Great Cities and Climate Change

Last week was great for learning about positive approaches to solving our collective climate change problems. First, I attended the MassImpact: Cities and Climate Change symposium at MIT on Friday (March 28, 2008). Then I got to see Michael Singer present some of his work at the down2earth event in Boston on Saturday. Pretty jam-packed. Jaime Lerner lead the MassImpact event through a visual description of his understanding of the ways that urban livability and vitality are directly related to reducing environmental impact and creating regenerative built environments. Jaime's perspective is summed up in his statement, "Every city that has a good quality of life... is sustainable." Here's Jaime speaking at last year's TED conference.

In Jaime's view, many policymakers and politicians don't have a very "generous" view of their cities. His goal is to bring the place and its inhabitants together into a joyful community. Jaime's commandments for great cities:

1. Use cars less
2. Separate your garbage
3. Live closer to work
4. Multi use all of the city — don't have parts of the city that are used only a small part of the time
5. Sustainability is the relationship between use and waste — don't waste things

Jaime's idea of sustainable cities led to Daniel Pearl's presentation on the idea of getting cities and suburbs to work together — to bring their advantages to each other and share needs. This was a compelling presentation of the positive relationship that urban and suburban communities can support. The next day, I headed over to the Down:2:Earth Exploration Into Sustainable Living, which turned out to be way better than the name would suggest. In exploring sustainable living, I got to eat some ice cream, try some chocolate and some coffee, sip some wine, and even have a shot of vodka. Seems like sustainable living is kind of consumptive. But the highlight of the day was hearing Michael Singer describe his large-scale infrastructure/art projects. This presentation seemed to fall neatly in line with the previous day's vision of urban generosity. Michael's recent projects are at the confluence of urban infrastructure and public art — a landfill station as community center and public art installation, a wastewater treatment plant as park and plant nursery — viewing all of the inputs as food and all of the outputs as product, including the pleasure created by the park. This is a further definition of the theme of linking livability and sustainability in cities and a pretty compelling vision all around.