www.futuretowns.org.uk

Locking Up Fresh Water

2010-04-07T13:36:00.002+01:00

I was watching a documentary called 'How Earth Made Us', (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qhqr8) presented by Professor Iain Stewart, about how history has been shaped by geological processes, such as the discovery of copper ore on the surface of rocks. In this documentary he argues that in Northern Europe and North America we have locked up so much fresh water in reservoirs, swimming pools and other fresh water storage facilities, that we have influenced the way Earth spins on its axis. A few years back when I was writing the theory behind Future Towns, I proposed that very large urban centres such as New York, could concentrate weight in such a way as to cause Earth to wobble. If this is true of water then surely large urban centres will also have a similar effect? Maybe this way of life will cause so much of a wobble, that we begin to see increases in tectonic plate activity, which means more Earthquakes and larger Earthquakes and increased volcanic eruptions. By extrapolation, this may also lead to a build up of stress in the spin of Earth, which like a plate shift, will suddenly jolt and change it's axis, sending every civilisation of Earth into extreme risk of collapse. This problem may not come to light in any real sense until it is too late, but might serve as a motivating factor in a real change to the way human beings live, i.e. away from large urban mass living towards smaller sustainable living, such as proposed by me (http://www.futuretowns.org.uk/future-towns-theory.php ).

Haiti Quake

2010-01-19T11:19:00.002Z

As the devastation unfolds in Haiti, it is clear that in this case poor construction of houses has caused many more deaths than was necessary. However, it also seems that some of the major buildings, like the Cathedral and the Presidential Palace were also destroyed, meaning that the Earthquake was large enough to take out well constructed buildings as well. This is one of those times when nature is more powerful than our powers to construct safe buildings. It is also the case that the shanty towns around the country were both unable to withstand any sized quake, but also, they were light constructions, which means that more people survived in shanties than would have otherwise been the case if these were poorly constructed houses. It is a little ironic, that a home made from pieces of scrap would be more safe than a properly constructed building. But as the death toll continues to rise to over 200,000 people, the devastation is immense. It has already cost the international community £550m and this bill will continue to rise to between £2bn and £10bn in total, as roads and buildings are reconstructed and the people there continue to receive aid in one form or another. As usual it is the poor that suffer the worst of the effects, but it does seem the elite will suffer as well. A society coping with this scale of disaster will obviously show a determination to overcome their troubles, and it does seem that Haiti is doing it's best to stay calm and not descend into chaos. For example, violence is lower after the quake than it was before (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8466973.stm) according to US commander, Lt Gen Ken Keen. I wonder how a Western country would cope with a massive earthquake right bang smack in the middle of a densely populated capital?

I Woz Right - Political Will Vanishes at Copenhagen

2009-12-19T18:13:00.003Z

While Obama has a ready excuse not to make a deal at Copenhagen, the others aren't so lucky. We certainly aren't. The House won't allow heavy cuts in carbon emissions through the US legislature. The EU didn't want to sign up to 30% by 2020, without others signing up to a similar cut in emissions. The Chinese say that 'It's not fair,' like some proverbial spoilt bastard. What is abundantly clear from all of this, is that money is more important than survival. Better to burn out in a frenzy of consumerism than to fade away as puritan environmentalists, knitting their way to salvation.

The left has always owned the environmental arguments. And that is kind of the problem. The right who are forever macho and uncaring, think that job security overrides environmental protection every time. Sensible people, (and I guess now a little more scared than they were), know that environmental security trumps economic security. But we're not dealing with sensible people. We're dealing with the likes of Murdock, who knows that pushing the right wing agenda will earn him more money than the left. It is the left which is losing ground right now. And the public seem to be listening and becoming climate change deniers, much like the windbags in the US who shout at the TV camera's every time a crack appears in the left's argument. George Bonbiot and his fellow lefties then just come across as whingers and panickers. So what do we do? Do what I always believed we would do, sit tight and wait for the really big disasters to start happening. Then it will be too late. Then the public will want blood and cry 'Why didn't you protect us?' Maybe they'll say, 'we were just following orders.' It will be too late for embarrassment, and in a democracy most of the leaders at Copenhagen will have been moved on to the lecture circuit, leaving people of my generation and younger to make good with the apologies and excuses.

