New Urbanism & "Weird"

New Urbanism!!

Awesome. People are looking for the next wave of living environment. Walkable cities, diverse retail and localized business interests, reduction of their energy usage - all part of the new urban schema. But I'm not going to settle for just hyper dense, garden communities. Single family, single building - that style is going to be very popular for sure but the Gia Ship takes it beyond.

Guy I was working with, a gentleman and programmer has a picture perfect business lunch with me: Excellent Sushi, presented beautifully and I decide to broach the subject of 'the idea' and my late night surfing and discovery of New Urbanism. To my surprise and delight, he responds quickly and is a fellow enthusiast.

He turns me on to Jane Jacobs and a short Amazon query later and a perusal of the free pages they provide. I've picked up three of her books, a quick $30 but hey... lunch cost that too, no big deal.

The nature of Economies. Excellent read, bout halfway through it. The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and Cities and the Wealth of Nations are next on the list, though my government professor is encouraging me to chew on a Texas government textbook instead. It's good reading too - and surprisingly relevant to the issue at hand. And this issue is decidedly a local government issue. After all, I need to know how to leverage the government policies and people if I want to do this, and New Urbanists are already helping make the case. Given that these posts are happening at the same time as My idea comes bubbling up... makes me wonder if I'm not being influenced by subtle external hints.

New Urban News - we have a for pay newspaper and someone making money off these thoughts - promising indeed. I just might blow the $80 for a subscription but it's high enough to make me hesitate... after all, my sidelines from my job include pursuing an engineering degree and buying a restaurant at the moment. This remains a 5-8 year planning effort. All in all - I'm reviewing the website and we'll see if I'll splurge for the full shabang.

Another nice resource - quantification of audiences. So, who am I looking to attract to the Gai Ship. Trendsetters for sure.

Quotes below are extractions of the entire article.

These consumers are willing to make choices that generate environmental benefits, but not if it means sacrifice.They will recycle when it’s convenient. They will embrace energy-saving housing, but it “cannot look weird."

I'm fully in the Opportunists niche.

These pragmatic, optimistic, entrepreneurial people welcome advances in technology. They love gadget-green buildings. They count on economic self-interest rather than regulation to lead society toward improved buildings and communities

Though I also find some harmonization with the Survivalists. I love to camp outdoors, and backpacking in the mountains is my ultimate recharge. I love knowing that I really *can* survive with little to no modern convenience.

They will adapt their lifestyles for the “Long Emergency,” the bleak period when oil production declines. The survivalists will spur more discussion of how we’re going to adapt to global warming. Survivalists will circle the wagons for family and community. They will prepare for off-the-grid living. At their worst, they are paranoid about security. They may constitute the majority someday. So new urbanists thinking about how to market sustainable development should think about security.

Ah, the loonies in the playground. Love them or hate them, they are a valid audience and may perhaps be our first customers. For instance off the grid power generation - well, at least I'm making the grid more local, tapped into the major grid of course, but since I'm looking at power generation coming from hundreds or thousands of micro generation systems - everything from solar panel, wind turbines, heat re-capture and geothermal; spread all over the Gai Ship complex, the blackouts are a thing of the past.

Back to the Trendsetters - our primary audience. The primary thing we have to be very very careful of is "Not Looking Weird"(TM) The Gia Ship will be a "weird" building by modern tastes!!! Currently I'm picturing a long, skinny building or set of 3-4 long skinny buildings - winding around 500 acres. Yes - Big buildings! Tall, 10-15 story Spires rise from the buildings capped by wind turbines and filled with condos, apartments, high end retail and dining establishments. These spires will look down upon hundreds of acres of living roof that doubles as park space, farm acreage, rainwater capture and perhaps even some animal husbandry (cattle, horses, pigs and or chickens); but roof usage is a decision I'll broach another time. Suffice it to say - we're building an artificial hill, complete with high plateaus, grottoes and peaks for people to live in, on and under.

