Archive for June, 2006

Major new resilience research center funded in Stockholm

Published by Garry Peterson on June 28, 2006 in General. 4 Comments

The three Swedish Resilience Alliance members (the Centre for Transdisciplinary Environmental Research (CTM) at Stockholm University, the Stockholm Environment Institute, and the Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences) have just recieved a the largest environmental research grant ever distributed in Sweden (22 million Euros) to build a new international transdisciplinary institute for research and policy dialogue on sustainable development.

From the CTM press release:

The new institute will conduct cutting edge research on how human welfare and viable ecosystems can develop together, and also act as a platform for dialogue between politicians, authorities and resource users all over the world. In this way, research results can be turned into practical solutions and contribute to sustainable societal development.

“Until now, political decision-making on the environment appears to have amounted to little more than reshuffling the deck chairs of the Titanic. In order to solve the great environmental problems of the world, we need to change course. Our hope is that the new Institute will contribute essential knowledge that is needed to steer development onto a sustainable path”, says Johan Rockström, Executive Director of the Stockholm Environment Institute and Director–to-be of the Institute.

Behind Mistra’s commitment lies the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a UN-led study on the world’s ecosystems which was released last year. In it, 1400 experts state that the ecosystems which are the basis for human welfare and economic development are deteriorating. Today, 60 percent of the free ecosystem services that we use are exploited in an unsustainable manner. Crucial ecosystem services such as air- and water purification, the pollination of crops and the seas’ capacity to produce fish are in serious decline. The changes are occurring so rapidly today that society is unable to adapt to the new environmental circumstances and thus cannot effectively develop strategies and frameworks for sustainable use of the ecosystems.

“We want to build a unique transdiciplinary research environment where innovative ideas can flourish. By combining new forms of cooperation with a holistic perspective, we hope to generate the insights that are needed to strengthen societies’ and the ecosystems’ capacities to meet a world which spins faster and faster”, says Carl Folke, Director of the Centre for Transdisciplinary Research and Science Director-to-be of the Institute.

“Our societies are an integrated part of the biosphere and dependent upon functioning ecosystems. That is why we need to manage ecosystems so that we can handle the future’s challenges and maintain our capacity to evolve in a positive way”, concludes Carl Folke.

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The Institute will conduct internationally leading research on how human welfare and robust ecosystems can co-develop, as well as serving as a platform for dialogue with politicians, authorities and resource users at a local, regional and international level; emphasis will be placed on the dissemination of information and communication through different media.

The Institute’s research will contribute answers to questions of the future such as: How can human societies – from a local to international level – be organized in order to meet future climate change? How can we reform agriculture so that there is enough food for a growing population? How should networks of marine reserves be shaped in order to secure the world’s future fisheries? How do we decrease the level of vulnerability in the megacities of today and tomorrow?

Congratulations Calle, Johan, Thomas and everyone else who worked on the research proposal!  I hope the center will be a huge success.

Ecological Engineering and New Orleans

Published by Garry Peterson on June 27, 2006 in Ecological Economics, Ideas, New Orleans, Reorganization and Vulnerability. 0 Comments

Robert Costanza, William Mitsch, and John Day, three ecologists with long experience with wetlands, New Orleans, and ecological economics, have an editorial in the journal Ecological Engineering on Creating a sustainable and desirable New Orleans (pdf). Their arguement is a more ecological version of the vison of a new bright green city presented by Alan AtKisson in his post Dreaming a New New Orleans.

Costanza et al write:

The Federal government has pledged over US$ 100 billion for the New Orleans and Gulf coast region to be rebuilt after this terrible (but predictable) tragedy. The question is not if but how it should be rebuilt. What was there can simply be replaced, but this would merely be setting the pins up to be knocked down again by a future big hurricane, the destructive powers of which are increasing worldwide, probably due to global warming. In addition, sea level is rising and New Orleans continues to sink, making the city even more vulnerable over time.

