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Exploring the Future of Saskatoon's Green Spaces: CALL TO ACTION
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#Biodiversity Conservation#biodiversity management#carbon sequestration#citizen activism#citizen engagement#City Council#City Development#city governance#City planning#city sustainability#Climate Resilience#Community Empowerment#Community Engagement#Community Feedback#Community Participation#conceptual master plans#Conservation Efforts#ecological assessment#ecological balance#Ecological Monitoring#Ecological Resilience#Ecological Restoration#ecological value#ecosystem health#ecosystem management#Ecosystem Preservation#ecosystem services#environmental advocacy#environmental awareness#environmental conservation
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"In China, a landscape architect is reimagining cities across the vast country by working with nature to combat flooding through the ‘sponge city’ concept.
Through his architecture firm Turenscape, Yu has created hundreds of projects in dozens of cities using native plants, dirt, and clever planning to absorb excess rainwater and channel it away from densely populated areas.
Flooding, especially in the two Chinese heartlands of the commercial south and the agricultural north, is becoming increasingly common, but Yu says that concrete and pipe solutions can only go so far. They’re inflexible, expensive, and require constant maintenance. According to a 2021 World Bank report, 641 of China’s 654 largest cities face regular flooding.
“There’s a misconception that if we can build a flood wall higher and higher, or if we build the dams higher and stronger, we can protect a city from flooding,” Yu told CNN in a video call. “(We think) we can control the water… that is a mistake.”
Pictured: The Benjakitti Forest Park in Bangkok
Yu has been called the “Chinese Olmstead” referring to Frederick Law Olmstead, the designer of NYC’s Central Park. He grew up in a little farming village of 500 people in Zhejiang Province, where 36 weirs channel the waters of a creek across terraced rice paddies.
Once a year, carp would migrate upstream and Yu always looked forward to seeing them leap over the weirs.
This synthesis of man and nature is something that Turenscape projects encapsulate. These include The Nanchang Fish Tail Park, in China’s Jiangxi province, Red Ribbon Park in Qinghuandao, Hebei province, the Sanya Mangrove Park in China’s island province of Hainan, and almost a thousand others. In all cases, Yu utilizes native plants that don’t need any care to develop extremely spongey ground that absorbs excess rainfall.
Pictured: The Dong’an Wetland Park, another Turescape project in Sanya.
He often builds sponge projects on top of polluted or abandoned areas, giving his work an aspect of reclamation. The Nanchang Fish Tail Park for example was built across a 124-acre polluted former fish farm and coal ash dump site. Small islands with dawn redwoods and two types of cypress attract local wildlife to the metropolis of 6 million people.
Sanya Mangrove Park was built over an old concrete sea wall, a barren fish farm, and a nearby brownfield site to create a ‘living’ sea wall.
One hectare (2.47 acres) of Turenscape sponge land can naturally clean 800 tons of polluted water to the point that it is safe enough to swim in, and as a result, many of the sponge projects have become extremely popular with locals.
One of the reasons Yu likes these ideas over grand infrastructure projects is that they are flexible and can be deployed as needed to specific areas, creating a web of rain sponges. If a large drainage, dam, seawall, or canal is built in the wrong place, it represents a huge waste of time and money.
Pictured: A walkway leads visitors through the Nanchang Fish Tail Park.
The sponge city projects in Wuhan created by Turenscape and others cost in total around half a billion dollars less than proposed concrete ideas. Now there are over 300 sponge projects in Wuhan, including urban gardens, parks, and green spaces, all of which divert water into artificial lakes and ponds or capture it in soil which is then released more slowly into the sewer system.
Last year, The Cultural Landscape Foundation awarded Yu the $100,000 Oberlander Prize for elevating the role of design in the process of creating nature-based solutions for the public’s enjoyment and benefit."
-via Good News Network, August 15, 2024
#china#wuhan#thailand#bangkok#landscape#wetlands#sponge city#landscape architecture#flooding#climate action#parks#public park#green architecture#sustainability#good news#hope
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Little vision for a more beautiful, sustainable, tactile future.
