This is a brief synopsis for a thesis topic idea that I am interested in. Can I please get feedback.
I appreciate the time.
What is sustainability? In today’s world, it is a word that is often thrown around as meaning good for the environment or “green.” Sustainability is a loaded word that means so much more than just sustaining the environment. In urbanism, sustainability must include at least the four elements listed as: cultural, social, economic and environmental. By a synthesis of urbanism and sustainability including these four elements, we can come to the realization of true sustainable urbanism.
Sustainable urbanism is the next step in a staircase of prior movements spearheading the movement for logical urbanism. The smart growth, new urbanism, and green building movements all include great principles and philosophies, but come up short when it comes to long term solutions, or in this case, using all four of the elements vital to making sustainable urbanism. You cannot just slap a solar panel on a roof of a Wal-Mart and call it sustainable.
By bringing all three of these, different but similar, philosophies and principles together, a design philosophy that allows and creates truly sustainable urbanism, can come to fruition.
By knitting together these three movements and deriving a new set of guidelines and principles, from which are manifested from previous philosophies as well as an outlook for the future, we begin to set up a new charter, a new set of rules to design by. A set of rules that not only reduces the environmental harm but makes great enhancements to the quality of life endured. Only by using the lessons learned from past initiatives as well as an educated outlook for the future, can we create a new framework in which we can create truly sustainable urbanism.
Framework-
-To explore examples in American Urbanism where an element was missing and made a very evident difference. And begin to ask the question, “what if this element was in place? How would this “place” work today?”
-urban ghetto
-suburbs -Lacking concentration, density, transit, historic architecture, and highly developed infrastructure like older center cities.
-To begin to derive a new set of design guidelines and principles to which designers, planners, and architects can work from to achieve a truly sustainable urbanism.
-To begin to produce a vocabulary of the necessary elements of urbanism.
-To then synthesize these new sustainable principles and elements of urbanism to create a charter that can then produce a model for sustainable urbanism.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
-R. Buckminster Fuller
To create a model from which these guidelines and elements of urbanism can be synthesized to produce sustainable urbanism here in Fayetteville, AR. The model will prove that the principles and elements can all work together to create a new place of “community.” This model would prove that with the deriving of present, past, and future movements and their principles, we can create a new guide for sustainable urbanism. The model would show that a new, enhanced quality of life is created, sustained with a far greater environmental impact.
In brief, I think your desire to tackle one of the most tossed-around terms (sustainability) in terms of urbanism, and to give it more robust meaning is admirable and highly relevant. My main critique comes in your methodology and outcome: I find them to be of the same cloth as those frameworks which gave us ideas like pv panels on a wall-mart (or even the wall-mart) in the first place.
If we have come to understand anything about urbanism and cities, it is that that which makes them bad (it's ad-hoc, sporadic, reflexive nature) also makes them good. The question becomes about the general or anticipated trajectory of that ad-hoc growth. The idea of being able to suss out or isolate a single condition which one could make meaningful assumptions about seems problematic in that the messy, interconnected nature of urban areas makes for many obfuscations and indirect, often hidden relationships.
The idea of a charter, also, is an artifact of this desire to understand cities this way. We think if we simply identify the problem, we can then legislate its corrective measure. The most glaring example of this being New Urbanism. But cities, social relationships and cultural production defy such dichotomous understanding of urbanity.
It seems as if models now are best seen in specific projects, where constraints and conditions are localized and specific, not in blanket charters or manifestos. If we can understand the regulatory, social, economic, and environmental forces at work on a single place (take the wall mart with the pv panels) and then operate in a way that suggests a positive potential outcomes for an ad-hoc growth, we can design trajectories instead of charters.
good luck on your thesis.
ken renaud
university of colorado/
8 track architecture
I have a few sketches of a "sustainable wal-mart" design I can send you.
Wal*Mart has made a lot of poor product choices and if you have been to one lately... the recession is hitting especially hard and even despite people not having not money, most consumers are still making better choices in terms of quality and origin. So, it is a one-two knockout.
One of the biggest things Wal*Mart has going for it is its financial infrastructure. In terms of a money changer, each individual Wal*Mart has enormous amounts cash on hand and has the ability to back that up. What does this mean? This means Wal*Mart can use its cash flow for other more subtle practices... it can be a landlord, a catalyst for a small urban core, a utility payment processor, et cetera. Unlike most companies, Wal*Mart actually has enough money to borrow against for redevelopment projects and to break into the practice of city building.
Let me know if you'd like to see them.
