Circular/Lateral Thinking – The Green Circle

In my previous post, I discussed what ecocities were and how we needed to start shifting our mindsets to be a part of that change. There was a lot (maybe a little too much) more stuff I wanted to talk about but it just seemed a bit too tedious and long. I provided an example of an ecocity construction framework, but I now want to bring up an example of a potential ecocity to help visualize what a sustainable city can be like.

On my way home recently, I stopped dead in my tracks as I noticed this specifically new display ad at my Skytrain station. It read “Oakridge: The Living City,” and after having spent a lot of time thinking about sustainable buildings and cities, I was immediately intrigued. I snapped a photo of the ad and when I got home, decided to give it a peek. Here I was, finally going through with a marketing ad at a train stop. I think it was the visuals and title that got to me – I guess this shows a form of sustainability marketing. Anyway, Oakridge’s “The Living City” is an ambitious plan to restore the living city – “one that celebrates nature as an integral part of who we are” – and create a place that lives as a testimony of the ability for man and nature to coexist. Oakridge is planning to expand its shopping centre and business hub into something more inclusive and more interconnected and more sustainable.

Another example of regenerative design, this project is hoping to revive and incorporate nature into the urban fabric by reintroducing the lost forest displaced by the original Oakridge mall in 1958. The new design of “The Living City” will include a nearly 10-acre park as the central feature of this new community, with 6 sub-parks that is accessible and programmable. It will have convenient paths connecting to all the major destinations and points, such as the Community Centre, and between sub-parks.

Each of the 6 unique green areas will be connected by trails and a 1km-loop. The goal of “The Living City” is to create a cultural hub for Vancouver where Oakridge can accommodate a range of business, residences, shops, services, and parks.

In terms of sustainability:

There is a plan to replace all of the 1,400 trees to create a new urban woodland and restoring the natural enclave.
Infrastructural-wise, Oakridge has been designed to be energy interdependent. For example, the electricity generated from movement of lifts and escalators will be stored for future use.
Solar panels will be used to turn energy to light
Waste energy generated from lighting the retail spaces is recycled to heat the residences
Food waste is composted and becomes soil for vegetables grown in the community garden.

Everything I’ve just mentioned resembles the features of a circular economy. No longer are we making, using and disposing at Oakridge, but every product and materials is reused, waste and pollution is being designed out of the system, and natural systems are now part of the bigger system; Oakridge is rebuilding system health, and I think it’s incredible. Again, it’s all about micro-systems working together to create a better bigger system.

I’m honestly looking forward to the future of Oakridge as it gives me hope in the possibility of creating a regenerative city. How/when this will come into fruition is still uncertain but there’s a plan and construction is slowly happening, and that’s all it takes to get the ball rolling.

All the information about “The Living City” was taken from their manifesto book. I only scratched the surface of this unbelievable project. To truly learn more, I highly recommend checking it out: https://oakridgevancouver.ca/living-city (go to bottom and click “Read the Book”).

“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” –Winston Churchill

This quote really resonated with me recently after reading the manifesto, and I think this goes not just for buildings, but our cities as well. Ultimately, we created and shaped our city’s system, but the issue is once we shaped it one way, it takes a heck of a longer time to reshape it – so we need to start enabling sustainable change now.

As mentioned previously, the next step after building environmentally and socially sustainable buildings, is thinking about how to incorporate them within our cities to start creating sustainable cities.

But what exactly are sustainable cities? While there’s no concrete definition for sustainable cities, generally, there’s a consensus that it means meeting the needs of the present without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. That is the United Nations definition of what sustainability is, only transferred to be more practical and relevant in our living space. But to be more specific, a sustainable city, also known as “ecocity”, is a city designed with consideration for social, economic, and environmental impact; this means dedicating efforts to reduce our use of energy, food waste, and outputs of CO₂. A somewhat new working definition was adopted by Ecocity Builders and the International Ecocity Framework & Standards (IEFS) advisory team in 2010 in Vancouver:

“An Ecocity is a human settlement modeled on the self-sustaining resilient structure and function of natural ecosystems. The ecocity provides healthy abundance to its inhabitants without consuming more (renewable) resources than it produces, without producing more waste than it can assimilate, and without being toxic to itself or neighboring ecosystems. Its inhabitants’ ecological impact reflects planetary supportive lifestyles; its social order reflects fundamental principles of fairness, justice and reasonable equity.”

So how do we create ecocities? Richard Register was the first to coin the term “ecocity” and is a firm believer in the potential for a pedestrian city to save the world by: reducing automobile dependence, global warming, massive sprawl, ecological habitat fragmentation, air and water pollution and other harms. This is actually what sustainable urban planning and development is all about. To build ecocities, we must create partnerships with private and public organizations, to develop and write in policies that can support sustainable site planning, engineering and construction to build that balance between built and natural systems. We talked a lot about partnerships in class and this is an example of how partnerships are fundamental in the sustainability realm. We can’t make the world a better place on our own.

I was interested in the elements of a sustainable city and found an infrastructure-based approach to a regenerative and sustainable design framework to build ecocities:

Landscape

- The landscape is where we build and live upon
- To build a sustainable landscape system, we need to preserve ecological integrity of natural areas, restore for habitat loss, and achieve self-sufficiency

Transportation

Transportation allows for the movement of people, animals, and products; it creates mobility
To build a sustainable transportation system, we need to reduce unnecessary trips by reducing length, prioritize non-motorized modes of transit, improve functionality of infrastructure, and minimize fossil fuel use

Energy

- Energy is what we use to function as a city
- We need to avoid unnecessary energy consumption, increase renewable energy use, increase efficiency in generation, conversion and distribution of energy, and minimize impact of fossil fuels

Water

- Water is needed for consumption and is also a source of supply
- We need to preserve long-term renewability and quality of water resources, reduce water consumption, and create system efficiency

Food

- Food is a basic human need
- An organized distribution is essential for the sustainable development of modern cities. We need to support local urban production, and minimize food waste and food loss

Waste

- We need to create a system that can restart the life cycle of products and reduce as much waste as possible.

From this framework, I’ve realized that it all boils down to working with different systems. We need to begin thinking of our world as systems and how they can work seamlessly together; as well as remember the importance of how complex and diverse we are as a society and how that translates into our city. There are so many systems involved in the foundations of our cities, and we are all a part of those systems whether we choose to or not. We get so stuck on the little things, but we have to remember to think about the bigger picture, and how we all somehow globally affect each other.An improvement or new policy in one city can lead to change in another – baby steps.

Ecocities is a large topic that I can’t really put into words in one post, so I suggest researching more about it online if you’re interested! The coolest part is that it’s more than just building sustainable buildings and putting them together in one place. So many systems are involved in creating ecocities and for once, the world feels small.

To learn more about ecocities, I recommend reading Downton’s book, Ecopolis. Here’s a link: http://library.uniteddiversity.coop/Ecological_Building/Ecopolis-Architecture_and_Cities_for_a_Changing_Climate-Future_City_Vol_1.pdf

Sources + More Readings:

http://zofnass.gsd.harvard.edu/planning/
http://www.vrm.ca/wp-content/uploads/EUE3_gauthier_en.pdf
http://greencriminology.org/glossary/ecocity-theory-and-practice/

Category: Circular/Lateral Thinking

Oakridge: The Living City

The Living Space: Ecocities