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Curated by:
Lisa Drogin | a University of Michigan Urban and Regional Planning Graduate Student studying Physical Planning, Urban Design, and Neighborhood Development. //
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via GOOD | New York Turns the Spotlight on North Brooklyn’s Creative Communities
“Love them or hate them, it’s undeniable that the North Brooklyn neighborhoods Williamsburg and Greenpoint have served as a laboratory of creativity for longer than a decade. Urban activists in the trendy enclaves have created models for more collaborative, locally focused economies, mapping out a blueprint for a sustainable approach to urban life. Amplify Brooklyn, an exhibit and event series officially opening tonight, will explore the work and ideas generated in those neighborhoods. Workshops will showcase organizations like Green Map System, which uses mapping to promote sustainable community development, and ioby, a social media and fundraising site for activists that’s debuting a new toolkit for neighborhood problems…
The exhibit is part of a two-year initiative called Amplifying Creative Communities, which investigated Manhattan’ Lower East Side last year before shifting the focus across the East River for this year’s Amplify Brooklyn. Graduate students and faculty affiliated with Parsons’ Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability Lab interviewed leaders from 30 different community organizations about socially innovative solutions to urban problems, from community gardening to alternative transportation….”

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studio630:

Creating Resilient Cities in-Step with the Seasons // Melissa Sterry
“The English proverb ‘It never rains, but it pours’ is apt to describe one of the great sustainability challenges facing humanity in the 21st Century. Earlier this year the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Elisabeth Rasmusson stated, ‘The intensity and frequency of extreme weather events is increasing, and this trend is only set to continue. With all probability, the number of those affected and displaced will rise as human-induced climate change comes into full force’…
The scenario in the US is unfolding worldwide, with Asia hit hardest, having been subjected to a relentless assault of major flooding events in a matter of years. Asia is no stranger to major flooding events, indeed several of the largest flooding events in recorded history took place there, including the 1931 Central China floods, of which the death toll is unknown, but which ranges between a few hundred thousand up to 4 million lives lost. This flooding event starkly illustrated the proverb with which I began this feature, for it was not a stand-alone natural disaster and was instead preceded by a two-year drought.
The seesaw weather effect is well documented by both climatologists and meteorologists. For example, throughout the 17th Century Britain was plagued by a combination of severe summer droughts and exceptionally cold winters, a number of which were so cold that the River Thames famously froze over (1620-21, 1635, 1648-49, 1662-7, 1677, 1683-4, 1688-89, 1690-99).
However, it’s not only in scientific and historical documents that we find reference to ‘double-whammy’ weather events. There’s an old English folklore saying ‘when berries be many in October, beware a hard winter.’ Those that casually dismiss this belief ought consider this: Britain has witnessed large autumnal wild berry harvests this past couple of years and did indeed proceed to experience usually cold winters. Similar nature-related folklore sayings include ‘If autumn leaves are slow to fall, prepare for a cold winter’ and ‘when birds and badgers are fat in October, beware a hard winter.’
References to natural ecosystems’ ability to anticipate meteorological events are not exclusive to English folklore, for an ancient Chinese proverb states ‘Spring is sooner recognized by plants than by men’. Which raises the question ‘how’? How is a wild berry bush able to accurately predict future weather events? Clearly such flora is in an on-going conversation with its environment, sensing subtle changes in heat and humidity and quite possibly endowed with a genetic memory that enables it to recognise and prepare for meteorological events. In order to understand why a berry bush may fruit more abundantly prior to a harsh winter, we need to recognise the fact that its long-term survival is dependent upon mutualistic symbiotic relationships with other species, including insects, birds and mammals which pollinate its flowers and spread its seeds. Therein, it makes sense for a berry bush to help sustain these species by enabling them to gorge on a bountiful harvest, therein increase their fat reserves, prior to an extreme cold event.”
In Kansas, there is a farmer’s tale that you can expect a storm the day when a ring (usually orange) appears around the moon. What other folklore and ways can nature help us? Make sure to read the whole article on ThisBigCity.net

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via Next American City | Power Meets the Arts in Detroit
The Power House is named for its ability to power itself through the generation of its own electricity and heat | © Mitch Cope
“Exemplifying ‘intelligent citizen interest and action’, Power House Productions (PHP) is working to help stabilize and revitalize their city – specifically in a Detroit neighborhood near Hamtramck - through the arts and other cultural endeavors.
Formed in 2009, PHP is run by architect and artist couple, Gina Reichert and Mitch Cope, and is a result of their own Power House project, which began back in 2008. Their work soon grew beyond one house to a point where, as is written on the PHP website, “it was necessary to establish a more structured organization”.
Located just around the corner from their residence, the Power House was a formerly foreclosed drug house that Reichert and Cope purchased for $1900. The home was one amongst several of a new crop of vacancies, as Reichert put it, that the couple took note of one year after the purchase of their residence in 2005. This, along with an arson, changed the feel of the neighborhood for them and pushed them to take action. “We started to be more active out of necessity,” said Reichert.
With minimal financial risk, the couple envisioned being able to implement their long-held interest in setting up an artist residency (throughout the years they had been hosting various artists in their own home and felt it was time to maintain a bit more privacy for themselves) and also their idea to “play with the space”, Reichert said.
The art and design duo coined the name Power House to describe the home’s ability to literally power itself through the generation of its own electricity and heat (via a solar power setup that includes a roof redesign implemented this past winter) as well as the home’s significance as “a kind of taking control of ones own community by becoming an example of self reliance, sustainability, and creative problem solving through education, communication and increased diversification of the neighborhood, ” as written on the PHP website…”

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irishboyinlondon:

Tiny parks are on a roll in San Francisco: Two dumpsters full of greenery, with four more to come, add a bit of nature to the streets of a paved-over downtown neighborhood. Some scoff, but others are willing to give the “parkmobiles” a go.
Photo: Dave Vetrano takes a coffee break at a parkmobile in San Francisco’s South of Market district. Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times

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city cooperative - via Grist | Can we turn mining pits into underground cities?
“Architect Matthew Fromboluti designed this inverted skyscraper to make use of abandoned open-pit mining operations in Bisbee, Ariz. The 900-foot underground building (maybe we should call it a mantle-scraper?) wouldn’t just be for residences — it would comprise an entire self-sufficient subterranean city, including crops fed by skylights.”

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