Trend Watch, November 2016

How enviro sensors will change the world:

As sensors become small and cheap, we’re creating a global network of environmental data collection to help us figure out the best ways to quickly cut emissions, writes Sean Captain via FastCoExist.

It has been estimated that by 2019, he writes, ” ‘citizen environmentalists’ will have deployed more personal sensors, measuring things like air and water pollution, than governments have in countries with well developed economies.”

And at the government level, cities are beginning to use motion sensors to track traffic – connect this to traffic lights, and weather reports, writes Captain, and “you get an automated world that adjusts itself to changing conditions.

“And while it isn’t specifically targeted at environmental management, it almost always touches on the environment, because it so often measures and controls things that use – and waste – energy.”

Further detail and examples in the article, here.

Photo by Hugh Han on Unsplash.

Bankable green spaces:

Daniel Bennett writes in Sourceable‘s Architecture News that the contribution of public space to a city’s economy can be measured and used to advocate for bigger and better parks.

He asks, “with the pressure on our increasingly urbanised populations, why is quality public open space in our cities too often seen as a ‘nice to have’ rather than a valuable investment for which the return is high?

“We need to quantify and qualify every positive aspect of our public spaces and park systems, where possible, into a value to make the business case.”

Quantifiable outcomes include increased property values, higher rates for local government, and more businesses in turn attracting customers, employees and services.

Read the whole article here.

 SOS save our spaces:

British architect and Pritzker Prize winner Richard Rogers writes for CNN on the pressures, and value, of well designed cities with equitable public space.

He writes, “When public space is eroded, it is our civic culture that suffers, even our democracy.

“Demonstrations are suppressed by governments, and even in London the right to congregate in Parliament Square — outside the ‘mother of parliaments’ — is constrained.

“But other forces can erode the public realm too,” he says.

For instance, market forces that propelled the popularity of shopping malls over the high street, the parallel worlds of the rich  and the poor, public space sacrificed for roads and cars.

“The only way to accommodate growing populations, while preserving urban vitality and minimizing carbon emissions, is to live in denser, better-designed cities,” he says.

Read the full story here.

Photo by Brisbane Architecture Blog.

 

Our precious urban lives:

Lisa Pryor, a medical doctor, writes of her experience living in the privileged inner city and commuting to Western Sydney for work.

In the past 20 years, she says, “the urban village ethos has encouraged prosperous neighborhoods to turn inward and even take pride in not connecting with fellow citizens in the suburban areas beyond.”

Pryor writes of the inner city’s fight for resources, its determination to hold to its cultural clout at the expense of Western Sydney suburbs.

“In Western Sydney more than anywhere, our future nation is being formed,” she says.

“The streets are not built for street life, but there is life, in spite of the streets. Thousands of years of culture are being woven into something loose we call Australian. And it is passing by those who refuse to venture beyond the inner city.

“The passion for well-designed communities needs to be directed outward instead of inward, geographically and in spirit. We need to let go of some of our resources; we need to learn to share.”

Find the full story at The New York Times.

Photo: Chalkyyyyyyy, Wikimedia Commons.