
So to come back to your question regarding whether this will encourage people to ignore the problem for a while: The answer is, maybe for some people it does. But the flip side of the problem is: you may not have a choice anymore but to take back CO2. You need some way of pulling the CO2 out of the air, and forests are not quite fast enough.
How much of a role do people’s choices play in this discussion?
Klaus Lackner:
I’m not particularly an advocate for the idea that we have to give up liquid fuels. What I am arguing is that if you successfully remove the problem that liquid fuels create, and you pay for removing that problem, then there’s nothing wrong with using liquid fuels. If you can’t fix the problem or it is too expensive, then you have to find another solution. And in the long run, we cannot let CO2 pile up in the atmosphere. So we have to find answers.
Now, with individual choices it’s always easy to say, ‘I’m such a little bit that it doesn’t matter so I’m ok.’ I’m always amused when I go to a conference and we all talk about how much CO2 everybody emits, and then I proceed to ask a “dumb” question: “How did you all get here?” And the participants all came on long intercontinental airplane trips. When I follow up by asking how much CO2 each participant caused to be emitted on that flight, I am often met with a response to the effect that, since the trip was taken for a good cause, the output in that case doesn’t count. That may well be true, but if we all think that way, we’ll never fix the problem.
So we have two choices: we make it totally expensive to contribute to the problem, such that people opt not to, or we pay for whatever it takes to avoid the problem in the first place. And of course it’s not just one — there are many problems associated with fossil fuel. The first and immediately most important one is that it puts greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But there are other issues as well. Mining is hazardous and often environmentally difficult business, so you have to figure out how to fix that too. You have work on all of these pieces, but currently the most pressing is CO2.
What can the younger generation do to fix this problem? What careers can they enter to help solve it?
…if you are worried about the planet, there are still many ways to get involved. It is not one size fits all, and I can’t even tell you which one is more important.
Klaus Lackner:
I think it’s not just one career — there are very many different paths. I would argue that what we at the Earth Institute call “sustainable development” has many different pieces to it that are so central to the problem. We’re being challenged environmentally. We have technologies to address energy and transportation issues; we have technologies for a lot of things. Where we run into trouble rather routinely right now is the environmental footprint of the things we do.
So we have to figure out how to make those footprints smaller, and that involves people from different facets of our entire society. You can decide that you want to be a political scientist, and there are plenty of relevant policy questions to address there. You can decide to become an engineer and solve the problems by looking at the engineering issues. You can become a scientist, and a lot more of science today is focused on how, precisely, the planet works and on what the environmental issues are that come with it. You can also become an astrophysicist and you would not be particularly concerned with this planet, but if you are worried about the planet, there are still many ways to get involved. It is not one size fits all, and I can’t even tell you which one is more important. Adding to that, politicians are perfectly willing to find a good solution if they feel like there is a solution, but as long as the engineers don’t provide anything, nothing much will happen. And if the engineers aren’t focused on these problems, nothing will happen either. So you have to get all of the various fields and disciplines together, and push in the right direction in whatever field you end up in.
Do you have any general advice for environmentally-conscious people?
Klaus Lackner:
That is a very difficult question. In my opinion, you have to combine realism with optimism because if you can’t do that, you feel like the problems are all so daunting and you’re not coming out of the other side. Realism means that you look at the issues and recognize that there are real problems that require real solutions and then start working on solutions. Don’t start from the premise the world is coming to an end; be an optimist, but be a cautious optimist and make this optimism real.
What can initiatives like City Atlas do to help your cause?
Klaus Lackner:
By making carbon footprints and other environmental impacts more visible, by getting people excited, you’re getting the message out there. The issue right now is that nothing happens, because there’s no political will to make it happen, and the political will can only come from informing the public. I think there are a lot of messages out there that are saying we’re all doomed, and that’s there’s nothing we can do. And that message doesn’t rally people to do something. I think it’s better to say that here’s a problem, and here’s a solution. It may not be the only solution, it may not be the best solution, but at least it means there’s a way out. This creates hope, which leads to the assurance to start asking questions like, “Can’t we do better?” And if you come up with something better, I’ll take it.
