Where?

Tiny homes have become an international trend over the past ten years. A tiny home is commonly capped at a living space that is 500,000 square feet or less. Often these homes are built on wheels so that they can be moved easily. The small living fad has idealized a minimalist life-style and come to signal environmental mindfulness. Tiny homes reject the traditional American view of what a home should consist of in rejection of consumerism culture. Some fans of the movement link this housing choice all the way back to Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond and to a spirit of independence. 

While the minimal environmental impact and respect for space are in fact good for the long terms success of cities and towns, many local governments have enforced zoning laws that make this type of living illegal. The New York metro area, like most densely populated regions, does not allow for long-term parking and living in RVs or other temporary living structures. Often zoning laws requirement minimum lot sizes or building structures that exceed the bounds of tiny homes. These zoning restrictions make it very difficult to find locations to park these structures. An estimated 90% of all tiny home users are living illegally either on public land or in the backyards/property of their friends and family. 

There seems to be a disconnect between the rise in tiny home building companies to match the demand for small-scale living options and support from local municipalities. Current zoning regulations do have not kept up with the changing definition of “home.” The stagnant laws over prioritize the desires of those who can afford to live in large, permanently plotted homes. The tiny home movement started largely in response to the 2008 financial crash as a way for individuals who needed both greater locational and financial flexibility to still have claim to a place that is there. Failure to accept the changing definition of home encourages families and communities to continue to invest in the building culture that has promoted over-consumption and inefficient use of public resources. 

I am not sure if tiny homes are the solution to sprawl or other unpleasant consequences of the current system of American zoning, but updating municipal practices to accept that this trend may actually benefit the greater community would be a meaningful first step. 

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/realestate/where-can-you-park-a-tiny-home.html

Someone mentioned this in class the other day and I had read about it before so I decided to expand on it!

In October 2017, Sidewalks Labs, a sister company of Google, was contracted to design and reimagine Quayside, a derelict waterfront industrial neighborhood in Toronto. Sidewalk Labs aims to develop the neighborhood as the “world’s first neighborhood built from the internet up” and create a “smart city.” In Sidewalk Lab’s proposal, they call Quayside, “A new type of place.”

Other traditional cities have experimented with data collection and feedback. For example, cities have adopted senor-enabled stoplights, apps that mark potholes, and street light systems that self-reports malfunctions to keep the lights on in high-crime areas. But Silicon Valley wants to create a city with a “constant flow of data” so the city can collect and analyze it in real time. Sidewalk promises “the most measurable community in the world.”

Ideas for the neighborhood include pay-as-you go garbage chutes that separate recyclables and charge households by waste output, hyperlocal weather sensors that could heat up snow-melting sidewalks, apps to tell residents when public spaces like Adirondack chairs were open, crowdsource approval for block-party permits, auto-calibrated traffic signals, regulating building temperatures, and separate ways of payment transactions specifically for residents and businesses. Currently, Sidewalk is working from the ground-up, spending a year on public consultations and polling Toronto for its own vision of the neighborhood.

However, privacy advocates and traditional planners definitely have some reservations about the idea. Smart city developed by corporations blur the line between the public and private sectors. Does collecting data about the city and its residents ruin the social interaction between the city dwellers? How does this interacts with Jacob’s vision of a sidewalk “ballet”? How does data collection interfere with privacy? Who owns the data? Corporations like Google are ultimately attempting to profit off their ventures—is this the right model for a city to follow? What will be the long term impacts of placing power over civic lives into private hands? Whose laws apply? Who controls the city if the city is being run with data and algorithms?

Sidewalk plans to treat the smart city like a smartphone. Third party developers (for example, Lyft) can have access to data and provide services much like third parties can develop apps for smartphones. Sidewalk has ensured the data collected in Quayside will not be used for advertising purposes and the data will be scrubbed of personal identification. However, some privacy advocates worry that collective data (traffic/pedestrian patterns of a neighborhood, analyzing sewage for concentrated drug use) can be harmful to the community. Additionally, it is unclear what entity will make the decisions on how data can be used and for what purposes.