The sides of our hill/building will be sloped outward. Yes, it's easier and more traditional to make it a flat 90 degree face - and it's likely that the slope will vary all over the place up to and even past the usual 90 degree vertical line - but outward sloping allows for multiple levels to have living patios. Picture this, you're in your living room, and you look out the large windows onto your patio. On the outer edge of the patio is a low, thick wall that acts as your railing. Flowers, shrubs and even small trees grow profusely in the earth filled and automatically irrigated space. For some patios, particularly ones for the upper end of the residential and retail mix, I even picture them being floored with grasses - that's right, an earthen patio... and you're on the 3rd floor. Walking out to the wall you smell the flowers and notice that the breeze that moves around you is cool and smells good. Your neighbor's Mountain Laurel is blooming and the scent overrides your own marigolds until you're right up on them. Looking out over your plantings, the wall is thick enough to provide your downstairs neighbor privacy unless you lean way over but then you'd probably crush your plantings.

The roof of your patio is a standard looking patio roof from below - but from above you would see that it's fully paneled with solar panels. Those solar panels are yours and the energy they produce offsets whatever usage you have - reducing your overall electric bill.

The patio plantings are a way to leverage their shade and cooling, do rainwater capture and provide a more pleasant living arrangement. Remember - this is supposed to be a replacement for the standard 'American Dream Home' that normally includes some sort of out-door space. You could even grow food plants in your patio garden

Building a living roof and something that can support trees and other plant matter all up it's side requires a good deal more strength than your typical wood frame. Given that another primary goal is to leverage the heating and cooling benefits of thermal mass, much of the construction will be stone and concrete based materials. I don't anticipate using a lot of woods or other more standard, and construction materials except as interior partitions. This again complicates our "Weird" feel since many people identify strongly with the traditional building styles as "Correct" and changing that perception may be very difficult. Brick and stone facades over concrete are the answer I think. People marvel when they enter a building that looks like it could be standing for their great great great grandchildren to see. That's the feeling - and reality I want to evoke.

So the outside - it's pretty weird! I mean... an artificial hill!?!

However, keeping it from being too weird - interior spaces will be much more standard fare. Interior facing doors and windows will have traditional facades. No rounded corners or Jetsons looking hallways here. Reactions to such post-modern styles is always a mixed bag. People can and will appreciate quality stone and brick work. In their homes, walls will be made of traditional materials like sheet-rock. Floors will be stained concrete, tile, carpet or bamboo based wood flooring (grown on site of course).

Inside - not so bad! Yay, we're Trendsetters!

One thing that is lurking in the back of my head and is fodder for another post - this place is going to be expensive to build. Ah well - we'll address the myriad income sources for a developer and manager. We did say this was to be luxury living... it's not going to be cheap, but it is going to be very, very nice - where living green is convenient.

Public Spaces

Dinner with a client

Adjusting your tie, you step into the breezeway outside your front door. The cool wind has a hint of damp pine from the evergreens around the corner. Turning, you stride past Heather's door, making a mental note to invite her to dinner again soon. Winning the neighborhood chili cookoff recently had given you that inroad you had been hoping for and you had finally been able to ask her out. You debate sending her a text immediately but discard the thought, you need to focus on that client you're meeting soon.

Becoming aware of your surroundings again you stride into a tram terminal and note that that as usual, you showed up as it was leaving. Ah well, another's coming shortly. You glance around and note that it's quiet for a Thursday night. Wondering, you glance around and see the sign in the corner scroll to an advertisement for the evenings entertainment. Ah, that hot young singer was doing her first show tonight. You consider hitting the music hall if the meeting is short, but discard that idea too - you can see better from the video feeds and it's much more comfortable to watch in your robe from the sensa room anyway. The ad shows a live view. She's belting out her new single and you sigh, knowing that it'll be stuck in your head for the next couple of hours, again.

Splashing water intrudes on your attention and you see the waterfall on the north wall running vigorously. A small hint of spray wafts towards you but falls well short and you glance up. It's raining hard outside. The falling water is being channeled and captured, explaining the strength of the usually quiet fountain. The drumming on the high glass fills the room with an almost subliminal roar. Lightning flickers above and you watch as it throws bright fragments of white light all down the light well.

