Difference between revisions of "NEWS: New Colleague Projects for 2009"

UPDATE MARCH 3 2009***

Dear Colleagues,

Two projects are in rather intense phases at the moment and any assistance you can give would be much appreciated.

1. Two colleagues are working on a paper on "Cities as Energy-Using Systems" for presentation in Copenhagen on Wednesday, the 11th of March. Any references to recent or significant research on urban form and energy use would be greatly appreciated, or any other suggestions. This is an urgent topic and a matter for influence on IPCC priorities and input into the big UN conference in Copenhagen in November. I will send the paper as an email attachment by separate cover. (Or email me at .)

Excerpts of the text are at Paper - "cities as energy-using systems"

2. Several colleagues are working on a on a pilot version of a “generative code” module for the SmartCode, a form-based code that is seeing widespread implementation in the US and in some international locales also. This is an open-source urban code platform developed by the Center for Applied Transect Studies in Miami, which includes several colleagues here. It promotes mixed use, walkability, support of transit, and other goals of low-carbon urbanism, within a Transect-based framework. I suggest this is an intriguing cross-pollination between Christopher Alexander and colleagues’ work on “bottom-up” generative strategies, and the work of Andres Duany and others to develop more formal armatures or “top-down” structures. As many examples show from existing urbanism and from natural systems, it is not so much a question of whether one or the other operates but how they combine that is the interesting question. Clearly it also has an important bearing on the climate change question, and the strategies (like coding) that are needed to deal with the challenge.

The page with more info is at Generative Module for Smart Code

OTHER UPDATES

Work by colleagues continues on key topics of coding, urban structure, and generative processes. We have several meetings planned for the coming year, including a session in June in Denver, and, we hope, a session in Portland in September. More on these soon.

We have also identified a series of linked projects that colleagues are working on, and that you might want to find out more about. The teams may have their own websites, which we will share the links for, or we will post material on the aboutus.org wiki site – more soon.

First a brief recap of the previous year. As reported before, we had a very rich and varied session at UCL in London in July, hosted by Stephen Marshall, with Bill Hillier, Mike Batty, Phil Steadman, Robert Adam, John Worthington, Paul Murrain, Yodan Rofe, Sergio Porta, Audun Engh, Bankoku Sasagawa, and a number of other colleagues and visitors. Peter Hall dropped in briefly as well. The topic was evolution in cities, and its implications.

A number of colleagues have written papers together or seen publication. Lucien Steil, Nikos Salingaros and I had a paper on incremental growth in suburbs published in the new book New Urbanism and Beyond, and Christopher Alexander, Brian Hanson and I had a chapter published on generative codes. (Other colleagues had separate chapters in that book, including Andres Duany, Bill Hillier and others.) Nikos Salingaros, Sergio Porta, Yodan Rofe and I are now working on a paper on neighborhood structure – more on this below.

We also helped to produce a conference in Oslo in September on “climate change and urban design,” looking at features of urban morphology and their contributions to adaptation and mitigation, and the policy tools available to alter the progression of this urgent threat, or make resilient adaptations to it. The gathering featured scientists, government leaders, educators and practitioners from 28 countries from all continents, with representation from the IPCC, European Environment Agency, UN-Habitat, Norwegian Ministry of the Environment, American Planning Association, Natural Resources Defense Council, Urban Land Institute, Congress for the New Urbanism and many more.

It was a very concrete application of the morphogenetic ideas we have been discussing – generative processes, codes, policy tools, other ways of shaping urban morphology and settlement, and of exploiting inherent capacity for self-organization and resilience. These are increasingly important issues of the day, surely.

We are taking forward collaborations from both events into the new year. In June we will have a meeting in Denver of a number of ESRG colleagues discussing neighborhood structure, and extending a very lively discussion from the July UCL meeting. Also at that meeting (in conjunction with the Congress for the New Urbanism annual conference) we will have additional collaboration on the climate change issue, including an “Oslo-Denver Initiative” looking at further international collaboration. This comes in the context of long-term ties the CNU has to Barack Obama and his administration, but also concerns about the sprawl-supporting direction of the current “economic stimulus.”

