geog 346: day 22 fusing the natural and built environments

GEOG 346: Day 22Fusing the Natural and Built

Environments

Housekeeping Items

Film on mining impacts

• Next Tuesday night, there will be a film, “Defensora,” on the conflict between a Canadian mining company and an indigenous Guatemalan community. It starts at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 1st in Building 200, Room 203.

Housekeeping Items• I promised to show you some images of Barcelona architect,

Antoni Gaudi.

Can There Be A Peaceful Co-Existence Between Nature and the City?

• Some resources: http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_pawlyn_using_nature_s_genius_in_architecture and http://www.ted.com/talks/janine_benyus_biomimicry_in_action.

Fusing the Natural and Built Environments• There are a whole array of strategies:GreenbeltsGreenways/ core and corridor systems in the city that serve

as habitat/ wildlife migration corridors and also as alternative transportation pathways

Parks of varying degrees of wildnessConservation subdivisionsBotanical gardensJapanese gardens/ quiet oases in the cityCommunity gardensGreen buildings, green roofs, “living buildings”Alternative stormwater management systems (swales, etc.)Living walls

Randall Arendt on Conservation Design

• He contrasts conventional subdivision design with conservation subdivision design. Conventional design is “where all the land is divided into houselots and streets, with the only open space typically being undevelopable wetlands, steep slopes, floodplains, and stormwater management areas” – or SLOAP, Space Left Over After Planning.• In these subdivisions, there are usually few places to walk, forcommunity events, or children to play.•The Planned Residential Developments (PRDs)of the 1960s were somewhat more flexible inlayout, but they didn’t provide better treatmentof open space.

[See http://site.ebrary.com/lib/viu/docDetail.action?docID=10196536]

Randall Arendt on Conservation Design• In conservation subdivision design, at least 50% of the site is reserved for open space, and half of that in a relatively natural state. The other half can be used as playing fields or parkland for picnics, etc.•The half of the land that is developed contains as many units as would exist in a conventional subdivision – that is, to say, the development is “density neutral.” It achieves this either through narrow, smaller lots and narrowerhouses or through duplexes, townhouses, orother denser forms of housing.• The key thing is to select the conservationlands first.•See next page for contrasting examples .

Conventional Design

Conservation Design

Role Play• Context: Vancouver, which is undergoing a high rate of

change, given its attractiveness as a world city and as a profitable place to development and speculate on real estate.

• Four Groups: 1)developers; 2)city officials (council members and city administrators); 3)environmentalists; 4)neighbourhood groups alarmed by the pace of change and concerned with affordability issues.

• I will randomly assign you to a group. Determine what the goals and outlook of your group are. What is it you want and why, and how do you justify/ rationalize that?

• Try to negotiate a constructive solution that satisfies all parties.