From Linear to Circular Cities:

The Impact of Climate on Cities

"In social science, the term built environment, or built  world, refers to the human-made surroundings that provide the setting  for human activity, ranging in scale from buildings to parks. It has  been defined as "the human-made space in which people live, work, and  recreate on a day-to-day basis."

In the age of climate change every city, town, and community located at or near sea level is now one perfect storm away from having to be rebuilt. This is as true today as it was yesterday.   

The biggest challenge we face is how complex our social order has become. It is easy to say "we are going to redesign everything" but, what exactly does that mean?  Every new process introduced, every new disruptive innovation will have a ripple effect throughout our current social order and resulting built environment.

As new technologies are unveiled, older technologies will go the way of the dinosaur. It is up to us as artists & engineers to  design new systems that are inclusive and open to change.   

Circular Cities 2030, as a Global World Fair Event, gives us the time-line. As a date, 2030  is not so-far-off into the future that we loose sight of our goals. It is close enough to the now that as active participants we will get to enjoy the fruits of our labor.   

But, most importantly, our children who are scared and have taken to the streets in protest will have every opportunity they need to join in on this  process. This is a co-creative process that requires the attention of all Earth citizens.

Let's throw a party and clean up this mess.

References: The Impact of Climate on Cities 

This is where the fun begins!

To be continued: 

The Global Green New Deal

One of the saddest truths there is to learn while researching the carbon cycle and resulting anthropomorphic climate change is that "we the people" lost  our clean energy option because  alcohol (ethanol) got us drunk. We lost HEMP (Cannabis)  because it got us high.  

It was taxation, over regulation, and the moral mismanagement of  prohibition that allowed fossil fuel the upper edge. 

There is no better example in the history of the  "Sin Tax" than during the civil war when the United States imposed a tax  on alcohol (ethanol) at $2.00/gal to help pay for the war, while  Kerosene, a new product, was taxed at $0.10 cents/gal.

Clean energy - Ethanol/Alcohol - didn't stand a chance in the "New  World" unfolding, and sadly, as a result, U.S. policy became the gateway towards  anthropomorphic climate change.

As a result, 150 years of burning Fossil Fuel has created the perfect storm for our northern forests when paired with Hydro-Power, which through the destruction of anadromous fish runs & surrounding habitats have effectively depleted our forests of one their most important natural nitrogen/nutrient exchanges.

See: Salmon to Forest Nutrient Cycling.

Yes. Our world is in crisis: Global Climate Change, Resource Depletion, Environmental Degradation, Species Extinction, Growing Inequalities are just some of the challenges confronting us today as a species. 

Our global energy transition is one of our biggest challenges that we face today when it comes to addressing these problems.  

What is a Micro-Grid? 

A Micro-Grid is a localized group of electricity sources and sinks (loads). They typically operate connected to and synchronous with the traditional centralized grid (macrogrid). 

Our goal is localized solutions that disconnect and maintain operation autonomously.  

In the age of Climate Change, our goal is to promote & develop a diverse micro-grid  to maintain a local resiliency in the advent of sever weather and/or other natural disaster & resulting outages. 

Ideas to Build On: EXPO 2015 Milan - Enel's Smart Grid For a City of 100,000

This is where the fun begins!

To be continued:

What is the Sixth-Mass Extinction? 

The science speaks for itself: under the current Global Economic System we have successfully wiped out over 40% of all wildlife on Earth in just the last forty years:   

This, the Holocene extinction, otherwise referred to as the Sixth mass extinction or Anthropocene extinction, is a current event, and is one of  the most significant extinction events in the history of the Earth. 

"This ongoing extinction of species coincides with the present Holocene epoch (approx. 11,700 years), and is mainly the result of human activity."  

The biggest challenge we have as a species is the restoration of our home environment - Planet Earth. 

I like to think of the Circular Economy when applied to our built environment as the foundation on which we will cultivate our ability as a species to respond to this extinction event with the assertion that our mission statement "we are going to redesign everything" is guided by the inspiration towards Healing Earth through Design.  

We have a lot of work to do! 

Let's throw a party to regenerate life on Earth!

This is where the fun begins!

To be continued:

People. Planet. Profit.

Finance in a Circular Economy:
A social enterprise is an organization that applies commercial  strategies to maximize improvements in financial, social and  environmental well-being; this may include maximizing social impact  alongside profits for external shareholders.

Social Entrepreneurship is the use of start-up companies and other entrepreneurs to develop, fund and implement solutions to social, cultural, or environmental issues. This concept may be applied to a variety of organizations with different sizes, aims, and beliefs. 

Social entrepreneurs are either non-profits, or blend for-profit goals with generating a positive "return to  society" and therefore use different metrics. 