You look again at the waterfall, artificial but rather well done, you really like that Japanese style with the bamboo stakes and bonsai trees. The waterfall usually looks like a mountain creek through a miniature landscape. Now it looks like a mountain river that aught to have kayaks sporting in it's rapids.

The tram pulls up and you hop on. A young couple is riding in the far front seat. Their infant burbling in a carrier grins at you and squirms. Smiling you head for the back giving them their privacy. Not that you can go far. This tram is a single car that only seats 10 if they are cozy. Light queue tonight - most of the big trams must be moving people from the public parking to the music hall.

Sitting down you pull out your communicator. The tram's menu is flashing insistently. Touching the icon, it zooms to cover the screen and the map centers on a moving dot at your location. Pulling the map around with your finger, you note your destination. It's a nice pool hall, bit older and the decor is rustic and muted, good for a private business meeting. The short skirts on the waitresses didn't hurt at all. A confirmation appears and you see the menu icon start flashing. Picking a beer takes only another moment and you glance up as you leave the lightwell - noting another fork of lightning dancing across the glass.

You make yourself comfortable as the tunnel lights turn into a long multicolor line. The couple begin to pack up their things. Why do people with kids always seem to have so much stuff with them?! The trundlebot accepts the load and you note it's balance is perfect. Your software really helped the spider looking things deal with the tram system. Coding for that initial lean of exterior momentum was so easy in concept... yet so much a pain to finalize. You grumbled again that the tram acceleration announcements were broadcast in MPH instead of the micrometer per second robot movement standard. So bizzare that holdover had been kept.

Shaking your head you glance back to your communicator's screen and open up a video feed of the pool hall's interior. Scanning you don't see your client yet. Excellent, you'll be first - always good to get the upper hand by being first to a meet. Opening up your search you skim through the last 10 minutes of video along restaurant row. No sign of anyone you know. They must all be at the concert. Noting who else is vidding the restaurants tonight you see that the police are watching too. Interested your slave your screen to see what they are watching... bah - they're watching a large broken trundle being gathered up by a custodian. The voice chatter grows from a whisper as you move the audio slider. It's just basic questions about the state of the bot. Tuning out you wonder again if they have secret vidding capability. All the rules say no, and the code that handles the vids are open source and there's no sign of it anywhere, but you still wonder.

Tuning into the concert you sit back as another hit washes over you. You don't have this one so you flag it for your personal record set, approving the charges absentmindedly and add a tip for the concert. After a bit of crowd scanning you don't see Heather and give up, letting the feed center on the stage and the contortions of yet another 17 year old superstar. Glancing out the windows you see the tunnel open up into a huge lightwell. The tram's moving fast enough that it climbs the curved wall like large luge even as it spirals up to the upper stories. Glancing to your right you can see down the lightwell and you imagine you can hear the water flowing into the huge vats below you. The fish are swarming around in the lake below, so dense in places that it's just a black mass where the light can't penetrate.

The tram darts into another tunnel, but then slows quickly and comes to a stop right at the beginning of the shopping plaza. Probably headed to the baby shop that's right there on the corner you think as the entourage hop out. You debate walking from here but sit back. There's no-one in the queue for the tram so you're going to get there faster just sitting tight.

Moving quickly again you see the new glass blower shop glittering all sorts of colors go sliding past. Looking ahead you see the great lightwell between the forest of market canopies. Slapping your hand against the wall you tell the tram to stop in an overloud voice. No matter, you're alone. The tram glides quickly and smoothly to a halt and you jump out as another lightning bolt flickers down and hits the Vertical Farm's lightning rod. Here the storm outside is very obvious. Lightning keeps striking the rod with loud rumbling accompaniment - making the entire well strobe and pulse. This well isn't completely covered and the area around the vertical farm is being drenched in a biblical downpour. Cats & Dogs indeed, maybe a horse or two! The water is flowing into a stream that meanders down the middle of the street, quaint little bridges and stepping stones all along it's length. Usually placid enough to only wet your ankles, it's full enough that the water is overflowing into the side drains. You step lively over one of the bridges trying to picture an amount of water that could actually flood this place. Given that this storm is a doozy and isn't making much of a dent, you find that difficult.

