ResilienCity: Boston's Innovation District 2035
Thursday, May 5, 2011 at 5:12PM ;)
The International Living Future Institute launched the Living City Design Competition in 2010, seeking designs for our cities in the year 2035. map-lab's submission was ResilienCity. ResilienCity seeks to set the vision for the future of Boston’s Innovation District, a new neighborhood built on greyfield and brownfield sites that will provide residences and workplaces for over 300,000 people. We have reached the tipping point where we need to think of the whole, not the self. We have arrived at a time when we need to stop behaving selfishly and begin to explore how we can all come together as a community to create environments that are culturally enriching, healthier, and equitable. We come back to nature to do this.
Site:
Our design proposal for Boston’s Innovation District incorporates a strategy of new canals that gives 100 acres of land back to the sea and provides for roof gardens and living walls throughout the district with the goal of re-establishing long lost ecological conditions. In total our proposal provides over 15 million square feet of green spaces for recreation and green roofs. In addition, we transform a major downtown Boston street into a pedestrian friendly boulevard modeled after the Ramblas in Barcelona.
Water:
;)
Our net zero strategy includes transforming an existing bus tunnel into a 20 million gallon district water cistern. Our “coastline” restoration at the Canal Districts residential developments remove existing hardened edges (granite seawalls) to provide permeable surfacing that allow for aquifer recharge through reconstructed wetlands.
Energy:
;)
Our energy strategy provides 4 times what is required in our district. Our project is able to do this using a variety of processes including photovoltaic systems on building roofs and the roads, biogas using organic waste, and MicroCHP strategies at individual building scales.
Health:
;)
We have designed ResilienCity to encourage all visitors, workers, and occupants to be active and educated about their health. Vehicular traffic has been substantially reduced in the ResilienCity by increasing public transportation and by relocating the tractor-trailer trucks to a new Eco Industrial Zone.
Materials:
An important part of our strategy is reuse of existing buildings and a self-imposed limitation of 500 km radius for sourced materials. All buildings in ResilienCity will contain a building nutrition label that provides nutritional value to occupants. This label will provide information about energy, water, waste, and will also warn occupants of red list materials. In addition, the label will provide occupants with the current embodied energy “debt” related to the building construction.
Equity:
We have stitched ResilienCity together with the previously divided South Boston community and provided them with new waterfront and a new trolley system. From a planning perspective the community will feature programs that help build community including day care facilities, an elementary school, a food market, a medical center, and community center buildings for residential areas.
Beauty:
Our project provides for educational opportunities about nature, self (health), buildings, and community. Along with the physical signage (nutrition labels on buildings and functional diagrams of the ecosystem at work) comes the embrace of the ever expanding “on-demand” information and the devices evolving to meet that demand for information. By taking the precedent of the carbon card deployed (in research) by London, we expand on that to create a model for the engagement and tracking activities. This “carbon card” (though really it’s a resource card) is an embedded synthesis of the economic (debit card) and the ecological (embodied energy factors) “costs” of things. This device, an evolution of smart phone technologies, becomes your “wallet”. Accessed by the user only, through bio-activation, are your ID card, your communications/data accessing device, your credit/debit card, embodied energy measurer, as well as health status (i.e. blood sugar levels, cholesterol, etc.)
Reader Comments (5)
I think green construction is key in the sustainability of big cities. This plan is not only utilizing green roofs, but permeable pavements and living walls. It will have great energy savings, and economic and health benefits. I love it!
I think many people see a project like this and think too short-term, worrying about the costs and ignoring the long-term benefits (both financial and non-financial). The end result of a project like this will be beautiful and reflect a socially, environmentally, and economically conscious people. Absolutely great for the community!
I like the anchors... new waterfront ...new trolley system...programs that ... build community .... day care facilities, an elementary school, a food market, a medical center, and community center buildings. Can there be tidal energy?
yes, there could definitely be tidal energy. we hope to keep expanding on this and finding new areas for innovation
I just read through the full document...and I especially enjoyed the spread where you narrate the different experiences of users in the neighborhood. From the young professional interviewing for their new job to a busy parent making a fun journey out of dropping their kids off for daycare. That page really described, for me anyhow, how and why all the proposed systems really can work.
Super rich document!
I learned of your important work at MapLab on the project:
ResilienCity: Boston's Innovation District 2035
through the program on WBUR yesterday:
Siefer, Ted
2011 "Balancing Industry And Recreation On Boston’s Waterfront," WBUR - Radio Boston, (22 June 2011).
As it turns out, I teach courses in the Harvard Summer School and Extension School on topics very centrally related to ecological design in the city, and I would very much like to expose my students to your work.
I can point my students to your online publication through ISSUU, but I am writing to inquire whether there is any way to obtain a "hardcopy" of this publication? I think it would have a greater impact if I could hold up a copy for them to see and pass around the class.
Please let me know if you think this might be possible.
Thank you very much for your consideration.
Cordially yours,
T.C. Weiskel
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T.C. Weiskel
Harvard Summer School
Global Climate Change
Harvard Extension School
Global Climate Change
http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre130
Environmental Justice
http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics
http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120
Cambridge Climate Research Associates
http://Climate-Research.Com
http://Climate-Research.TV
http://Cambridge-Climate.ning.com
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