The term has gone by so quickly! On Tuesday, we will have our last lecture. We will also have some time to go over the final assignment requirements and give you a few minutes to discuss your final presentation preparations as a group.
Group presentations begin this Thursday, March 30 and continue on Tuesday, April 4 and Thursday, April 6. We ask that each of you attend class to listen to all of the presentations and arrive on time to avoid interrupting your classmates. As part of your participation, you will provide feedback to the members of another group; please be kind and considerate with your comments.
There are still a few questions about how the assignment works. We are asking for a single 12-slide presentation from each five-person group. The first two slides will give a general outline of your designs for your site, and the key concepts/themes/ideas that directed your decisions. These two slides should be prepared as a group. The next 10 slides will be made up of five sets of two slides representing each group member’s individual component. Please stick within these limits.
Much of your grade will be determined through your presentation, but we are also asking you to submit a one- to two-page individual summary after your presentation as well. This written component is designed to allow you to respond to feedback you received during the presentation and to provide additional description about what you included in your two individual slides.
We hope you are enjoying the project and are looking forward to seeing the final results!
I want to add a few things to today’s talk on benefits of urban farming. One big issue the food system is facing is the high food miles (and will worsen as urbanization is happening). Long distance and time from farm to plate means that more emission from transportation, more food spoilage on the way and more mismatch of demand and supply which would result in food waste (see how easily supermarket ends up with tons of expired food). Urban food production can definitely help alleviate these problems. Also, urban production is more likely to be organic than remote, large industrialized farm (it is so much harder to manage a large farm using organic practices than chemical ways) since there are tons of organic resources available within the city (given that people and government are willing to invest in composting).
This week’s lecture mainly talked about the benefits of green roof from the aspects of ecosystem and human well-being. What impresses me most is that the green roof of lower buildings can be views through windows of higher buildings. As what we learned from the course readings before, window views of green landscape help reduce stress and improve work efficiency due to it’s aesthetic value. Besides, I think that growing fruits and vegetables on roofs in forms of orchards can not only appeal people to going out and doing planting activities which inspires active lifestyle, but contribute to environmental protection. If people can get fruits and vegetables from the roof of where they live or work, they will not have to drive to markets which help reduce the emission of carbon dioxide from cars to some extent.
I actually appreciated a lot that this lecture addressed students’ requests. The part of the lecture that surprised me was the short documentary on the city of Curitiba- Brazil’s green capital and one of the world’s leading cities in green/sustainable urban design. I was amazed to hear that it all began with the vision of one man (three-times mayor Jaimie Lerner, and renowned architect and urban planner). I wonder what his strategies might have been in order to promote his ideas in such a way that he succeeded at being elected mayor. Anyways, this proves that with the right amount of conviction, one can achieve extraordinary things. Nowadays there is some talk around UBC to design cities that are friendly to people and not to cars; professor Patrick Condon is an expert on this. Given that Lerner and Condon share this idea, it is clear that to design the cities that the 21st century demands, one has to prioritize people over cars. As Lerner stated “cars are like our mother in law; we’ve got to have a good relationship with our mother in law but we cannot live [with them] conducting our lives”. Very interesting to have ran across this example in class. I wonder if there are other examples of sustainable cities around the world, outside the ones of the first world, that we have not yet heard about (?). Perhaps an upcoming one is the Colombian city Serena del Mar, a city adapted to today’s many social and environmental challenges: https://www.1843magazine.com/design/the-daily/a-city-to-grow-into , but I wonder what else is out there.