About Klaus Lackner:
Klaus Lackner is the Ewing Worzel Professor of Geophysics at Columbia University, where he is also the Director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy, the Chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, and a member of the Earth Institute faculty. Lackner’s current research interests include carbon capture and sequestration, air capture, energy systems and scaling properties (including synthetic fuels and wind energy), energy and environmental policy, lifecycle analysis, and zero emission modeling for coal and cement plants.
Lackner earned his degrees from Heidelberg University, Germany: the Vordiplom, (equivalent to a B.S.) in 1975; the Diplom (or M.S.) in 1976; and his Ph.D. in theoretical particle physics, summa cum laude, in 1978. He was awarded the Clemm-Haas Prize for his outstanding Ph.D. thesis at Heidelberg University. Lackner held postdoctoral positions at the California Institute of Technology and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center before beginning his professional career, and he attended Cold Spring Harbor Summer School for Computational Neuroscience in 1985. Lackner was also awarded the Weapons Recognition of Excellence Award in 1991 and the National Laboratory Consortium Award for Technology in 2001.
About the Lenfest Center:
The Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy focuses primarily on developing the next generation of carbon capture and storage technologies, as well as technologies that will improve energy efficiency and thus reduce carbon emissions. The center, part of The Earth Institute, Columbia University, is also engaged in policy research and outreach on a variety of energy topics, with a common emphasis on sustainability and climate change.
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Photography by Justin Strauss
Editorial assistance: Rebecca Cress, Maureen Mitra; Thanks to Pamela Lambert and Harvey Blumm at Stuyvesant High School
Two weeks ago, MTA Director of Sustainability Projjal Dutta enlightened attendees at the Green Festival by pulling back the curtain on something we thought we all knew: the MTA.
New Yorkers rely on the trains and buses to get us where we need to be, when we need to be there. Almost as inherent to MTA city travel as the sound of screeching brakes is the griping and groaning we do while on board. Why isn’t the train here faster? Why does it stop in the middle of the tunnel? Why don’t they run more crosstown buses? We’re really good at being critical of the system, some with vocal indignation and others with more mild resignation, and few of us has probably ever really stopped to think critically about this system we love to hate.
I spent my first 5 years in NYC in a love/hate relationship with the MTA. I loved when the M15 Limited got me from 14th to 96th in 15 minutes, but I hated when the 6 was so packed I had to let three trains go by and be late to work. I recognized and appreciated that the MTA let me never need or want a car and allowed me to be exponentially greener than my suburban counterparts, but I came to abandon my petty grievances and love the MTA wholeheartedly after reading Projjal’s interview for City Atlas where he explains the basic structure of the system and how the MTA is in fact doing a whole lot to be greener.
In his presentation at Green Festival (Taking the Car out of Carbon) he outlined just how much credit the MTA deserves for reducing carbon emissions. The MTA’s 2012 Earth Day Report on Sustainability found that every subway or bus trip prevents 10.4 pounds of carbon from being released, for a whopping 17 million metric tons collectively. The scale of the system allows it to be green in a way that has an instant and significant impact, a way that recycling your kombucha bottle simply doesn’t.
The scale of the system is an asset but also a liability. Mr. Dutta explained that because most of the underground infrastructure of the extensive system was built in the early 1900s, simply maintaining it for 24/365 use is the full time job of many. For all Projjal’s prestigious credits, among them certification as a LEED A.P. and MIT graduate, he has a knack for illustrating concepts in palatable ways. When an audience member at Green Festival complained about the constant route changes for construction and asked why they didn’t “just fix things right and upgrade them the first time so they wouldn’t have to continuously make repairs,” he didn’t gloss over the question with a boiler plate response one might expect of a city employee; he smiled and offered the following analogy: “how many things do you have that belonged to your grandparents? How many of them to you still use? How many of them do you use all day long every day of the year? How many of them do you share with millions of friends?” Obviously we can’t shut down the entire system for a year to take it out and replace it with an entirely new one, so the MTA is charged with coming up with creative ways to repair a system that is constantly in use.
