A 1964 View

50 years can shift our POV certainly. But it is often productive to look at the our past view on a topic to see if/how we have progressed. What works - What doesn't; these refine and extend our vision. As we build the future, we must inventory the past!

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Have you ever wondered what makes some cities better than others? In public access television pioneer George C. Stoney's 'How to Live in a City,' the argument is that it all depends on the quality of the public space. 
New York City folk singer and architectural critic Eugene Ruskin guides us through unique locales which illustrate the fine line between organic and sterile urban spaces. It all depends on a place’s ability to attract and sustain, even if only momentarily, a sense of community.

And while some spaces succeed and others fail, one may wonder whether if it was designer’s intention to drive people away, or not.

Open Source Cities

The Definitely right direction. The semantic representation of global resources is particularly useful. Open Source and Publicly Available!

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Open Source Cities: aptly named: We live in an urban age. And while technology will surely make cities smarter and more connected, we know that what makes a city great is how we experience it as people.

The good news is that cities are becoming more open, more liveable, and more aware of their footprint on the planet. The idea of the city is undergoing a reinvention. You could say that the city is being open sourced, and we are all part of a global conversation.

We are busy constructing a platform for citizens of the world to connect with cities. If you'd like to get involved, please drop us a line. In the mean time, find us on Twitter and our Tumblr blog.

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Livable Cities, Urban Mobility, Citizen Urbanism, Open Data, Ecological Design.

A global collection of the best ideas on the future of cities. Featuring in-depth interviews with visionary leaders and a survey of rich media content, Open Source Cities explores the discipline and tradition of open source collaboration as a model for systemic change in our collective urban present and future.

Plans for the site include a semantic “middleware” database of global resources to connect citizen urbanism initiatives with top-down urban planning and policy making bodies.

Emission Management at the Urban Edge

One of the base-line metrics going forward. Be it county, state, national, or global. Keeping an envelope (and noting the annoncement that UK greenhouse gas emissions were down 7% in 2011!  in the news this week-end). It's a baby-steps path forward. Can we do better in our urban systems by integrated monitoring and management infrastructures. With Individuals being aware of their aggregated footprints. The Urban Dome idea from Picarro is part of that envelope - emissions related to people, working personal and group actions, in their life choices and social context fills out the middle. 

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Greenhouse gas emission thresholds adopted

Thresholds for greenhouse gas emissions that will trigger environmental analysis and mitigation measures were narrowly adopted Wednesday by the San Luis Obispo County Air Pollution Control District board.

Directors voted 6-5, with Grover Beach representative Karen Bright absent, to adopt the thresholds despite objections from individuals and a home builders group.

But directors removed examples of mitigation measures that might be made mandatory in any local climate action plan over concerns some might think APCD was mandating those measures.

The board directed the staff to bring the issue back in a year with a list of projects that did and did not meet the thresholds.

In a separate 11-0 decision, the board asked the construction industry to provide data on mitigation costs for projects that exceed the thresholds.

Aeron Arlin-Genet, manager of APCD planning and outreach, said the guidelines will help implement Senate Bill 97 requirements for offsetting greenhouse gas emissions as part of the California Environmental Quality Act process.

“These thresholds will provide guidance to lead agencies, project proponents and the general public on how to implement SB 97 in a consistent and defensible fashion while streamlining the process for smaller projects,” she said.

Commercial and residential projects would not require analysis and quantified mitigation if:

• The development is consistent with an agency’s adopted climate action plan;
• The project would produce less than the “bright-line threshold” of 1,150 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year — the amount expected from a 70-unit urban residential subdivision, a 49-unit rural subdivision or a 40,000-square-foot urban strip mall; or,
• The project’s yearly emissions do not exceed 4.9 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent for each employee and resident it serves.

The industrial project threshold would be 10,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions a year.

Arlin-Genet said 56 projects are expected to hit those thresholds by 2020.

Read more at the Santa Maria Times:

It's ARPA-E day in the US.

Today is the day that all interested parties get to step up and give notice to ARPA-E of new and transformative ideas. There are 8 topic areas, 30+ sub-topics and even a catch-all bag called "Other".
While I've little expectation of being awarded and ARPA-E grant, (It's that pragmatic side of me that tells me don't get your hopes up with 5000+ applicants submitting proposals!) I do use these events as a driver to collect my thoughts on various aspects of our transformational, evolutional, path to the future:)

Last year, we proposed the "EnergyOS: GridNOC" project and also "A Control Architecture for Urban Microgrids". Nice titles and topics to drive us forward. While these were not ARPA-E funded, we are now in the happy position of leveraging the ideas percolated through the ARPA-E experience into showcase pilot installations in Nagasaki Japan and Xiamen China. This validates the return on effort put forward in our participation in the  ARPA-E process!

This year, we have collected our working team (Intel Microgrid Labs and Nextek Power Systems) to provide 4 topics for consideration. These are, again, at the forefront of our view of the needs of the market place and levarage forward on our success of the past 12 months.

So we will see how the following fare:

• Title 1: DC Infrastructure, Aggregated Contextual Data Streams, and Holistic Operational Management in Buildings

• Title 2: Managing Consumer Behavior & Aggregated Energy Markets: Consumer Engagement through Gamification, Social Motivation, and Community Economic Flows

• Title 3: DC Power Management in High Performance Data Centers

• Title 4: EnergyOS: Building an Open Source Energy Infrastructure

Interesting topics and ones that, if they should happen, would provide critical elements in our transformed energy infrastructure.  Of course, like last year, we won't wait to change the future!!