What is needed is a new vision of a truly New Orleans—one that can provide a sustainable and high quality of life for all of its citizens while it works in partnership (not in futile opposi- tion) with the natural forces that shaped it. This New Orleans can serve as a metaphor and a model for the sustainable devel- opment of western industrial society more generally.

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The built capital of New Orleans has been radically depleted and must be rebuilt. We can recreate the vulnerable and unsustainable city that was there, or we can reinvent New Orleans as a model of a sustainable and desirable city of the future. To do this, we need to redesign and restore not only the built infrastructure, but also the social, human, and natural capital of the region. How do we do this and what would a truly sustainable and desirable New Orleans look like? Here are some of the elements of a sustainable vision:

1. Let the water decide: Building a city below sea level is always a dangerous proposition. While parts of New Orleans are still at or above sea level, much of it had sunk well below sea level since the first quarter of the 20th century. It is not sustainable or desirable to rebuild these areas in the same way they were before. They should be either replaced with coastal wetlands which are allowed to trap sediments to rebuild the land (see below), or replaced with buildings that are adapted to occasional flooding (i.e., on pilings or floats). Wetlands inside the levees can help clean waters, store short-term flood waters, provide habitat for wildlife, and become an amenity for the city. Coastal wetlands outside the levees should be rebuilt so that the city has both wetlands and levees to protect the city.

2. One should avoid abrupt boundaries between deepwater sys- tems and uplands. Gentle slopes with wetlands are the best division, and avoid putting humans, particularly those who have few resources to avoid hydrologic disasters, in harm’s way. Of course the abrupt boundaries of the levees are nec- essary, since wetlands alone cannot protect the city, but we need to use both as appropriate.

3. Restore natural capital: Coastal wetlands in Louisiana have been estimated to provide US$ 375/acres/yr (US $940/ha/yr—these and all subsequent figures have been converted to US$ 2004) in storm and flood protection services. Hurricane Katrina has shown this to be a large underestimate. Restoring Louisiana’s coastal wetlands and New Orleans levees has been estimated to cost US$ 25 billion. Had the original wetlands been intact and levees in better shape, a substantial portion of the US$ 100 billion plus damages from this hurri- cane probably could have been avoided. Prevention would have been much cheaper and more effective than recon- struction. In addition, the coastal wetlands provide other ecosystem services which when added to the storm pro- tection services have been estimated to be worth about US$ 5200/acres/yr (US$ 12,700/ha/yr). Restoring the 4800 km2 (480,000 ha) of wetlands lost prior to Katrina would thus restore US$ 6 billion/yr in lost ecosystem services, or US$ 200 billion in present value (at a 3% discount rate).

4. In order to do this we should use the resources of the Mississippi River to rebuild the coast, changing the current system that constrains the river between levees, and allow the resources of freshwater, sediments, and nutrients to flow into the deeper waters of the Gulf. Diversions of water, nutrients, and sediments from the Mississippi are a major component of the LCA plan. These planned diversions should be greatly expanded in order to allow more rapid restoration of the coastal wetlands. Levees are necessary in some locations, but where possible the levees should be breeched by structures in a controlled way to allow marsh rebuilding.

5. We should restore the built capital of New Orleans to the highest standards of high-performance green buildings and a car-limited urban environment with high mobility for everyone. New Orleans has abundant renewable energy sources in solar, wind, and water. What better message than to build a 21st-century sustainable city running on renewable energy on the rubble of a 20th century oil and gas production hub. In other words, New Orleans should be built higher, stronger, much more efficient, and designed to make extensive use of renewable energy. One can imag- ine a new pattern for the residential neighborhoods of New Orleans with strong, multistory, multifamily buildings surrounded by green space, each with enough water and fuel storage for several weeks, and operating principally on wind and solar energy.

6. We should rebuild the social capital of New Orleans to 21st-century standards of diversity, tolerance, fairness, and justice. New Orleans has suffered long enough with social capital dating from the 18th (or even the 15th) century. To do this the planning and implementation of the rebuilding must maximize participation by the entire community. This will certainly be difficult for a number of reasons, including the historical antecedents of racism and classcism in the region, and the fact that much of the population has been forcibly removed from the city. But it is absolutely essential if the goals of a sustainable and desirable future are to be achieved.

