IBM INNOV8: A SIMS for urban designers

I just found an urban design "game" that is in the works by IBM. The trailer said it will be available in the fall of this year. I just wish there was a trial version up on the site.

I found out about this on thecityfix.com and the website for the game is here.

Phoenix coffee may put their lattes where their mouth is...

Phoenix coffee, if you happen to be a cave-dwelling microorganism with no propensity to sip a latte, is a locally owned coffee chain in and around Cleveland that has been pretty consistent with their aims and actions in pursuing sustainability. So it is out of no occurrence of happenstance that I just so happened to be in the West 9th location this very afternoon meeting with my college mentor.

While I was at Phoenix I saw a flyer about a forum on sustainability that they are hosting. It turns out (and how I missed this when my roommate was a 40+ hr a week barista there remains a supreme enigma) that Phoenix has a series of "conversations" with sustainability professionals in the area for the use and engagement of the general public. The one advertised on this particular flyer is for this Sunday, May 2, with Terry Schwarz. I've mentioned Terry in other blogs regarding pop-up city, etc. The forum will be on 'Shrinking Cities and Urban Design' and hopefully I will learn a thing or two!

If you are interested here's the info. Go! If I get enough studying done, I will definitely be there....ehh, no matter what, I'll be there.

Destroy what destroys

Reading this makes me want to take a trip to Detroit as soon as possible (I never thought I was capable of such an utterance).
An artist there is doing some amazing things right now to highlight vacant space in much of the same way as pop-up city has done in Cleveland, yet I am almost inclined to say in a somewhat cooler way (but not THAT much). I love this so much because it was during my first trip to Detroit from Bowling Green that I realized I the passion I had for environmental issues. Drivng through the River Rouge on I-75 would upset just about anyone. All you see is litter on the side of the roads, smog being pumped out of factories, and blighted neighborhoods that make anyone familiar with the term "Not In My Back Yard" (or NIMBY for short) and the concept of environmental racism, fuming mad.

The artist, Tyree Guyton and his project the Heidelberg Project, has turned a whole section of a neighborhood into a magical urban wonderland. Houses once vacant are now occupied and adorned with the very things that made them so unwelcoming in the first place. Guyton transforms trash and other relics of a home once loved into something so appropriately symoblic of a rustbelt city...A city once booming with productivity and the promise of acquiring the American Dream. A dream that everyone has begun to chase after elsewhere.


I cannot urge anyone who has kept up with this blog enough to utilize the links I am tagging on to this post. Read about it more on gcbl as well. Please watch this video too:

Lake Eerie (I couldn't make a more obvious pun)

Toxic algal blooms a HUGE problem in Lake Erie.Possibly irreversible. Why was this story front page in the Akron Beacon Journal and not The Plain Dealer? How are Clevelanders supposed to be informed of all the ways they are contributing to the degradation of their water supply? You know, the freshwater supply that is already inspiring political tension by being the most strident example of global resource envy, aside from oil in Saudi Arabia.

I recommend reacting accordingly:

1) Read this.

2) Get really upset

3) Get rational: Tell everyone to stop fertilizing their invasive, non-native grass because it is contaminating the water supply.

In regards to Sustainability:Ask not what Cleveland can do for you, but what you can do for Cleveland.

No one is more aware or afraid of preaching one thing and practicing another as I am. I mean, I drive a car. A lot. To study sustainability...so I'm aware of my everyday contradictions. And I work on them.

Regardless, choices like your diet are very personal and at this point, if you have studied it, found logic in your decision, and actually live it consistently, then you have made it halfway there. The point is a sustainable diet is one that is active, that is informed, and that is made with a conscious effort to do right based on where all that information has taken you. I really don't care what you choose or don't choose to eat. It's the fact you actually considered it first that means so much-and that's mostly what sustainability demands: thought, getting people to think about their food choices. But there are parameters: buy local, the price must be truly reflective of actual cost, and organic is better and in the case of meat, grass-fed beef, free range, hormone-free and all that is what's best.With that said...

Michael Pollan's book "The Botany of Desire" is making me look at Cleveland differently and to tell you the truth, I'd look at Kazakhstan differently if I was reading this book while living there. It's just good enough to make me look at all the tulips blooming around the city (as a whole chapter in the book is devoted to them) and understand them a bit better.