Maybe a miracle is what we need, as Polly Toynbee says in her opinion piece in the Guardian? (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/dec/18/gutless-planet-future-copenhagen-leaders) Who knows? I think I am right though. We won't change in time and we'll just have to live with all the chaos. That's exactly what's going to happen. I guarantee it. By the way Polly, what does pusillanimous mean?

Copenhagen Part II.

2009-12-12T22:35:00.001Z

It’s been a difficult year for the green movement. Sceptics are in the ascendancy. They are winning the hearts and minds of the people. There are huge question marks over the origins of their opinions, i.e. that they are paid by the oil industry, directly or indirectly to influence the US government, publish counter evidence of climate change, reach out to the public to convince them that the science isn’t certain. But I don’t think that they’re winning because they’re clever or right. I think they’re winning, because people want to believe that they can keep their lifestyles the same or improve their wealth and increase their consumption without worrying about the long term effects. Al Gore (http://www.algore.com) said it was an ‘Inconvenient Truth’ and just now I watched another great environmental film, ‘The Age of Stupid’ (http://www.ageofstupid.net). Both of these films are bang on the money. They reflect the challenges perfectly from all angles. Watch them, because both of them have convinced me just as I was becoming sceptical.

All week I’ve been hearing experts and commentators discussing the significance of 2015 and the temperature increase limit of 2ºC. I have been distracted by personal problems so I have been half listening to it all on the build up to Copenhagen. But watching the Age of Stupid, I finally realised what they mean. Earlier in the year I heard political leaders discussing keeping the increase in global temperatures to 2ºC. At the time I thought what a stupid thing to have a target of increase of temperature. How is that ever going to be possible? But the point of a limit in increase, is the scientific predictions of what will happen beyond that point. If it goes past 2ºC the world is expected to tip into runaway climate change. The second figure, the 2015 limit, is to point out that to limit this increase, we have to peak emissions at 2015 at current projections. In other words if we continue on our current path, a decline in emissions must begin in 6 years. That’s not a long time.

I became an environmentalist when I was twenty-one in 1995. I began this path after a childhood dreaming of becoming a high flying, high consuming businessman. When my best friends at the time were about to have their first baby, it occurred to me that the end of the twentieth century was a bad time to bring a child into the world. I asked myself whether having a child, would condemn that child to a life of turmoil and peril. I then went into a spin over it. I saw saving the environment in a radically different way to other people. I didn’t see it as a left wing, tree hugging issue. I saw it as a right wing issue, because it was about survival. It would take those aggressive right wing business types and war mongers, and evil capitalists to do the job – to save humanity. I didn’t want to hug trees, and espouse love of the world. I was serious about saving the planet. I didn’t want to leave it to a committee. I wanted the best minds, the most motivated, the clever and the devious; the rich, the most convincing people to commit themselves to the task. Only then could we avert the crisis – when those people destroying the world, turned their resources and skills to saving it.

So in Copenhagen do the leaders need to sign up to a target or two? In the entry below (if you want to read it) I said no. I wrote this at about 6pm tonight. But in between writing that and writing this, I saw The Age of Stupid and Hot Planet, by the BBC. I realised just how important new technology is, a long time ago. But tired and angry about politicians not reacting effectively to the challenges we faced, I stepped away from believing that an agreed binding reduction target was possible. I now believe that instead of backing away because of the inadequacies of our leaders, I now believe that more pressure should be put on politicians. Much more. So much that they cannot walk away from their responsibilities any more. Technology and the Manhattan Project of green technology that I wanted, should still happen. But targets are still vital to the process. Also, it has been proposed by climate campaigners that a target of reduction of use of fossil fuels should also be negotiated. In the film the Age of Stupid, it was explained that there should be a cap on fossil fuel use with a slight reduction each year until 2065, when use is ended. While America, the EU and Australia gradually reduce, India and China can continue to increase until they match larger economies on their way up and then they would begin to reduce emissions, equalising their emissions with the larger economies as they go. This is what should happen. And Copenhagen is a chance to do something like this. However, I still do not believe that politicians will achieve a decrease in carbon use by 2015. The political will just isn’t there and it is entirely the fault of the nay-sayers that this is happening. The sceptics that keep the public questioning are ruining the deals that could be made. If the public isn’t convinced then politicians tend to agree with them in similar proportions. For example, Obama can come to the conference and tell the world he wants quick and ample reductions in emissions. However, a large amount of politicians in the US just don’t want that and will vote it down in the Senate and the House. His hands are tied. All he can do is agree a target and then put pressure on his colleagues to pass it, like he did in the case of his Health Bill. There just isn’t enough time though. Six years is a very short period of time in the world of global politics. All we can hope for is that the projections are wrong.

