The world is good

2021-09-23 10:42:14 Open / Comment

2021-09-23 10:42:04 Vertical modular farms aim to solve the problem of urban food deserts

Millions of people in the US experience food insecurity on a daily basis. This problem has been exacerbated by the pandemic, which has pushed the total number of Americans experiencing hunger to an estimated 42 million people, many of whom live in urban food deserts which lack adequate access to fresh and affordable food.

With the aim of tackling this urgent issue, creative agency Framlab has developed Glasir — a conceptual project which involves building groups of modular vertical farms to provide low-income neighborhoods with access to fresh produce.

Glasir takes the form of greenhouse-like cubes designed to be installed anywhere in the city where there would be room for a standard tree. The target, however, is to build them in food deserts, where there is an infrastructure barrier to nutritious and affordable food.

The system runs on renewable energy and rainwater, and it even helps reduce air pollution using an outer layer on the greenhouse modules. “There’s a chemical process catalyzed by sunlight that would allow the material to break down air pollutants,” architect Andreas Tjeldflaat tells euronews, adding that his ambition is “to confront environmental harm and social inequality within our food systems.”

Each cube can reportedly produce more than 200kg of crops per year. The self-regulating system uses aeroponics, which means that the crops don’t need any soil and draw their water from the greenhouse’s misty environment, absorbing nutrients in a faster and more effective way than in traditional farming. “This allows us to reduce water usage and land arrow requirements by about 90 percent,” explains Tjeldflaat. Open / Comment

2021-09-22 12:15:13 Open / Comment

2021-09-22 12:15:04 CA introduces trio of laws to make housing more affordable and sustainable

With new policies surrounding oil extraction, recycling, and building codes, California has led the way on green policymaking this year. Now, the state is taking aim at low-carbon affordable housing with a series of new laws that remove red tape surrounding progressive construction.

The first law, Senate Bill 9, removes some of the barriers surrounding single-family home zoning and permits property owners to build duplexes or split their lots to make new housing options more sustainable and affordable. Single-family lots make up three-quarters of zoned land in California, meaning that the new law will allow 700,000 homeowners in the state to build new units on their lots.

The second law, Senate Bill 10, also addresses zoning by allowing local governments to circumvent zoning rules in urban areas with plenty of public transit. For progressive cities itching to improve their housing landscape, California State Senator and bill author Scott Wiener says, “This new law will cut maybe five to 10 years off the rezoning process.”

Lastly, Senate Bill 8 closes some of the loopholes which cities use to prevent the expansion of affordable housing. These include stricter zoning to prevent housing expansion and increasing the cost of building permits.

As the most populous state in the US, California is facing a serious housing crisis. Outdated policies like single-family zoning contribute to a shortage of affordable housing and encourage the construction of homes with a higher environmental footprint. These three laws are a strong step forwards in expanding affordable housing options while decreasing resource use and reducing the expansion into natural habitats which takes a toll on local ecosystems and exacerbates wildfire risk. Open / Comment

2021-09-21 10:49:23 Open / Comment

2021-09-21 10:49:13 Amsterdam’s underwater bike garage will also improve aquatic habitats

The Netherlands is a country that is home to more bikes than people, which explains why city train stations have more than half a million bicycle parking spots, including the largest single garage in the entire world located in Utrecht.

Even so, cyclists often struggle to find a spot to park their bikes, so the country has decided to create space for an additional 100,000 bikes before 2025. The new garage, which will be built in Amsterdam, won’t simply be a space to safely store your bicycle. It’ll be underwater, allowing for more public space to be constructed above, while there are plans to install features that support aquatic and plant life in the garage area underneath.

The bicycle parking garage will be part of a semi-floating structure build behind Amsterdam Central Station. The structure’s original purpose was to protect the quay (where the station sits along the water bank) from potential accidents such as boat collisions. “The protection put in place for the train and bus station, road traffic, and the Michiel de Ruyter tunnel meant there was some unused space between the collision protection and the quay,” explains principal architect at Venhoeven CS Danny Esselman.

Venhoeven CS is the architecture and urban design firm responsible for designing the floating structure in collaboration with Van Hattum en Blankevoort and DS Landschapsarchitecten. “That’s where the client decided to add bicycle parking, as there is always a lack of parking space in the city. Designing the project so it was semi-underwater meant we could create additional public space above it.”

