Symposium for AAAS 2010 Annual Meeting,
San Diego, California
Synopsis:
Sustainability is the signal challenge of our time, yet we are overlooking the vital role of urban design in confronting this challenge. Most U.S. energy debate and investment focuses on supply-on developing and scaling up new or alternative sources. But in our emphasis on increasing supply we are neglecting a crucial aspect of reducing demand. According to the Department of Energy, buildings and transportation together account for two-thirds of U.S. energy use. This session will highlight place-based research that shows how cities can reduce energy use through the comprehensive adaptation of existing systems, including shelter, transportation, power, water, landscape, and waste. "Existing" is key: our national tendency, when faced with obsolete infrastructure, is to abandon what exists and build new-an unsustainable practice. Speakers from architecture, urban design, and building science will show how diverse factors-density, land use, multimodal transit, renewable fuels, w!
ater and waste conservation, landscape and reforestation, and building shape, size, material, and orientation-can be coordinated, modeled, and measured to create designs for resource-efficient (almost zero carbon) districts, reduce urban heat island, and integrate human and natural systems in suburbia. The panel will further argue that effective adaptation must engage not only the scale of components-such as solar arrays or high-performance materials-but also the larger scale of urban systems.
Organizer:
Nancy Levinson
Director, Phoenix Urban Research Laboratory
Professor of Practice, School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture
Arizona State University
Speakers:
Harvey Bryan
Professor of Architecture
Arizona State University
School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture
Daniel Hoffman
Professor of Architecture
Arizona State University
School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture
Harrison S. Fraker
Professor of Architecture and Urban Design
University of California at Berkeley
College of Environmental Design
Stephen Luoni
Director, University of Arkansas Community Design Center
University of Arkansas School of Architecture
Discussants:
Steven A. Moore
Bartlett Cocke Professor of Architecture and Planning
University of Texas at Austin
School of Architecture
Hillary Brown
Associate Professor, City University of New York
Principal, New Civic Works
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