The R4 SustainabiliTEA! Public Consultation on Waste at Concordia Public Event

Thursday, October 18

4pm – 6pm

Library Building Atrium, Concordia SGW Campus

Join us for the first sustainabiliTEA of the year!!!!!

The SustainabiliTEA is a monthly event organized by the working groups of Sustainable Concordia to gather the community in a casual, tea drinking setting, for some discussion on sustainability!

R4 and the Zero Waste Campaign will be hosting the first of the year, raising the question: If you’re not for zero waste, then how much waste are you for?

This informal community discussion is an opportunity to learn about Concordia’s waste stream! Join us for a cup of tea and a short introduction given by R4 representatives, to provide context on current initiatives and issues at the university and a visual presentation of the data from the annual university waste audit.

Then, it is your turn! By breaking into groups focused on specific parts of waste output on campus, help brainstorm what else we can be doing!

This is an event to involve the community in making plans and taking definitive action! Join us to participate or to just enjoy your tea and listen.

And here is a relevant blog post entitled  Poop, Pee, and Efficiency

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Majora Carter – Update

First posted about her in November of 2008. This woman is awesome!

Majora Carter to launch national brand for local produce

BY CHRISTINA ASQUITH

Born and raised in the South Bronx, Majora Carter is best known for leading the effort to create the South Bronx Greenway: 11 miles of bike and pedestrian paths that connect the rivers and neighborhoods to the rest of the city. In 2001, when few people were talking about sustainability in poor neighborhoods, she pioneered one of the nation’s first urban green-collar job training and placement systems. Her organization, Sustainable South Bronx, advocates new policies and legislation that fuel demand for green jobs in marginalized neighborhoods, focusing on intensive urban forestation, green building, and creating parks and water-permeable open spaces.

Currently, Carter runs her own consulting firm, hosts the Peabody Award-winning special public radio series The Promised Land, and serves on the boards of The Wilderness Society and the U.S. Green Building Council. Her work has earned numerous honors, including a MacArthur “genius” Fellowship, spots on on Fast Company‘s list of the 100 Most Creative People in Business andEssence magazine’s list of 25 Most Influential African Americans, and a New York Post Liberty Medal for Lifetime Achievement.

Q. Your message has spread well beyond the South Bronx. What are you working on now?

A. I am putting all of the pieces together in order to launch a national brand of locally grown produce — everything from the most efficient hydroponic growing systems, brand identity, USDA support, political allies, relationships with institutional buyers, and investors. I want to redirect some of the capital flows in the food business to revitalize underutilized industrial space and people.

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Refurbished Street Cars A Hit In North American Cities

Do any old salvageable street cars exist in Montreal?

Photo Thomas Hawk

Hot tram! Old trolleys are the new classic cars [SLIDESHOW]

A Brookville-restored streetcar in San Francisco. While they have the look and feel of historic streetcars, the restored trolleys are equipped for modern day needs, can have air conditioning, are ADA compliant and meet modern safety standards. Photo credit: Rick Laubscher.

Restored Streetcars Now Desirable

To the delight of many, old streetcars are being restored to their former glory and put back into transit service in New Orleans, Philadelphia and Portland.

“A unique industry is flourishing in Brookville, Pa., an old lumber town about 80 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. The sounds of buzzing saws are emanating from a modern-looking warehouse on the grounds of the Brookville Equipment Corp. (BEC). Inside, workers are cutting through the body of a streetcar that’s clearly seen better days. Sitting next to it on the factory floor is an old yellow streetcar, polished to look new. It basically is. BEC is in the business of restoring old streetcars, and these days, that’s a booming business.”

“Behind many of these streetcar projects is the desire to revitalize neighborhoods. When Portland built its line in 2001, the city hoped it would encourage transit-oriented development. The line has done just that. Today, it is credited with leading to $3.5 billion in new construction, 10,000 residential units, and more than 5 million square feet of office and hotel space. Even though it’s still under construction, the New Orleans Streetcar project has already stimulated hotel renovations, new apartment construction and retail projects along Loyola Avenue. The city currently operates three streetcar lines using vintage and replica trolleys, which the city’s transit authority calls “a piece of movable New Orleans history.””