Copenhagen Summit

2009-12-12T17:09:00.003Z

There is a lot at stake this year at Copenhagen. This is the right time to come up with a deal, as far as the climate change science is concerned. But as for the political climate it still isn't right. In recent years when the politicians come together I am always skeptical about the outcome. They like to make a joint statement at the end and tell the world all the things they've agreed. But often these are pledges with no substance. They know it and any seasoned observer will know it too. Even Obama won't get things moving. This is because the sticking point is linked with economic performance and economic security. A country with a troubled economy, loses its power to do everything and anything. And agreeing targets won't work, ever, because of this. Targets are linked negatively to economic performance, both in theory and in practice. It will cost a lot of money, even though the overall cost of doing nothing will be far greater. It is the short term costs which are the decider however, because that's the nature of money. I've said for a couple of years now, and others agree (most notably Bjorn Lomborg - http://www.lomborg.com) that agreeing to targets won't get us anywhere. Every politician in there could agree to cut emissions by 100% by next year - they don't have to do it. No-one can make them do it. And they often don't. Ed Miliband reckons the UK have already met their carbon targets. I don't know what planet he's on, but as far as I understood the only country to reach their Kyoto target was Poland or Romania, but only because their economy is in free fall and they weren't using much energy. I said it before and I'll say it again, that a massive fund should be set up to fund the technology that will allow a change from carbon to non-carbon economies. And subsidise that technology till the cows come home. That's what should be agreed at the talks. Have targets as well as you like. There's no harm in it. But ultimately targets are unenforceable and don't mean all that much.

Secondly on Channel Four news (http://www.channel4.com) the other day, they were talking about Rare Earth. Rare Earth is the stuff where very rare metals are mined for producing things like magnets for wind turbines and low energy light bulbs. It is at great environmental cost that these metals are recovered, mainly from China, which has all but monopolised the Rare Earth market. This indicates that even if we were to agree targets and push new technologies onto the market, we still haven't solved the raw materials problem, i.e. that eventually they will run out. Almost half of the worlds supply of copper for example, is recovered from recycling plants and landfill and old buildings. There are so many very serious problems with capitalism and although I was enthusiastic about books like Natural Capitalism (see http://www.rmi.org) there are very fundamental reasons why capitalism fails as an answer to environmental problems. In other words capitalism is almost entirely incompatible with environmental sustainability - in other the words the long term surival of the human race. It could provide the answers to climate change given the right conditions. But it will never provide the answers, to population growth, land use growth, biodiversity conservation and resource use, because it is about using resources "like a business in liquidation" (EF Schumaker - Small is Beautiful (1973) - http://www.smallisbeautiful.org).

Many people have argued that in order for the environment to be treated properly and sustainably by a capitalist society, raw materials, air quality, land use, etc, must have a proper value added to it, to reflect scarcity and the cost of removing it from its habitat, or changing the environment itself by polluting it for example. This means that the environmental cost added to the costs to extract or use something, would have a value, which a) inhibits its use and b) money will be paid to help correct the damage afterwards. These issues have not been dealt with at any political level and becomes what the politicians coming together talk about, targets will continue to mean very little, because just switching to a non-carbon economy is not enough. Nowhere near. There are larger issues looming.