7. Finally, we should restore the Mississippi River Basin to min- imize coastal pollution and the threats of river flooding in New Orleans. Upstream changes in the 3 million km2 Mississippi drainage basin have significantly changed nutrient and sediment delivery patterns to the delta. Changes in farming practices in the drainage basin can improve not only the coastal restoration process, but also improve the nation’s agricultural economy by promoting sustainable farming practices in the entire basin.

Peñalosa @ World Urban Forum

Published by Garry Peterson on June 26, 2006 in Ideas and Reorganization. 1 Comment

In Vancouver’s Tyee.ca, Charles Montgomery reports from the World Urban Forum on The Mayor Who Wowed the World Urban Forum - Enrique Peñalosa, fomer mayor of Bogota, Columbia who helped transform Bogota from a city famous for murder and cocaine, to a city famous for its bike paths and bus system.

Enrique Peñalosa presided over the transition of a city that the world–and many residents–had given up on. Bogota had lost itself in slums, chaos, violence, and traffic. During his three-year term, Penalosa brought in initiatives that would seem impossible in most cities, even here in the wealthy north. He built more than a hundred nurseries for children. He built 50 new public schools and increased enrolment by 34 percent. He built a network of libraries. He created a highly-efficient, “bus highway” transit system. He built or reconstructed hundreds of kilometers of sidewalks, more than 300 kilometres of bicycle paths, pedestrian streets, and more than 1,200 parks.

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Resilience networks in global environmental change science

Published by Garry Peterson on June 24, 2006 in General, Networks, Visualization and Vulnerability. 3 Comments

In a new paper, Scholarly networks on resilience, vulnerability and adaptation within the human dimensions of global environmental change, Marco Janssen and others have analyzed the networks of co-authorships and citation among research on resilience, vulnerability, and adaptation in human dimensions of global change research. They analyzed co-authorship and citations among 2286 publications between 1967 and 2005 (3860 unique authors and 10,286 co-authors).

Janssen et al identified the most central scholars, publications, and journals in the knowledge domains of resilience, vulnerability and adaptation.
Coauthorship among human dimensions of global environmental change researchers

Figure 2 Co-author network of most productive and best connected authors with the strongest co-authorship relations. Circles denote author nodes and are labeled by the authors’ last name and first initials. The larger the node, the more publications. The darker the node, the more the co-authors. Black nodes refer to 50 or more co-authors, while white nodes refer to less than 10 co-authors. Edges represent co-authorship relations. The width of an edge represents the relative number of co-author relationships (Janssen et al 2006).

Janssen et al found that the number of publications in all domains increased rapidly between 1995 and 2005, while co-authorship increased from 1.5 authors to 2.5 authors per paper between the 1970s and early 2000s. Despite this increase in number of publications and co-authorship, the resilience knowledge domain is only weakly connected with the other two domains. However, overall there is an increasing number of cross citations and papers contributing to multiple knowledge domains.

The complete database of papers can be analyzed online, on Marco Janssen’s website. However, because this is the Resilience Science weblog, I’ve an image showing the citation network among the most cited papers on resilience (in human dimensions of global change) is shown below. Size corresponds to the number of citations.

Citations within resilience domain
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Why green building has spread

Published by Garry Peterson on June 23, 2006 in Design and General. 0 Comments

The built environment is a major part of humanity’s ecological footprint. The design of buildings, the materials they use, their interaction with their environments, and how they shape human behaviour have substantial impacts on urban ecology. The growth of the human population (7-11 billion by 2050) and the reduction of household size (fewer people per house) combine to suggest that people will need to build a huge number of new buildings (perhaps the same number as those already built) to house humanity in the coming decades. In this context the spread of green building has the potential to have a major impact on humanity’s ecological footprint.

