LA Energy - block by block

The UCLA City Energy Map exemplifies visualization of data that may driving planning and infrastructure decisions.  This map is the product of a year-long partnership with UCLA, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), and the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR). As a tool for visualizing and analyzing the energy usage trends within the city, this map brings greater transparency to the discussion on better energy investments, energy efficiency, and public policy.

The map is the first in a series being developed for the Regional Energy Baselines Project, directed by Stephanie Pincetl, PhD and funded by the California Energy Commission’s PIER program.  Jacki Murdock, an Urban Planning graduate student at the Luskin School of Urban Planning and a CCSC researcher, created the map as part of her Master’s Capstone project. Yoh Kawano, GIS Coordinator at the Institute for Digital Research and Education at UCLA helped advise the GIS efforts on this project. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research are critical partners on the project.

Breaking the Cell Phone Economic Suck ...

Look at the $s sucked out of local communities through the bundeled services provided by your merged entertainment/communications conduit. There must be a better way - a back2theFuture muni model of local services provided by local businesses (see the St. John Telephone Company). 

Google may show the way ....

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Google’s Private Cell Phone Network - A small cell network over the company’s HQ could herald new competition for established carriers.

ilings made with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission reveal that Google wants to start operating its own, very small cell phone network on its Mountain View campus. It’s the latest in a series of hints in recent years that Google is unsatisfied with the way that mobile networks control the mobile Internet.

Google tells the FCC it wants to install up to 50 mobile base stations in buildings on the Western edge of Google’s Mountain View campus, just a block or so away from its main Android building. Up to 200 mobile devices will be used on that “experimental” network and the area covered will be small, with indoor base stations reaching only up to 200 meters, and any outdoors ones reaching no further than a kilometer. The WSJ reports that the frequencies used belong to ClearWire, and aren’t compatible with any U.S. mobile device. They are in use in China, Brazil, and India, though.

Google might just be experimenting with devices for those parts of the world. Or it might be trying something more radical. The search and ad giant has been rumored to be exploring the idea of working with TV provider Dish to launch a wireless Internet service, has already got into the business of providing broadband (see “Google’s Internet Service Might Bring the U.S. Up to Speed”), and has a history of showing interest in ideas that would loosen the grip of cellular providers on mobile devices and what people can do with them.

[More at MIT Tech Review ...]

NY City Unveils Winner of Tiny-Apartment Competition

A peek at the winning design in the city’s small-apartment competition. 

The entry, “My Micro NY,” packs a lot of space and light into less than 370 square feet.

Make it Small - Make it Livable - and if you must, stack them into cities:)

But if you live in the country - or have a big back yard 

Digital Rights - Sandy Pentland

You own your data, and you should only share it when you get something back in return, argues Sandy Pentland.

Megacities: soulless sprawl or shining future? - Carl Björkman

Full Draft at Davos 2013

Urbanization - Geoffrey West Intro

Whether we like them or not, megacities will increasingly become the future of our planet, writes the World Economic Forum’s Carl Björkman.

For the first time in history, more people live in cities than in rural areas. By 2050, the world’s cities will absorb 3 billion people, at which point 70% of the planet will live in urban areas. This represents the biggest shift in human civilization since humankind moved from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement.

Yet, some cities are more than cities. Some are megacities. These giant sprawling urban conurbations pack people, communities and businesses across vast spaces. There are now over 20 megacities or metropolises (population centres with more than 10 million people) scattered around the world – from New York, which still captures our imagination with its skyscrapers crammed like dominos onto the finite Manhattan grid, to the bustling, colourful and crime-plagued Mexico City, and from the self-assured Beijing, the meticulously organized technological hive of Tokyo, the melting pot of Istanbul, the booming vibrant Seoul, to the grand old lady of cities, London.

More megacities are sprouting up, although few in the West may have heard of the new emerging metropolises that will play an increasingly dominant global role: Chengdu and Beihei on the north-eastern Chinese coast; Palembang in Indonesia; Ghaziabad, Surat and Faridabad in India; Chittagong in Bangladesh; and Toluca in Mexico. Their cumulative growth is set to usher in a new era of city living, changing the lives of those who move to them – and the face of the planet.

[More At Davos ...]

Davos - People are Cities

Davos Designing Smart Cities Session Summary

How can cities be designed for urban resilience and prosperity?

• Understand the characteristics of smart cities
• Rethink infrastructure for resilient dynamism
• Share best practices and partnership models

Key Points

• Resilience is the capacity of cities to prepare, respond and recover. 
• Information technology does not make a city smarter or more resilient; rather, the solution lies in keeping the citizen at the centre and providing better, faster and cheaper services.  
• Planning matters. 
• Cities share global values, including the primacy of safety and security, and the importance of convenience.  

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One Step at a Time - DEVAP is Keeping it Simple

Tech to the Rescue! 


Comfort within the new urban environment is crucial to our perception of livability and central to enablement of active communal spaces. Buildings are the containers that, in many geographies globally, will house these spaces and communities. So when we see small advancements such as this one from the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) that point to 80% efficiency break-throughs for building HVAC systems - coupled with significantly noticeable improvements in perceived occupant comfort - we are enthused! 


Coupled with a productization roadmap that puts the new tech in the field rapidly, we can foresee a time where our urban shells can truly lead to sustainable, community habitation 

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NREL zeroes in on super-efficient AC system for commercial buildings

A new air conditioning system invented by DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory could well be a promising breakthrough for energy efficiency in commercial buildings: a compact, cost-effective cooling unit that uses 90% less electricity and up to 80% less total energy than its traditional counterparts. In terms of commercial buildings, that can mean huge cost and energy savings.

Because the system, desiccant enhanced evaporative air conditioning (DEVAP), also is efficient at managing humidity, it can maintain a comfortable atmosphere for building occupants without the need for overcooling, one example of cost saving.

NREL's Eric Kozubul, co-inventor of DEVAP, explained the system's benefits, technology and its likely path to commercialization in a Q&A which is part of NREL's Lab Breakthrough series.

The outstanding benefits, of course, are comfort for people in buildings equipped with the system: in addition to comfortable temperatures and humidity levels, what they may notexperience is the stuffy, lack of fresh air atmosphere common to commercial buildings. And because of the drastically lower level of electricity consumption, building owners should see an estimated 40-80% reduction in their power bills.

As the name suggests, DEVAP is a combination of desiccant (drying) and evaporative processes, neither of them new to the industry. But as Kozubul explained, attempts to put those processes together in the past haven't worked out. "There have been attempts to put these technologies together, but technical issues prevented successful development. NREL took advantage of recent materials advances and liquid desiccant advances to design a compact and cost-effective system." He added that with those injections of new ideas and materials into existing processes, "we demonstrated indirect evaporative cooling with cooling effectiveness never thought possible – and better than any product available today."

Kozubul said commercial buildings will be the first market targeted for a rollout because "the financial and energy payback for efficient air conditioning is much higher in commercial buildings. Once the product is well-established, a residential rollout will surely follow."

He acknowledged that DEVAP needs work before it's ready for a market debut. "DEVAP will require additional development to get it to a field prototype stage. Although the cooling cycle is largely proven through laboratory testing, we need to make it smaller, cheaper, reliable and manufacturable." That will require support from DOE, NREL and the HVAC industry, he said.

As is the case with so many "breakthroughs," DEVAP didn't happen overnight. NREL has had researchers working on desiccant and evaporative AC technologies for more than 25 years.