UK Gears Up for Disasters

2009-06-19T10:44:00.002+01:00

I have been told a couple of times that Future Towns and its philosophy is a little negative, in that it speaks of disaster as being the norm. I have always felt that this opinion is one born of the fact that never in the full history of mankind have we had to deal with a true global catastrophe. But with all the recent one in one hundred and fifty year floods that have hit Britain in the last five years or so, this attitude is changing. There are climate panels run by the government and staffed by some of the finest scientists in the world which are feeding other government institutions like the Environment Agency with alarming predictions. This in turn means that those agencies are better funded and if they are not funded well they have the evidence needed to get that funding in the future. For example the UKCP09 report (http://ukcp09.defra.gov.uk/) was issued this week under the shadow of a major climate funding summit in Europe, which is looking to fund sustainable development in the developing economies of the world, including China and India, to the tune of 150 billion Euro's a year. Also, the Environment Agency is seeking a doubling of funding to £1billion annually for flood proofing work in vulnerable communities and sea fronts, where rising sea levels will put pressure on eroding shore lines. Also, a group of companies, some with government funding are now building or planning to build flood resistant properties. For example http://www.lifeproject.info/. This is a building firm with three current projects with flood mitigation features, such as a flood plain in the front of the building, which is served by a river and the properties are raised up on a large bank. While all this is good, some of the designs look vulnerable to a wide range of other disasters. Future Towns, believe good solid designs can take away risk for many of the potential disasters, like storms and fires. However, in the UKCP09 document released this week, increased ferocity of storms is one of the features of a projected future, taking us to 2080, along with higher temperatures of up to 41 degrees, and wet winters with drought summers. There is a movement afoot to provide safer housing, but just limiting those designs to flooding alone is very short sighted.

Future By Design

2009-02-11T11:54:00.003Z

Browsing through an art based website the other day, I saw what looked like a very similar 'future city' to mine. So I clicked through to the Future By Design website, by a chap called Jacques Fresco. He is an artist and designer looking at a 'resource based economy' with a complete redesign of the world to his vision, of sleek interesting architecture and a Utopian society. He thinks seriously about creating a world in which people do not need to live by the sweat of their brow. Where crime and violence are eradicated and where computers build and maintain that world. Although his vision is similar to mine, particularly how he has laid out a city, with bands of functions, and central domes and integrated transportation etc, he doesn't discuss disaster protection and he doesn't really get to grips with the motivation of people to work or the fact that man's natural state is to work for reward - and work hard. But he is essentially joining me in discussing new ways to live, uncoupled from restrictive economic constraints and using architecture to deliver a better way of life. He has started an organisation to actually build this new world beginning with a university.

There is a documentary coming out on DVD called 'Future By Design' by award winning director William Gazecki. In it he describes Fresco as a modern day 'Da Vinci'. He's in his eighties now and has been studying and looking at the future for his whole career. I think anyone interested in how the future could be, if only we could get our act together, should make a visit to his site (link above). He discusses a resource based economy, which is something I have devoted quite some time thinking and writing about. But with diminishing resources I think that limitations on human activity via adequate and perhaps more strict resource allocation is on the way. But first the resources will go to the highest bidder, until people and their elected politicians have had enough and can see that this route will lead to uprisings and popular revolutions, which wouldn't help anyone. Proper resource allocation means abandoning economics as we know it. But as ever in world politics it will take a crisis to bring it about.

In the meantime people like me and Fresco will argue for a change. But both of us are jumping the gun. Only crisis tends to brings about change on a global scale, because human behaviour is very much limited to micro concerns and decisions, rather than the masses changing together. I think that's how things get done, how change occurs on a mass scale. Via crisis only. That's why the Russian Revolution happened the way it did, or the haulocaust, or the birth of the EU project after the end of the Second World War. For good or bad it is crisis, not planning that makes those big changes and pushes mankind to do things differently.

Catastrophic Economic Crash

2008-09-15T06:46:00.003+01:00

This site is not just about natural disasters. Human human created disasters are something that mankind has had to deal with for as long we've been around. The obvious things are war, nuclear war and climate change. But also, I considered carefully the idea that a massive economic collapse was also possible and should be included on the list. This kind of disaster can come in two forms. A short term depression style disaster, where a ten year downturn with mass unemployment can kick in, sending inflation sky high and leading to cues to get basics like bread from a government agency. The second kind is much deeper than that. It drags in other factors as well. For instance. London, or at least some of London, lies within a flood plain. If London found itself without access to its buildings, and all that infrastructure was condemned overnight, then resulting economic costs would be a more permanent disaster. But is it possible for the economic model of the free market to have a total collapse, to the point where we cannot return easily? Mass starvation. Chaotic criminal activity. Collapse of Police and emergency services. Collapse of government. The kind of economic crisis, precipitated by a disaster, perhaps even a global one, which leads to collapse of the structures of government and civil society. We've seen them before in times of war. We've seen it up to point both in Germany between WWI and WWII and in Zimbabwe recently. How do we rescue ourselves from a chaotic collapse of society? This isn't an easy question to answer. Immediate decisive action towards setting up as many of the essential aspects of government would be the first thing to do. A place where key players know they need to go to. A need to have an alternative emergency economic model already agreed upon and ready to be used in times of crisis. In others words an emergency plan. One such plan I have invented will be available from www.newneutral.org in the coming months. It involves a clone economic model, which replicates a real one, but is not affected by the fickle cycles of booms and busts. Something more stable. It also involves a system which issues funding for large public projects and does this in a unique way (too complex to explain in a blog).