Full story.

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3 Links

“According to its Wikipedia entry, 22 percent of Paducah’s population was living below the poverty line as of 2000, including 34 percent of those under age 18. Those numbers have surely worsened since the recession hit.”
Arts-driven revitalization in Kentucky – yes, Kentucky

“You’re talking about a way of thinking about how local government operates and makes decisions that is just really, really different from how it’s done in the U.S”
Detroit, Midwest leaders visit European cities on rebound

Is Montreal’s Underground City a sustainable success?
Building a better winter city

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Turcot Walk A Success

Was a beautiful day for a walk. Being prehistoricentric I won’t have any pictures for a bit, but would be glad to post any images or videos people would like to send along. And I must compliment the organisers for putting together a remarkable event!

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March Today!

Just a reminder that the march through Saint Henri is today, April 19, 2009, starting at 2 locations, Lionel Groulx Metro and 780 Saint Remi at 1pm.

Thanks to Jacob Larsen over at Spacing I noticed this article by Henry Aubin from a couple of weeks ago that I missed at the time. I have to admit there was a time when I felt like the lone weirdo in the darkness on the edge of town ranting and raving about what seemed to be an astonishing lack of clarity to all these transportation projects for the island of Montreal – does the right hand know what the left is doing? I sort of asked. What got me going was how painfully obvious, at least to me (wink), it was that there was absolutely zero cohesiveness to all these projects, and the projects themselves were indeed nothing more than realizations of concepts that were 40 or more years old! Turns out I wasn’t going crazy. Phew!

See you there

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Detroit And The $100.00 House

New American Dream?

For Sale: The $100 House

By TOBY BARLOW

Published: March 7, 2009

Detroit

Sophia Martineck

RECENTLY, at a dinner party, a friend mentioned that he’d never seen so many outsiders moving into town. This struck me as a highly suspect statement. After all, we were talking about Detroit, home of corrupt former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, beleaguered General Motors and the 0-16 Lions. Compared with other cities’ buzzing, glittering skylines, ours sits largely abandoned, like some hulking beehive devastated by colony collapse. Who on earth would move here?

Then again, I myself had moved to Detroit, from Brooklyn. For $100,000, I bought a town house that sits downtown in the largest and arguably the most beautiful Mies van der Rohe development ever built, an island of perfect modernism forgotten by the rest of the world.

Two other guests that night, a couple in from Chicago, had also just invested in some Detroit real estate. That weekend Jon and Sara Brumit bought a house for $100.

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Curitiba, Brasil

This city of 1.8 million people is world renowned as a model of sustainable urban planning, and has been referred to as one of the most innovative cities in the world. While Curitiba has opened eyes globally with all kinds of interesting planning strategies – such as turning a floodplain into a park rather than spend billions on a levee (that may not necessarily work, as eventually happened in New Orleans)- it is their public transit system that has been very inspirational. From wiki, ” The system, used by 85% of Curitiba’s population, is the source of inspiration for the TransMilenio in Bogotá, Colombia, Metrovia in Guayaquil, Ecuador,as well as the Orange Line of Los Angeles, California, and for a future transportation system in Panama City, Panama.”  And that despite the fact that Curitiba has one of the highest car ownership ratios in the country!

But it took a leader with the courage to go against the grain to get Curitiba doing things efficiently in a different way. Jaime Lerner became mayor in 1988 and was given money to build a subway system. But the overall cost seemed too high – even “light rail” was deemed expensive – so they decided to go with a bus system that maximized availabilty to all districts and neighborhoods.