More strobing light and afterimages are burned into your retina's. Blinking them away you glance at your communicator again and pull up the Gia Ship's charge level. The graph is climbing even as you watch. Checking the distribution, hydroelectrics spiking as high as you've ever seen and solar is bottomed out. Even the lightning strikes are feeding in, but they are really just drops in the energy torrent. You smile because it'll be cheap to recharge the runabout and your communicator for a week or so and you make a note to refill your house's water reserves when the price bottoms out tonight.

As you walk up to the door of the pool hall, you see your client stepping down from a tram. His coat still shows water droplets on the shoulders. "Wet out?" you quip as you hold the old west swinging bar door wide for him.
"This is from the park and ride." He replies "I'm dry again compared to what I was, coms say it's going to rain like this for another day or so."
"Oh really?" You make a mental note to perhaps wait until tomorrow to top off your tanks.
"Yeah, hey good suggestion coming here. After this I'd like to hit up that place you took me the other week. That Salmon was phenomenal. I really need to look at moving in, the downtown condo I'm in is nothing as nice as this."

Stepping inside you glance around. The pool hall is crowded and a bit noisy. A new waitress steps forward and hands you your beer. "Hello sirs, would you like a table or would you like to head to your reserved room."
"The room please" you respond, wanting to get down to business.
"Follow me!" She chirps and spinning on her toes her skirt flares and it's all you can do to keep from staring. You note that your client is unable to resist and you take a sip of your beer to cover the grin as he flushes and grins embarrassed when he sees that you caught his social faux pa.

"What would you like? A local brew?" You begin the pleasantries as you are led into a 2nd floor enclosed balcony looking out into the light well.
The light strobes again. Staring at the lightning rod your client nods absentmindedly and mumbles to himself "really aught to move here."
Touching your communicator you order a round and open a tab for your friend here. Yeah, you're going to get the contract, you can feel it, a tab tonight is a small price to pay for landing it. You're going to be a hero at the office tomorrow.

Noting that he's still watching the lightning capture, you thoughtfully queue up an email with the Gia Ship's resident's application web site.

House of the Future

Disney thinks that the house of the future is based on automation and gadgetry. While I can sympathize since I'm a geek and would love automating the suburban house... that's not the future, it's just today's expensive.

Why is it expensive? Because today's floor plans and features are minor tweaks on designs that date back to the turn of the century. Thought for today's common requirements and technology hasn't been integrated. We really are very conservative when it comes to housing designs that are out of the ordinary.

Multiple dining rooms? Formal dining in today's world is done in high end restaurants or in special retail establishments that cater to larger parties. Having it done in your home is only available to the rich. And yet, in almost every house built today there are at least 2 places to sit and eat.

Hrm - why not understand how people really live, how their lifestyles revolve around family and roommate interaction, access to the internet, entertainment both digital and analog (reading, board & card games etc) and comfortable furniture.

Think about a cat box that's hidden away and ventilated to the outside, rather than crammed into the corner of the spare bathroom where it gets litter everywhere. A dog door that leads into a tiled utility area that has a large drain and a hose attached to the wall. A fully wired house that knows your preferences (yes automation) for lighting, music and moves with you through the house. A delivery box at your front door that allows the UPS dude to leave that expensive item you bought off the internet in a secure location.

A recent really intelligent look at our modern lifestyle was Dilberts Ultimate House. The writer of the Dilbert cartoon asked his readership to suggest design features for Dilbert's home. And what a home they came up with. It inspires and helps refine my vision for the interior of the Gia Ship.


