Welcome to the ECOCITY 2022 Interactive Programme

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The development of modern high speed rail passenger systems in North America has been elusive for decades. Numerous financial, social, economic and political barriers exist. Four green field projects are in play in California, Texas and Florida & the Pacific Northwest. Supported by WA, OR, BC, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Microsoft and Amazon, the PNW Corridor project is being developed more on parallel urban vision, planning and design innovation than a simple transportation upgrade. I will update Eco-City on the project and it's opportunities and challenges from Obama to Trump to Biden.

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The Mexico City Metropolitan Area, one of the largest megacities in the world, is exposed to the effects of multiple risks -geological, hydrometeorological, water stress, air pollution, and socio-political uprisings-, addressed reactively through short-term responses. Through this interdisciplinary study we investigated the relationship between intra-urban and peripheral green areas, urban and infrastructure systems, and water-related ecosystem services concerning social and environmental vulnerability, to inform decision making from an urban resilience standpoint. Information and data for Mexico City’s Metropolitan Area currently available are uneven, sectoral, and not integrated, which hinders efforts towards a systemic approach. Through an interdisciplinary team of urban planners, urban designers, biologists, environmental scientists, and geographers, we applied a hybrid methodology of spatial analysis to align and correlate diverse sets of data. A series of cartographies and an updated database of integrated environmental, urban, social, as well as risk and vulnerability information was generated. Its analysis was conducted through several workshops between the authors and specialists in different fields to corroborate, weigh-in, and discuss conclusions, based on a multi-criteria decision-making support software. A risk model and submodels were developed as a result, bioregional systems were defined, and recommendations for plans and interventions were included. The Mexico City Metropolitan Area represents a sustainability laboratory for testing integrated solutions that address the most pressing urban-environmental issues cities are currently facing. The study is intended to become a tool for decision-making processes in large heterogeneous metropolises, such as Mexico City, towards a proactive, collaborative, sustainable, and integrated understanding of complex urban systems.

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Utica, New York is typical of many “rust-belt” communities in the United States that is stagnating and searching for ways to boost their future economic prospects. The Mohawk Valley Health System is constructing a new hospital campus in downtown Utica. MVHS conducted an analysis in 2015 that considered 12 sites for a new hospital within a 10-mile radius of Utica. The project goals were “To consolidate the existing campuses into a single facility within Oneida County’s largest population center, and to comply with the provisions of a $300 million state grant supporting the project.”

The hospital is in the heart of downtown Utica near many cultural resources, such as the Utica Memorial Auditorium and the Utica Marsh Wildlife Management Area. It is a massive undertaking for the region. The hospital is intended to be the anchor for broader redevelopment that would help stimulate growth in the downtown area and the city, and to improve the economic stability for the region.

Geodesign is a tested process that uses geospatial data and analysis tools to address complex land use issues, that involve multiple systems and stakeholders, to provide organizational leaders the information they need to make informed decisions.

We partnered with the City of Utica Planning office and conducted two graduate level courses to delve into the numerous issues that the city faces. Interviews were conducted, and existing studies and digital media from residents of the city was synthesized. Online tools for stakeholder negotiation were utilized so that groups could understand what each other desired for the area. Cutting edge geospatial tools, such as ArcGIS Urban and City Engine, were used to create digital twins to help develop site design alternatives and visualizations for preferred design scenarios.

Our talk will review how an eco-system of geospatially enabled digital tools was used to fully understand the problems that Utica faces and provide guidance for how it can adapt in the future to become more resilient. We will demonstrate how this process can be replicated for other cities that are experiencing similar issues.

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The German Federal Government has defined high climate protection targets for the building sector up to 2050 and beyond. The municipal authorities and local government play an essential role in implementing this process. They have a significant direct impact on the regional urban development of climate protection and climate adaptation through active action.

The built environment can be a key element of municipal climate protection. In the future, the use of sustainable biobased materials and renewable energy systems will play a significant role in this context. Timber constructions in particular, which are designed for durability and reusability, are able to enhance the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions in municipalities. Biobased products offer two environmental benefits: the storage of carbon in the material and the additional substitution effect when mineral construction is replaced by timber structures. However, municipal decision makers are usually unaware of these potentials because they are not part of the urban landscape planning. This is where the geodata-based web-GIS system "Holzbau-GIS" comes in.

The aim of the R&D project "Holzbau-GIS" is to demonstrate the potential of utilizing wooden building materials as an additional climate protection method for municipalities and to make this nature-based solution practicable.

In this paper, besides the methods and model description to calculate the carbon dioxide emission savings, first impressions on the web-GIS-system are presented. The web-GIS system integrates the available geodata on the building level and puts them into a citywide context. In different scenarios, feasible potentials for new construction or modernization can be projected. In addition, the results are divided into the carbon storage in the wooden material and the substitution potential by replacing mineral constructions with wooden structures.

The results show greenhouse gas savings from timber utilization as well as its potential as additional municipal climate protection. The web-GIS system supports municipal decision-makers in their decision-making process in the context of urban landscape planning. Based on this, they are able to quantify these possibilities through the project "Holzbau-GIS".

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The extraordinary tide pools of the California coastline present a brilliant model for the design of social spaces and a clue to how to tackle one of my country’s large-scale social challenges: the polarization of beliefs that drives people into competing camps. I posit that this polarization is caused by the tendency of people to take on the belief system of those around them (whether a physical or, increasingly these days, virtual group). Using simple computer modeling, I show that when individual decision-making of this sort accumulates, unmitigated, it leads inevitably to a static end-state in which both sides are locked into their own ideas and opinions. What do we need to do to reverse that polarization?

Inspiration comes from the ecosystem of California tide pools, which harbor an incredibly diverse range of sea creatures and serve as a model of mixing, flow, porosity, and change far removed from the rigid determinism prevalent in current society. In tide pools, the regular influx of seawater brings in fresh nutrients and microorganisms and connects discrete pools to create an ever-changing environment. This subtle interplay between consistency and variability (the tide keeps coming in, but each wave brings something different) is crucial to the health of the tide pool ecosystem. I will present photos of tide pools and my own diagrams showing how the changing tide fluidly interconnects previously separate pools.

The rigidly uniform social spaces typical of many urban environments and of school campuses, my architectural specialization, contrast with the design of social spaces that promote the best qualities of tide pools—mixing, flow, porosity, and change. I will demonstrate how unprogrammed “flow” spaces inspired by the ecosystem of tide pools promote the kind of serendipitous individual encounters that can ultimately lead to large-scale social change. Returning to the original computer model, I show how using tidal flow as a proposed intervention, it is possible to undo polarization and return to a more fluid society.

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Transition and Transformation Through Reasonable Asset Valuation” (focusing on the historic opportunity we now have to “re-value assets” simply because we are “sheltering in place” and the financial markets haven’t been “connected” to anybody’s reality for more than a year – and it has become common knowledge that recent hedging and merger activity are truly impossible to quantify with any degree of certainty. And if “poverty” is conceptualized more as a “default setting,” there is a tremendous opportunity for open discussion before actual “implementation.” Of course, there is tremendous pressure by some parties to “get back to normal” without asking questions about everything “normal” implies in a world of changing climate and physical and institutional responses required.

It should be obvious that “revaluation” is much more feasible than “redistribution” and there is a chance to explore dimensions of “fairness” and the peculiarly protected status of “legal fees” and the give away culture supported by almost total lack of ethical enforcement structures.