In his presentation, Projjal used many graphics to illustrate how carbon emissions from driving are indisputably the most massive factor in greening our lives and the planet. He boldly stated that recycling, organic food, and plant based materials mean nothing if you’re driving to get them. He argues that climate change is in large part a result of the emissions from driving. In a fascinating micro-history of Eisenhower and American politics, Projjal explained how a shift in land use and population density resulting in response to the creation of the U.S. interstate system created a nation of drivers and carbon emitters. He offers the important distinction that cars themselves aren’t what pollute the planet and make us fat, driving them is. When you create a system of transit that fosters population density and practical land use, you create a system that does good things for the environment and better things for people.
Mr. Dutta also addressed how the MTA spends billions of dollars fortifying itself against flooding and other problems resulting from climate change, a problem to which the MTA system itself contributes next to nothing. He asked listeners to consider that the reason they don’t see more new trains and technology is because funds often have to be diverted to immediate problem solving for circumstances (often weather related) beyond their control; in these situations the MTA receives no extra funds for making these system amendments, consequently leaving them with less capital for the kinds of visible and meaningful-to-rider improvements (like countdown clocks and new trains with LED strips) that many riders lament the lack of.
Reconceptualizing the MTA and just taking time to pause on the platform to consider just how many hurdles that 2 train has to overcome to make it to the station may be tough, but it’s possible. Perhaps the most helpful grain of information for better understanding why the MTA works the way it does is to consider where the money comes from. The MTA is not a city agency; it’s a state one. Funding for the city’s buses and trains comes from Albany, not City Hall. When the policy makers all drove on state roads to get to their transit budget meeting, well, they just tend to put those roads before new signal switches for the BDFM and the millions who rely on the MTA annually.
Verdant Power has been awarded the first US license for a tidal power generation system. Over the next two years, 30 underwater turbines will be installed on the bottom of the East River and begin to provide hydropower for 10,000 residents of Roosevelt Island. Verdant has been testing parts of the system in the East River since 2002, and with this license, has moved forward to full scale practical application. Read more about the project at Inhabitat and Bloomberg News.
This weekend developers and designers put their minds to coming up with the best ideas for new apps for sustainability, in the two day Cleanweb Hackathon held at NYU-ITP.
“Cleanweb Hackathon is a gathering to demonstrate the impact of applying information technology to resource constraints…Participants are tasked with building applications that tackle energy, waste, water, and other sustainability issues by leveraging web and mobile technologies. We challenge attendees on what they can do in 24 hours with utility, transport and smart grid datasets that might just change the world for the better.”
Overall winner: Econofy, for green shopping match-ups of appliances and electronics, including an online calculator for comparing savings between models
Best energy app: NYCbldgs, “Find the best and worst performing building in New York”
Also noticed: 1v99.org, which lets users compare a jet set lifestyle to their own, in terms of energy usage (screengrab below):
Candlelight Tours | City AtlasJoin a tour focusing on lighting technology and architectural features, using the Wyckoff House as a template. Learn about lighting options, access to materials and finished goods, and the nighttime tasks people could expect to accomplish under different lighting conditions from the colonial area to the beginning of the 20th century.
GreenHomeNYC Green Careers MeetUp | City AtlasThe Green Careers MeetUp is a social event for those who are both looking to break in and have recently broken into the green career field. The idea behind this is to have a short and informal one hour meeting about everyone’s current pursuits and successes and maybe to exchange some job postings that have not yet gone viral.
Coming Soon to the Sidewalks: A New Look for ScaffoldingBuilt from steel pipes and used plywood, they snake their way a million feet (or 190 miles) along New York’s sidewalks and have long been considered egregious eyesores. “They’re really ugly,” said Robert LiMandri, the city’s buildings commissioner, “but they’re a necessarily evil for construction.”
Why Your Water Bill Must Go UpChicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel launched a $4.1 billion initiative to replace his city’s dilapidated water infrastructure last month, spinning it as a plan to create 18,000 jobs over the next decade. The rub is that by 2015, most Chicagoans would pay more than double their current water usage fees.
Breaking New GroundNevin Cohen teaches sustainable food systems, environmental policy and urban planning at the New School, and focuses on the evolution of municipal food policy. Kubi Ackerman is a research coordinator at the Urban Design Lab at the Earth Institute at Columbia University; he focuses on food systems and urbanization projects.