Michael Pollan is pretty much the authority on the sustainable diet-and he isn't even a vegetarian. Nor did he pursue the title I just bestowed upon him, but nonetheless he deserves it and I find solace and logic in what he has to say about being an omnivore in a sustainable world.

If you have the time read something by him. I suggest starting with Power Steer, a New York Times series he did following one steer from birth to slaughter...and consider (since I make no direct reference to the city of Cleveland and local sustainability efforts in this particular post) how you as a Cleveland resident can make your daily choices sustainable ones.

I've been smited by a sustainable business

Well, I am working on securing some reservations for a dinner after commencement and I of course thought to go to the Greenhouse Tavern downtown on East 4th. I thought it appropriate to really reign in all everything I have learned by being obnoxious and forcing everyone else to eat vegan chickpea mush (which I would love by the way) and washing it down with local beer. But I have hit a bump in the road...

Greenhouse Tavern wants $1,500 for a reservation of 6...up front.

I understand there aren't great theoretical ties to be made here in the fact that I can't/refuse to pay that amount to eat there on my big day and the concept of sustainability as a whole (they are trying to run a business, right?) But I find it extremely ironic given the circumstance.

Looks like I will commit some fundamental hypocrisy on my graduation day by sedating my sustainability stupor with a meal crafted from dozens of ingredients shipped from all over the world...and country. And to top it off, there will be 15-20 of us...what a demand we will create in the global food market and what a hit for the local.

A 19th Century historic school house reduced to...chairs and shelves?

Here it is, definitive proof that a historic building does not have to be reduced to rubble in order to provide value to the city...and it also turns out that I really don't have to face the rush hour traffic on 2 East/90 East coming out of downtown this afternoon to take pictures of the school at East 55th and St. Clair that I saw get deconstructed for my internship (this I promised in an earlier blog).I found a blog on it at the A Piece of Cleveland site. Super cool pictures. The architect in charge of this school was also commissioned to do the Arcade downtown. You know the building is beautiful now. Plus, the material harvested was used to make the furniture below and the bricks were recycled and donated to urban gardens for walkways, etc. free of charge. Plus, the site of the building is being used for an urban garden in the future, thanks to new Cleveland urban garden zoning laws. The furniture is not necessarily my style (minimalistic Ikea-esque furniture makes my stomach turn most times), but this is way too novel and amazing to be passed up.To learn a little bit more about Stanard School, click here.

From this:


















To this:

Who's got "Interpersonal Capital?" We do! We do!

Cleveland may be torn to pieces in a lot of ways, but the one thing that sets it apart from many other places is the sense of identity Clevelanders have with their city. I once heard that Brown's fans were the biggest fans, even though the team is notoriously sub par. So how can we tie this strength, a strength in a very strange, anomalous, and more often than not, incomprehensible pride for Cleveland into a matter of sustainability? By deconstructing it, I guess?

A Piece of Cleveland (APOC), Urban Lumberjack's of Cleveland (ULOC), and Cleveland's Urban Reclaim Lumberyard (Curly for short) all operate together to deconstruct vacant buildings in the city and reuse the materials for other projects. And being that vacant homes are ubiquitous here, it seems like a consistent source of capital. But deconstruction can be a lot more expensive than traditional demolishing (in some cases the costs are doubled). This does not, however, keep these groups from looking into ways to make the process viable, and even profitable.APOC deconstructs homes and other buildings and reuses the "harvest" (salvageable materials) from the deconstruction and sells them as high quality furniture. It is upcycling at its best. Not to mention, most of these pieces of furniture are rendered from older buildings in Cleveland and provide local history and nostalgia to the owners. Most cities can not stand to guarantee a high turnover of upcycled furniture made from old buildings the way Cleveland can, and this guarantee of a higher turnover is due to the "interpersonal capital" available in Cleveland (an economic term used to acknowledge the implicit capital accrued by a city due to the strong identity denizens have with it).

No one loves Cleveland more than Clevelanders.

Here's a good example of the things APOC does with historic buildings.

Cleveland putting words into action and of course I find something wrong with it.