The Harvard Business Review (June 2006) article Building the Green Way explains why green building practices have entered the mainstream. This article is interesting both for its location, and that it speculates on why green building has entered the mainstream. Hopefully, other green design and consumption approaches can learn from the normalizing of green building.

In June 2005, mayors from 50 large cities around the world met at the United Nations World Environment Day conference in San Francisco and signed the Urban Environmental Accords, which set out 21 sustainable-living actions for each city to complete by 2012. As part of the accords, the mayors pledged to mandate green rating standards for all new municipal buildings in their respective cities.

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Before 2000, companies generally regarded green buildings as interesting experiments but unfeasible projects in the real business world. Since then, several factors have caused a major shift in thinking.

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Inequality Dynamics in USA

Published by Garry Peterson on June 22, 2006 in General. 3 Comments

The Economist (15/06/06) has a special report on income inequality in the USA. They describe trends and a little about hypothesized drivers of these trends, but little about the consquences. They write:

Americans do not go in for envy. The gap between rich and poor is bigger than in any other advanced country, but most people are unconcerned. Whereas Europeans fret about the way the economic pie is divided, Americans want to join the rich, not soak them. Eight out of ten, more than anywhere else, believe that though you may start poor, if you work hard, you can make pots of money. It is a central part of the American Dream.

The political consensus, therefore, has sought to pursue economic growth rather than the redistribution of income, in keeping with John Kennedy’s adage that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” The tide has been rising fast recently. Thanks to a jump in productivity growth after 1995, America’s economy has outpaced other rich countries’ for a decade. Its workers now produce over 30% more each hour they work than ten years ago. In the late 1990s everybody shared in this boom. Though incomes were rising fastest at the top, all workers’ wages far outpaced inflation.

But after 2000 something changed. The pace of productivity growth has been rising again, but now it seems to be lifting fewer boats. After you adjust for inflation, the wages of the typical American worker—the one at the very middle of the income distribution—have risen less than 1% since 2000. In the previous five years, they rose over 6%. If you take into account the value of employee benefits, such as health care, the contrast is a little less stark. But, whatever the measure, it seems clear that only the most skilled workers have seen their pay packets swell much in the current economic expansion. The fruits of productivity gains have been skewed towards the highest earners, and towards companies, whose profits have reached record levels as a share of GDP

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Several new studies show parental income to be a better predictor of whether someone will be rich or poor in America than in Canada or much of Europe. In America about half of the income disparities in one generation are reflected in the next. In Canada and the Nordic countries that proportion is about a fifth.

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According to Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, and Thomas Piketty of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, the share of aggregate income going to the highest-earning 1% of Americans has doubled from 8% in 1980 to over 16% in 2004. That going to the top tenth of 1% has tripled from 2% in 1980 to 7% today. And that going to the top one-hundredth of 1%—the 14,000 taxpayers at the very top of the income ladder—has quadrupled from 0.65% in 1980 to 2.87% in 2004.

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But the scale of America’s income concentration at the top, and the fact that no other country has seen such extreme shifts, has sent people searching for other causes. The typical American chief executive now earns 300 times the average wage, up tenfold from the 1970s. Continental Europe’s bosses have seen nothing similar. This discrepancy has fostered the “fat cat” theory of inequality: greedy businessmen sanction huge salaries for each other at the expense of shareholders.

Whichever explanation you choose for the signs of growing inequality, none of the changes seems transitory. The middle rungs of America’s labour market are likely to become ever more squeezed. And that squeeze feels worse thanks to another change that has hit the middle class most: greater fluctuations in people’s incomes.

Visualizing Global Urbanisation

Published by Garry Peterson on June 21, 2006 in General and Visualization. 0 Comments

Urban Growth RatesThe BBC website has a visualization of the growth of global cities showing the growth of cities of more than 5 million people as part of their coverage of the World Urban Forum.

The coverage includes other interesting articles, such as a multimedia profile of a few of the million people who live in the slum of Dharavi in downtown Bombay, and Finding green in the concrete jungle, a look at how air pollution in cities compares in rural areas.