4 Cities Using Tech to Alleviate TrafficThe Global Innovation Series is supported by BMW i, a new concept dedicated to providing mobility solutions for the urban environment. It delivers more than purpose-built electric vehicles – it delivers smart mobility services. Visit bmw-i.com or follow @BMWi on Twitter. There are one billion cars on the road, and that number could reach 2.5 billion by 2020.
5 Sites for Shopping Local Food OnlineAbout 97% of consumers used online media to shop local in 2010, according to a study by BIA/Kelsey and ConStat. Now, that wasn’t all food shopping of course, but the statistics show that giving money to local businesses is more of a priority than ever.
Streetsblog New York City » Graphed: How East Side Select Bus Service Cut Trip Times and Gained Ridersby Noah Kazis on November 15, 2011 Yesterday, we reported on the impressive gains in speed and ridership along the First and Second Avenue Select Bus Service route. Since then, NYCDOT and the MTA released their official progress report on the project. It’s full of graphics that show the boost for bus riders even more clearly.
Streetsblog.net » More Evidence That Bike Facilities Are Good for Local BusinessesIt’s a shame businesses so often line up against better bike infrastructure. Believing that business depends on customers who drive, local store owners have opposed bike improvements in Philadelphia, Memphis and many other cities. But research shows that bike facilities and local businesses are, in fact, complementary.
While City Atlas is primarily a resource for New Yorkers to see all the great sustainability initiatives their neighbors are already engaged in and how they can get involved–so we can get our multiplier effect on–there is of course the bigger picture. You don’t see a tremendous amount of political talk on here because we try and focus on the work people are already doing without anyone giving them directions to do so. Hence our belief in the power of the bottom-up. But bottom-up, will ultimately have to meet the top-downers in our mutually beneficial middle. So, in case anyone else needs another reason to feel slighted (frustrated, confused, undermined, insert adjective here_____) by the political process these days, I offer you some fuel for your fire, with specific regard to climate change and renewable energy legislation.
Image via:World’s National Museums and Art Blog
A few weeks ago, 285 investors with assets worth $20 trillion issued a report essentially saying, we want governments to address climate change. Please? An actual quote from the 2011 Global Investor Statement on Climate Change says, “Private investment will only flow at the scale and pace necessary if it is supported by clear, credible and long-term policy frameworks that incentivise investments in low-carbon technologies rather than continuing to favour carbon-intensive energy sources.”
Want more? Ok. People who are not worth $20 trillion, but drive the technology that these 1%-ers want to invest in, have basically said that this know-how already exists–we are waiting for your help (hey government, that’s you!) to get it out there. Eleven of the world’s top engineering societies, which includes 1.2 million engineers from four continents signed on to the statement.
Let’s play matchmaker. We have technology. And we have investors for said technology. I don’t really need to tell you what that pesky little step is, that is very successfully and destructively halting the sanctity of that marriage–no, it is not Kim Kardashian–believe it or not!
In this top-emailed story from the Times on Wednesday Paul Krugman does a nice job of telling you that people standing in the way of renewable energy are just blatantly lying at this point. Getting energy from the sun is, in the near future, going to be cheaper than burning coal. All sass aside, while its fun to call them pesky and little, in reality, their impact is huge. 2010 was the largest leap in carbon emissions on record. Global output was 564 million tons more than it was in 2009. Guess who accounts for about half of that? China and America…
So, think about all that other stuff I said on top and rest assured that we have technology and money and a healthily growing renewable energy sector. Over the same period that emissions rose 6%, investments in renewables increased by 30% and soared to $243 billion. Let’s go for trillions, shall we?
Now, back to local action. We appreciate your patience for this beyond-New York interruption.
Introduction to + Pool, from the “+ Pool Project Summary”:
EVERYTHINGISBETTERWITH A POOL
+ Pool is the collaborative initiative of design studios Family and PlayLab to build a floating pool for everyone in the rivers of New York City. The project seeks to improve the use of the city’s natural resources by providing a clean and safe way for the public to swim in New York’s waters.
