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.

As reads from their website, “TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes). This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. More than 200 talks from our archive are now available, with more added each week.”

TED is a fantastic, inspirational resource which offers a range of talks that would engage the Sustainable Cities Net audience. For example, related themes include A Greener Future?, Design Like You Give a Damn, Inspired by Nature, Technology, History and Destiny, The Power of Cities, The Rise of Collaboration, and more…. Check it out and enjoy!

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 an abstract below from an interesting article which discusses some of the issues involved in going for zero carbon emissions in building design. The full article can be viewed at http://www.theecologist.org/pages/archive_detail.asp?content_id=1879.

Abstract: “Whole-house thinking”, Dr. David Strong, The Ecologist, 20/06/2008
“What’s the point of zero-carbon homes that aren’t fit for habitation? There is more to sustainable building than meeting Government targets, argues Dr David Strong

The UK Government has declared a laudable and ambitious plan to ensure all our new homes are zero carbon by 2016 and new non-domestic buildings zero carbon by 2019. The impact of this plan has been felt throughout the property and construction industry, and the drive towards zero-carbon has already had a powerful effect in galvanising the house-building and property development community, and in stimulating innovation. I am not sure that would have happened without such a strong legislative and policy initiative.

Of course the huge surge in interest in sustainable building is good news. After 35 years working in the industry, it is highly gratifying to see sustainability finally reaching the top of the political, planning and construction agenda. The emphasis being put by the Government on more energy-efficient buildings, and greener communities generally, is a truly welcome and encouraging sign.

However, those of us who are passionate about delivering a genuinely sustainable built environment currently face a real dilemma.

Here’s our problem: there is so much more to delivering exemplary built environments than zero carbon. In fact, there is even a danger that a fixation on zero carbon may result in highly perverse outcomes and deliver seriously damaging and unintended consequences in terms of sustainability – with the pursuit of the ‘best’ becoming the enemy of the good.”

The full article can be viewed at http://www.theecologist.org/pages/archive_detail.asp?content_id=1879.

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 information about The Chatham House Food Supply Project published in May 2008.

URL: http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/publications/papers/view/-/id/624/

Chatham House Food Supply Project, May 2008

Download Paper here

Demand for food is increasing because the global population is rising and major developing economies are expanding. Global supply capacity, meanwhile, is struggling to keep up with changing requirements. Four global food supply scenarios have been developed by the Chatham House Food Supply Project to consider the challenges created and their impact on the EU/UK:

• ‘Just a Blip’: what if the present high price of food proves to be a brief spike with a return to cheap food at some point soon?
• ‘Food Inflation’: what if food prices remain high for a decade or more?
• ‘Into a New Era’: what if today’s food system has reached its limits and must change?
• ‘Food in Crisis’: what if a major world food crisis develops?

Across the world the responses to change will be conditioned by uncertainties surrounding the availability of sufficient energy, water, land and skills. EU/UK stakeholders need to start planning now to develop new food supply systems that are up to the task.

More about this project: UK Food Supply in the 21st Century: The New Dynamic.

Please find an abstract below from a post listed on the blogsite: “A Town Square: Conversations about where we live“. I thought it would be interesting to SustainableCitiesNet.com readers.

URL: http://heckeranddecker.wordpress.com/2008/06/13/the-next-city-2/
The Next City?
June 13, 2008 by aandh

This past weekend the New York Times Magazine was devoted to architecture and urban design, and the issue was entitled “The Next City.” I was crestfallen to see that the title of our project here had been scooped up. I was certain that we had been rendered obsolete - surely the NYT would get great journalists to talk about all of the issues facing the next city, and they would do so in a provocative and insightful way. They would spend time, and column inches, talking about making cities, even new and exploding cities in the developing world, sustainable and green and fit for their burgeoning populations. I was really bummed.

Until I read the magazine. At first I was puzzled, and then, as I began to reflect on what I had read, I started to get angry. Really angry.

