Nifty stuff if you’re planning based on regions or watersheds, or..

“Integrated Land and Water Information System, ILWIS, the world’s most user-friendly integrated software with raster processing capabilities to work on remotely sensed satellite images and vector processing capabilities for making vector maps and countless spacial modeling abilities. Its fully integrated raster and vector approach and user-friendlyness make it particularly suitable for natural resources managers, field scientists, biologists, ecologists, etc., as well as for educators.

http://www.ilwis.org/

This may happen, and it’s just a small element of the ideas they are throwing out there, but still… The cynical can read it as “companies wil continue to socialize costs while privatizing benefits at the expense of the social infrastructure”.

Companies will likely build smaller, decentralised working centres. They may even use existing neighbourhood infrastructure – from the local coffee shop to the community centre – for flexible working arrangements.

via What’s in store for city-dwellers in 2040? | Forum For The Future.

Sounds like a very interesting read, and dealing with some hard tradeoffs that neourbanism is going to need to consider.

In his new book Cities Under Siege, published just two weeks ago, geographer Stephen Graham explores “the extension of military ideas of tracking, identification and targeting into the quotidian spaces and circulations of everyday life,” including “dramatic attempts to translate long-standing military dreams of high-tech omniscience and rationality into the governance of urban civil society.” This is just part of a “deepening crossover between urbanism and militarism,” one that will only become more pronounced, Graham fears, over time.

BLDGBLOG: Cities Under Siege.

Global meat production has tripled in the past three decades and could double its present level by 2050

via Major report reveals the environmental and social impact of the ‘livestock revolution’.

Corn ethanol doesn’t appear to be the way to go, for multiple reasons.  So no, it’s not “green”.

“The new study, published in the March issue of BioScience , finds much lower emissions from indirect land-use change than the Searchinger paper calculated but still enough to tip the balance away from corn ethanol.”

http://www.wbcsd.org/plugins/DocSearch/details.asp?type=DocDet&ObjectId=Mzc4NzM

Very cool stuff  I could want one….

Not only has the entire country gone carbon neutral, educated all of their children in environmental science and furiously built retaining walls around every island, but the government is buying up land in nearby nations as a place to retreat to when the Maldives disappears. Now it appears that the intrepid Maldivians have come up with a new strategy to fight the rising tide: creating mini floating islands!

via Waterstudio.NL’s Floating Star Shaped Resort Islands for the Maldives | Inhabitat.

Guerrilla Gardening and more.

http://www.designundersky.com/dus/2010/2/25/ludic-guerrilla-gardening-drone-warfare.html

“Operating on a scale never before attempted in this country, the city would demolish houses in some of the most desolate sections of Detroit and move residents into stronger neighborhoods. Roughly a quarter of the 139-square-mile city could go from urban to semi-rural.”

A lot of issues here, from property acquisition to end use and ownership. At this stage, haven’t seen anything on depaving or soil remediation, which would add a whole new layer into what *could* be done within this kind of framework.

One of the potential dangers in this kind of redevelopment is the encouragement of semi-rural slums to replace the decaying neighborhoods – perhaps an improvement, but not much. On the other hand, this could lead to semi-planned resilient communities, and a wide variety of business opportunities, including large-scale reuse and recycling of construction materials.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100308/ap_on_bi_ge/us_downsizing_detroit

How have I missed this?

“What is “Seasteading”? Seasteading is creating permanent dwellings on the ocean – homesteading the high seas. A seastead, like in the picture to the right, is a structure meant for permanent occupation on the ocean.”

via A Brief Introduction to the Seasteading Institute | Seasteading Institute.

While this piece has a somewhat odd tone to me, in terms of catching the lessons I think it’s a win. There are far more lessons, of course – about building refugee camps, and disaster relief, and the limits of isolation – but it’s good as far as it goes.  I would like the narrator to try and navigate without the “symbolic” streetlights on a duststorm night, but nevermind.

As the Metropolis theme develops over the next year, expect to see more here about urban design, housing innovations, and related topics.

via YouTube – 5 Things Cities Can Learn from Burning Man.