Additionally, an idea that I don’t think was developed fully in the articles I read was the inherent classism of the proposal. Some of the ideas for the smart city involve apps which rely on smartphones. Not very resident will have access to a smartphone or the ability to charge it consistently unless they have a permanent residence and stable income.
Sources:
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610249/a-smarter-smart-city/

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/02/googles-guinea-pig-city/552932/

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/06/29/google-city-technology-toronto-canada-218841

https://torontoist.com/2017/10/civic-tech-list-questions-wed-like-sidewalk-labs-answer/

Powell demonstrates the ways that sprawl have reinforced racial segregation. In Powell’s study, he outlines how sprawl has enabled inter district segregation even if the civil rights movement addressed intra-district segregation. Others, like Rothstein demonstrated the ways that the legacy of redlining has created continued segregation and a racial caste system in our country. In both cases, these scholars demonstrate the ways that government policies have explicitly perpetuated legal segregation. There is perhaps no place where that segregation has had a bigger effect on determining potential for success than in our school systems. Continued segregation of our education system has perpetuated this racial caste system.

New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio recently unveiled a plan to increase diversity in New York’s elite public schools. The backlash from white parents, even from many supposed progressives, demonstrates the difficulty of dismantling this systemic inequality. The plan would change admissions policies at the elite public schools so that the top 7% of performers at each public middle school would receive admission, rather than basing admission on test scores. The plan is similar to what Texas has applied to the University of Texas, where they admit the top 10% of performers from Texas public schools. Currently, Black and Hispanic Students make up just 10% of seats at specialized high schools, despite making u 67% of the public school population. De Blasio claims that if all his proposed reforms are passed, 45% of students at New York’s specialized schools would be black or Latino.

That modest plan has faced significant backlash from white parents, many of whom have tried to justify their objections through paternalistic concern for minority students facing stigmas for unfair admission. NYU professor Jonathan Haidt said “If this proposal is enacted, we are going to increase the racism and prejudice of our kids in the specialized high schools. Put yourself in the place of black and Hispanic kids who are there because of accounting methods.” Many white parents have expressed “concern” for these minority students who they claim would not be prepared to succeed at the more selective schools.

As De Blasio’s proposal faces resistance from upper-class parents, some New York communities have taken a more local approach to desegregation efforts. In Brooklyn School District 15, which includes Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Sunset Park and Red Hook, approved a plan to designate a share of seats in selective middle schools for students from low income or homeless families.

Resistance to De Blasio’s efforts to integrate schools demonstrate that schools, particularly selective ones, remain racialized spaces. Bottom-up organizing, like what we see in Brooklyn District 15 may be the only effective way to overcome the systemic segregation that remains in our public schools.

Sources:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/parents-vehemently-oppose-mayors-plan-to-change-admissions-at-citys-elite-public-high-schools-1543945835

https://www.wnyc.org/story/brooklyn-families-adjust-changes-middle-school-admissions/

 

https://chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2018/09/07/new-york-city-is-rethinking-selective-admissions-beyond-specialized-schools/

 

 

The Rhine river might be Europe’s most famous river. Running from the Swiss Alps in the south along the modern Franco-German border to the sea in the Netherlands, it has been a part of major historical events. During the height of the Roman Empire, it signified the boundary between Roman Civilization and the barbaric Germans. During the Medieval and early modern periods, the banks of the Rhine was host to towering castles and came to represent the natural border between France and Germany. During World War Two, the Rhine was a battleground between Nazi and the Allies. Today, however, the river is a peaceful center of trade and tourism that is suffering under a new threat: climate change.
Low water on the Rhine strangles trade and economic activity Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/04/world/europe/rhine-drought-water-level.html?module=inline

Last summer was Western Europe’s hottest since record-keeping began in 1767 and has been particularly dry. This weather has stifled trade and tourism on Western Europe’s most important river. Water levels have been reduced to the point where even small ferries have had to stop using the river. This has stifled the tourism industry directly. Trips have been canceled forcing companies to provide refunds, people have shortened their trips, and selected alternative destinations. Furthermore, according to the New York Times, 80% of German shipping uses the Rhine. German gas stations have run out of fuel, industries have had to delay production as they can no longer use the Rhine to cool their plants, and whole projects have been canceled due to the impossibility of shipping the necessary heavy materials. This hot and dry weather has had negative consequences for the economy and threatens to persist as climate change continues to worsen.