In the depression, the billionaire John Rockefeller, decided to build the Rockefeller Centre, which was a huge building project, bang smack in the middle of New York. He took a risk with his fortune and his reputation, believing that a large building project would stimulate the economy and kick start a recovery. It did. His gamble paid off, leading to the boom in the following decades. For this reason he's still hero to this day to many who are aware of the history and to those who are still around to remember it. Large public works can lead to an economic boost. But with the latest crisis the sources of private funding are the very sector in the economy which are causing the downturn. So this isn't always an option.

Water Security.

2008-08-16T09:06:00.004+01:00

Many people are now discussing water security as the issue hots up. It will be the hottest of issues as demands for fresh water increase with rising population and increased usage. Because it is not just water piped into homes that is the issue here. In fact water piped into homes only accounts for a small proportion of the fresh water we use. Much of it is used in agriculture and industry. Much of the fresh water from around the world comes as run off from mountains and hills feeding into rivers and lakes. The rivers are then used to irrigate crops, taking the water from the river before it reaches the sea. For this reason many of the worlds largest rivers are not actually reaching the sea much anymore. The Yellow River in China is one example.

So how does an increasing population adequately supply itself with enough water to supply its industry, its homes and its agriculture? For example Coke, the most popular soft drink in history, with an addictive quality, takes nine parts of water to create one part of Coke. In some areas of California for example, there is a stretch of prime arable land which has been artificially created by engineers and farmers. It should be an arid stretch of land. But they take water from a number of sources including underground aquifers and water this large piece of land so that it can produce all manner of vegetables, crops and fruits. However because of the population demands and limited water supply, these two parts of the human system are now competing for this water at increasing levels. In fact this land may have to be abandoned and crops shipped in from else where.

Part of the solution is knowing what to do with water that has been flushed into the sewage system. Stuff that we have used just gets wasted and flushed into the sea. And desalination plants are expensive to build and run and can only really supply sea side towns and cities, because of the huge costs of pumping water inland. Recycling on the other hand can borrow natural filtration systems. They take the water coming from sewage and feed that water through a treatment plant. They then run the water through the ground and into the underground aquifers. They then collect it and run it through a treatment plant again before re-feeding it into the pipework to homes and businesses. It is essentially what happens to water anyway. Its just a system borrowed from nature and put to work by humankind. The engineers who proposed the Californian scheme say that the water is purer than treated rain water.

Desalination plants are another option. However the energy needed to produce the filtered water is enormous. Over the years countries like Saudi Arabia and Australia have built them and made them so that they use less energy than before. But the energy levels are still unsustainable high. It makes the water more expensive for the end user. The costs of pumping water from desalination plants is also high, adding yet more cost to the end user. So without a sustainable energy source desalination plants can only really be used en-mass in two circumstances. One that the water is delivered locally, i.e. to seaside towns and cities. And two if the energy they use comes from a sustainable source.

I think that recycling is the best chance for water security. Because as well as river systems not reaching their delta's anymore, but underground fresh water aquifers are drying up very quickly indeed. It will be a matter of decades before our usage levels outstrip the replenishment from natural sources, if not sooner. If not now. We need an overall, global agreement on water with plenty of funding for engineering project and we need to begin this process now.

Brazil's Future Town

2008-06-16T15:13:00.006+01:00

Brasilia is a new town created by visionary architect, Lucio Costa, who around 1956 was given the go ahead to build the new socialist capital of Brazil, by the president of Brazil, Juscelino Kubitschek De Oliveira (President of Brazil 1956–61). This new town spread out a like a bird across the plains at a site that was miles from the nearest city. It was revolutionary because the apartments that line its central road, were designed so that someone at the top society could live next door to someone at the bottom of society. It was supposed to disperse people evenly, so that poor neighbourhoods wouldn't develop and richer neighbourhoods would not become isolated from the others.