Social  entrepreneurship typically attempts to further broad social, cultural,  and environmental goals often associated with the voluntary sector in areas such as poverty alleviation, health care and community development.

Source: Wikipedia

A new age of  Finance is upon us!

This is where the fun begins!

To be continued:

What is the Fourth Industrial Revolution: 

"The Fourth Industrial Revolution is the fourth major industrial  era since the initial Industrial Revolution of the 18th century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines  between the physical, digital and biological spheres, collectively  referred to as cyber-physical systems.  

One of  the biggest challenges in establishing circular supply chains is localization. We must disrupt the global shipping industry as it exists.

Carl Sagan described the crisis:

"We have cut the whales off from themselves. Creatures that have communicated for tens of millions of years have now effectively been silenced." 

I know. I know. So dramatic. Still, the global economy is devastating life on Earth.

In order for us to save our oceans - if that is even possible - we must begin to localize the means of production of everything.

The Ultimate Goal - 

Parks over Ports: Transforming Trade Routes into Tourist Traps. 

Ideas to build on

Designing Reality: How to Survive & Thrive in the Third Digital Revolition  

Drawing on the history of digitization and exploring the frontiers of research, Designing Reality outlines a vision for a future radically transformed by digital manufacturing - FAB LAB  

From Global to Local: The Making of Things and the End of Globalization 

This is where the fun begins!

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Two emerging mega-trends:   

"Artificial intelligence (AI) can play an important role in enabling this systemic shift. AI is a subset of the technologies enabling the emergent ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ era, and deals with models and systems which perform functions generally associated with human intelligence, such as reasoning and learning. 

"AI can complement people’s skills and expand their capabilities. It allows humans to learn faster from feedback, deal more effectively with complexity, and make better sense of abundant data."

Most importantly, it helps us make sense of ALL the data. Again, we have evolved into such a complex social order that it is hard sometimes to make sense of all this information. Nature. Technology. When all life on Earth is suffering - we should know that it is time to innovate.

AI will free set the human mind free. 

Source: Google Cloud 

This is where the fun begins!

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Wait? What happened to my personal vehicle? 

The Future of Transportation in our urban areas and city centers will  be Electric, Autonomous & Shared.

Gone are the days when we will be required to transport thousands of pounds of resources just to get us from here to there on a whim. 

As a bicyclist, this is one of my favorite disruptions. I can't wait for the day when we begin building parks over parking lots, incorporating pedestrian and bike paths everywhere. 

Here's the thing: we need to de-pave our built environment as much as possible. We need green infrastructure. We need de-industrialization. This is a Utopian High-Tech Enterprise after all:

See: The future of Transportation

This is where the fun begins!

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Feeding the World in the 21st Century: 

Urban agriculture, urban farming, or urban gardening is the practice of cultivating, processing and distributing food in or around urban areas. Urban agriculture can also involve animal husbandry, aquaculture, agroforestry, urban beekeeping, and horticulture.  

Steps Local Communities can take towards localizing food production:  

• allow urban farms and community gardens throughout our cities.
• Allow residents to sell food grown on their property. 
• Recognize farmers markets and allow them to flourish where ever there is public demand. 
• Allow dedicated food production in rooftop greenhouses.   

Vertical Farming? Yes. Please!

This is where the fun begins!

University of Washington

The Circular City + Living Systems

What are Circular Sourced Solutions  (CSS) A Sustainable Industrial Feed-Stock is one defined as a renewable, biological material that can be used directly as a fuel, converted to other forms of fuel or energy. 

Biomass Feed-Stocks are plant and/or algal (other) organic materials used to derive fuels like ethanol, butanol, biodiesel.

One of the key components of a sustainable feed-stock is its sourcing

Circular Supply Chains -   
Cities need local solutions to offset their global footprint. Hemp & Ethanol are two bio-regional industrial feed-stock solutions.

This is where the fun begins!

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Throwaway Living

In August 1955, Life Magazine ran a story on how Disposable Items Cut Down on Household Chores. The picture above describes the new found freedom in the use and disposal of just about anything -

To be continued:

Plastic Planet:

It is estimated that upwards to 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic have been created since the early 1950s, when industrial production of synthetic materials began, according to researchers in Amercia. 

Plastic waste is increasingly hard to ignore, with  an estimated 150 million tonnes of plastic currently present in the  world’s oceans, "leakage" adds at least 9.1 million tonnes more each year — a figure that is  said to be growing by five per cent annually — the Ellen MacArthur Foundation report  calculates there will be 850-950 million tonnes of ocean plastic by  2050, versus total fish stocks of 812-899 million tonnes.

The world's burgeoning plastic waste crisis has won the attention of  Britain's Royal Statistical Society, which chose 90.5 percent—the  proportion of plastic waste that has never been recycled—as its  international statistic of the year.

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The rise of fast food culture: 

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