As both a public amenity and an ecological prototype, + Pool is a small but exciting precedent for environmental urbanism in the 21st Century.
WATER + POOL
The most important aspect of + Pool’s design is that it filters river water through the pool’s walls – like a giant strainer dropped into the river.
The concentric layers of filtration materials that make up the sides of the pool are designed to remove bacteria, contaminants and odors, leaving only safe and swimmable water that meets city, state and federal standards of quality.
HISTORY + POOL
Floating pools have paralleled the development of New York City dating back to the early 19th Century. When the city’s elite used lower Manhattan as a resort in the 1800′s, floating spas were located just off the Battery. After the Civil War. the huge influx of immigrants required bathhouses in the Hudson and East Rivers as many were without proper bathing facilities in their homes. In the early 1900′s improved plumbing infrastructure and increasing water quality concerns closed the last of the river-borne pools, relocating aquatic leisure activities to more sanitized and inland sites.
In 1972, the Clean Water Act set forth the goal of making every body of water in the country safe for recreation, and in 2007 the Floating Pool Lady – a reclaimed barge now located in the Bronx – brought back the first semblance of New York’s floating pool culture in almost a century.
Today, as the appreciation for our city’s natural resources becomes increasingly crucial, a permanent floating pool in the river will help restore the water culture so integral to New York City.
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As of September 25th, 2011, + Pool has raised a research fund of more than $40,000 from over 1200 backers on Kickstarter.com. The leading engineering firm Arup is now a consultant to the project.
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Dong-Ping Wong on the pool and the process:
Why the shape? Why that particular location?
We wanted Plus Pool to be for everyone, so it’s four pools in one. Granted, you could subdivide a regular pool into four quadrants, but then it wouldn’t look as good, would it?
We don’t have a particular location per se. Since the pool is more a new typology, or even product, than a site-specific building, it more or less can go anywhere.
How will you clean the filters? Is Plus Pool feasible even if there are sewage spills, like the recent spill from the North River Treatment Plant?
Some of the filters we are looking at are self-cleaning. Others will require backwashing and of course the occasional maintenance, like any pool filter. Sewage spills and rainy weather contaminant spikes are what we are designing for. Whether people will want to get into river water after a spill, even if it’s clean, is another story.
Now that you’ve started the campaign, what have you learned most about the process, about people, about yourself?
That this project is surprisingly self-propelled. And that we know very little. And that inexperience isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And that a lot of New Yorkers are jaded experts on the outside and stoked kids on the inside.
What else would you like to see in NYC in ten years?
A proper goddamn burrito.
What would you like to see in City Atlas?
A burrito map. Anything regarding food really.
Do you think people can change their lives to include less of the old ways (high energy and carbon) and more new ways, and be happy?
No duh. One of the problems is that ‘sustainability,’ or ‘green,’ or ‘conservation,’ has all been understood as reducing a bad thing. Which is all good, but reducing how you live is never all that appealing. The other way to look at it is producing good things, which seems a lot more fun and wide open.
How did you decide to go the Kickstarter route?
Playlab used Kickstarter for a small sculptural project they did a while back. And we met with Kickstarter and they seemed rad and into the project. Honestly, we didn’t know of many other options so we figured we might as well try Kickstarter.
What are some precedents that inspired your course of action?
Not sure. The High Line is somewhat similar. But otherwise we haven’t found any models that shed light on what to do next. It’s mostly: “Huh, that seems like it’d be good. Let’s try it.”
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Top photo illustration courtesy of pluspool.org
From smartphones and e-readers to laptops and tablet computers, today’s high-tech devices put a wealth of information and utility at our fingertips – however it can be a real challenge to keep these power-hungry gadgets charged while you’re on the go.
Workers completed tunneling for the first phase of the Second Avenue Subway on Sept. 22, 2011, when the project’s tunnel boring machine reached the Lexington Av-63 St station, breaking into the existing subway system. The 485-ton, 450-foot-long machine used a 22-foot diameter cutterhead to mine 7,789 linear feet in two tunnels, averaging approximately 60 linear feet a day. Photo by Metropolitan Transportation Authority / Patrick Cashin.
