A fascinating article in the New York Times about exploding manholes in Rio de Janeiro. The explosions occur when gases condense underground and interact with frayed and sparking electric lines. This results in dangerous conditions where urban infrastructure ‘bites back’.
My friend, Ric Frankland, has designed and built an inspiring housing prototype, Dwelle House, that has optimised performance in a small package. I visited during an open house and was impressed by the build quality and attention to detail.
A photo in the International Herald Tribune on 23 November 2012 showing a house in Wenling, an eastern Chinese city, in the middle of a new road (the homeowner refused to sell).
I recently visited Milan where I was invited to give a talk at Milan Polytechnic on ‘The University as Urban Catalyst: Facilitating Sustainable Development’. Thanks to Ciu Lui for the invitation. I also had the opportunity to check out some of the city and ran across the ancient canal network (currently drained for maintenance).
I recently visited Helsinki where I attended a conference at the Aalto Business School on ‘Energy and Society’. Fortuitously, my hotel was located directed in front of the Baana, an old subterranean rail line that has been converted into a hike and bike trail. It’s a Finnish interpretation on New York City’s High Line!
I attended the Royal Geographical Society annual meeting in Edinburgh where I presented a paper on ‘Zero Carbon Housing in England and the Emergence of Meso-Scale Energy Provision’. I stayed in one of the dormitories at the University of Edinburgh and the toilet in my room included the following sticker: ‘This is an eco fill toilet, please flush a second time if required.’
The 3 June 2012 issue of the Observer Magazine includes a new article by Catherine Deveney on the reemergence of microhydro in the UK. The article profiles landowners who have restarted ageing mill infrastructure or who have created new hydroelectric systems to harness water energy on their properties. The author also speculates on larger systems that could be run by communities. There are some interesting tensions on reaping the benefits of this renewable energy source versus the potential impacts on wildlife who use the waterways.
Gardiner Harris of The New York Times recently published a fascinating article about the increasing problem of monkeys in New Delhi. Packs of aggressive primates are harassing human residents while efforts to control the expanding populations are confounded by Hindi religious customs, individual behaviour (feeding the monkeys), lack of financing, and arguments over governmental responsibility.
The author Ernest Callenbach has passed away at the age of 83. He was well-known in environmental circles for his 1975 novel Ecotopia in which the Northwest US seceded from the rest of the country to form its own ecologically conscious nation. While some elements of the novel are a bit dated today, he contemplated many ideas about bioregional habitation that inspired thousands of writers, activists, and residents to reconsider and reconfigure their lives to create more improved futures.
I recently attended the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) in New York City where I convened three paper sessions on ‘The University and the City’ with my colleagues Bas van Heur (Free University Brussels) and James Evans (University of Manchester). The sessions were sponsored by the Applied Geography Specialty Group and the Urban Geography Specialty Group and included fifteen papers on a variety of ideas about the spatial, political, and social aspects of institutions of higher education as they relate to their urban surroundings. Presentations included:
Tom Becker (University of Luxembourg)
‘Building a campus from scratch: the urban and regional dimension of the ‘Cité des Sciences’ in Esch-Belval/ Sanem, Luxembourg’
Jan Fischer (Oxford Brookes University)
‘Housing, Parking, and Marketing: Conflict over City Space in Oxford’
Heike Joens (Loughborough University) and Mike Heffernan (University of Nottingham)
‘After Redbrick: Debating the Location of British Universities in the 1960s’
Darren P Smith (Loughborough University)
‘The changing studentscapes of university towns’
Brian Ackerman (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro)
‘Bridges to Favelas: How campus planners are trying to integrate the campus of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro with its surrounding neighborhoods’
Caroline Newton (Sint-Lucas School of Architecture)
‘UniverCity: Spatial interventions for democratizing urban space’
Jennifer Karlin (University of Chicago)
‘Re- Spacializing “The Clinic”: Constructing Communities and Transforming Chicago’s Southsiders into Healthy Subjects’
Nathaniel Laywine (McGill University) and Melissa Tanti (McMaster University)
‘Creating a ‘Contact Zone’: Negotiating the Boundaries of an Urban Classroom’
Eliot Tretter (University of Texas at Austin)
‘Interstate Competition and The University of Texas at Austin: The Geographies of the High-Technology Sector and the Birth of the Entrepreneurial University’
David Hassenzahl (Chatham University), Michael Finewood (Chatham University), Jessica Mooney (Chatham University), and Alice Julier (Chatham University)
‘Transcending Urban/Suburban/Rural through a University-Based Sustainability Mission’
Paul Vallance (Newcastle University)
‘Universities and sustainable urban development: institutional and academic roles’
Hélène Dang Vu (Université Paris Est Marne-la-Vallée)
‘Typology of universities as new urban stakeholders in Northern Europe and North America’
Kate Geddie (University of Lausanne)
‘Reconsidering university-city relations through overseas branch campuses: examples from the UAE’
Marc V. Levine (UW-Milwaukee Center for Economic Development)
‘The False Promise of the Entrepreneurial University: Academic Commercialism and Urban Economic Development’
James Powell
‘Creative Engagement and Leadership by Higher Education in Reach Out in order to Develop Creative City Regions – Deep Partnership’
Andrew Karvonen 