Local experts in the fields of Contamination/Remediation, Greenspace Expansion, Stormwater Management, Urban Agriculture, Alternative Energy and Land Assembly are working on an answer to Cleveland's vacant land woes, and will have recommendations for a more sustainable solution by May, and an action plan by June.

Here is a link to the article: ReImagine a more sustainable Cleveland becomes a priority at the city

The Mayor of Cleveland the Council have went to Japan and China, supposedly, to find inspiration for the new city plan. In Asia, the waste-to-energy power plants popping up are providing inspiration to Cleveland and the Cleveland municipal solid waste-to-energy plant is in the works. Also, large-scale urban farms, like the Hantz Farm in Detroit, and G-tech in Pittsburgh are being considered as templates for Cleveland city plans.

But all is not too rosy: treehugger.com has a critical eye on the starter of Hartz farm, John Hantz, a white real-estator in a city that is 82% black. I commend the critical eye of the person writing the article, an architect who has had plenty of experience with developers and real-estate people. It is completely necessary to be critical of those popping up in blighted cities to absorb all the vacant land at a cheap price with intentions to get the land up to a point that it will never sell as low again. It seems like a catch-22 in trust. Are these business men really looking to change the tide of development in poorer areas?Or are they wanting to have a monopoly on the land guaranteed to appreciate in price with green development strategies? I would be more skeptical if the end product wasn't a farm that fed local neighborhoods in food deserts. Something is unnerving in considering all this vacant land going to one person...Let's hope we consider the potential pit-falls to some of the plans we are looking to reproduce here.

Cleveland and Toronto: 'On the Waterfront'

Too bad Marlon Brando is nowhere to be seen. Cleveland and Toronto may actually have some things in common, like being post-industrialized and along some river channels. Here is what Toronto is considering for their Lower Don Lands in terms of sustainable urbanism.

An application an ipad couldn't even dream of having...

I found something off of Inside Urban Green (a blog site off of The Pop Up City website that shares urban gardening strategies) that is not intimidating to an amateur gardner.

They are called SIPs (Sub-Irrigation Planters) and these DIY garden boxes if you will are being touted as the laptop/ipad of urban gardens. You cane construct one for as much as $9 using a plastic tote box (think Rubermaid bins for storage) and some old milk cartons (1/2 gallon) and a water bottle.

In judging the picture you need:
-5-1/2 gallon milk bottles
-1 water bottle
-a plastic tote and a lid
-and some container mix (NO TOP SOIL)
-and you used the plastic bag from the container mix as a mulch cover for the whole that is required to be cut out from the lid...
-obviously seeds, etc.

I think that communinty development corporations in Cleveland neighborhoods could reach people not involved in direct urban gardening with these little plant-growing units. It brings satisfaction and a sense of achievement in growing your own little portable food device, especially in areas where most people live in apartments or other environments that are not too conducive to self-food production. One thing comes to mind: workshops for people in neighborhoods in food deserts where they can learn to make these things, and even better, these workshops could integrate SIPs with other components of urban gardening like composting, etc. This is one small yet big way for Cleveland to promote food more local than City Fresh. With the food coming out of a plastic tote! I think the City of Cleveland's Sustainability Department could find some $$$ to fund workshops so residents in food deserts can get a green thumb. I know the City has spent money on rain barrels for residents in the St. Clair-Superior neighborhood

This seems like it is just as worthy of a cause. I wonder...

Here are some working SIPs:

Pop-Up city

I love this concept. I love this group. And Terry Schwarz, the urban planner that started it here in Cleveland, has my dream professional job. Obviously a real dream job would have nothing to do with being a professional, it would be a lifestyle of hedonism and excess. (Though it runs counter to the goals of sustainability, I find the life of a rock star appealing).

Speaking of what's appealing, urban design seems inherently appealing to a student/professional of sustainability...as any "smart design(er)" finds it uber trendy to be as minimalistic as possible. Less stuff used; stuff used smarter;stuff with more than one function.

I just had to put some spot light on this group and show you what they do. They also have a great Facebook page with upates on current projects. Please please please look at it. Cities in Europe and across the U.S. have turned to the concept of a pop-up city as a new way to look at urban growth and redevelopment.