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#China#Forest City#Liuzhou#urban planning#green architecture#air pollution#climate change#sustainability#environment#innovation
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reminder that fighting for climate solutions means fighting for public health.
switching to clean energy means less air pollution and significantly less deaths associated with fossil fuel extraction
green, localized, and walkable neighborhoods with accessible transport is good for physical, mental, social, and emotional health
cutting down the beef and dairy industries and eating more plant based (for those who can) is better for health of individuals
fighting for unionized labor in good, clean jobs means less stress in people's daily lives which leads to less stress-related illness and injury
Fight for your neighbors, fight for the planet
#solarpunk#sustainability#climate change#climate crisis#activism#walkable communities#walkable cities#plant based#clean energy
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Exciting news from Arizona! The opening of the Eleven Mile Solar Center marks a $1 billion investment in clean energy by ACPMember OrstedUS The solar & energy storage project is set to power 65,000 homes. Take a look at the project celebration.
#clean energy#solar energy#sustainable development#investing#capitalism#finance#baking#city#commercial#clouds
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"The Bluff," 4315 W Semple St, Seattle, WA, United States,
Deforest Architects,
Interiors: Design Group, Lucas Interior,
Charles Anderson Landscape Architecture.
#art#design#architecture#interiors#interiorsdesign#luxury house#luxury home#luxury pad#sustainable architecture#seattle#thebluff#deforest architects#design group#lucas interiors#mark vadon#city-retreat#retreat
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They're having a not so good time rn
#in my head they make it into the ancient basin#maybe after sustaining a major head injury from one of the city's former residents#they're not the best with magic#they're really good with a sword but they have no real combat experience so they're overwhelmed quickly#so they run to the ancient basin for shelter#their skull is just one massive gaping wound#and they're trying SO HARD to concentrate l#so they can heal enough to make the journey home#and a buncha lightseeds come scurrying out of the darkness#crawlinh all over them#getting INSIDE their wound#and suddenly they're b u r n i n g#from the inside out#my art#hollow knight#hollow knight gijinka#gijinka#hk lost kin#broken vessel#hk lk#hk bv
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Rough sketches for an idea of dual purpose covered bike and walkway, inspired by victorian and art nouveau architecture and decoration style. What do you think? :)
#solarpunk#hopecore#hopepunk#peaceful revolution#greenhorizon#anti capitalism#anti fascism#sketch#ideas#solarpunk ideas#lunarpunk#tidalpunk#climate change solutions#urban design#city planning#infrastructure#sustainability#environmentalism
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Building at great height requires a massive amount more material than a typical high-rise. The upper storeys of super- and megatall buildings – which often include hundreds of metres of unoccupiable ‘vanity’ height – are buffeted by ferocious wind loads, with any sway at all introducing enormous destabilising forces into the structure below. They are home to hefty services that raise water, coolant, people and air to great heights, and these heights must be offset by deep underground foundations. ‘If you’ve ever seen any Revit models [of London high-rises, there is pretty much as much concrete in those foundations as there is above ground,’ says Natasha Watson, an engineer at Buro Happold who leads the firm’s efforts to measure and reduce embodied carbon in its projects. Even in areas with firmer ground than London, Watson explains, the awe-inspiring physics of skyscrapers has a huge material cost.
In an industry that is chronically lacking in transparency around its ecological, social and labour impact, it is difficult to find good data on the carbon footprint of skyscrapers. But the assessments that are available bear out the physics. Watson and her colleagues’ modelling shows that the efficiency of structural material usage, by floor area, drops above just three storeys. According to a 2015 study commissioned by the CTBUH, the whole life emissions of both energy use and materials for a 120m concrete and steel structure are nearly five times higher than those of its 60m equivalent. Who knows what the cost becomes at 600m?
It is not yet possible to avoid this cost by using less ecologically destructive materials. Although some 100m-tall timber buildings are beginning to appear, they are nowhere near the 600m ‘megatall’ mark. According to Watson, finding a sufficient volume and quality of reused steel and concrete structural components for such a large, high-performance building would also likely be challenging.
Even at city level, the huge carbon cost of skyscrapers fails to outweigh any potential benefits that they might achieve from restraining urban sprawl. A study in npj Urban Sustainability in 2021 showed that the most carbon-efficient way for cities to grow is by developing densely built low-rise environments. The carbon cost of taller buildings is greater than carbon savings from restricted land use. This means that high-density low-rise cities such as Paris are more carbon-efficient than high-density high-rise cities such as New York.