Fuel use, intimately connected to urban pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, demonstrates exquisitely the problems in trying to compare the ecological footprint of the rural and urban dweller.

In 2002, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) focused much of its Human Development Report on China.

“Rural residents consume less than 40% of the commercial energy used by their urban counterparts,” it concluded.

Tokyo skyline

Tokyo’s population and economy have grown while air quality decreased.

“However, if biomass [principally wood-burning] is included, the average person in the countryside uses nearly one-third more energy than a city dweller.”

So the rural resident apparently contributes more to global climate change than the urban citizen - but the equation hinges on how the energy is produced.

If “commercial energy” used in cities - principally electricity - is derived from renewable sources or nuclear stations, the urban dweller wins the eco-prize hands down. But if the rural citizen burns nothing but trees and always replaces them, he or she becomes “carbon neutral” and scoops the award.

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In London and Tokyo, air quality has improved over the last 50 years. In Shanghai and Kuala Lumpur, it has gone down, though there are signs of improvement elsewhere in the developing world.

“It has happened in Delhi, for example, where there has been a huge improvement in air quality by substituting liquefied petroleum gas [LPG] for diesel in vehicles,” observes John Harrington.

“Partly it is just that as cities become richer they can clean their act up, but it’s also how vocal the middle classes become, which in India counts in a way it doesn’t yet in China.

The coverage also includes less interesting articles. One disappointingly boring, and strikingly disconnected from the other articles is a collection of perspectives on the urban world in 2050 from urbanization experts. Their views of 2050 seem to more represent cities today, rather than a global view of what cities could become.

Urban ecology & the World Urban Forum - Urban Solutions

Published by Garry Peterson on June 20, 2006 in Tools. 0 Comments

Vancouver-WUFPrior to the WUF meeting in Vancouver, UN-HABITAT organized a global internet discussion - Habitat Jam - on urban problems to bring ideas from the public to those preparing for WUF3. According to the organizers, slum dwellers in poor countries were most active in this online forum. Following the discussion organizers collated the ideas to produce a workbook (pdf) and a website. Below are some of the “70 actionable ideas” that emerged from the discussion (and links to more details):

Idea: 4.3 Building Community Resiliency
Community resilience can be built using participatory tools that enable community members to map their own hazards and risks and mobilize critical resources to respond to those risks.

Natural disasters are occurring with increased frequency and their financial, social and environmental impacts are rising exponentially. The increased risk of disaster poses challenges to local authorities and their citizens. Community members are the first respondents in emergencies and it is their capacity to cope with impacts of disasters that often determines the risk to life and property. Simple knowledge of “Dos” and “Don’ts” before and after disasters can help improve community response. Post-disaster rehabilitation by rebuilding and reconstruction is not enough to build resiliency.
Idea: 5.3 Cities as Ecosystems
Local governments are figuring out how to treat the natural and built environment, and the humans that interact with it, as one interconnected “city ecosystem”.

Cities are organisms, consuming resources and discharging wastes at ever higher rates as their populations explode.Treating the city as an ecosystem recognizes natural limits. BedZED in the UK, Durban,South Africa and Auroville,India are examples of an approach that treats a city as a part of, rather than apart from, the natural world.

The ‘city as ecosystem’ research was started by UNEP, codified in the Melbourne Principles and the Cities As Sustainable Ecosystems (CASE) approach. CASE is the multidisciplinary study of urban and economic systems and their linkages with natural systems. It focuses on multiple spatial and temporal scales; emphasizes the systems approach; and takes account of techniques such as the ecological footprint, human ecosystem framework, urban metabolism and ecosystem services focus.

Idea: 1.4 Urban Agriculture - A Poverty Reduction Strategy
In poor communities and informal settlements, city councils can promote urban agriculture as a means to fight malnutrition and hunger, enhance the environment and create jobs.

