We won’t have the money or cheap energy needed to fix this slowly collapsing legacy of steel, concrete, and macadam. We will fill the potholes, and rebuild the occasional bridge, but we are going to have to imagine new transportation and energy approaches that leave the current infrastructure to fall down.

via Our Failing Infrastructure | Underpaid Genius.

Stowe Boyd has some solid thoughts on our infrastructure situation.  The issue goes beyond transportation and energy, though they attract most of the attention. Water supplies, drainage, and flood control are equally vulnerable to deterioration – and our national water systems are in notably poor shape.  Certainly conservation can help, and while “smart” materials can also help in terms of   future utility, so can some older tech.

This comes at a time when a leading Republican candidate for President says she believes the states should be responsible for repairs. It’s hard not to read that as indicating that infrastructure spending will continue to be blocked at the national level.

At the same time, there is increasing pressure on cash-strapped municipalities to privatize their infrastructure, as Dylan Ratigan has reported so well. It’s not unreasonable to assume that, absent Federal funds, these sales will tend to occur in the net-deficit states. Many of which, not so coincidentally, are  more dependent on transportation, flood control, and energy infrastructure than most of the rest of the country.

The privatization trend is about as non-resilient economically for a region as it can get. Private investment is designed to make a profit, and that means additional funds flowing out of the region, rather than being reinvested locally. At best, this makes a region marginally poorer – at worst, it turns it into an economic colony.  Any municipal region in these circumstances needs to think hard about how to deal with the likely fallout in the near future.

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Except the graphic to the left is from the report they referenced. It’s not that each of those markets is growing faster than California – it’s that altogether they FINALLY are.

A bit depressing that Dixie is still nearly solar-free, and New Mexico is not taking advantage of one of the few renewable assets it has to the degree it should. Poor states don’t do solar, apparently.

http://www.blogdash.com/publication/blog_claim/blog_claim.png?s=e671626c0d5d7b6432f0ea034d3ed877

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The response was overwhelming. Submissions included not only existing container buildings, but also new designs that were created specially for the exhibition: original, practicable, fictitious, sensible, fantastic, minimalist, exotic, pragmatic, futuristic—the breadth of submissions was very wide. Two dozen of these designs have been reconstructed as models on a scale of 1:5 for the ‘Container Architecture’ exhibition; the highest of the models breaks through the ceiling of the museum. Over 100 designs were submitted for consideration and every one of them will be included in a frieze of pictures running around the walls of the exhibition space. A catalogue of the exhibition will be published.

NRW-Forum Düsseldorf – Ausstellungen – Preview: Container Architecture (english).

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via The Land Art Generator Initiative: Fields of Windstalks Harvest Kinetic Energy From the Wind.

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Water has long been the poor relation in the sustainable development family.   Although diarrhea caused by dirty water is the second biggest killer of children under five, funding for water and sanitation declined from an already low 8% of total development assistance to just 5% between 1997 and 2008, according to a 2010 UN report.  And most of that does not go to the world’s poorest countries, or people.  Providing water and basic sanitation to those most in need clearly remains a low political priority.  But without it communities will never escape poverty, and money spent on other sectors, such as education and health, may ultimately be in vain.

Turning the Tides on World Water Day.

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‘Where does the sea water drain?’ he asked. ‘This is now radioactive waste water. Has there been any measurement of its radiation effect?

‘I am interested to know how this water is being disposed, if it is being disposed or just allowed to drain to sea. That is the hidden part of this catastrophe.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368357/Japan-tsunami-Staff-evacuated-smoke-rises-nuclear-reactor.html#ixzz1HGjcIDU4

This is, indeed, a hidden part of the disaster. Another issue is the land itself – if the soil is or has been saturated with seawater since the tsunami, particles can disperse horizontally in a much wider area than the plant.

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“I think we may just be scratching the surface of what can be achieved by combining existing knowledge and data from the climate and agriculture communities,” Lobell said. “Hopefully this will help catalyze some more effort in this area.”

http://news.discovery.com/earth/climate-change-and-corn-a-bad-combo-in-africa-110321.html

While the results of this are not promising for the staple crop in East Africa, I want to highlight the way these things came together. Often it’s cross-discipline collation or the juxtaposition of two or more pieces of information that yields useful answers. And how to do that – the skills and practices of  ”be a generalist” – aren’t much taught anymore. Bucky Fuller used to point out that the US Naval Academy once taught generalism, but it too has succumbed to the specialist notion.

The loss of generalists is increasingly expensive in lost opportunities. But because these are “forward” losses instead of direct financial losses, they don’t show up on anyone’s balance sheet.  if our society was run by generalists, or strategists, we might have noticed that a while ago. Since it’s run by economists, we’re completely unaware of the issue.

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“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/

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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.

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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.

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