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#permaculture#city planning#solarpunk#renewableenergy#renewables#sustainability#green future#green infrastructure#green technology#functional supply chains
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I'm so peeved that literally every aspect of the Gerudo in BOTW/TOTK serves to make me mad bc I love the Gerudo desert and I think that some of the most interesting NPCs to speak to are Gerudo.........alas
#august.chr#trying my damndest to piece together a BOTW/TOTK timeline bc I dont believe for an instant that the divine beasts are 10k years old#and i'm scraping my brain trying to think if any cutscenes from pre-calamity mention the ban on voe in the city#bc i'm trying to justify an in-universe reason why the gerudo would implement such a policy#given you know. they're a trading city. and banning men. means banning half of all possible trade partners.#my best guess is that the gerudo were always somewhat isolationist but were much more lenient#until the calamity hit and the gerudo faced serious damages from ganon's destruction and vah naboris causing sandstorms for a while#in the turmoil the gerudo banned visitation but after enough years it became obvious that this was destroying the city's economy#so they opened the gates back up but only to women. because the gerudos' need to find men to sustain their population in combination with#the new Inaccessability of gerudo women invited a rather predatory type of crowd. so this discriminatory gate system was an attempt to cull#this behavior. but it only made it worse because it just cemented gerudo women in the cultural perception as hard to get and Foreign#<-(aka Interesting skeevy edition)#so to the gerudo opening the gates means the not unlikely possibility of inviting harassment from scummy guys but not opening the gate will#never allow this terrible dynamic to heal. and instead of trying to forge a healthier relationship with dating for gerudo women#the gerudo have leaned into this gender seperationist ideal. as seen with mattison and the whole culture of removing young gerudo girls from#their fathers and the kingdom of hyrule at large in favor of staying in gerudo town#anyways sorry i hate the gerudo's worldbuilding but i actively hate the fan approaches to make it Woke Gender Essentialism more#it's literally not better if you go 'well the gerudo would let trans women into town if they just claimed to be women' like.#no they wouldn't. they let link into town in the gerudo vai fit because he passes as a woman in the outfit. if he changes clothes in town he#stops passing and they kick him out.#gerudo town is literally TERF city it's a city where a society of women have isolated themselves and banned men from interacting and will#only allow women they subjectively deem to be Womanly Enough to enter their gates#and teach young gerudo girls that men are dangerous and that they have to grow up in gerudo town until they come of age. like it's literally#a law that gerudo diaspora have to move to gerudo town before puberty#anyways sorry this is like the third time in the past 2 years i've drafted a post about how i think the gerudo's worldbuilding#is both illogical and abusive to the gerudo growing up in it. but illogical and abusive does not make for unrealistic worldbuilding either#so i want to find a way to work within its confines while also complaining loudly about it the entire time
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"Chicago’s 82-story Aqua Tower appears to flutter with the wind. Its unusual, undulating facade has made it one of the most unique features of Chicago’s skyline, distinct from the many right-angled glass towers that surround it.
In designing it, the architect Jeanne Gang thought not only about how humans would see it, dancing against the sky, but also how it would look to the birds who fly past. The irregularity of the building’s face allows birds to see it more clearly and avoid fatal collisions. “It’s kind of designed to work for both humans and birds,” she said.
As many as 1 billion birds in the US die in building collisions each year. And Chicago, which sits along the Mississippi Flyway, one of the four major north-south migration routes, is among the riskiest places for birds. This year, at least 1,000 birds died in one day from colliding with a single glass-covered building. In New York, which lies along the Atlantic Flyway, hundreds of species traverse the skyline and tens of thousands die each year.
As awareness grows of the dangers posed by glistening towers and bright lights, architects are starting to reimagine city skylines to design buildings that are both aesthetically daring and bird-safe.
Pictured: Chicago's Aqua Tower was designed with birds in mind.
Some are experimenting with new types of patterned or coated glass that birds can see. Others are rethinking glass towers entirely, experimenting with exteriors that use wood, concrete or steel rods. Blurring lines between the indoors and outdoors, some architects are creating green roofs and facades, inviting birds to nest within the building.