Some of these ideas that lead to an overall paradigm shift are:

-looking to build buildings without considering perpetuity. Can buildings be made well, and deconstructed easily and reassembled into something new without loss of energy invested and without compromising building materials.

-this design without intentions of perpetuity, like buildings being made with the conscious acceptance that one day it will be useless where it is and as it is built..and that flexibility is now provided by easy deconstruction.

-shedding light on a less-trafficked portion of an urban area by putting on installments and organizing events so that people come into an area, see potential for change, and then act on it by seeing a preview.

Check a link out:

POP UP CITY CLEVELAND

POP UP CITY MAIN SITE

Here's Terry Schwarz bein' cool and smart:

Blogs-to-come will be me looking at the general pop up city site and seeing how we could use this stuff in Cleveland.

Speaking of waste...

I am pretty sure I waste tons of time on this network map on the Green City Blue Lake website. It is a web application called "the Brain" that, once you select a category of sustainability you are interested in, allows you to see all the projects and organizations (as well as businesses) that are working towards sustainability. It's pretty cool and shows you that some people are actually doing things in this city. Below is a screen shot of it so you can see the format and find it harder to resist. It's easy as pie to use.
check it out:Green City Blue Lake Network Map

Ohio has a new fat wallet

It looks like Cleveland did get the $400 million federal stimulus money to invest in passenger rail. Ted Strickland made the announcement on January 28th, actually...I will post the video below.

There is so much information about the rail, even the feasbility report is posted in pdf form before the rail service was funded.Read all about it here.

Some statistics that are mentioned in support of the rail:

• Every $1 invested in passenger rail development can generate $3 in economic benefits-this is according to federal formulas from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
  
• It would serve more than 478,000 passengers in its first year of operation
• 73% of Ohioans from the ages of 18-34 support passenger rail in Ohio

And this rail is not going without criticisms. Rhetoric like "snail rail" has been used against the project...working off of the Amtrak statistics that because the line will operate on existing freight lines between the three cities, at times it could only travel as fast as a freight. One speed quoted was 35mph...making a trip to Cincinnati from Cleveland 6.5 hours.

 

An adoption of a passenger rail, I thought, may lead to a high speed line.After rider numbers begin to grow, significant investments are usually made to improve speed.However, given the fact the 3C will be operating on existing freight lines, this may not be a possibility. I really don't know how disappointing traveling only 35 mph would be, especially if we are making use of a more obsolete form of commodity transportation, like freight, and instead getting passengers on the line and making the 3 city commute more efficient. Saving those lines and using them for more modern mass transit sounds like a bonus given previous infrastructure costs.

Here is a argumentative article on the rail, which makes good points through the eyes of direct critics and people who know the rail lines and their capacity for high speed. I also stumbled across a blog that was written in criticism of the rail. What do you think this rail could mean for Ohio.

I will note that environmental groups like EcoWatch Journal have supported this line from the beginning. It'd be interesting to see if their support shifts after the rail begins to operate.

I'm guilty of gas guzzling.

But it really is no fault of mine that fate put somebody so worthwhile almost 200 miles away.

The disllusioning factor of fate, really though, does not make me any less of a criminal against nature.

My boyfriend lives in Columbus and I live in Cleveland. So, as to be expected, after my last class on most Fridays, I drive from Berea to downtown Cleveland back towards Berea to Columbus. Yes, it is estimated that I drive an extra 30 miles just to transform myself from my embarrassing look of "class clothes," pillow-tousled hair, and a face so tired I look like something out of the "Thriller" video to the person I am after an hour worth of prep. Hey, it's a situation of (wo)man dominating nature...and like that one thermodynamic law, everything about my look tends toward choas after term papers, exams, and morning commutes.

Once again, I admit this folly given my area of study, but "have love will travel" and like your carefully selected organic produce, a relationship isn't going to sustain without the proper attention.

Call me out...I am putting my own selfish desires before the health of the planet, but who else is going to be there with me in my storm shelter when all this climate change goes helter skelter? Not my parents, they will be too resentful at my failure to change the world after a hefty investment in my education.

Regardless, I do see a promising future ahead for the love-lorn Clevelanders in long distance relationships with OSU students....