Although growing food in cities is an ancient practice,itskey role in reducing poverty is gaining recognition today. In Kampala, Uganda, the city council, NGOs, research groups,national and international agencies joined forces in a unique collaborative process to legitimize and safeguard growing food and keeping livestock in the city. Kampala’s set of supportive bylaws governing urban agriculture is a model for other cities grappling with this contentious issue. Now the Ugandan government is adopting a national urban agriculture policy.

Idea: 1.11 Ecological Sanitation: Public Toilets in Slums
Sanitation for people living in slums is a criticalproblem. Ecosan toilets, a system using source separation, not only provides sanitation services at low cost to poor inhabitants, it also recovers waste for reuse in agriculture.

The concept behind ecological sanitation (ecosan) is that sanitation problems could be solved more sustainably and efficiently if the resources contained in excretaand wastewater were recovered and used rather than discharged into water bodies and the surrounding environment. The sanitary systems that are used today are based on modern misconception that human excreta are simply wastes with no useful purpose and must be disposed of. Ideally, ecological sanitation systems enable a complete recovery of nutrients in household wastewater and their reuse in agriculture. In this way, they help preserve soil fertility and safeguard long-term food security, whilst minimizing the consumption and pollution of water resources.

Idea: 6.5 Attractive, Affordable Transit
The TransMilenio Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) System in Bogotá, Colombia provides equitable, clean and efficient transportation and has transformed the city from a place designed for cars to one designed for people.

In Bogotá, people happily choose to take the bus knowing their trip will be cheaper, faster, safer and cleaner than taking the same trip by car. The TransMilenio bus rapid transit system is a low-cost network of high efficiency buses that makes public transport the choice of the people. Cutting car use reduces energy consumption and air pollution,and makes cities more livable.

Reporting Futures

Published by Garry Peterson on June 20, 2006 in Scenarios and Tools. 0 Comments

Jamais Cascio, co-founder of WorldChanging, has an good post on his weblog Open the Future on what journalists need to know to report on studies of the future.

1. Nobody can predict the future. This should go without saying, but too often, reports about trends or emerging science and technology tell us what will happen instead of what could happen. In fact, most futurists and foresight consultants will avoid making any predictive claims, and you should take them at their word; any futurist who tells you that something is inevitable probably has something to sell.

2. Not everyone is surprised by surprises. The corollary to #1, be on the lookout for people who saw early indicators of surprises before they happened. Just like an “overnight success” worked for years to get there, the vast majority of wildcards and “bolt from the blue” changes have been on someone’s foresight radar for quite awhile. When something happens that “nobody expected,” look for the people who actually did expect it — chances are, they’ll be able to tell you quite a bit about why and how it took place.

3. Even when it’s fast, change feels slow. It’s tempting to assume that, because a possible change would make the world a decade from now very different from the world today, that the people ten years hence will feel “shocked” or “overwhelmed.” In reality, the people living in our future are living in their own present. That is, they weren’t thrust from today to the future in one leap, they lived through the increments and dead-ends and passing surprises. Their present will feel normal to them, just as our present feels normal to us. Be skeptical of claims of imminent future shock.

4. Most trends die out. Just because something is popular or ubiquitous today doesn’t mean it will be so in a few years. Be cautious about pronouncements that a given fashion or gadget is here to stay. There’s every chance that it will be overtaken by something new all too soon — and this includes trends and technologies that have had some staying power.

5. The future is usually the present, only moreso. Conversely, don’t expect changes to happen quickly and universally. The details will vary, but most of the time, the underlying behaviors and practices will remain consistent. Most people (in the US, at least) watch TV, drive a car, and go to work — even if the TV is high definition satellite, the car is a hybrid, and work is web programming.

6. There are always options. We may not like the choices we have, but the future is not written in stone. Don’t let a futurist get away with solemn pronouncements of doom without pressing for ways to avoid disaster, or get away with enthusiastic claims of nirvana without asking about what might prevent it from happening.

