This is to reminder that you are welcome to post your sustainable-city related events, initiatives, research & even questions & ideas for free DIRECTLY on SustainableCitiesNet.com!

SustainableCitiesNet.com is a communications hub as “a portal to the future of cities” that are ecologically, socially and culturally sustainable. It serves as a network and communication system to deliver information, to connect people and projects, to accelerate the city’s transformation across the world. For more information about this site please visit “About“.

To contribute a post click here and follow the instructions. If you have any problems posting your data please contact either:
Ferne Edwards, Project co-ordinator & site moderator, at fedwards @unimelb.edu.au or
Simon DAlfonso, Technical support, at dals @unimelb.edu.au.

Green TECH 08, www.greentechshow.com.au, is proud to present an international Trade Show and Conference with a core focus on green building, sustainable design and clean technology . GreenTECH 08 special features include SRD ChangeX 08 , Green Inventors Showcase , Eco House of the Future Competition and a Green Living Zone. Please find more information about the event below.

International and Australian authorities will present keynote topics in their respective fields of expertise. Subject categories will include:
Built Environment
Carbon Trading
Climate Change Science
Clean and/or Renewable Energy
Ecological Sustainable Development
Energy and/or Water Security
Energy Efficient Building Design
Water & Energy Conservation
Environmental Engineering
Exhibitor Product Launch
Government Policy
Low Emission Technology
New Inventions
Permaculture Design
Sustainable Cities
Sustainable Product Design

Steps to apply to present a seminar at Green TECH 08:
Email your seminar title, a brief overview and biodata to: info @greentechshow.com.au (include any website details)
On our review and acceptance you will be required to fill in a Confirmation Form.
Submission deadline: September 30, 2008

Review GREX 07 speakers here: http://www.grex.com.au/conferenceinfo.shtml

Please find an update from the Green Map headquarters below. The Green Map System, http://www.greenmap.org/, supports local Green Mapmakers as they create perspective-changing community ‘portraits’ which act as comprehensive inventories for decision-making and as practical guides for residents and tourists. Over 350 vibrant Green Maps have published to date, and hundreds more have been created in classrooms and workshops by youth and adults. To learn more about the Green Map System visit http://www.greenmap.org/.

An abstract from the latest newsletter from Green Map Systems:

Open Green Map on a Roll!

The enthusiasm is building as the Open Green Map project goes into full-scale production. Already a finalist in the NetSquared Challenge and presented at Beyond Broadcasting and Where 2.0 conferences, this inclusive, participatory social mapping website will put thousands of hopeful green sites from around the world on the map! Open Green Map will also share the public’s insights, images and impacts about each of these significant places.

Mixing social networking, familiar Google Map technology and Green Map’s award-winning iconography, Open Green Map will create a common platform for Green Mapmakers, Green Map users, and a global public that is becoming more and more adept at living green. Users of OGM will be able to select the themes they are most interested in, and explore the world from a fresh vantage point. They will also have quick access to the unique ‘traditional’ Green Maps published locally in each city, town or region.

We believe that every community has resources to help individuals build healthier, greener communities together. But up until now, too many people lack the awareness and access they need to find and connect with those resources. Open Green Map will energize the booming green innovation, ‘go local’, regeneration and ecotourism movements with social networking and interactive mapping, empowering widespread participation in critical local environment, climate and equity issues worldwide.

This season, a dozen dedicated staff members and interns in our New York office, alongside Green Map partners around the world, are hard at work (preview at OpenGreenMap.org). In July, we’ll open the site to our network of locally led Green Map projects. We’re targeting September for our public launch – you will be among the first to know the exact date!

To learn more about the Green Map System visit http://www.greenmap.org/.

Please find a snapshot below of one of the more recent posts from the Mount Alexander Sustainability Group in Australia, part of the Sustainable Cities Network. To view the original post visit http://masg.org.au/.

Please find message below from Permaculture North, Sydney, Australia of the forthcoming lecture regarding transition towns and relocalisation of community to address peak oil and climate change.

Monday, 21st July 7pm for 7.30pm sharp start
Ku-ring-gai Centre for Seniors, 259 Pacific Highway Lindfield

Peak Oil, Climate Change and the Sydney Transition: Permaculture’s Latest or Greatest Challenge?
After decades of debate, challenge scepticism and uncertainty there is now a growing global consensus on the reality of global warming, though still debate about solutions and weak commitment to action in many nations. Peak Oil – though first predicted in 1956 – is a newer debate and is going through a similar cycle. There are still nations and vested interests in denial and plenty of sceptics. There are plenty of others hoping for a ‘techno-fix’ to the Peak Oil issue. The impacts of Peak Oil, however, are starting to bite right now, much earlier than severe climate change effects. Rising fuel prices, rising food prices, airline cost-cutting and price increases, transport industry struggling and even food-riots are current daily news. We may have much less time to adjust to Peak Oil than to Global Warming. No one can know the exact impacts or timing, but the future scenarios all seem to involve both energy and climate volatility and uncertainty.

Transition Sydney has been formed to stimulate and support local action initiatives aimed at building community resilience and planned adjustment to a world where cheap energy is no longer available and our personal and collective carbon footprint must be reduced to save the planet’s climate and biosystems. Such community-driven ‘relocalisation’ initiatives are likely to prove the most important response to the future challenges, particularly if government responses prove ineffective or even dangerous.

