Development

Seven Graphics that Explain Energy Poverty and How the US Can Do Much More

Sat, 2015-06-20 10:40 — Kathy Gilbeaux

cgdev.org - by Todd Moss and Madeleine Gleave - February 18, 2014

1. Energy poverty is an endemic and crippling problem; nearly 600 million people in Africa live without access to any power, which also means no access to safer and healthier electric cooking and heating, powered health centers and refrigerated medicines, light to study at night, or electricity to run a business. Here’s the situation in the 6 countries chosen to be part of President Obama’s Power Africa Initiative, home to nearly 1/3 of the continent’s population:

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As Sierra Leone emerges from Ebola crisis, new innovations are helping poor villages

Wed, 2015-04-29 12:04 — mike kraft

DESERET NEWS by Kimberley Curtis April 29, 2015

Thirteen years after civil war devastated the country, basic infrastructure and services are still lacking in many parts of Sierra Leone. This means transporting food throughout the country is prohibitively expensive and staple foods are out-priced for many of the roughly 60 percent of the population that lives in poverty.

HESE AFFORDABLE GREENHOUSE

In particular, basic vegetables such as carrots and tomatoes are in short supply in the country for most of the year as they are only grown in a few regions with a limited season. You can’t eat your vegetables if you can’t afford to buy them, which is one of the reasons why Sierra Leone has one of the highest rates of malnutrition in the world.

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Structural Adaptivity, Before and After Thoughts

Tue, 2014-11-04 12:57 — WDS1200-Columbus

As a means of concluding these writings on Structural Adaptivity and Resilience, following are some of the background thoughts, with recent revision, that led me to my proposals. Originally, my writings were directed at city and regional planning. However now I realize they are also about resilience. I hope my submittals will be helpful. I will try to write more soon.

Time. Planners, resilience makers, and all other leaders and professionals dealing with the built environment must focus on long time spans. In order to have significant impact on the future of our world, we must recognize that only by looking at big chunks of history and big chunks of future time can we really see the reality of what is going on. Likewise, we need to do so in order to see the reality of what needs to be done.

Typical urban or regional plans target a future some 20 years ahead. Moreover, they typically are based on past trends of 20 years or so. However, our world does not change in 20-year cycles. Twenty years is a very short time period in the flow of transformation.

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Structural Adaptivity, Rebalancing by Watersheds - Part II

Thu, 2014-10-23 19:32 — WDS1200-Columbus

Here is the second part of my Rebalancing by Watersheds Exercise. I presented the background work recently in my Part I post. Part II contains a Concept Plan Map and a discussion of the more particular information and data that led me to the Plan.

Both Parts I and Part II are only a condensed version of the full text I prepared. Within the portions I left out for this version is a considerable amount of technical information that some readers may want to see. I will provide more of it upon request.

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Structural Adaptivity, Rebalancing by Watersheds - Part I

Wed, 2014-10-22 16:57 — WDS1200-Columbus

One of the applications of structural adaptivity that I have presented is re-balancing our nation by major watersheds. The benefits would be two-fold: (1) growing our nation into urban regions where each would have resilient economic and adaptivity capacities; and (2) tying the regions to ample sources of fresh water by linking them to regional U.S. watersheds.

Because it would be such a large departure from recent trends and because I could discover no literature showing its possibility or desirability, I sought to perform an exercise to demonstrate its possibility. In doing this, I am setting aside my own considerable shortcomings. I am assuming that criticism of my arrogance in attempting such an exercise is less important than taking a step in a much-needed new direction.

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Structural Adaptivity Facilitation Examples - Part III

Fri, 2014-10-10 13:12 — WDS1200-Columbus

Here are my last three Facilitation Examples, proposed activities by planners and others to influence the development of the built environment toward structural adaptivity and resilience as we progress into an ever more uncertain and unpredictable future.

Rethinking Homeownership. Conventional owner-occupied land and buildings in the US many times tie the owners into long-term tenures. It makes moves, to other locations, overly cumbersome even when such moves are in the occupants’ best interests. Adaptivity requires the ability to make quicker changes than in the past, including the self-initiated movement of people and businesses to other locations when beneficial. Alternative types of ownership or tenure must be facilitated, types which are more adaptable to quick change.

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Beyond the Immediate Tragedy: Ebola’s Long-Term Implications

Wed, 2014-10-01 19:49 — mike kraft

THE ATLANTIC COUNCIL October 1, 2014

By J. Peter Pham

....beyond the immediate tragedy, there are significant short, medium, and long-term impacts that we are not even beginning to address.

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Some Examples of Structural Adaptivity - Part III

Sat, 2014-09-20 15:39 — WDS1200-Columbus

Here are 4 more examples of structural adaptivity for resilience. As with the other examples presented previously, they only are intended to illustrate the concept of structural adaptivity for resilience. They are intended to focus on the structure or structural elements of cities and/or regions. Moreover, they are intended to demonstrate how such structural elements can be located, organized, or otherwise developed to have capacity to adapt to the continuing needs of the citizens - as the unknown and rapidly changing future unfolds.

Polycentric Urban Development. Urban development need no longer be monocentric (having only one center). In fact, such a pattern is not adaptive to meet the future.

Central business districts have traditionally been the home of government, financial institutions, offices, civic plazas and the like, as well as many commercial retail and services. They have also often contained many churches, health care facilities, educational institutions, libraries, museums, convention centers, theatres, etc.

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Risk and Risk Underwriting

Mon, 2014-09-08 23:29 — WDS1200-Columbus

In writing about the importance of promoting private enterprise, as well as in many other sections of my work, I suggested an almost near certainty that the risk management industry eventually will facilitate resilience and structural adaptivity in our built environment. In my larger draft, I included a short section about this, which I am posting below (somewhat revised). I believe it is beneficial to share this section now in order to explain my optimism for resilience. (I also wrote short sections on Time, Rapid Change, Optimism, A Futurist Perspective, and The Human Factor but do not necessarily intend to post them here.)

The future will be all about risk and trying to find protection from the rapidly increasing threats to our world as we advance in population size, social/cultural/economic complexity, and cutting-edge science and technology. Risk underwriting will play a big role in how well or how poorly we adapt to accelerating change.

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Structural Adaptivity Thinking

Tue, 2014-09-02 22:23 — WDS1200-Columbus

Here, I would like to explain more extensively my thinking about structural adaptivity as a critical aspect of resilience. (In researching this subject, I was surprised by the lack of information/ideas conveniently available about the characteristics of adaptivity or adaptability. The following are my own preliminary conceptions. I hope others will improve upon them.)

The world is changing so fast that our government, think tanks, universities and research institutions, business leaders, builders and developers, and “planners” have no hope of being able to keep up with it. Many thinkers describe our world as actually undergoing rapidly accelerating change. To be able to plan for the change, or even to be able to react to such transformation while it is happening, we need to do more than just keep up with it. We need to jump out in front of it.

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