Dry hot weather will become more frequent unless climate change is stopped in its tracks. The costs of mitigating and adapting to these challenges are massive. Baring a global solution to climate change, the river could become impassable. Dredging significant portions of the river could become necessary. However, such a program would take years and cost millions while trade stalls. While people may still come to see the areas beautiful castles, tourist agencies will no longer be able to rely on the river as an attraction and form of transportation. Similarly, industries may be forced to relocate in order to survive. Climate change is undoubtedly changing the character of the Rhine. It will no longer be the same attractive place for tourists and industry alike. This suggests that adaptation may simply not be possible. It may soon be too expensive to save the Rhine. Losing access to the history and beauty of the Rhine would be a grave loss for Germany and all of humanity.  As the case of the Rhine demonstrates, the costs of climate change are substantial and we are only just beginning to understand how far-reaching these costs are.

SOURCES:

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/28/travel/european-river-cruises-low-water-cancel.html

2.https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/04/world/europe/rhine-drought-water-level.html?module=inline

3 .https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/04/world/europe/europe-heat-wave.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer

See https://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/and-results-are-blackfridayparking-and-they-are-worse-you-can-imagine.html, where you can find more pictures from the campaign.

I’m on the email list for Strong Towns, a Smart Growth organization. They have an activity every Black Friday (the frenzied shopping day after Thanksgiving), which is to photograph parking lots that aren’t even full on that day and post the pictures with the hashtag, #blackfridayparking.  Local zoning laws often demand that businesses comply with parking minimums, which helps explain why every store on a sprawling thoroughfare is surrounded by a lagoon of parking.  Strong Towns has a campaign against mandatory parking minimums and it involves the Black Friday photography project.  This is an issue that cuts across the political spectrum, with progressives and libertarians both concerned about these sorts of regulations.  As Strong Towns founder Charles Marohn notes, parking lots are among the worst forms of land use.  They contribute to sprawl, they generate polluted runoff, they worsen flooding, they require maintenance (including snowplowing in colder places), they’re unfriendly to pedestrians, they’re ugly, they generate few jobs or tax revenues, they’re often hard to navigate by car, they raise local temperatures in summer, and they’re often empty.  Perhaps the only benefit of empty parking lots is that they’re good for learning to drive!

See:

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/11/19/its-2018-does-your-city-still-have-minimum-parking-requirements?utm_source=pardot&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=generallistjab&utm_content=1119182018-does-your-city-still-have-minimum-parking-requirements

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/7/2/3-major-problems-with-parking-minimums

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/11/20/we-forbid-what-we-value-most

– Peter

On the night of April 29, 1991, a deadly cyclone struck the Chittagong district of southeastern Bangladesh. Of the 140,000 lives lost, 90% were women.

During the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, 1.5 times more women lost their lives than men.

As Hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans on August 29, 2005, 80% of those who were left behind were women.

These statistics, drawn from case studies conducted around major natural disasters, illustrate the disparity between the level of risk men and women face during natural disasters. Although the severity of the issue has been stressed by the UN during the 2005 World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan, countries all over the world still disregard the importance of gender equity in reducing disaster risk. In the article “Gender Equality Can Save Women’s Lives In Disasters,” Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women, and Robert Glasse, head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, discuss the source of hindrance to progress. Through an analysis of a report by UNISDR (United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction), they found that most countries struggled to know how and where to implement gender equality. Many countries claimed that because they had already addressed gender equality within their laws, they had done their job. Some countries argued against the findings that women were at a higher risk during natural disasters in comparison to men. They also discussed the implementation of a global flagship programme with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), to address these issues and increase women’s leadership in addressing disaster risk.