Here is a typical bus stop on the system. Passengers  pay at the entrance to the tube and enter the bus  on a level plane which facilitates boarding and unloading and leaves the driver with nothing more to do than just drive the bus.

It is kind of hard to picture that on Ste. Catherine street  in winter isn’t it? But that doesn’t mean that the basic ideas are not usable here. Perhaps one of the most significant aspects of this system is that it actually makes a profit. That is correct. No endless government subsidization.

The system is not without it’s critics, most of whom say the it would not work in large American or European systems. But what is the difference between practical matters and just plain old political resistance to change? Most North American cities are glued in to networks of development that maximize profits for the builders of the system with an almost naive hope that when  done, everyone will think it is wonderful,  despite the fact that building costs will almost always create an insurmountable deficit for the system before it has even opened. We need to learn from Curitiba as part of reshaping our thinking.

Here is Jaime Lerner on sustainable cities.

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Passive Homes

Article in the New York Times about Passive Housing. With the European Parliament proposing that passive house standards become the norm by 2011, it’s probably safe to say that central Europe is way ahead of North America when it comes sustainable buildings.

DARMSTADT, Germany — From the outside, there is nothing unusual about the stylish new gray and orange row houses in the Kranichstein District, with wreaths on the doors and Christmas lights twinkling through a freezing drizzle. But these houses are part of a revolution in building design: There are no drafts, no cold tile floors, no snuggling under blankets until the furnace kicks in. There is, in fact, no furnace.

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Woods # 3 Or Riviere a L’Orme

Crazy kind of situation on the West Island in Sainte Anne de Bellevue where a developer actually owns one of the islands 10 “ecoterritories”. And would like to develop it, of course. There is however a movement afoot to buy the land in order to preserve it which should be the only option worth talking about and the only right thing to do.

Story here.

The Ten Ecoterritories.

The sad part of all this is that we even have to discuss these matters. The city said a few years ago that it was going to integrate ecoterritory, along with “green” strategies into it’s “Master Plan”. But we have seen that plan become nothing more than a vague reference package for good ideas come election time. The Tremblay administration had floundered, hemmed, and hawed on environmental and citizen issues, while giving developers unusually vast powers. The good news is that there is strong citizen support to save and protect Woods # 3, um, well, maybe that is not good news if one looks around at projects approved in recent times.

Stay tuned.

Rivière à l’Orme and its principal tributaries. The forest corridor bordering Riv-

ière à l’Orme serves a strategic link for the fauna and flora of the three neigh-

bouring nature parks (Anse-à-l’Orme, Bois-de-la-Roche and Cap-Saint-Jacques).

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Turcot Park?

Well, I have been saying for three years that there is a wonderful opportunity to do something truly great and of value at Turcot Yards and today I read Jean Fortier saying this,

” “It’s an unbelievable opportunity…the potential is there to make something beautiful. [The yards] are a black hole for Montreal,” he said. “At least 60 percent of the land is public property,” owned by different levels of government. Autoroute 20 through LaSalle would effectively become a parkway, enhancing the city’s image in the eyes of visitors driving in from Trudeau International Airport.”

Not that I see it as a black hole because the glass is always half full at Turcot for me, at least until they officially actually go ahead and do something dumb and totally uninspired such as the current plan to rebuild the Interchange and effectively waste hundreds and hundreds of acres of possibilities.

Please read, Turcot Park? Will the Feds get on board or is it a pipe dream? in The Suburban.

To view the entire plan, visit here.

This plan, however, does not take in a truly global overview such as how the Falaise Saint Jacques can become the “connector” for green corridors and bike path networks on the west side of the city. Still, it is indeed light years ahead of what has been presented by Transport Quebec thus far.

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Budget Sustainabilty Money Disappoints

The provincial government has announced that it will spend 133 million dollars in the coming years on sustainability programs. That might sound all good and proper especially as they claim that luminaries such as Al Gore and David Suzuki have praised Quebec’s environmental programs, but it’s really like giving someone spare change and expecting homelessness to go away.

