Housing & urban design - Jan 27
by Staff
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From Nuisance to Asset: The Greening of Alleyways
Sarah Kuck, WorldChanging
... a movement to redesign alleyways into useful spaces is quickly changing them from nuisance to asset. Green Alley projects are taking off across the United States and Canada as a way to reclaim these spaces as filtration and collection centers for rainwater, open spaces and corridors for community members to walk and play, and green space for creating natural habitat or starting local composting efforts.
In Los Angeles, the Back Alley LA project plans to use “community-based landscape design and environmental engineering to transform nuisance alleys into lush green ribbons linking the city’s diverse neighbors together in a network of public spaces.”
The partnership of public agencies, community-based organizations, and USC’s Center for Sustainable Cities and Keck School of Medicine has conducted action-oriented research on alleys in LA and hope to influence the city to invest in the idea.
While connecting neighbors with open spaces may have been the project's initial inspiration for greening its alleys, Back Alley LA has found numerous benefits for greening alleys:
*Create recreational opportunities. Alleys are a vital land resource in many park-poor neighborhoods, where obesity is a major health problem. Transforming alleys into walkable, bikeable, playable spaces can supplement scarce park resources by using existing underused infrastructure.
(22 January 2009)
Thermal Storage Mass
Will Stewart, The Oil Drum
This is Part 3 in a series on Passive Solar Design by Will Stewart, a Systems Engineer in the energy industry and longtime reader of theoildrum.com. As a new administration considers how best to make future infrastructure investments, it seems like some of the lowest hanging fruit is better utilization of the daily solar flux, not only directly with photovoltaic and hot water, but also in building construction and placement
Passive Solar Design Overview: Part 3 – Thermal Storage Mass
In Part 1 of this series, we looked at the three main architectural styles of passive solar design (Direct Gain, Indirect Gain, and Isolated Gain), as well as the first of the five design aspects, Aperture. In Part 2, we covered heat transfer, building heat gain and loss, and Absorbers. This article will present an over of the next design aspect, Thermal Mass, which is one of the main factors in avoiding passive solar overheating in the daytime and excessive cooling at night. Mornings are typically the coldest times for some passive solar homes, and this article aims to provide help to those who want to design their next home or renovate their existing one to provide moderation in heating, cooling, or both.
(26 January 2009)
Big Homes, 1-Person Households are Main Causes of Consumer Energy Waste
SMR Research Corporation, PR Newswire
Changes in household size and home construction have been the main causes of over-consumption of energy by American consumers, according to a new study released today by SMR Research Corporation.
A reversal of these trends, SMR noted, would dramatically reduce U.S. energy use. Yet, household demographics and home building are seldom mentioned in the debates over global warming and energy independence.
SMR's study, Consumer Energy Spending And The Demographics Of Over-Consumption, is based on detailed interviews with more than 27,000 households.
Single-person households, which have grown at triple the rate of overall population growth since 1960, use 18.4% more energy per capita than two-person households do, SMR found. They use 52.8% more energy per capita than three-person households.
Even when excluding households with children, since they do not drive, per-capita energy use is far higher among single-person households than any others, SMR found.
SMR also found that people in houses with 10 or more rooms use 18.8% more energy than people in 8-room homes, and 31.3% more than people in 7-room homes -- regardless of the age of the home. The average square footage of newly built homes has increased by some 34% since 1980, SMR noted.
"This study shows that energy conservationists need a new public message," said SMR President Stuart A. Feldstein. "The old focus on things like home insulation and auto fleet mileage is incomplete. People who decide to live alone, now more than one of every four households, and people who buy the McMansions, are those who squander our energy resources."
(6 January 2009)
Expert sees housing growing more green
Marty Hope, Calgary Herald
Jerry Yudelson sees nothing but a rosy future for the green building movement.
The Tucson, Ariz.-based green building consultant--and author of eight books on the subject--says the green machine will continue to move forward in spite of the global credit crisis and the economic recession that is tightening its grip internationally.
"What we're seeing is that more people are going green each year, and there is nothing on the horizon that will stop this trend," says Yudelson, the principal of Yudelson Associates.
(24 January 2009)
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