Yes, women must be involved in conversations surrounding disaster risk prevention, that is a given. However, the root of the issue extends far beyond what involvement in conversations could solve. We must re-evaluate our socially constructed notion of gender, along with its effects on the socio-economic status of women, in order to truly decrease the risk women face during natural disasters. The Judith Layzer reading on Hurricane Katrina discussed the vulnerability of the poor and disadvantaged during the disaster, yet it neglected to discuss that 80% of those left behind in New Orleans were women, specifically black women, who did not have the financial means to evacuate the city. We live in a society that prioritizes the lives of white men, who are able to exercise their privilege over those who are left to suffer. This is simply outrageous. We must recognize that natural disasters are gendered events, and re-evaluate our constructed notion of gender before it is too late.

Source:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/5910a273e4b056aa2363d790

https://www.jstor.org/stable/20838463?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

A current New York Times’ series is covering endangered cultural sites around the world – so far focusing on Easter Island, Lebanon’s cedar forests, and the Orkney Islands in Scotland – and highlighting the increasingly tenuous state of locations around the world in the face of climate change.

In the case of the Orkney Islands, thousands of remnants of stone age villages are at risk from rising sea levels and coastal erosion, exacerbated in recent years by climate change. In the words of one archeologist on site, “Heritage is falling into the sea” (Dwyer). Similarly, on Easter Island many of the famous moai statues lie near the coast and are threatened by the erosion of beaches and sea level rises projected to top five to six feet by 2100 (Casey). In Lebanon, rising temperatures are shifting the cedars’ prime ecological zone to higher altitudes and insect infestations, a new side effect of the warmer climate, have contributed to the decline of these forests, killing almost 10% of trees in some locations over the course of a decade. Now, less than 20 square kilometers of Lebanon’s cedar forests remain, and further trends of shorter winters and decreased rainfall are also threatening the remaining trees (Barnard).

Different steps have been taken to preserve these places in the face of their changing environments. The Orkney Islands and Easter Island, for instance, have both seen the use of seawalls to halt advancing tides and curtail coastal erosion, a moderately successful, but impermanent measure (Casey; Dwyer). In Lebanon, efforts have been organized to protect the cedars, but political turmoil has generally prevented a comprehensive plan to protect their national symbol. Local conservationists are attempting to plant thousands of new cedars, expand existing forests, and diversify locations to allow for greater resilience of the forests in the face of a changing climate (Barnard).

Attempts at preservation in these cases inevitably raise questions about best practices and intentions. Firstly, what does the preservation of these places, forecasted to be washed over or barren in the not too distant future, look like? In Scotland, artifacts and a burnt mound were moved to a heritage center from a vulnerable coastal location (Dwyer). On Easter Island, an ongoing debate centers on the best means for preserving moai statues and vulnerable petroglyphs – from anchoring them to sturdier structures or moving them entirely (Casey). However, does moving relics to a museum or building a seawall around cultural heritage sites destroy key aspects of their authenticity and fundamentally change them as places? There may be no simple solution to preserving these places and their cultural and historical character, but it is clear that, if the effects of climate change are left unaddressed, key places on Easter Island, in Lebanon, and on the Orkney Islands – and many more like them around the world – will continue to disappear.

Sources:

Barnard, Anne. “Climate Change Is Killing the Cedars of Lebanon.” – https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/18/climate/lebanon-climate-change-environment-cedars.html?mtrref=www.nytimes.com

Casey, Nicholas. “Easter Island Is Eroding.” – https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/14/climate/easter-island-erosion.html

Dwyer, Jim. “Saving Scotland’s Heritage From the Rising Seas.” – https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/25/climate/scotland-orkney-islands-sea-level.html?mtrref=www.nytimes.com

A recently published report in Nature entitled “Protect the Last of the Wild” has presented thorough evidence that suggests we are currently in the process of completely losing all wilderness areas around the globe. The report from Watson et al. highlights that over three-quarters of all land on earth, “excluding Antarctica”, has been altered in one way or another by the hands of humans (Watson et al., 2018). This percentage is quite staggering given that only 15 percent of wilderness areas were altered by human industry a century ago (Albeck-Ripka, 2018). It should be noted that wilderness areas, in the context of this study, are defined as areas that “are not subject to direct human use” (Albeck-Ripka, 2018).

