Public fruit trees gaining ground–in an underground sort of way
There’s a wonderful article in today’s New York Times about the subversive trend in urban agriculture to plant fruit trees in urban spaces. A loose-knit group called Fallen Fruit is planting fruit trees in the Los Angeles area–its bounty to be free for the taking. And up the coast in San Francisco, the Guerrilla Grafters are surreptitiously grafting branches of fruit-bearing trees onto ornamental trees. Even parks departments are now catching on, which portends well for an urban environment in which more of what we eat can be grown within walking distance. For more, read...
Read MoreIt Ain’t Necessarily So
Korky Koroluk, columnist for the Daily Commercial News, explores the contradictory effects that can result from energy-efficiency retrofits. It has been persuasively argued by some that adding more efficient energy systems tends to reduce the amount of energy used, thus lowering over-all energy costs. But that, it is argued, tends to make tenants less careful in their energy use. Extending the argument, increased efficiency lowers cost and increases demand, which increases the rate of consumption, wiping out the initial savings. That’s not a reason not do it, though. Resilient Design...
Read MoreHow biology informs resilient design
We’ve just come across a very thoughtful article by Michael Mehaffy and Nikos Salingaros called “Toward Resilient Architectures 1: Biology Lessons” in MetropolisMag. Mehaffy and Salingaros draw a number of lessons from biological systems and use them to draw conclusions about how resilient human systems must be designed. Here’s what they suggest resilient cities must be like: 1) They have inter-connected networks of pathways and relationships. They are not segregated into neat categories of use, type, or pathway, which would make them vulnerable to failure. 2) They...
Read MoreResilient design for hospitality spaces
RDI and resilient design are being mentioned even in unlikely places, such as this mention at Boutique Design in the context of designing hotels and other hospitality spaces. It underscores our conviction that resilience to climate change and other environmental challenges should be built into any new building or retrofit.
Read MoreInterview with Alex
Sustainable Industries has posted this interview with RDI’s Alex Wilson. From the interview: The biggest challenge we face in trying to make our buildings more resilient is to dramatically improve the energy performance of existing homes. That’s a huge challenge. It will require innovative outboard insulation systems, high-performance window treatments, and other measures like those, and I believe that there is tremendous entrepreneurial opportunities with such products and systems. It will also require innovative financing approaches, the introduction of insurance policies that...
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