People Power - Enabling Green Button and our Transformed Energy Economy!!

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It's all in the Packaging: 20x boost to solar (MIT)

MIT stacks solar panels like pancakes, increases their power output by up to 20x
By Sebastian Anthony
ExtremeTech


What’s better than one pancake? A whole stack of pancakes! Using the same logic, a team of MIT researchers have stacked a bunch of photovoltaic solar cells together to produce up to 20 times the power output of conventional solar power installations.
Normally I’m the first to drop my jaw in awe at MIT’s latest and greatest innovations, but this one really is a bit of a no-brainer. Basically, photovoltaic cells themselves aren’t all that expensive — according to MIT, they’re only around 35% of the total cost of a solar power installation. The main issue with solar power (and its main cost) is its low energy density, and thus the sheer surface area required to generate a sizable amount of electricity. This is why you need to cover your whole roof with cells to power your light bulbs, and why solar power plants would have to occupy tens of square miles of desert to produce as much power as a nuclear power plant.

[More ...]

Zipcar moves electrically in Chicago

EVs are expensive (see CODA's announcement they are now shipping to first customers)  with a range of @125miles. Urban environments, and 2xcommuting distance and 2xpriceReduction is still needed (IMO:). But applying the current generation to the community shared model is certainly in order. Zipcar (see below) has launched in Chicago - to success I hope. I also think a special edition of buzzcar.com might emerge - especially in CA. 

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Forbes: Zipcar Launches Its Pilot Large-Scale Electric Vehicle Program In Chicago

Zip car carsharing service at downtown Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Zipcar has launched its first large-scale electric vehicle program in Chicago. Electric Vehicles are a natural fit to car-sharing programs not just because of their eco-friendly nature, but also owing to the easy and cheaper access to adequate charging infrastructure, which has long been a hurdle in the popularity of EVs. Car-sharing programs opting for EVs would also benefit from government support for electric vehicles.

Zipcar is a membership-based car sharing company that serves over 673K members with a fleet of over 9K vehicles in North America and Europe. Aside from competing with traditional rental companies and car-sharing services like Connect by Hertz, Enterprise’s WeCar, UHaul’s UCarShare and City Car Share, it also faces competition from new low-cost, pee‘“r-to-peer (P2P) car sharing services like RelayRides and
So far, weak infrastructure and fewer number of charging stations have been a big hurdle to the popularity of electric cars. However, car-sharing programs make development of shared charging infrastructure easier.
Zipcar has been investing significantly in developing electric charging infrastructure and is likely to benefit from government support for electric vehicles. In Chicago, Zipcar is working with several partners like 350Green, which are installing EV charging stations for Zipcar EVs in various locations that include commercial and residential buildings, private parking lots and major travel routes.
The utilization of energy efficient vehicles like EVs also qualifies Zipcar to earn ‘Zero Emission Vehicle’ credits, and selling extra ZEVs under low-emission regulation laws generate supplementary income for Zipcar.

 
Zipcar Hits College Campuses To
Attract Young Drivers GetAround.

Chicago Going Green With Zipcar
Zipcar has launched its pilot Electric Vehicle program starting with five Chevrolet Volts in Chicago, and is expected to add another 20 EVs to its fleet this year. A Chevrolet Volt can travel gas-free up to 35 miles, after which it shifts a gas generator which produces electricity to keep it going an additional 375 miles on a full tank of gas. It thus offers Zipcar members the best of both worlds – low carbon experience of an electric car with the back-up security of a gas engine. Since most trips taken by Zipcar members are fewer than 35 miles, these trips taken in the Volts will be powered solely by electricity rather than fuel. The new Zipcar EVs will be placed in pods located throughout the city and will be available for reservation starting at $10 per hour.

Zipcar’s Electric Vehicle program also gets support of the Chicago Climate Action Plan. In 2012, the City of Chicago will install hundreds of electric vehicle charging stations for public use to help expand the EV infrastructure throughout the city.

In December 2011, Zipcar’s much smaller Chicago-based non-profit car-sharing competitor I-GO also launched a $2.5 million electric vehicle project for solar power based EVs. It added 36

Electric Vehicles Make A Strong Case For Car-Sharing and Government Support
There is a natural fit for EVs in the car-sharing space as some people’s reasons for not owning a car is due to environmental harm. Electric vehicles are clean, green and quiet and are believed to be the best near-to-market low emission vehicle technology with no emissions at “point of use,” 30-40% lower CO2 emissions, and 60-70% lower fuel costs compared to petrol or diesel-fueled vehicles.
Electric vehicles are likely to be strongly leveraged by car sharing programs after 2012 and will create a strong case for government support for car sharing programs in Europe and North America.

Communities and Corporations: A Sustainability Symbiosis?

SustainAbility.Com 2012 Sustainability Leaders
and
GreenBiz Coverage Calling out Unilever as a 2 time winner!

Well, congratulation to the top 10! And I'm very happy to see IBM, Siemens, Nike, and Nestle' move into the top 10 (I never did feel that Shell was executing a sustainable business model, as represented in last years list:).

These are, for the most part, global companies that are executing sustainable practices throughout their operations. They interact with a diverse collection of local communities, bringing sustainability, based upon global economic flows, in direct contact with local economic flows driving sustainability of the community. There is often conflict and cross purposes as these two drivers, global and local, interact.

A deeper impact of this interaction;  at the role of community and city sustainability as a significant metric in the evaluation of our global corporate players' sustainability ratings; might extend our understanding. Maybe we need a cross view. The most sustainable cities and their supportive sustainable industries?

The SustainAbility video (3 min) is definitely worth your time. 

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