If Dilbert built his own house, he'd start with a list of functional requirements that looked like this:
• Zero maintenance inside and out
• Energy usage approaching zero
• Green building materials when practical
• Healthy indoor air quality
• Practical to build, using local contractors
• Inexpensive luxury (emphasizing layout, colors, lighting, function, and design)
• Flexible use rooms
• No wasted "museum spaces" i.e. formal dining room, front room, foyer
• Fully documented, from the home theater to kitchen appliance for maintenance or upgrading
• Address modern lifestyle needs that are often overlooked:

• Exercise
• Play
• Crafts
• Home office or two
• Home theater
• Easy pet maintenance (dog or cat)
• Lots of storage for every function

Architecture

• 3,000 square feet above ground
• 3,000 square feet basement for exercise, storage and energy management purposes
• Three-car garage
• Spanish/Italian/English inspiration, but modern
• Stucco, brick, tile, rock, wood
• Not too boxy
• Rounded doorways
• No "museum rooms." Every room should be used and inviting.
• Outdoor areas (lanai, courtyard, screened porches)
• Interior colors warm and earth toned
• White exterior walls
• Ceiling beams (not old growth trees)
• Mirrors to make space seem larger
• Internal courtyard?
• Extensively wired for power, Internet, cable, etc.
• Few hallways.

Rooms Omitted

• Formal dining room
• Formal living room
• Big foyer

Interesting Rooms Included

• Home theater
• Basement with high ceiling, basketball hoop, golf practice area, ping pong, exercise area
• Craft room
• Storage area (within garage)
• Workshop
• Home office
• Quiet Room for noisy kids or music practice (might be incorporated in Home Theater space)
• Cat or Dog room
• Greenhouse
• Observatory

You really should check out the details - how it all fits together; it's really well done.

While we can't really conceive of everyone in the eco-city having 6000 square foot homes, we can use these ideas to forge an understanding of our modern lifestyle. Things like the 3 car garage, observatory and sport court can easily be public spaces where more than one resident has access and use.

In the list of "ideas not used" we pull quite a bit out of here and incorporate them as well in our design:

• Electricity generation on site - yes, but scaled up facility wide for efficiency.
• Super insulation - Of course
• LED lighting - Absolutely. The tiny power draw and their lifespans that are measured in human lifespans make LED lights very attractive.
• Automation - Sure thing. Since this place is designed to be the house of the future... automation has a big place there. Making it more comfortable and convenient for people to live here is a big part of making it attractive to the masses.

Disney wants to show what the home of the future looks like... I want to build it.

Groceries

A Vertical Farm would provide fresh organic produce for residents, year round.

Think about walking to an organic market where the food is grown on the floors rising above you. You step into the entranceway and see all manner of vegetables and fruit laid out in front of you. Heavy fresh oranges and huge grapefruit vie for space with small watermelons and ripe mangoes. The season doesn't matter - it's all right there.

You walk to the back and an array of fresh fish, shrimp and other seafood awaits your inspection, most of it grown on site in the huge aquariums and indoor ponds that dot the bike and walking paths. The sushi shop next door has a special shrimp dish that recently won awards and you decide to grab some on the way out the door.

Or, since it's so close - place your order online from the comfort of your own home and have fresh vegetables delivered to the door in just a few minutes. Room Service indeed!

Other items like your dried grocery goods you can either pick up yourself at specialty shops and the general goods store, or have them too delivered to your door. Most of this will be 'imported' processed food that you find normally in your local supermarket. Local food shops that you would visit would handle luxury goods and specialty items.

Restaurants located in the facility have fast access to anything the farm can make - and they can request specific things be grown! Instant feedback to the production side of the house.


When you are done picking out the vegetables and have dropped them into a robotic cart that will drop them at your doorstep, you grab that sushi and decide that you wanted more than just a bite. Heading quickly to the glass elevator your ascend quickly through floor after floor of green growing things. Alighting at the top floor you exit into a posh restaurant. Today's special is Bok Choi lettuce, fresh grilled salmon with a ginger white wine sauce and a side of fresh lime juice sweetened with sugar cane sugar. All of it of course grown on site.