7. Dinosaurs lived for over 200 million years. A favorite pundit cliche is the “dinosaurs vs. mammals” comparison, where dinosaurs are big, lumbering and doomed, while mammals are small, clever and poised for success. In reality, dinosaurs ruled the world for much, much longer than have mammals, and even managed to survive a planetary disaster by evolving into birds. When a futurist uses the dinosaurs/mammals cliche, that’s your sign to investigate why the “dinosaur” company/ organization/ institution may have far greater resources and flexibility than you’re being led to believe.

8. Gadgets are not futurism.Don’t get too enamored of “technology” as the sole driver of change. What’s important is how we use technology to engage in other (social, political, cultural, economic) activities. Don’t be hypnotized by blinking lights and shiny displays — ask why people would want it and what they’d do with it.

9. “Sports scores and stock quotes” was 1990s futurist-ese for “I have no idea;” “social networking and tagging” looks to be the 2000s version. Technology developers, industry analysts and foresight consultants rarely want to tell you that they don’t know how or why a new invention will be used. As a result, they’ll often fall back on claims about utility that are easily understood, familiar to the journalist, and almost certainly wrong.

10. “Technology” is anything invented since you turned 13. What seems weird and confusing will become familiar and obvious, especially to people who grow up with it. This means that, very often, the real utility of a new technology won’t emerge for a few years after it’s introduced, once people get used to its existence, and it stops being thought of as a “new technology.” Those real uses will often surprise — and sometimes upset — the creators of the technology.

11. The future belongs to the curious. If you want to find out why a new development is important, don’t just ask the people who brought it about; their agenda is to emphasize the benefits and ignore the drawbacks. Don’t just ask their competitors; their agenda is the opposite. Always ask the hackers, the people who love to take things apart and figure out how they work, love to figure out better ways of using a system, love to look for how to make new things fit together in unexpected ways.

12. “The future is process, not a destination.” — Bruce Sterling The future is not the end of the story — people won’t reach the “future” and declare victory. Ten years from now has its own ten years out, and so on; people of tomorrow will be looking at their own tomorrows. The picture of the future offered by foresight consultants, scenario planners, and futurists of all stripes should never be a snapshot, but a frame from a movie, with connections to the present and pathways to the days and years to come.

When talking with a futurist, then, don’t just ask what could happen. The right question is always “…and what happens then?”

Bruce Sterling follows up in the comments with his revisions:

1. The future belongs to the open-minded. If you want to find out why a new development is important, don’t just ask the people who brought it about; their agenda is to emphasize the benefits and ignore the drawbacks. Don’t just ask their competitors (((social opponents))); their agenda is the opposite. Always ask the hackers (((academics, regulators))), the people who love to take things apart and figure out how they work, love to figure out better ways of using a system, love to look for how to make new things fit together in unexpected ways.

2. Not everyone is surprised by surprises. Be on the lookout for the people who saw (((and published))) early indicators of surprises before they happened. Just like an “overnight success” worked for years to get there, the vast majority of wildcards and “bolt from the blue” changes have been on someone’s foresight radar for quite awhile. When something happens that “nobody expected,” look for the people who actually did expect it — they didn’t “predict the future,” because that’s impossible, but they will be able to tell you many useful and cogent things about why and how it took place.

3. The future is usually the present, only more so. The details will vary, but most of the time, the underlying behaviors and practices will remain consistent. Most people (in the US, at least) watch TV, drive a car, and go to work — even if the TV is high definition satellite, the car is a hybrid, and work is web programming.

4. There will always be avant-gardes and backwaters. Important changes can’t happen quickly and universally. Any important social change will create at least some reactionary counterforce.

5. There are always options. We may not like the choices we (((seem to have now, but new situations create new choices.))) The future is not written in stone. Don’t let a futurist get away with solemn pronouncements of doom without pressing for ways to avoid disaster, or get away with enthusiastic claims of nirvana without asking (((what people would do next after utopia arrives.)))