There are billion dollar projects all over the province these days, including building a dam on the Rupert River, which will divert the world’s last great “virgin” river and create numerous environmental problems all so Quebec can follow the remarkably naive dream that it will become to hydroelectricity what the Saudis are to oil (hey, ya never know…). They were talking like that in the early 60′s.

A look at a good relief map will show that Quebec is indeed a massive freshwater reserve and we need a much stronger commitment to preserving and managing that water for now and for the future.

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Sustainable Stormwater Management

Terrific award winning project designed by Kevin Robert Perry for Portland, Orgegon, that recycles storm water locally instead of routing it to expensive treatment facilitities.

Please read this post over at Pruned to see how it works.

When I talk about the ridiculous lack of  creativity in contemporary projects planned in Montreal, this is the kind of thing that I find absurdly missing. Sustainability is not covering a thing in trees and shrubs and little grassy areas. It is about making places as self supporting as possible, particularly in regard to how energy is brought in, used, conserved, recycled, reused, and let out. There is no longer any point in building large scale projects that do not have an inherent sustainability plan, yet we see our politicians constantly on the bandwagon over projects with built in obsolescence. We need to be trying things like this.

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How Green Is My Parking Garage?

Last year Santa Monica, California, opened what is being called the world’s first sustainable, LEED certified, parking garage. The project is not without controversy as some suggest that the 29 million dollar price tag actually provides little bang for the buck, while some feel that it is aesthetically abhorring, and others feel that a sustainable parking garage for fossil fuel burning vehicles is a total contradiction.

I don’t mind the look, it is a lot better than the plain concrete structures most of us are used to. It is expensive, but this sort of thing has to get started somewhere. If anything, this project stands to inspire other cities to reconsider the aesthetics of parking. The down side is, of course, that it does not discourage gas burning vehicles in any way. Perhaps there can be reduced rates for hybrids and no fees for electric vehicles?

With some small retail space on the ground floor and a cafe on the main plaza the structure intends to facilitate pedestrian traffic in the area. There are also ocean views. Only in California, of course.

Locally, with so many huge projects in the planning, it will be interesting to see how parking is dealt with in sustainability terms. Whether it is the hospital on the old Glen Yards or Griffintown, let us assess urban development projects with automobile practice as part of the main criteria.

Treehugger Review 

The Look Out News 

The Architect’s Web Page 

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Golf Dorval/ Pierre Elliot Trudeau Airport

I have never been a big fan of golf courses. Building them has usually meant the destruction of a forest or, in the extreme, ancient burial grounds. Still, they are a lot better than a big box mall with endless parking. In the last few years I have visited a few parts of the green spaces that run mainly on the north and west sides of Pierre Elliot Trudeau International Airport, and this summer I discovered the west section of Golf Dorval.

The controversy here is that the airport needs to expand and it is merely taking some of the land it owns back for those purposes. On the other hand environmentalists, and some golfers, have objected that this land contains valuable wetlands that are home to migratory birds such as geese and that the land also contains important streams and other animals. I have personally seen red foxes in 2 locations.

SOS Dorval, a citizens coalition, sent a petition signed by an impressive 20,000 people to the federal government. What followed is an all too familiar passing of the buck between the feds and the airport, although the airport quite arrogantly says it is simply taking it’s own land back and no one can do anything about it.

Of course none of this would be happening if Mirabel airport had not failed so spectacularly.

Here is an article from last January in The Chronicle that outlines some of the issues. And more recently here.

The Green Coalition also has some documentation on their site (scroll down a bit).

In the fall of 2006 I took this shot which verifies that this was a stopping point for Canada Geese. They are almost impossible to see here but there are at least 60 of them.

In the meantime the bulldozers have arrived. Here is what that land looks like as of September viewed from the far right.

The golf course has condensed itself from 36 holes to 18. Here is a short tour of the area above.

Stay tuned.

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