Archinect - News

Can Cleveland combat climate change with compact communities?

2016-10-18T12:54:00-04:00

Although Cleveland often serves more as a punchline than a solution (the Cuyahoga River caught fire in 1969 due to pollution), a climate change conference convened by the United Nations and currently being held in Quito, Ecuador sees new potential in the city. As StreetsBlog reports, if Cleveland can transform its current suburbia into denser neighborhoods, the metropolis could serve as a model for numerous water and climate-challenged cities in how to adapt to the demands of an increasingly populated globe. As a paper entitled "Where to put the next billion people" states:

"Cleveland could play a significant role in the fight against climate change by developing a strategy for more compact communities and with a more open and encouraging immigration policy, the report concludes.

The influx of immigrants should probably be planned better.

Cleveland’s outer suburbs and nearby rural towns hold the key. If the suburbs can figure out strategies to retrofit themselves as dense, walkable com...

How is water used in California?

2015-08-25T12:12:00-04:00

No California resident can claim ignorance of the current drought conditions: things are bad, and they'll probably stay that way for a while. Governor Jerry Brown called for statewide water restrictions earlier this year, and news coverage of dwindling supplies, dry rivers and sinking farmland have flooded the local and national media for months. While the drought is on every Californian’s mind in some way, it can still be hard to imagine the sheer physical extent of our water: where it comes from, and how exactly we use it. Making drought conditions tangible can be difficult for anyone, in or out of California.

In the final week of Archinect’s open call for submissions to our Dry Futures competition, we’ve compiled some helpful stats and figures for better understanding water use in California. These are basic numbers, intended to be used as a framing context for how water flows through the state. But first, let’s clarify some water-based terminology, courtesy of the US Geological S...