We are still planning a special ESRG issue of the Journal Of Urbanism, which will cover many of these issues. I will be in touch about that as the time approaches for submittal of papers and coordination of themes.

Following are projects that a number of colleagues are carrying forward. If you have interest in these, please contact the colleagues directly, or you can email me as well.

• Kyriakos Pontikis and Stephen Marshall are both working with students in their universities to write new patterns for pattern languages. This follows the belief that we have much to learn from the software world’s use of “pattern repositories” and other powerful results using more open-source methods. This kind of work will be a major focus of efforts going forward.

• Besim Hakim and Michael Mehaffy are working on a proposal for generative codes, with feedback from Nikos Salingaros, Emily Talen and Sandy Sorlien, and with the aim to publish it in the Journal of Urbanism. As you all may know, Besim has done very fine scholarship on the study of historic codes.

• Emily Talen is working on a “codes project” that will compile “an anthology of the codes, laws and related documents that have created, or sought to create, particular urban forms. Besim Hakim, Andres Duany, I and other colleagues have contributed. As the website states, “It is a searchable archive drawn from a broad array of historical documents. We have selected documents from around the world, and from all time periods.” The project is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, and is in collaboration with the Center for Applied Transect Studies, created by colleagues Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, with assistance from colleagues Sandy Sorlien and Bruce Donnelly. Emily wishes to emphasize that the project is not yet “live”, but the work in progress can be seen at http://codesproject.asu.edu/ .

• Yodan Rofe, Nikos Salingaros, Sergio Porta and I are working on a paper on neighborhood structure and the location of centers in relation to the movement economy. This topic came up at the July meeting in London, and will be continued in the June meeting in Denver. This work reviews Garden City concepts of neighborhood structure, and critiques and alternatives from Paul Murrain and others. We offer a model of variations of type that seem to bridge the divide on this issue (or so we argue).

UPDATE: This will be the subject of a major session at the CNU, with colleagues Paul Murrain, Andres Duany, Yodan Rofe, and others.

• Sandy Sorlien, Bruce Donnelly, I and others have plans to develop a “generative module” for the SmartCode, a form-based code based on Transect theory now adopted by some 22 jurisdictions, and in process in over 60 others, and developed by Andres Duany and colleagues. This generative module is a way of tying into our long-term work on generative codes with Christopher Alexander, and related synergies.

• Hajo Neis participated in the Oslo conference, and presented a paper on wholeness and sustainability. He argued that sustainability cannot be achieved without a whole-systems approach, and this was certainly true on the specific issue of climate change. He gave examples of projects that seemed to demonstrate wholeness, and the qualitative factors that were required to make the determination. This related closely to a key conclusion of the conference, that if we want people to live in low-carbon environments, they must find them qualitatively appealing and worthy of enduring care. Hajo is seeking to develop this work as part of his new research center, the Portland Urban Architecture Research Laboratory, which we hope will develop a number of links with ESRG colleagues.

• Audun Engh is participating in the Oslo-Denver Initiative as a member of the CEU board and an ESRG colleague. Audun did much of the heavy lifting to organize the Oslo conference. He has a particular interest in participation and citizen collaboration in design, and the legal and political aspects of design.

• Stuart Cowan, Kathryn Langstaff and I are collaborating on a paper with Diana Urge-Vorsatz, a coordinating lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Report (the panel’s Nobel-Prizewinning work). The paper is on cities as energy systems, and will be presented in March at the International Alliance of Research Universities scientific conference in Copenhagen, a lead-up to the December UN conference in climate change there also. This collaboration was a direct outgrowth of the Oslo conference.

• Christopher Alexander and I are working on a film about his ideas on morphogenesis and generative codes. Currently there are about three hours of footage shot for the film, and the project is expected to be edited soon. I hope to draft other ESRG colleagues to help with this and perhaps include their discussion of the ideas and their relation to other fields like software.

• We are staying in touch with colleagues in New Orleans who are taking forward the plans we developed there, including the Neighborhood Renaissance Centers. Things are moving slowly there as always, but more on this when there is significant news. The City did pass a new charter amendment that gives the plans the force of law, which was a major step forward.

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