You opt to sit on the roof today so you can enjoy the spring day. Climbing a stairwell you exit onto a living roof where tables are set up under awnings made of solar panels. The wind is brisk but mellowed by the warm sun and broken up by the flowering bushes set along side the tables.

Waste Management

Recently, a new technology has come out that turns our everyday landfill waste into high quality oil, gas, water, and a carbon based residue.

Neatest thing about it... it thrives on organic waste. Anything Carbon based, including and especially plastics can be processed in this way. Turkey waste... industrial quantities of bird shit, feathers, bones, fat and other not so tasty scrap bits go into this large machine and out comes a light fuel oil - almost exactly the same kind thats used to heat homes.

This is a no-brainer for the eco-city we're looking to build here. All of the waste generated by human living, sewage included can be processed though a machine that feeds fuel, natural gas, electricity and gray water back into the system. This thing doesn't even have to make a 'profit' per say but the latest on the big industrial plant where they've been proving the concept just put them past the break-even point after 3 years... with profits coming.

Feedstock [10]	Output	Feedstock	Output	Feedstock	Output
Plastic bottles	Oil 70 % Gas 16 % Carbon solids 6 % Water 8 %	Turkey offal	Oil 39 % Gas 6 % Carbon solids 5 % Water 50 %	Paper (cellulose)	Oil 8 % Gas 48 % Carbon solids 24 % Water 20 %
Sewage sludge	Oil 26 % Gas 9 % Carbon solids 8 % Water 57 %	Medical waste	Oil 65 % Gas 10 % Carbon solids 5 % Water 20 %	Tires	Oil 44 % Gas 10 % Carbon and metal solids 42 % Water 4 %

Note those carbon solids... those are excellent fertilizers which could be used in the Vertical Farm.

The natural gas could be fed into heating & electricity generation systems. If it's possible, I'd like to use some of this in stove top cooking but I don't know if the gas produced is capable of this.

Note that this oil can be easily refined into a diesel. Full burner personal vehicles are banned from the premises BTW! - no rampant polluting in this place! The oil can be used to provide fuel for the hybrid cars everyone is driving. This thing will also need a truck fleet to support it and since I don't yet see any major improvements in 18 wheeler hybrids, this fuel oil could be used by this fleet. Many other industrial options are available for that oil - I'm sure that I'm just scratching the surface


With our solid waste management being handled by the thermal separation, normal household trash, especially plastic based is welcome for its contribution to the natural gas, oil and electricity of the place. Nothing is 'waste' any more... everything cycles into an input for the next step. What we normally think of as stuff going to the dump - is now an integral part of the contribution to our sustainability. Even and especially that most noxious of human waste... our own poo. Solid sludges are fed into the thermal separation while liquid move on to the next step bio-remediation.

Water Cycle
Bring in the gray and black water left over from the thermal seperation, rainwater collection, irrigation runoff and of course human activity into a living machine.

A living machine has several major advantages to conventional waste water treatment:

• No toxic sludge bi-product from chemical use to sterilize & treat
• Sequestration of heavy metals - can even be designed into specific plants for special disposal later
• Reduced capital, human and energy investment to maintain the system

Now, a living machine doesn't get us to 'pure' yet. And it's possible we'll have to do a few more steps of bio, mechanical and chemical filtration to make it potable but there is another route to drinking water. Transpiration from the plants in the farm. Watering the plants would be a precise endeavor with each planting getting only the water it needs. Don't think about large rooms filled with spraying water - that's more likely to be used as a rain simulation for washing the plants. A drip or other hydroponic solutions that have controlled water and nutrient flow would deliver just the water necessary for the plant to thrive.

So - all that fresh open air above the plants is has pure and highly oxygenated water floating around in vapor form... enter another wonder of our world... condensation. You run chilled pipes or a depressurization system with a condensation water capture system and that pure floating water comes trickling in a steady rain that can be bottled or piped into peoples homes as tap water.