The garage, which the team plans to open in 2022, is designed to be a calm and sleek refuge for cyclists who have to navigate the chaotic hustle and bustle of the city above. “A good, attractive design means cyclists will want to use the parking facility,” Esselman says. “This means good accessibility, a limited height difference, efficient traffic flows, a safe and light environment, and using aesthetically beautiful materials.”

Not only will the structure add much-needed bicycle storage, but it was designed with aquatic life in mind, and has features that will help support the river’s ecosystem. For example, the porous concrete allows plants and mussels to grab onto the walls, while coconut mats offer vegetation space to grow while helping purify the water. The team also included mesh baskets called “biohuts,” devised to shelter young fish, and a net will help trap plastic waste and prevent it from entering the river.

Esselman highlights the importance of “tak[ing] measures to build a better habitat for aquatic life than there was before,” because the floating structure robs these creatures of a part of their home. “As designers, you have to be aware that you are making changes to the environment, and it’s important to minimize the impact of your work. Our aim was to go beyond just minimizing the impact and improve the conditions, being mindful at every stage of the process. During construction, the methods we used meant that there was minimal disturbance of the riverbed and surrounding biotope.”

Esselman hopes that other designers and architects working on bicycle parking garages at other train stations near the water will take on this approach, too. Open / Comment

2021-09-20 14:16:38 Open / Comment

2021-09-20 14:16:15 Los Angeles County votes to phase out oil extraction

The Los Angeles County board of supervisors unanimously voted to prohibit new oil wells and evaluate existing ones, taking a big step towards ending oil extraction in the US’ largest county.

Currently, oil wells cannot be shuttered in the county until companies recoup the costs of drilling. Under the new measure, the county will evaluate if costs have been recouped on each well and designate extraction as “nonconforming” use, allowing the county to revoke permits.

Although oil drilling may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Los Angeles, the county is actually home to thousands of wells. This new measure could potentially shut down 1,600 of them, most of which sit in the Inglewood Oil Field, a region that produces up to three million barrels of oil a year.

More than one million people live within a five-mile radius of the field, exposing them to dangerous air pollution which has been linked to cancer, preterm births, and respiratory illnesses. This would be particularly beneficial for communities of color as 73 percent of the tens of thousands of residents who live near oil wells in the county are people of color.

Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell, who led the motion, said, “We have an opportunity and responsibility as the home of the largest urban oil field in the nation to lead by example in creating an equitable path for phasing out oil drilling.” Open / Comment

2021-09-19 09:33:58 Open / Comment

2021-09-19 09:33:50 Fusion energy could soon be commercially available thanks to MIT scientists

As shown by the most recent IPCC report, moving away from fossil fuels as fast as possible is key to preventing catastrophic consequences from climate change. According to scientists, fusion power has a huge potential to transition the world towards a cleaner and safer energy future, but so far it has proven incredibly difficult to build the necessary technology to make it commercially viable. That may soon change, however, thanks to a new breakthrough at MIT.

The good news follows a recent study from MIT scientists who have tested a large high-temperature electromagnet for the first time to measure its strength. A first-of-its-kind, the magnetic field successfully proved that it was possible to generate commercially viable fusion power.

So far, the problem preventing fusion from wide-scale adoption has been the challenge to capture more energy than is used to generate it. Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), an MIT startup company, is the first one in the world to demonstrate that a full-scale commercial fusion power plant is practical.

“Fusion in a lot of ways is the ultimate clean energy source,” said Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research. “The amount of power that is available is really game-changing.” The fuel needed to create fusion power comes from water, and “the Earth is full of water — it’s a nearly unlimited resource. We just have to figure out how to utilize it.”

Fusion powers the sun, where gravity compressing small atoms into larger ones, which releases huge amounts of energy in the process. The challenge so far has been creating those conditions on Earth, as it requires much higher temperatures than most materials can hold. The MIT innovation solves that problem by using intense magnetic fields to create an “invisible bottle” that contains “the hot swirling soup of protons and electrons.”

The new project involves high-temperature superconductors, which helped create higher magnetic fields in a relatively small space. Creating similar magnetic fields typically required much larger machinery.

The breakthrough was made possible thanks to a new kind of superconducting material that became commercially available a few years ago. Following the successful trial, the researchers are now working to build the world’s first fusion device, a project expected to reach completion by 2025.

If everything goes according to plan, fusion energy will be able to replace conventional energy sources and pave the way for a future where greenhouse gas emissions are no longer associated with energy production. Open / Comment