Read More >

Also from Worldchanging.com is a recent report from Chad Monfreda about the recent conference in Stockholm on “Resilience, Adaptation, and Turbulent Times“. You can read his article here.

Many of the talks from the conference were captured online with Chad’s favourites listed as:
1. Steve Carpenter, University of Wisconsin – Madison, on World-Ending Disasters, coping with uncertainty, and the many-fold uses of scenarios in approaching complex problems in “Scenarios: Imagination for Transformation”.
2. Martin Scheffer, from the Netherland’s Wageningen University, describes ‘tipping points’ in coral reefs, lakes, forests, and society more generally to show how surprise is often the norm in non-linear systems that pack big change in rapid events in his talk on “Critical Transitions”.
3. Will Steffen, Australian National University and former Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), describes how humanity’s Great Acceleration has inaugurated the Anthropocene, and its implications for geo-engineering, the precautionary principle, and other potential solutions in a talk titled “The Earth as a Social-Ecological System?”.

Another great feature to watch inspirational speakers on a variety of topics is to tune in to TED, http://www.ted.com/. TED stands for “Technology, Entertainment, Design” and started out in 1984 as a conference to bring together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes!

A bit closer to home for SustainableCitiesNet.com are the Sustainable Cities Round Tables where key sustainability professionals outline their environmental innitiatives in just 3 minutes!!!!! Scroll down the SustainableMelbourne.com blog to view the wide variety of talent within Melbourne, Australia.

Holly Pearson has recently published an article about the highlights from the 7th EcoCity World Summit on WorldChanging.com and its well worth a read! Find an abstract of her post below followed by a link to the full text.

ABSTRACT:
Highlights from the 7th EcoCity World Summit
HOLLY PEARSON
APRIL 28, 2008 9:48 AM
“In order to transform our cities, we need to move from ego-culture to eco-culture.”
— Rusong Wang, President, Ecological Society of China

The EcoCity World Summit wrapped up on Saturday afternoon in San Francisco. An incredible assemblage of the world’s brightest minds that are working to build greener cities and towns gathered for three and a half days of presentations, discussions, city tours, arts & culture, and celebration. As an urban planner for whom the sustainable cities movement is not only a passion but also a raison d’etre, professionally speaking, I found the conference to be nothing short of mind-blowing.

A vast amount of information and ideas was exchanged, and after letting it all sink in for a day or so I’ve summarized what I thought were some of the most interesting concepts and initiatives presented at EcoCity.

The Big Picture for Saving the Planet: Sustainable Cities
Amazingly, somehow I have worked as a city planner in Oakland, California for almost a year without knowing that right here in my own neighborhood is one of the leading green city advocates in the country, if not the world: Richard Register. Dubbed “EcoCity Master” by his conference co-organizer, Rusong Wang of China, Register is the President of non-profit EcoCity Builders.

Looking critically at the environmental movement, Register asserts that humanity is “winning the battle but losing the war.” Despite lots of successes – stronger environmental legislation, recycling programs in most metropolitan areas in the U.S., and the like – ecological degradation continues and is, in fact, worsening. That’s because, says Register, we’re not paying attention to the big things. And the big things, first and foremost, have to do with the design and functioning of our cities. Urban population is on the rise the world over, and cities are by far the greatest sources of natural resource consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and other pollutants. For this reason, a sustainable global future cannot be achieved without re-thinking and redesigning cities to reduce their ecological impact.

To read the full article visit: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007996.html

See below for details about a Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Hong Kong. I wonder if this event will include a sustainability section?….

Conference Innovation and Entrepreneurship
12 - 13 November, Hong Kong International
Wing Lung Bank International Institute for Business Development (IIBD), David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies (LEWI) and the School of Business of Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) are organising a two-day international conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The conference will focus on innovation in social entrepreneurship as well as new directions in entrepreneurial education in emerging nations. Academic scholars, doctoral students and others interested in entrepreneurship related research are welcome to attend the Conference.

Venue: Hong Kong Baptist University Topic: Education
More Information: David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies (LEWI)