“Many people think about bird-friendly design as yet another limitation on buildings, yet another requirement,” said Dan Piselli, director of sustainability at the New York-based architecture firm FXCollaborative. “But there are so many design-forward buildings that perfectly exemplify that this doesn’t have to limit your design, your freedom.”
How modern buildings put birds in danger
For Deborah Laurel, principal in the firm Prendergast Laurel Architects, the realization came a couple of decades ago. She was up for an award for her firm’s renovation of the Staten Island Children’s Museum when the museum’s director mentioned to her that a number of birds had been crashing into the new addition. “I was horrified,” she said.
She embarked on a frenzy of research to learn more about bird collisions. After several years of investigation, she found there was little in the way of practical tips for architects, and she teamed up with the conservation group NYC Audubon, to develop a bird-safe building guide.
The issue, she discovered, was that technological and architectural advancements over the last half-century had in some ways transformed New York City – and most other US skylines and suburbs – into death traps for birds...
At certain times of day, tall glass towers almost blend into the sky. At other times, windows appear so pristinely clear that they are imperceptible to birds, who might try to fly though them. During the day, trees and greenery reflected on shiny building facades can trick birds, whereas at night, brightly lit buildings can confuse and bewilder them...
Pictured: A green roof on the Javits Convention Center serves as a sanctuary for birds.
The changes that could save avian lives
About a decade ago, Piselli’s firm worked on a half-billion-dollar renovation of New York’s Jacob K Javits Convention Center, a gleaming glass-clad space frame structure that was killing 4,000-5,000 birds a year. “The building was this black Death Star in the urban landscape,” Piselli said.
To make it more bird friendly, FXCollaborative (which was then called FXFowle) reduced the amount of glass and replaced the rest of it with fritted glass, which has a ceramic pattern baked into it. Tiny, textured dots on the glass are barely perceptible to people – but birds can see them. The fritted glass can also help reduce heat from the sun, keeping the building cooler and lowering air conditioning costs. “This became kind of the poster child for bird-friendly design in the last decade,” Piselli said.
The renovation also included a green roof, monitored by the NYC Audubon. The roof now serves as a sanctuary for several species of birds, including a colony of herring gulls. Living roofs have since become popular in New York and other major cities, in an inversion of the decades-long practice of fortifying buildings with anti-bird spikes. In the Netherlands, the facade of the World Wildlife Fund headquarters, a futuristic structure that looks like an undulating blob of mercury, contains nest boxes and spaces for birds and bats to live.
The use of fritted glass has also become more common as a way to save the birds and energy.
Earlier this year, Azadeh Omidfar Sawyer, an assistant professor in building technology in the Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture, working with student researchers, used open-source software to help designers create bespoke, bird-friendly glass patterns. A book of 50 patterns that Sawyer published recently includes intricate geometric lattices and abstract arrays of lines and blobs. “Any architect can pick up this book and choose a pattern they like, or they can customize it,” she said.
Pictured: The fritted glass used in Studio Gang’s expansion of Kresge College at the University of California, Santa Cruz, depicts the animals in the local ecosystem.
Builders have also been experimenting with UV-printed patterns, which are invisible to humans but perceptible to most birds. At night, conservationists and architects are encouraging buildings turn off lights, especially during migration season, when the bright glow of a city skyline can disorient birds.
And architects are increasingly integrating screens or grates that provide shade as well as visibility for birds. The 52-floor New York Times building, for example, uses fritted glass clad with ceramic rods. The spacing between the rods increases toward the top of the building, to give the impression that the building is dissolving into the sky.
Gang’s work has incorporated structures that can also serve as blinds for birders, or perches from which to observe nature. A theater she designed in Glencoe, Illinois, for example, is surrounded by a walking path made of a wood lattice, where visitors can feel like they’re up in the canopy of trees.
Pictured: The Writers Theatre, designed by Studio Gang, includes a walking path encased in wood lattice.
Rejecting the idea of the iridescent, entirely mirrored-glass building, “where you can’t tell the difference between the habitat and the sky”, Gang aims for the opposite. “I always tried to make the buildings more visible with light and shadow and geometry, to have more of a solid presence,” she said.