The city of Brasilia was first thought to trace its conception back to the Brazilian saint, Dom Bosco who on August 30, 1883, had a dream of a city there at the site, where he is buried, and where Brasilia now stands. He says " Between parallels 15 and 20 there was a long and wide depression, in the vicinity of a lake. Thus spoke a voice, over and over again: "... when they come to explore the riches buried in these mountains, here will rise the promised land of milk and honey, of inconceivable wealth..."

This is made as the first real beginnings of the capital which was built 73 years later. However, the reason why I bring it up here, is that the socialist vision ultimately failed when the socialist government was ousted a few years after the city was completed. It has meant that with the ensuing capitalist government, the poor did indeed end up in shanty towns a few miles out of Brasilia, having to take long journeys into the city to service the rich who now occupy the best apartments along its wide boulevard. I think, for Future Towns, which shares the idea of dispersing the classes so that patches of wealth and protected 'gated' communities, and patches of poverty and crime, don't build up. Brasilia, sadly now has satellite towns, which are unplanned and very poor indeed. Exactly the opposite of Costa's vision. In order for social equity to exist outside of one town and without having to bus in labour to better towns, leaving the unprotected normal towns outside of the system, it is indeed necessary to build more Future Towns instead. Ideally, it is my intention that a Future Town should have as much of its labour, skilled and unskilled in the town to begin with. If the socialist vision of Costa at Brasilia was to work, the Brasilian government would have had to build more planned towns to cope with the inevitable rise in population, as people naturally migrate to capitals, to have grievances aired, to seek wealth, recognition or power or to search for employment. So my question is and should be, will a Future Town within a free market be able to support unskilled labour within its boundaries? It should do this, if the build up of shanties servicing the town are to be avoided.

Big Buildings

2008-04-29T14:50:00.006+01:00

There are two major buildings being talked about at the moment that deserve a mention. I advocate big buildings. They reduce sprawl and make better use of resources, especially in domestic housing. However, two buildings now on the drawing board, one a serious reality and the other a vision of a future, have caught my eye and have probably caught the eye of most of the construction industry.

The Crystal Island.

The first is of course a Foster building. The Crystal Island (below) is a building planned for Russia and is to all intents and purposes a town in one building, providing all the aspects of a town, from shops to services. In fact if the commissioners of this building had any sense, they would classify it as a town and collect local taxes to maintain it.

The Xceed.

The second building I want to mention is the Xceed, a building being discussed in Japan. This building even dwarfs the Crystal Island. It will cost between $300 and $900 billion and will house between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people. It is the size of a mountain (see below).

This building is impressive and really scares me (in a good way). I love the idea of enclosing a city into a structure. However, besides the cost both the Xceed and the Crystal Island run contrary to the idea of disaster proof buildings. Large buildings drain a lot of energy and raw materials, and shouldn't be encouraged over a certain size. Secondly the buildings physical integrity can only take it so far over a point where the buildings will collapse under their own weight. A lot of architects and engineers believe that they can build large buildings whilst maintaining integrity during earthquakes or impacts. But the fact is they can't. The physical restrains will mean that structural integrity will only last so long before major engineering repairs would need to be carried out. Within a capitalist economy it would not be possible to build a building that would be so economically as well as structurally unstable. It would be like the very large engineering projects of the past. The Titanic; the SS Great Britain the giant cargo ship built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, which killed Brunel and never made a fully laden voyage before heading for the scrap yard to be dismantled. Or the Channel Tunnel, straddling the UK and France, under the English Channel, which only started making a profit this year, a full 20 years to begin to make money for the owners. Large engineering projects within a free market economy need to be limited in size to make them financially viable, and with very large buildings, they need to be limited in size to offset the physical restrains of materials and the way they cope (or not) with natural stresses.

Nanotubes are of course lauded as the answer. But this technology is expensive and unproven and I doubt would be able to be used in a large construction like the Xceed idea. I believe that town and city sized buildings have a natural social and structural limit, and that once this limit is discovered (because we don't know what it is yet), then we can begin to experiment. Experimenting with peoples lives and the economies that build large buildings, is not the way to go. Besides earthquakes, high impacts in wars or from asteroid strikes, would utterly destroy the building and if those two things don't do it then economics will. A neglected super sized building is just as dangerous as one threatened by earthquakes - if not more so.

