Engineering and Environmental Challenges Technical Symposium on Earth Systems Engineering (2002) / Chapter Skim
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Rethinking Urbanization
Rethinking Urbanization
Pages 73-90
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From page 73... ...
This panel identifies some critical challenges facing today's cities and discusses potential innovations for designing the urban centers of tomorrow.
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From page 75... ...
Because cities are virtually devoid of oxygen-generating vegetation, they exacerbate the problems of atmospheric pollution. The surface "footprint" of a typical city consists predominately of buildings and concrete or asphalt, all of which repel water and can lead to deprivation and even subsidence 75
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From page 76... ...
Since the Industrial Revolution, waves of technological invention and innovation have succeeded each other with increasing rapidity making cities what they are today. Industrial manufacturing attracted armies of workers to cities; railroads, and later airports, weakened the commercial advantages of maritime cities; the internal combustion engine helped create suburbs; electricity made all sorts of labor-saving devices possible; the elevator made vertical expansion possible; sanitation made cities healthier; radio, later complemented by television, computers, and the Internet, enabled people to interact without physical contact and to work cooperatively at a distance (Moss, 1998~.
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From page 77... ...
Another sign of dysfunction is the difficulty of disposing of solid waste, a problem that could be addressed in many creative ways but generally remains, particularly in the developing world, one of the most intractable problems of cities. More subtle signs of dysfunction are urban sprawl, the monotonous grid pattern of streets, and monocultural zones devoted exclusively to a single kind of activity, such as shopping malls or financial districts.
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From page 79... ...
We are now at a moment of great urgency and great opportunity. On the one hand, we are faced with the urgent problems of explosive urban growth.
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Such a city must also ensure stability (changing the current policy of constant tearing down or reconstructing, making cities architectural palimpsets) , be aesthetically pleasing, and be well managedin other words, it must be not only functional but also beautiful.
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From page 81... ...
· Contained geographical footprint · Reduced resources footprint AREA TIME Tributary territory Pollution and waste · Reach · Quantity The City Manageable · System of systems (neighborhood-cluster-city) · Localized vs centralized activities · New organizations and services (public/private)
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From page 82... ...
A city intelligent must also be efficient in its use of all kinds of resources, including human resources. For example, it could take advantage of advanced traffic control systems and flexible scheduling of city activities to reduce congestion.
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From page 83... ...
Walkable neighborhoods, for instance, reduce congestion by encouraging the creation of a hierarchy of transportation hubs connecting the city's components. With wise public planning, suburban sprawl can be stayed in American cities, discouraged in the more concentrated European cities, and avoided in many exploding cities of the developing world.
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From page 84... ...
The key to an effective balance is to ensure that the human biological component is not overwhelmed and made to feel powerless by the infrastructure or by the social organization of the city. For example, there must be a balance between bioremediation and traditional methods of water and wastewater treatment or between tasks performed by humans and those performed by machines (e.g., a policeman directing traffic versus the use of traffic control devices)
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From page 85... ...
The knowledge park provides a new organizing principle for the knowledge city by transforming the urban environment and providing an enormous economic boost. A case in point is Metrotech, catalyzed in Brooklyn, New York, by Polytechnic University, which has attracted some 20,000 jobs around the university, mostly in information technology and telecommunications, and has revitalized a significant part of downtown Brooklyn (Bugliarello, 1996~.
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From page 86... ...
The overall engineering challenge will be to limit the effects of these changes through design and operational decisions. For instance, although a city totally covered by a dome is unrealistic, a skyline the location and configuration of structures engineered to affect temperature and wind patterns is entirely feasible.
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From page 87... ...
In appropriate situations, these technologies could provide alternatives to macroscale technologies, such as trunk utilities and other centralized services. MOVING FORWARD Transforming today's dysfunctional cities into tomorrow's less dysfunctional ones will, of course, require resources.
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The city as a whole must be willing, when necessary, to accept temporary economic losses to ensure a more sustainable future. Current trends strongly suggest that cities of the future will be home to an increasing share of the world population.
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From page 89... ...
2000. Comment made during a discussion at Megacities Workshop, National Research Council, Washington, D.C., September 26, 2000.
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