Richard Levine

Does sustainable development lead to sustainability

Abstract The shortcomings and contradictions of the present understanding of sustainable development as a concept and a strategy suggest that the very idea of sustainable development must be subjected to the most thorough-going reevaluation. In rejecting simplistic versions of sustainable development strategy, this paper offers the strategy of sustainable cities both as an alternative strategy and as a catalyst to long-term global sustainability. In so doing, it seeks not to replace all components of the strategy of sustainable development but instead to place them within a restructured strategic framework locating the design and building of sustainable cities at its centre.

Research and Solutions: "Green" vs. Sustainability: From Semantics to Enlightenment

The sustainability movement from the grassroots to the global level has been both enriched and hobbled by the many different versions of sustainability articulated in scholarly and popular writings...

The space of flows, the rules of play, and sustainable urban design: The sustainability game as a tool of critical pedagogy in higher education

This paper seeks to explore the origins of these inchoate changes and shifts in perception and experience of urban dwelling places and electronic spaces by tracing out their implications for the agenda of sustainable cities.The paper first considers the movement from Netville, the cybercommunity generated among technical experts and scholars associated with the building of the Internet, to Cybercities, the various online communities emerging from ARPA’s seemingly anarchic communications network. It pays particular attention to the “rules of play” that governed the construction of the Internet and the kind of egalitarian community of competence that those rules engendered. The analysis explores the import of those “rules of play” for “Emerald City,” a sustainability game for designing sustainable cities. The last section then shifts from participatory design process as game to an ongoing design project – the Westbahnhof project. This project, demonstrates the relevance of both the “rules of play” and the sustainability game in building sustainable cities of the future in an open, democratic, and participatory fashion.

Research and Solutions: Don't Pick the Low-Hanging Fruit! Counterintuitive Policy Advice for Achieving Sustainability

As the ecological movement shifts from conceptualization to implementation of programs for sustainability, the matter of appropriate tactics and strategy comes into play with increasing frequency. This strategic and tactical review becomes all the more crucial in the twenty-first century context of global warming and peaking of world oil reserves. This essay argues that the currently fashionable and appealing tactic of “picking the low-hanging fruit” in order to achieve quick paybacks and build coalitions of support for sustainable policies is fundamentally flawed and, on its own, counterproductive. Grounded in the imagery of a pathway or avenue to sustainability, this policy nostrum eventually leads to a series of walls or barriers that make the goal of that journey unrealizable. In advancing the alternative strategy of sustainable city regions, this essay lays out the case for adopting the commitments, tactics, and strategems flowing from the idea that sustainability is a balance-seeking process requiri...

Sustainable City Regions: Mega-Projects in Balance with the Earth’s Carrying Capacity

The issue of sustainability is becoming the basis of a massive global project for the transformation of the existing human-made environment to operate within the capacities of the natural environment. Such a project requires the balancing of resource and energy use at every scale from the scale of the individual dwelling to the scale of the globe. Imbalances in a sustainable system can persist at a given scale only when the accountability for that imbalance is negotiated with some agency at the next larger scale. The master scale for adjusting these numerous balances is the town-region, where the major balance-seeking activities required to practice sustainability will be carried out. This paper presents a design for a town-region that is well suited for the carrying out of such a balance-seeking process. The project is an entry in a competition to design a new administrative town for South Korea. This entry presents a new urban form, a MegaForm, the Sustainable Town-as-a-Hill. The Town-as-a-Hill is uniquely designed to support both the technical processes of sustainability as well as provide an urban environment that supports and is supported by strong civil society processes. The project’s processes are grounded in a principle called the Sustainable Area Budget (SAB). The SAB is an equitable, land-based budget from which, on a net basis, all the town-region’s energy and resource needs are to be met. An ongoing, participatory, multiple alternative scenario-building design process engages citizen stakeholders to negotiate how they will afford to live in an equitable, regenerative relationship with nature – that is, within the carrying capacity of their Sustainable Area Budget.

THE MEDINA, THE HAMM.M AND THE FUTURE OF SUSTAINABILITY

The Islamic Mediterranean city faces increasing pressures from without and within. It is faced with the question of how to support the valued institutions and traditions of the past, while confronting the influences and pressures of the present and the opportunities of the future. The hamm.m has been centered on a venerable tradition from the past that is both a building as well as a cultural tradition and that is trying to survive in a modern world. Hence, each of these historic building should be seen as cultural heritage sites. One of the given aspects of this study has been the question of conservation and preservation of these once elegant buildings, the hammams. Strategies for the restoration of these buildings thus become the precondition for many of our other considerations. At the opposite extreme of building restoration considerations is the question of sustainability. Therefore the other major issue looked at in this study is: how can we develop scenarios that propose a sustainable future for these hammams. Scenarios that are both respectful and supportive of the historic local culture yet also create a viable strategy for developing a sustainable mode of contemporary life. It was the ambitious charge of our research to explore the territory between these two questions.

FRIENDLY HOMES: A SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY

ABSTRACT Friendly Homes is a cooperative community in a rural Kentucky setting which is to be food and energy self sufficient. It is located on 115 acres of rolling Madison County farmland (36° N) and consists of 116 dwelling units with supporting community facilities to be built over a ten year period. Started by a group of retired people, it is a Utopian model for a sustainable future. The “Seniors” live on fixed incomes, and over the years have built up savings and equity in their present homes. From these resources, they are able to provide the capital for the construction of the community. Younger community members will do the construction, grow the food and provide the services required by the community, receiving wages and building equity in their homes and in the community. Because of this internal economy, the quality of life will remain uncompromised even though the community is to be built at low cost. To complement this unusual economic and social structure, it was necessary to design an architectural counterform which was generated from the same sorts of values. During the process of designing Friendly Homes, it was discovered that a number of low energy approaches become possible as well as economical at the integrative community scale which are not possible at smaller scales. Such concepts as the Hillside annual cycle passive solar heating system, the conditioned Village Walk, and the methane digester/sewage disposal system are all very cost effective at Friendly Homes, but would be in appropriate in a smaller project. Indeed it appears that many widely scattered approaches in alternate energy integrate very naturally within the framework of a cooperative community. This seems to be just the right scale and structure for appropriate technology to provide the dwelling counterform for the sustainable towns of the future.