The study presents a number of harmful consequences of continued human alteration and modification of wilderness areas. The environmental impact is obviously detrimental and even potentially disastrous. As Albeck-Ripka analyzes in her assessment of the report put forward by Watson et al., wilderness areas “are the only places on earth that have natural levels of biodiversity, and can continue to sustain plant and animal species on an evolutionary time scale” (Albeck-Ripka, 2018). Furthermore, these areas are untouched ecosystems that are crucial in the fight against climate change. Protecting these areas has become increasingly difficult since officials in developing, resource-rich nations have the incentive to extract resources from these areas in an attempt to catch up to their industrialized counterparts (Albeck-Ripka, 2018).

With that being said, Thoreau and Muir would point out that one of the consequences not mentioned in the report is the loss of the relationship between humans and unblemished wilderness areas. For example, one thing that Thoreau and Muir would say is that these areas serve as safe havens for humans when one wants to distance themselves from the day-to-day of the industrialized world. I strongly agree with this hypothetical sentiment given the relationship I have with wilderness areas.

So, what needs to be done to assure that we do not lose wilderness areas forever? Watson et al., advocate for “the establishment of global targets within existing international frameworks — specifically, those aimed at conserving biodiversity, avoiding dangerous climate change and achieving sustainable development” (Watson et al., 2018). Given the trend we are currently experiencing, I agree with Watson et al. and suggest committing to the same aforementioned goals, however, I feel that the creation of a new international framework may be needed to achieve them.

Works Cited:

Watson et al.,  “Protect the Last of the Wild” https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07183-6

Livia Albeck-Ripka, “Scientists Warn that World’s Wilderness Areas are Disappearing” https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/31/world/australia/australia-wilderness-environment-gone.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=23&pgtype=sectionfront

Photo: https://10hikes.com/top-10-lake-louise-hikes/

 

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that we have twelve years to limit climate change. In twelve years we must implement major changes to keep temperatures between 1.5C and 2C. Already the effects of climate change are present as sea levels rise in Bangladesh and wildfires rage in California. The California fires occurred in a mostly wealthy technologically heavy city destroying more than 7,000 structures and displacing several homes and families, many of which are celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. In an effort to save their home and neighborhood Kim Kardashian and Kanye West paid private firefighters to fend off the fires. A privilege many low and middle-income individuals most likely could not afford to save their own homes

An emerging fear has begun circled around the idea of “disaster capitalism”, or the idea that “Climate adaptation could look like a million individual products, each precisely targeted on social media to the intersection of a consumer culture and a catastrophe” (Madrigal, 2018).  Another term is the “shock doctrine” used to “ describe the brutal tactic of using the public’s disorientation following a collective shock – wars, coups, terrorist attacks, market crashes or natural disasters – to push through radical pro-corporate measures, often called “shock therapy” (Klein, 2017). Climate change can be commodified so that survival is a luxury only privy to the wealthy. Individuals can adapt to climate change in a way that does not work to lessen the environmental impact but instead to see it as a consumer good. The question of climate change then becomes an individualistic goal rather than a common problem that needs to be solved.

There are already business and products that are profiting off of climate change and disaster. For example, for wildfire smoke, there are different masks called the Training masks and personal rafts and vests for flooding disasters. The commodification of climate change will only lead to a more unequal world. It will lead to a world where only the wealthy will be able to buy their survival and poor and most often black and brown communities will be left to fend for themselves. The free market approach to climate control and in large disaster control is inhumane, there should not be a price to human life.

Sources:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/11/california-wildfires-climate-change-and-disaster-capitalism/575794/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/06/naomi-klein-how-power-profits-from-disaster