The proposed Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinnati passenger train, also known as the "3C QUICKSTART PASSENGER RAIL PROJECT" which will eventually lead to high speed rail.

The Ohio Department of Transportation applied for $500 million from the federal stimulus for passenger rail last October to fund the project and we were to find out in March (2 days ago) if the state will receive the funding.

I wonder how it went. The next blog will be research on this...

A Piece of My Internship

Here is a video of a project that I worked on 2 years ago in Cleveland in the St. Clair-Superior neighborhood. My supervisor, Chris Kious, successfully planned the deconstruction of an amazing mid-19th century brick school (Stanard) to put up an urban farm. I haven't been back to the site since, but I am considering a trip to take pictures and then post.


To be honest, I have no idea how well this all panned out and this blog is a good opportunity to follow up. It's also a shame the school went down, it was the most beautiful and creepy place, but it was so decrepit that it was posing a threat to residents whose homes touched the back of the main building.

If the Cuyahoga River burned again...

I would hope it would get recalcitrant enough to jump the shoreline and set ablaze the new unwelcome neighbors on my block: Larry Flynt and his charming hustler club.

Then again, the pyrotechnics may serve to draw more of a crowd, as Diamond Men's Club and Christie's can confirm from their nightly light shows that blast cones of light into the Cleveland skyline in an attempt to distract the distracted on their way home.

Why do Cleveland citizens continuously support the cultural crud that will in the end ruin local economy (cough *casinos*cough) and degrade significant portions of our neighborhoods? How are The Flats suppose to "come back" when local economy is sustained by franchised strip clubs that chip away at one of the most fundamental cornerstones of sustainability, like let's say ohh, you know, social equality and progressive gender dynamics?

But like I promised, there are some potential plans for The Flats that make me less angry...

A new project, Building Cleveland by Design, is making the Flats District a focal point for urban greening work. In addition to helping inform and coordinate public space planning among all the parties involved in the district, it is managing the LEED-Neighborhood Development design and certification process for the Flats East Bank development. The goal will be to develop the Flats as a vibrant, 24-hour neighborhood that minimizes environmental impacts. (taken from gcbl.org).

Towpath efforts are also underway to connect different neighborhoods around the Flats (from the Steelyard Commons to Tremont) with a completion date of around 2010.

Also mentioned on the Green City Blue Lake website, the Warehouse District is already a mixed-use area, helping to facilitate certification by the LEED-Neighborhood Development program. The East Bank is the side of the Flats that will experience all this anticipated change. Nothing has been mentioned for developing the West Bank in anything that I have read.

Here's a video some random guy posted on youtube, highlighting, from the safety of his booze cruise, the East Bank and the work yet to be done. At the end you can see t:e bulldozed areas ready for new construction, etc:

West Side Market, Southern Hemisphere Produce

If any of you have been lucky enough (or patient enough) to brave the storm that is the West Side Market parking lot on a Saturday morning, you may have noticed, once you finally get inside, that most of the produce section is full of Chiquita bananas and produce that is not very local...or even regional.I remember my first adult visit there and how I wondered why such a great historical resource wasn't doing more to utilize the potential economic opportunities it stands to offer.

First of all it's an imposing and pretty historical building at the intersection of W.25th and Lorain (2 major Cleveland arteries). Secondly, what else is there to do in Cleveland on a Saturday morning except make enemies from the comfort and safety of your car while simultaneously anticipating the chocolate mousse cake from that one french dessert vendor?

Now there are local produce vendors, but I am just wondering why that place isn't dominated by our farmers, among many other rural agricultural cities near the City.I'm sure there is a great opportunity for it.

Is anybody familiar with West Side Market politics? I feel like I need to do some research on who and how someone gets a consignment or whatever to be a vendor there...more to come.

So what if my paycheck is made from 100% post-consumer product ...

what good is it if a trip to Whole Foods requires relinquishing a whole paycheck?

Here's my first point. There are two Whole Foods Markets in the Greater Cleveland area and they are both located in affluent areas. One location is in Cleveland Heights and the other is near Beachwood/Woodmere. Same thing with Trader Joes. There is one in Crocker Park and again, Woodmere. (*note that the Trader Joes and Whole Foods Market are both on the same street less than a mile apart in Woodmere.)