Gang has been experimenting with adding bird feeders around her own home in an effort to reduce collisions with windows, and she encourages other homeowners to do the same.
“I’ve found that birds slow down and stop at feeders instead of trying to fly through the glass,” she said.
While high-rise buildings and massive urban projects receive the most attention, homes and low-rise buildings account for most bird collision deaths. “The huge challenge is that glass is everywhere.” said Christine Sheppard, who directs the glass collisions program at the American Bird Conservancy (ABC). “It’s hard to know what I know and not cringe when I look at it.”
Tips for improving your own home include using stained glass or patterned decals that can help birds see a window, she said. ABC has compiled a list of window treatments and materials, ranked by how bird-safe they are.
Whether they’re large or small, the challenge of designing buildings that are safe for birds can be “liberating”, said Gang, who has become an avid birdwatcher and now carries a pair of binoculars on her morning jogs. “It gives you another dimension to try to imagine.”"
-via The Guardian, December 27, 2023
#conservation#birds#avian#ornithology#new york city#chicago#united states#architecture#green architecture#conservation biology#construction#sustainability#glass#glass windows#skyscraper#cityscape#buildings#bird conservation#birdwatching#good news#hope#“hey mc why is this post so in depth and full of pics compared to what you usually post” you ask#great question#the answer is bc I like architecture a lot#...well I like the kinds of architecture I like a lot lol#bauhaus can fight me tbh#but sustainable architecture is awesome#also this article actually came with a bunch of pics#which yknow most of them don't#cw animal death
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behold, the very first concept arts for spectre city online! i think i'll try to post concepts regularly to show my progress and also to challenge myself i guess? this is for the townspeople/playable characters - i'd imagine them to be normal kids with pumpkin heads, who can replace them in a 'carving ritual' (think like pixie hollow minigames) for different designs. maybe they put other stuff on their heads, like fruit, and there could be limited edition fruit for holidays? another option for playable characters would be ghosts, but i feel like theyd have less customisation choices. i really want faceless characters as well, because i think one of the core parts of halloween is the fact that you're not really 'yourself' - you could be in a mask, and nobody would recognise you, and you can be whoever you want. for outfits, i imagine costumes based off a variety of halloween monsters and creatures - the scaryness of the outfit would affect your 'tricking' (battle system) performance, while the cuteness or sillyness of the outfit would affect your 'treating' (trading/selling your stuff with npcs/other players) performance.
#zeno's art#spectre city online#i'll try to refine these designs also! i want a more chibi look to be honest#by the way this is most likely not going to be a real game because i cant code at all#and cannot sustain a server for an online game (i am literally a teenager)#but if it ever comes to the point where absolutely everything is decided and finalised and someone would want to make it a game themselves -#idk about legal stuff regarding the idea. but that would be pretty cool :]
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I cannot go into full depth on the inner workings of this neighbourhood but just know that Wyryn is freaking tf out
#tfw you build the perfect self sustained environment for your children to flourish and succeed n they run from home#city builders as a vauge way of saying they are very crucial to the development of urbanization in the vaaauge city#his family has a thinly veiled monopoly as theres not many other individuals who can worm their way into power like them#neighbourhood au
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More than half of all people on Earth live in cities, and that share could reach 70% by 2050. But except for public parks, there aren’t many models for nature conservation that focus on caring for nature in urban areas.
One new idea that’s gaining attention is the concept of food forests – essentially, edible parks. These projects, often sited on vacant lots, grow large and small trees, vines, shrubs and plants that produce fruits, nuts and other edible products.
Unlike community gardens or urban farms, food forests are designed to mimic ecosystems found in nature, with many vertical layers. They shade and cool the land, protecting soil from erosion and providing habitat for insects, animals, birds and bees. Many community gardens and urban farms have limited membership, but most food forests are open to the community from sunup to sundown.
As scholars who focus on conservation, social justice and sustainable food systems, we see food forests as an exciting new way to protect nature without displacing people. Food forests don’t just conserve biodiversity – they also promote community well-being and offer deep insights about fostering urban nature in the Anthropocene, as environmentally destructive forms of economic development and consumption alter Earth’s climate and ecosystems.
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