Apr 4, 09 11:06 am ·
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Senior Thesis Topic Idea
This is a brief synopsis for a thesis topic idea that I am interested in. Can I please get feedback.
I appreciate the time.
What is sustainability? In today’s world, it is a word that is often thrown around as meaning good for the environment or “green.” Sustainability is a loaded word that means so much more than just sustaining the environment. In urbanism, sustainability must include at least the four elements listed as: cultural, social, economic and environmental. By a synthesis of urbanism and sustainability including these four elements, we can come to the realization of true sustainable urbanism.
Sustainable urbanism is the next step in a staircase of prior movements spearheading the movement for logical urbanism. The smart growth, new urbanism, and green building movements all include great principles and philosophies, but come up short when it comes to long term solutions, or in this case, using all four of the elements vital to making sustainable urbanism. You cannot just slap a solar panel on a roof of a Wal-Mart and call it sustainable.
By bringing all three of these, different but similar, philosophies and principles together, a design philosophy that allows and creates truly sustainable urbanism, can come to fruition.
By knitting together these three movements and deriving a new set of guidelines and principles, from which are manifested from previous philosophies as well as an outlook for the future, we begin to set up a new charter, a new set of rules to design by. A set of rules that not only reduces the environmental harm but makes great enhancements to the quality of life endured. Only by using the lessons learned from past initiatives as well as an educated outlook for the future, can we create a new framework in which we can create truly sustainable urbanism.
Framework-
-To explore examples in American Urbanism where an element was missing and made a very evident difference. And begin to ask the question, “what if this element was in place? How would this “place” work today?”
-urban ghetto
-suburbs -Lacking concentration, density, transit, historic architecture, and highly developed infrastructure like older center cities.
-To begin to derive a new set of design guidelines and principles to which designers, planners, and architects can work from to achieve a truly sustainable urbanism.
-To begin to produce a vocabulary of the necessary elements of urbanism.
-To then synthesize these new sustainable principles and elements of urbanism to create a charter that can then produce a model for sustainable urbanism.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
-R. Buckminster Fuller
To create a model from which these guidelines and elements of urbanism can be synthesized to produce sustainable urbanism here in Fayetteville, AR. The model will prove that the principles and elements can all work together to create a new place of “community.” This model would prove that with the deriving of present, past, and future movements and their principles, we can create a new guide for sustainable urbanism. The model would show that a new, enhanced quality of life is created, sustained with a far greater environmental impact.
In brief, I think your desire to tackle one of the most tossed-around terms (sustainability) in terms of urbanism, and to give it more robust meaning is admirable and highly relevant. My main critique comes in your methodology and outcome: I find them to be of the same cloth as those frameworks which gave us ideas like pv panels on a wall-mart (or even the wall-mart) in the first place.
If we have come to understand anything about urbanism and cities, it is that that which makes them bad (it's ad-hoc, sporadic, reflexive nature) also makes them good. The question becomes about the general or anticipated trajectory of that ad-hoc growth. The idea of being able to suss out or isolate a single condition which one could make meaningful assumptions about seems problematic in that the messy, interconnected nature of urban areas makes for many obfuscations and indirect, often hidden relationships.
The idea of a charter, also, is an artifact of this desire to understand cities this way. We think if we simply identify the problem, we can then legislate its corrective measure. The most glaring example of this being New Urbanism. But cities, social relationships and cultural production defy such dichotomous understanding of urbanity.
It seems as if models now are best seen in specific projects, where constraints and conditions are localized and specific, not in blanket charters or manifestos. If we can understand the regulatory, social, economic, and environmental forces at work on a single place (take the wall mart with the pv panels) and then operate in a way that suggests a positive potential outcomes for an ad-hoc growth, we can design trajectories instead of charters.
good luck on your thesis.
ken renaud
university of colorado/
8 track architecture
I have a few sketches of a "sustainable wal-mart" design I can send you.
Wal*Mart has made a lot of poor product choices and if you have been to one lately... the recession is hitting especially hard and even despite people not having not money, most consumers are still making better choices in terms of quality and origin. So, it is a one-two knockout.
One of the biggest things Wal*Mart has going for it is its financial infrastructure. In terms of a money changer, each individual Wal*Mart has enormous amounts cash on hand and has the ability to back that up. What does this mean? This means Wal*Mart can use its cash flow for other more subtle practices... it can be a landlord, a catalyst for a small urban core, a utility payment processor, et cetera. Unlike most companies, Wal*Mart actually has enough money to borrow against for redevelopment projects and to break into the practice of city building.
Let me know if you'd like to see them.
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