6. “Technology” is anything invented since you turned 13. What seems weird and confusing will become familiar and obvious, especially to people who grow up with it. (((The most important technologies are the huge, old, taken-for-granted technologies already massively integrated into everyday life.))) The real utility of a new technology won’t emerge for a few years after it’s introduced, once people get used to its existence, and it stops being thought of as a “new technology.” Those real uses will often surprise — and sometimes upset — the creators of the technology.

7. Even when it’s fast, change feels slow. It’s tempting to assume that, because a possible change would make the world a decade from now very different from the world today, that the people ten years hence will feel “shocked” or “overwhelmed.” In reality, the people living in our future are living in their own present. That is, they weren’t thrust from today to the future in one leap, they lived through the increments and dead-ends and passing surprises. Their present will feel normal to them, just as our present feels normal to us. Be skeptical of claims of imminent future shock.

8. Gadgets are not futurism. Don’t be hypnotized by blinking lights and shiny displays just because they make such good copy. (((Ask the full set of journalistic questions of a gizmo: who, what, when, where, how, why? Why would people would want such a thing? Which people, which demographic? What do they plan to do with it? What’s the killer application? Where’s the revenue stream? What’s the track record of the people introducing this innovation? Does it do anything genuinely novel?)))

9. Most trends die out. (((No tree grows to the sky.))) Just because some trend is (((sexy))) today doesn’t mean it will stay sexy in a few years. Be cautious about pronouncements that a given fashion or gadget is here to stay. There’s every chance that it will be overtaken by something new all too soon — and this includes trends and technologies that have had some staying power.

10. “The future is a process, not a destination.” — Bruce Sterling The future is not the end of the story — people won’t reach the “future” and declare victory. Ten years from now has its own ten years out, and so on; people of tomorrow will be looking at their own tomorrows. The picture of the future offered by foresight consultants, scenario planners, and futurists of all stripes should never be a snapshot, but a frame from a movie, with connections to the present and pathways to the days and years to come.

Urban ecology & the World Urban Forum - universities as catalysts of innovation

Published by Garry Peterson on June 19, 2006 in Ideas and Reorganization. 1 Comment

Michael M’Gonigle is co-author of Planet U: Sustaining the World, Reinventing the University, has an article in the Toronto Star How universities can help Canada’s troubled cities.  He writes that universities can help cities solve their problems and help build sustainable liveable cities:

The idea of many such cities and regions co-operating directly, as well as globally, is intriguing. To help it happen, I have a strategy, too, one that involves an unlikely ally —one with massive and diverse expertise, potentially boundless youthful energy, a large land base, and lots of power, prestige and wealth

I’m referring, of course, to the university. The “higher education industry” is arguably the most important industry in the world. A recent study of the American industry (with 6,500 accredited colleges and universities) put its economic impact at $1.2 trillion per year. At any time, 20 million Americans either work for, or attend, an “institution of higher education.”

Of Canada’s total R&D, 35 per cent (or $9 billion worth) was done by universities. This investment sustains a million jobs, contributes more to the country’s GDP than pulp and paper, automobiles, or the arts, entertainment and recreation industries combined.

These locally situated colleges are also plugged into countless worldwide networks; they are truly a global intelligence. Indeed, with millions of university graduates staffing the high-tech firms and hospitals and manufacturers that make up today’s knowledge economy, the university is actually the mother of all industries.

Today, universities generate huge traffic problems and massive quantities of greenhouse gases. Yet, some now save millions of dollars by giving every student a free transit pass. Local demand for buses has shot up; the need to drive has dropped. Fifty American universities issue passes to more than 825,000 students and staff.

Now, instead of 50 colleges, imagine 5,000. And, looking beyond just the bus pass, think of all these campuses building only state-of-the-art “green buildings,” revitalizing local farming and food systems, shifting to renewable energy suppliers, and redirecting institutional investments into community enterprises. Where a university adopts a mandate of comprehensive local innovation, its potential is truly Earth-changing.

With this week’s gathering asking how we might create sustainable cities despite the intransigence of national governments and transnational corporations, we have an answer: Look to your own backyard.