But this is not a new social phenomenon, in fact, it's not even a phenomenon. It's just how things work. The affluent have better access to organic, "healthy," and questionably labeled "sustainably produced" produce. I only say "questionably," because growing/harvesting something sustainably is one thing, but shipping it and selling it are another. If the produce is coming from California, how sustainable is it really to send it to Ohio? But we all are not too willing to sacrifice choice. Strawberries in Ohio in the winter...

But I digress.Not only do these areas have the access to better and fresher food, they have the money for it. They have money for a $16 jar of raw organic almond butter. But I see daily, living in the Flats downtown, people walking to the corner gas station to grocery shop. Literally, I have seen people coming out of the gas station with bags about to burst full of, as to be expected, the typical dietician's nightmare of partially hydrogenated soybean oil and high-fructose corn syrup.

I once heard Whole Foods was committed to not selling anything containing hydrogenated oils (trans fat)- and that seems to be true. And they also are on record saying that items with high fructose corn syrup are the exception rather than the norm, as in conventional markets. But how good are places like Trader Joes and Whole Foods for cities like Cleveland that have many areas that have been dubbed "food deserts" where the closest grocery store is miles away.

I also realize that Whole Foods sells some local produce. As does The Mustard Seed (CRAZY EXPENSIVE). Two reusable grocery bags full of stuff at Mustard Seed costs me about $65, Giant Eagle about $30. I know this and I am completely comfortable with those numbers. I'm a college student and being at the checkout counter at Mustard Seed with my typical two-bag-fulls is like going through public penance and then being kicked in the gut after it's over.

But alas, there are good points, and some are to be found even in the expensive stores that sit safely in affluent areas (especially Mustard Seed, which sells the most, from my observations, local produce).

Cleveland has some awesome urban agriculture going on. There are many urban garden plots running-where you can buy into (or work on) a bit of garden to gain access to fresh produce cheaply. Most of these gardens are also in poorer inner-city neighborhoods. I know of 5-6 within one mile of me. Actually, one sits in my "backyard" in the parking lot of Rock Bottom in The Flats. Another is on West 25th a little after I-90. Not to mention, there are community supported agriculture (CSA) projects flourishing in Cleveland, like City Fresh which stimulates local agriculture by offering it easily and cheaply to people who opt into the system. People can buy a share in the CSA and pick up their weekly/monthly produce at "fresh stops" all around Cleveland. Lastly, there is a group called Fresh Fork that connects local produce to restaurants. And I think Fresh Fork was started by some Case Western Students (one of whom I went to elementary school with). Check out both sites, learn more, and support them since the economics of deciding whether or not Whole Foods, Trader Joes, and The Mustard Seed are as great as people make them out to be, are even beyond my reach. (And I even made it a point to study this stuff...)Lucky's Cafe in Tremont also has an urban garden and features mostly, if only, local and in-season produce. Yummy.

To learn more about whatever I'm talking about: Urban Learning Gardens

Ok, so Cleveland has tons of urban gardens, but so do many other places. Not enough to keep me here...

Black is the new green.

So here it is, the first post on my blog site. I'll be honest, I faced considerate choice fatigue when deciding on a blog template and it took every satirical bone in my body to overcome the more calcium-rich practical bones I have to opt for the BLACK template over the GREEN.

After all, this is a blog about disillusionment upon graduation as much as it is about sustainability. Call it a graduate cocktail of equal parts despair and optimism, except this hangover is worse than a late night with Kamchatka.

Each blog I write will contain two components:
1. my disillusioned diatribe (to be written in white, as black won't show up on my background)
AND
2. my positive affirmation (to be written all in green)

Both of these components obviously relate to my feelings about the concept of sustainability and Cleveland.

In addition, both components of the blog (the disillusionment and affirmations) actually happen in real time in my own head resulting in a completely neutral feeling.

This is not desirable.

Help me use this blog to graduate with a feeling of satisfaction.I want to replace my feeling of neutrality about a study I invested so much time, energy, and money (in the form of unnecessary luxury meals used as anxiety band-aids) with something meaningful that I can be truly proud of.