if green and blue structures in cities are to become significant in cities based on the services that they are capable of provide (Improve air quality, control Micro climate, Noise reduction, Rainwated drainage, Improved water quality, Increased groundwater recharge, Wastewater treatment, Flood protection, etc) we need to engage residents in a dialogue with the ecological processes happening in them

Recently I have been finding some interesting initiatives by which some cities are creating new public spaces in areas that were previously underused. Such initiatives are based on what I would call a “Reclaim-Test-Evaluate-Establish” approach of which I will show you an exciting example.

Inspired by New York’s Plaza Program, San Francisco’s “Pavement to Parks” is a program that creates spaces for people reclaiming excess roadway, through the use of simple and low-cost design interventions.

The first step was to recognize that San Francisco’s streets occupy 25% of the city’s land area (more space than all of the city’s parks). Many streets are considered to be excessively wide with high underused space (something that happens in most cities around the world).

The “Pavement to Parks” projects seek to temporarily RECLAIM these unused spaces and quickly and inexpensively turn them into new public plazas and parks.This is done by a temporary closure of the street and the installation of a new public use with the help of temporary activities, seating, landscaping, and treatment of the asphalt.

The reclaimed space becomes then a public laboratory where the City works with the community to TEST different uses and designs. After trying different configurations the space is EVALUATED to see if whether the temporary closure should be a long term community investment and ESTABLISHED as a permanent public space.

This is the case of the “Castro Plaza”. After being tested and evaluated for over a year, the Castro Plaza was made permanent by request of the community. The trail period provides the designers all the information they needed to create a public space that is tailored to the desires, needs and routines of the community. Something that would definitely contribute to the sustainability of the project.

In times where there is a shortage of resources, where there is a high demand for local public spaces and green areas, where municipalities can not cope with such demands, where there is the need of actively involving communities in the development and management of their public areas, it seems to me that a “Reclaim-Test-Evaluate-Establish” approach can be very useful. Having said that there should be much more support and attention given to initiatives such as the Park(ing) Day.

Here you can find a video of the transfromation of the Castro Plaza done by StreetFilms

Images from Pavement to Parks program

Here you can find other initiatives of reclaiming unused streets for more sustainable transportation. 

Planners, architects, designers are “always” trying to create places that enhance sustainable ways of living, ways that are more environmentally sound, more economical, or more conducive to the building of community. Today we talk a lot about high-density and walkable neighborhoods, transit oriented developments and mix use, waste and water management schemes, self-organized and resilient communities. Neighborhoods that include new, modern-stylish designs and sophisticated technologies have become the new model for achieving sustainable urban development and are trying to be replicated/exported all over the world.

However it seems to me that there is the dubious assumption that making an area, garden or building look nice will go hand in hand with more sustainable and eco-friendly living. This has been shown in a recent research (Just Environments  : Politicising Sustainable Urban Development) where it is argued that today sustainable urban development decisions are mainly based on the believe that more gardening, tidiness, recycling and eco-technologies will solve our environmental problems, ignoring deeper unsustainable societal structures. In short this means that one can live in a nice, green and tidy neighborhood but still live live in a very environmentally unfriendly way (with airplane use, car use, high levels of energy intensive consumption, etc).

So if this is true, are there any other models than the multibillion-dollar neighborhoods with all the so called features of urban sustainability?

Recently I found an article by Pavlina Ilieva and Kuo Pao Lian, showing how all the trendy “features” of sustainable urban design (high-density and walkable neighborhoods, transit oriented developments and mix use, waste and water management schemes, self-organized and resilient communities) can be found in a very different context. The examples of sustainable neighborhoods are not new and innovative areas in Scandinavia, Germany or the US but in the neighborhoods of the world’s poorest inhabitants. In the so called Slums, Favelas, Ghettos.

picture from digitaljournal

As said by Stewart Brand “to a planner’s eye, these cities look chaotic. However for biologist like me, they look organic. They are unexpectedly green, they have maximum density—1m people per square mile in some areas of Mumbai—and have minimum energy and material use. People get around by foot, bicycle, rickshaw, or the universal shared taxi”.

Of course living in Slums has many problems and I don’t mean that we all should live in them to become more sustainable. But there are many lessons that can be incorporated in to new urban developments (the Self-Generative Community or Rem Kolhass’ book and documentary “Lagos, How it works”).

Pavlina Ilieva and Kuo Pao Lian argue that if we look beyond the poverty issue, slums can serve as an example of humanity in its most resourceful, responsible and aware of its surroundings. Is in it this what we are trying to achieve in sustainable urban development?

In some of my posts I try to express my concerns about the growing believe that green technologies or green buildings will solve our environmental problems. Although I do believe that these new technologies can create less impact than many of our existing constructions, I also see their growing promotion as a new business opportunity, one that many are trying to manipulate and take advantage of.

To rely on green technologies is to abstract and to de-individualize the responsibility we have towards our environment (if you pay a tax for CO2 emissions it doesn’t mean that you are doing better for the environment). Buildings alone wont do it and some even argue that it is citizens and their lifestyles that will achieve sustainability, not engineers, architects or planners (see eg. Julian Agyeman and Per Berg).

Even if we live in a zero-energy building nothing will be achieved if that house is part of the sprawling development of the city, or if the vertical garden demands more energy in its maintenance than the one it produces, or if we still drive to buy the milk (40% of all urban travel in the US happens within 2 miles & nearly all of that travel is by car!), or eat highly processed food coming from the other side of the globe, or follow our current consumption pattern of shop just for the sake of shopping, and so on and so on. 

This seems to be the case in the United States where green-building technologies have become the latest thing in the market. In a CNN special report a group of American architects argue that the American building-design community’s vision of sustainability is myopically focused. They say that the so-called “green” buildings are simply not sustainable if (as it is now):”their occupants drive long distances every day, the energy they consume is carbon-intensive, their technology is too complicated to use or too difficult to maintain, their impact stops at the property line, they deny the use of pre-existing infrastructure or building fabric , they are conceived in isolation from larger, systemic environmental change”.

All these seem to be things that we all (planners, designers, engineers, … news paper boys, house wifes/husbands, doctors, firefighters, gardeners, farmers, teachers ….. buildings, cars, roads, etc, etc, etc) need to address in the development and everyday life of our cities.

Recently I came across the the work of the Atelier d´Architecture Autogérée (AAA), an architecture and urban design studio that describes itself as “an interdisciplinary practice including architects, artists, urban planners, landscape designers, sociologists, activists, students and residents”. 

The combination of so many and diverse actors within in their practice is what makes AAA projects very different from many other architecture or urban design firms. The diversity of its team members lies on the fact that their main goal is to create an  architectural and urban practice that is inclusive and respectful of the desires of inhabitants and users, whatever is their social and cultural background. 

For AAA public space is socially, culturally and politically produced and not just physically build. Their projects are highly embedded in their local contexts, including, adapting and shaping everyday practices and using them as platforms for cultural and social production. Their goal is not to create a product but a long term process that can host the diverse needs and demands of its users as well as serve as a learning space for new lifestyles and ways of being together in the future.

Such ideas are clearly reflected in their award winning project “Passage 56”. A public space that because of its format and use, it is continually “under construction”. The Passage 56 is a continuous social, cultural and political process rather than a design object.

Find more about what is going on in the Passage 56 in their blog. It is in french but the images talk for themselves.