In a multi-media and interactive presentation, Peter Driscoll and Andrew Harvey from Transition Sydney will provide key information on Peak Oil and Climate Change and how these two realities might interact. They will examine possible future scenarios and possible solutions. The vulnerability of the Sydney Region – a metropolitan conglomeration of over 4 million people, 40 local government areas and 8 large city hubs will be discussed. They will then focus on the areas of Sydney serviced by Permaculture North’s activities and activism, the actions that can be undertaken and the central role of Permaculture in building localised community resilience. Finally they will discuss the Transition Towns model of community engagement with local councils to develop local energy descent action pathways for their communities.
After the meeting we will have an open discussion and debate about permaculture strategies to transition. Be prepared for a thought provoking and stimulating meeting this Monday that will get you planning for action.

More information can be found at www.permaculturenorth.org.au Phone 1300 887 145, or email info @permaculturenorth.org.au.

Please find a snapshot below of one of the more recent posts from SustainableRotterdam.com. To view the original post visit http://www.sustainablerotterdam.com/.

The abstract from the article below discusses the uptake of “green skins” on buildings - such as “garden rooftops, multi-levelled terraced gardens, lush foliage draping exterior walls and vast, internal, Babylonian hanging gardens”. What a sensible and beautiful idea! Why can’t cities but sites of production - ie. greenness producing clean air, possibly even food, rather than simply sinks of consumption?! Comments are welcome below. The full article can be accessed from http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23894388-5012694,00.html.

Abstract: “Green skins”, Greg Callaghan, The Australian, June 21, 2008

Garden roofs and leafy walls could be crucial steps in the fight against global warming, writes Greg Callaghan.

Take one glance at images of the eye-catching ACROS building in Fukuoka City, Japan, and you’ll have no trouble believing that a 21st-century office tower can be eco-friendly. Yes, it boasts a host of energy-saving features ranging from densely insulated walls to compact fluorescent globes, but this is a building that wears Mother Nature’s theme colour on its sleeve – or more specifically, on its back. On the street entrance side, it looks like an ordinary office building, all steel and shimmering glass; at its rear it’s a 15-storey cascade of lush garden terraces pouring down to a park: a green, living oasis in a sea of dead, grey concrete.

Green is the right word to describe the flora-embracing features now being incorporated into new and old buildings across the US, Europe and parts of Asia. We’re talking garden rooftops, multi-levelled terraced gardens, lush foliage draping exterior walls and vast, internal, Babylonian hanging gardens. “Living” buildings, some call them – and they’ve been credited with emitting far fewer greenhouse gases than their vegetation-free counterparts, even the most energy-efficient ones.

Not only do their green-clad exteriors freshen the surrounding air, insulate against heat and cold, and reduce flash flooding in the streets by soaking up rainfall, but they’ve also been found to better absorb street and plane noise, which magnifies as it bounces off hard metal roofs and concrete exteriors. Not to forget their warm and fuzzy aspect: built-in gardens create a soothing refuge for a building’s residents and workers, taking the pressure off public parks. All of which explains why some of the world’s leading architects are designing buildings that can only be described as nature-loving, with built-in structures to support living walls and rooftop habitats that can range from grasslands to birch forests, which in turn can support bird and insect life.

The full article can be accessed from http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23894388-5012694,00.html.

See the snapshot below of the website for the Bicycle Film Festival to be held in New York, 9-12 July. Check out the website at http://bicyclefilmfestival.com/index.php.

Please find a brief abstract of an article in The Sunday Times below about the for and against’s about ecotowns. Comments are welcome below!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4115568.ece

From The Sunday Times
June 15, 2008
Ecotowns: for and against
Ten new clean, green ‘eco-towns’ will be built by 2020. And pigs might fly, say critics. They argue that the government is bulldozing through a programme that will create the slum estates of the future
Richard Girling

This is how it will be. Across the fair face of Albion, to the ringing of bells and the soft murmur of doves, appears a leafy flush of eco-towns. They are sun-dappled utopias, urban dreamworlds in which no human need is unfulfilled. Wildlife romps through bird-loud glades. People work at home or in business parks to which they can stroll or cycle. Public transport is swift, efficient and free, so cars are not needed. Community sports hubs, leisure and cultural facilities are so abundant that nobody wants to leave the town anyway. Children walk safely to schools in which the most popular subject is environmentalism. There are superstores for convenience, and farmers’ markets for friends of the planet. Allotments, too, for those who want to grow their own. Energy is renewable, insulation total and the carbon footprint zero.

Nothing is wasted. Grey water goes onto the gardens. Rainwater is dispersed via permeable pavements, swales and ponds into wetland habitats, which channel it safely back into the aquifers and rivers where it belongs. The town never floods. There are no dustcarts. Residents put their rubbish into cylinders that discharge straight into underground vacuum tubes, which whisk it to the local recycling centre, where at least 50% of it finds new economic use. The rest of it is converted into heat or energy. Ill health and unfitness are rare aberrations.

Please find below a report about the ‘Edible Cities’ movement which was based on some urban agriculture projects a delegation from London, UK, visited in the US, supported by the US Embassy, as part of an exchange trip with Growing Power, Milwaukee.

The ‘Edible Cities’ report can be found here: http://www.sustainweb.org/page.php?id=432, and is available for free download.