Explorez tous les épisodes de Livable Low-carbon City
Plongez dans la liste complète des épisodes de Livable Low-carbon City. Chaque épisode est catalogué accompagné de descriptions détaillées, ce qui facilite la recherche et l'exploration de sujets spécifiques. Suivez tous les épisodes de votre podcast préféré et ne manquez aucun contenu pertinent.
Rows per page:
50
1–13 of 13
Date
Titre
Durée
16 Sep 2022
01: Ditching the Double Loaded Corridor.
00:25:28
In this inaugural episode of the Livable Low-carbon City podcast, host Michael Eliason explores different types of vertical access for urban housing - and the effects these have on livability, sustainability, and climate resiliency.
Projects discussed in this episode include:
Vienna House, Vancouver. Public Architecture + Communication.
US cities don't have a missing middle problem, they have a missing *mid-rise* problem.
A problem that is reflected in the depths of our housing crises – and in the inability to meet climate goals.
In this episode of the Livable Low-Carbon City, we'll explore the problems with Missing Middle housing and why it is inadequate to meet the demands of today's housing shortage - and why we need to be focusing on broad areas zoned for mid-rise districts instead.
In a warming world, heat will increasingly be deadly.
The IPCC has stated that extreme heat events are due to global warming – and as we are failing to curb emissions – there is a high confidence they will only get worse. Even if your building doesn’t overheat today – it may well in the future.
In this episode of the Livable Low-Carbon City, we'll explore the problems with overheating, and some of the ways we can mitigate this to make our buildings and cities more climate adaptive, more livable.
Transit Oriented Development (TOD) in the United States lacks the vitality, affordability, access to nature and open space, and high quality urban spaces found in new European ecodistrics/TOD. They are also much more auto-centric than would be found in EU cities - leading in part to a lower quality of life than should be possible. This is in part due to poor building and land use practices.
In today's episode, we discuss some of the problems with TOD (yep, the double loaded corridor plays a role!). As well as trends in European TOD - and some examples that US cities interested in creating walkable, family-friendly, mixed use TOD with a good economic and social mix of residents should be studying. All of these districts are filled with buildings that would not be legal to build anywhere in the U.S.!
A few months ago, Larch Lab was contacted to start discussions of an ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) focused on climate adaptive urbanism, influenced by the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.
With the effects of climate change becoming more frequent and intense than anticipated – we can no longer wait ten to twenty years to adapt to this new normal. Larch Lab believes we need an ARPA-esque project to facilitate the research and development necessary to rapidly roll out high performance, decarbonized buildings, ecodistricts, and cities.
This episode of the Livable Low-Carbon City is a download of themes and topics that we will be discussing in detail over the coming months...
Here in the Pacific Northwest, we have had fairly significant wildfire smoke for the last six weeks. For the most part, wind patterns have kept much of the Seattle Metro from experiencing the worst of it. That changed this week, as weather patterns shifted and the dense wildfire smoke cloaked our region for several days, thrusting both Seattle and Portland into the cities with the worst air quality globally.
Unfortunately, this pattern is likely to worsen as the western slopes of the Cascade Mountains continue to dry out. Due to their rugged, steep terrain and abundant fuel - fighting wildfires is going to be significantly different than on the dryer, and eastern slopes of the cascades. Containment and mitigation will be the main strategies in dealing with this smoke.
However, cities have not prepared for this new normal to the extent they should have, with studies predicting this very issue for decades. We already utilize public buildings for weather that is extremely warm or cold - the next logical step is to utilize public buildings as fresh air centers for smoke and air pollution events. The region has also added over a hundred thousand homes in just the last decade. Unfortunately, weak energy codes that failed to mandate Passivhaus only ensured that there was significant carbon lock-in with these, and an inability to adapt and mitigate climate change to the effect they could have.
Had we mandated Passivhaus levels of construction, with airtight buildings and fresh, filtered ventilation - many more of these buildings could adapt to these types of events, and ruggedized against an increasingly dangerous normal. We need climate leaders who will take these issues seriously, and act swiftly.
Nestled at the southwest edge of the Black Forest, close to where France, Germany and Switzerland all come together - is the Green City of Freiburg. I spent a year living and working in Freiburg in 2003-2004, with a really amazing architecture firm ( Pfeifer.Roser.Kuhn Architekten) doing incredible things around low energy buildings and dowel laminated timber. The city, despite its smaller size - with a population of roughly 220,000 - is one of the most livable cities I have ever experienced.
Literally all of the things that I am interested in as an architect - Mass Timber, Passivhaus, ecodistricts, pedestrian zones, baugruppen - all have extensive roots in this region. Many of you many know about the car-light ecodistrict of Vauban - a family-friendly quartier. What you may not know, is that a number of the projects here are baugruppen - self-developed urban housing. There are also several Passivhaus projects here - and in fact, the first Mass Timber Passivhaus project - which also happens to be a Baugruppe. Mind Blowing? Indeed.
