I've been tossing ideas around here about what a city might look like if we got really ambitious about sustainability. Sassen's presentation is a good contribution to that conversation. I'll save my thoughts for later (I am still in the symposium). But I'd love to hear what other people think about her ideas.
Sassen @ URS 1: Intro from openalex on Vimeo.
Click "read more" for parts 2 &3..
Sassen @ URS 2: Delegating to Nature from openalex on Vimeo.
Sassen @ URS 3: Conclusion from openalex on Vimeo.
Saskia's talk was really thought-provoking; however, on hearing comments during the Symposium, I wonder to what extent she was able to engage with the 'language' of the participants. For example, her density examples were considered just erroneous, particularly in signalling Mexico DC as a positive example.
In a session of empirical examples of local carbon emissions mitigation projects I asked whether any of the examples could be considered as an example of what Saskia's called "delegating to nature" but my question was openly ignored, suggesting that it did not resonate with the participants.
Hi Vane! I got the same sense. I think Sassen's position as someone outside the planning and climate science community gives here a great vantage point to come up with new ideas. But the challenge is communicating those ideas in a way that urban professionals can understand.
But if you want to hear something new, you have to be ready to go a bit outside your comfort zone and to contribute something.
I didn't think Sassen picked the strongest examples either. But I have definitely seen the closer functional relationship to natural processes that she is describing taking root in some of the cities that I've researched. Think natural storm water remediation for example, or the synergies between urban agriculture and large scale composting systems. But there is a lot more going on here too.
A more complete riff on her presentation is coming up!
Intersting in its own right, I thought this link on CO2 scrubbing "sythetic trees" might be relvant to some of the presentation's points about how we replace natural systems with commercial man made alternatives. http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/scrubbing-co2-with-synthetic-trees/