Longevity of Materials

2008-01-26T07:47:00.000Z

Wood can only last so long as a building material. Sooner or later it will be useless. Maybe fifty years. Isn't it more sustainable to use a material that lasts a long time and easy to repair? Most materials (including concrete) can be reclaimed and reused. Also, from a disaster proofing perspective I would never feel secure in a straw bail, timber framed house. It can be blown apart by high winds or destroyed by fire. Isn't that why we switched to bricks in the first place? A collective amnesia I think. A building should be built for longevity and resilience and if it takes a bit longer to demolish and reclaim its materials, so be it. Let's not be lazy about reusing materials.

Foster + Partners.

The environmentally conscious building movement is in a state of collective amnesia, and its taking hold. Eco-towns are springing up all over the place including one in Abu Dhabi, which is walled city, with enclosed streets for pedestrians only. Designed by Foster and Partners (seemingly the only architect in the world at the moment), it's enclosed streets shade pedestrians as they wonder around, with small cars on monorails to take passengers around the town (see pic). The project is funded by petro-dollars and will house a eco-power R&D community. It is an answer to ecological problems with self-sustaining solar power supply and waste recycling systems etc. But they have not taken into account the disasters that will and have in the past, come about as a result of climate change. Rising sea levels, storms, dry prolonged periods, maybe earthquakes etc. If you really want a sustainable town you must look at the disasters and unusual weather events that come with it, at least. If not all possible disasters.

Working with Wood as a Sustainable Building Material

2008-01-23T14:36:00.000Z

Wood from sustainable sources is a great favourite of green building specialists but I don't like it as a sustainable building material. Wood is a great material, with fantastic aesthetic qualities and great beauty. But as a source of sustainable building material, it failed to convince me, along with the all advocates of properly sourced wood from sustainably managed forests. For a start if you take it to its logical conclusion, wood maybe renewable, but how much wood would be enough to build or contribute to housing all over the world? Sustainable forests + unsustainable forests wouldn't go far enough, especially when good fertile land is at a premium and competing with food and low carbon fuels. No, wood is a bad idea for building houses. The wood would have to be intensively farmed, not taken from sustainably managed. Also, in the wider context wood is flammable and weaker when reacting to flooding, earthquakes and impacts, and so would be no good in a disaster proofing context.

I believe that wood should be removed as an option in sustainable building methods and materials. At this early stage I think it's fine, but governments all over the world are pushing sustainable building practices onto statute books and planning laws, so at some point there will be a cry from the green lobby to say enough is enough and when that happens wood from any source would not be an option.

Sustainable Building

2008-01-02T15:53:00.000Z

Green building as a concept; as a movement has been riding high in the last year or so. It has been realised by the great and the good that to properly insulate and to sustainably supply energy to all buildings will achieve the Kyoto targets that we signed up to, all on its own. For this reason and because it is cheapish to properly insulate homes, (relative to new energy sources and the technology that supplies it) it is seen as a great way to cut back on carbon emissions. However, while the world gears up to this idea and as businesses sign up to the principles, and as newspapers and TV news and Mr Schwarzenegger et al put their weight behind the ideals of climate change, the world 'sustainable' has been kind of passed over without proper attention. In essence, as I am sure you all know, sustainability is about preserving the ability of future generations to have the means to survive at a reasonable rate of comfort in the future. What we do shouldn't destroy what future generations can do, in terms of resources and so on. But what sustainability, if we use the word in its full sense, really proposes is that we sustain human life, whatever it takes (within reason). It means that our lives as beings are as precious to us now as they will be in 1000 years time when we are all dead. There are some in medicine that claim we will soon unlock life expectancy and live for two hundred years onwards almost as long as we like. Or at least the technology and knowledge we have will be able to do this, whether we choose to or not. So not only does sustainable living involve us and what we do now, but it also involves the unborn future generations in the far off distance. It may also involve us with medical marvels leading to indefinite life expectancy as well. However, this all depends on what 'sustainability' really means . The ability to survive just about anything that is thrown at us by nature, or each other perhaps. To 'sustain' life, is often to save it from an array of disasters which may just hit one continent or just one town, or all of them. For example, the kind of disaster that we are creating now with climate change, is exactly what sustainability is alluding to. Not just to stop extreme weather and flooding from happening in the first place, but ensuring that when it does happen we can cope with it and we can survive it. And to do this, we need sustainable i.e. disaster resistant building: Hence the existence of Future Towns and this blog.