In today's episode, I reminisce a little about some of the things that made this such an amazing city - and how nearly 20 years later, those same subjects are central to who I am as an architect, a husband, a father. And those ideals, those concepts are foundational to Larch Lab.
Several of our friends and colleagues are currently going through divorces and other changes in their family household structure. Many of them were homeowners. However, Seattle - as many other cities in the US, has a pretty severe housing shortage. There are very limited options for housing that is affordable for single parents or those co-parenting... Let alone housing specifically designed for single parents. Over the last year, I have had numerous discussions like this – by and large parents with younger children – who, until their divorce, had been homeowners and housing secure. In the process of getting divorced, they found themselves on the other side of housing precarity. Some even being technically homeless.
Today, on the Livable Low-Carbon City podcast – we’ll be talking about some housing solutions for single parents that I think cities should be prioritizing, so that they have a good economic and social mix of residents.
Further reading... Gender in Mainstreaming Urban Development, via the City of Berlin. Apfelbaum, an innovative housing project centered on radical inclusivity and accessibility in Vienna. via IBA Wien.
Our cities are full of ghost projects. Lost opportunities. Potentialities that could have prioritized safe streets or public health. Transit station with homes for cars, instead of a neighborhood for people. Streets that prioritize speeding cars, instead of safety and sustainable mobility.
But the reality of our cities, at least in the U.S. – is that we don’t realize those opportunities.
Often, these ghost projects were eliminated or watered down to preserve single family zoning or parking.
We waste these opportunities - opportunities to make our cities better, more equitable, healthier... And we do it largely to preserve a deeply unsustainable and inequitable status quo.
And so…
I see ghost projects.
I see dead districts.
They haunt my dreams.
They’re… everywhere.
Further reading... Schumacher Quartier - the mass timber, social housing ecodistrict underway outside Berlin's Tegel Airport and the Urban Tech Republic.
Aufstockungen is the German term for vertical additions. These are rooftop additions common throughout European cities - where many structures were built with concrete, block, or stone.
Vertical additions offer a really interesting path towards re-compacting (densifying) existing neighborhoods in an incredibly sustainable manner.
They preserve more affordable, existing housing.
They reduce sprawl.
They allow the incorporation of new housing without sealing new surfaces - thereby reducing the urban heat island effect, and allowing more area for mitigating storm inundations and flooding.
It is also an approach that can be utilized to add to a number of different building types - not just housing, but schools, offices, institutions, etc.
Housing prices in the US are completely out of balance. Affordable housing is difficult to attain in entire metropolitan areas. There are few options for middle class households, and even fewer for working class residents.
We need a reset on the American dream.
From one that is sprawling, unaffordable, lonely, carbon intensive, and exclusive – to one that is community-oriented, multigenerational, family-friendly and sustainable. One that is inclusive and accessible. Perhaps most importantly, one that is climate-adaptive and resilient to events exacerbated by climate change: energy spikes, heat domes, cold snaps, and extended wildfire smoke events.
In this week’s episode, we’ll be talking about one solution that could provide a path towards boosting middle class housing opportunities: Baugruppen.
Further reading... Catch Mike Eliason's 2014 series on Baugruppen over on the Urbanist.
Larch Lab's page on Baugruppen, with several links and examples.
Strike. Verb. A disaster, or other unwelcome phenomenon that suddenly occurs and has harmful or damaging effects on something.
Zoning has afflicted our cities - some might say even damaged them - through their lack of flexibility and sterility. A hundred years on, the experiment of zoning is a massive failure.
However, it doesn't have to be this way. Other countries don't even have single use zoning like single family zoning in the US... Many others have zoning that is dictated at the federal level.
In this week’s episode, we’ll be talking about the absurdity of zoning in the USA, and why other countries are able to see better outcomes in their versions of zoning.
Two years ago, a German newspaper ran a piece hinting that Green Party Bundestag member Anton Hofreiter was calling for a ban on new single family homes. Hofreiter had not been calling for a ban on single family homes, but rather an end to subsidies that cater to sprawling detached single family homes, as well as the lower energy efficiency standards they were required to meet, compared to attached homes.
After this, the Wuestenrot Stiftung - a foundation focusing on arts, culture, education, and questions around the future - published criteria for a design award on future-oriented single family homes.
In this week’s episode, we’ll be talking about some of these projects, and what we believe the future of single family homes in the U.S. will be.
Améliorez votre compréhension de Livable Low-carbon City avec My Podcast Data
Chez My Podcast Data, nous nous efforçons de fournir des analyses approfondies et basées sur des données tangibles. Que vous soyez auditeur passionné, créateur de podcast ou un annonceur, les statistiques et analyses détaillées que nous proposons peuvent vous aider à mieux comprendre les performances et les tendances de Livable Low-carbon City. De la fréquence des épisodes aux liens partagés en passant par la santé des flux RSS, notre objectif est de vous fournir les connaissances dont vous avez besoin pour vous tenir à jour. Explorez plus d'émissions et découvrez les données qui font avancer l'industrie du podcast.
