Urban Parks

Today I want to talk to you about a trend in urban renewal that I really like. Reclaiming blight and making it into parkland.

New York's High Line Park

The High Line was a subway train line in active use in New York City from its construction in the 1930's until 1980. After being decommissioned the elevated tracks just stood their and began to decay. Nearly twenty years of detritus accumulated in and around the tracks. Year after year more and more wind blown seeds would fly up there and germinate, ultimately creating a sort of wild pasture an mile and a half long.

Unfortunately the structure, though still basically sound, was slated for demolition under Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 1999. Then a group called Friends of the High Line began to support saving the structure and turning it into a modern urban park.

The City invested more than $40 million to turn the High Line into a park and it was opened to the public in June of 2009. Now what was once a beautiful but somewhat dangerous and mostly unknown urban wilderness is now a safe and beautiful strip of green wending it's way through the city. Now the entire city can appreciate the High Line.

The reconstruction of the park included sustainability features such as water filtering systems that catch all of the rain water for use in irrigating the plants instead of continuing to damage the structure. This is a great way to re-use resources and make a part of the city that was blighted more livable again. In fact now that the park has opened more than 30 projects have started in the area along the park alignment.

Please take a look at the link I provided above. I'm sure that you'll find the park to be beautiful.

Winter is Green this Year

So today I want to talk about two of my favorite things. The Olympics and sustainable construction.

Winter is Green at 2010 Olympics

Okay so maybe I like one of those a little more than the other. I love the Olympics. They hit me on a deep emotional level for many reasons. I see them as an expression of how powerful we can be when we are focused and determined to be the best at what we choose to do. The Olympics are also a great way for nations across the world to compete on a very emotional level but without any bloodshed.

Another reason to love the Olympics is it's ability to be a bully pulpit if you will. Millions and millions of people all over the world watch the competition. While watching they are exposed to the puff pieces that the producers put together about the various athletes and also about various other things like how amazing a place they are competing in.

This year I guarantee they will also be talking about LEED certification. For the first time ever the Olympic Village will be LEED Gold certified, and the Community Center will be Platinum certified. For those of you who are unfamiliar with LEED please take a quick look at this link for more info.

What LEED is

Basically LEED is how we categorize levels of sustainable construction using various parameters such as CO2, energy consumption, etc. Gold certification is not easy to get. Platinum is even more challenging.

This will get talked about a lot by the producers which will educate a very large number of people about what LEED is and why it's a good thing for us to strive for. It can only be a good thing to associate LEED with the Olympics. The strong positive associations will make for a boom in green construction all over the world, which can only mean good things for our industry.

Real Investment in Urban Gardening

Okay so obviously urban farming isn't a new idea. Various people have been talking about the concept and trying small scale pilot projects for many years actually. Detroit may be the first place in the world to try it on a truly large scale.

Can farming save Detroit?

Desperate times can lead to great innovation. As the author of this article points out, it is Detroit's tragic situation that has opened the opportunity for this sort of project. Mr. Hantz's new urban farming development will be the largest of it's kind in the world when it is completed. No one would have been willing to put this kind of investment in such a risky endeavor unless there were few, or no, other options.

Detroit's unemployment numbers are crippling. With so few jobs people have been leaving the city by the thousands. This has left probably the largest inventory of empty houses in the entire country. With lots and homes selling for an average of $15,000 an urban blight has been growing bigger and bigger every month. This is an opportunity for a risky but potentially world changing shift in how we grow food.

I'm really excited to see how this project works out for Mr. Hantz. If he is able to be successful in growing agriculture within an urban environment for profit, then he will be writing the blueprint for how it can be done elsewhere. Local production of food is going to be vitally important as we try to find ways to reduce consumption of fossil fuels. Good luck to him.

First Real Post - Burj Khalifa

Okay so today was the opening ceremony for the new Tallest Building In The World. The Burj Khalifa is the new big boy on the block by a big margin. Taipei 101 held the title for almost 5 years at nearly 1700 feet in height. The Burj Khalifa bursts onto the scene at over 2700 feet. Wow! So think about it this way. Saying that the Burj is 1000 feet taller than Taipei 101 sounds impressive but saying that it's one and a half times as tall is truly astounding.

I'm not a structural engineer but I have an appreciation for the skill and knowledge that those folks have. The engineers at Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill have set a new bar though. Not only is it the tallest building but the Burj is also very stylistically beautiful in my opinion.

Today's opening was talked about in many places but two of the more interesting posts or at least the ones that bring up the most interesting discussions in my mind are these:

WSJ.com - Opinion: Of Burj and Babel

World's tallest building: Is the Burj Khalifa a herald of economic woe?

Makes for some interesting thoughts. Not necessarily that this might be the bottom for Dubai or anything like that, necessarily. What is it about bad economic times that leads to big buildings? Are really big buildings just an expression of "See how cool I am"?

Those questions leads me to others. Why do we as humans feel the need to make things bigger and bigger? Why was a building like the Burj needed in Dubai at all? Is it really necessary in a place like Dubai? Are really tall building's an efficient use of space and resources?

That last question leads me to thinking about how tall buildings intersect what I'm truly interested in. Are tall buildings good for cities? Does the benefit of having that much square footage focused into a relatively small footprint offset the expenditure the vast amount of resources necessary to put it there? So many questions. Lot to think about.

Introduction to the blogging world

So I guess I'm a little behind the times here. Sort of. I've been reading and participating in blogs for years now but I never took the next step to create one to start talking about the things that interest me.

Perhaps it was because I felt I had too many interests and didn't have the time. Perhaps it was because I'm a little shy. I hold strong opinions. I shouldn't be afraid to shout them to the world, right? So here it is. My first blog. I'm going to discuss the things that made me interested in Civil Engineering in the first place.

I might end up talking about other things too, maybe. But mainly this blog is so I can talk about the things that I read about all the time, such as Burj Dubai which opens officially today, or the urban farming concepts that are seeing some strong support in Detroit right now.

So welcome to my little corner of the world. I hope that you find some interest in the things I have to say.