Image: infomatique from flickr CC

This article is from a remixed talk by Beth Noveck’s on “Transparent Government“. The talk was given as  part of the Long Now Foundation‘s Seminars about Long-Term Thinking. The talks were remixed by Hassan Masum, are made available under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa 2.5 license.

The talk describes a social experiment “which seized upon the truth that each of us is an expert in something” that was designed to investigate ways of re-energising democratic decision making.  It started from the following point,

We have been concentrating decision-making power in the hands of too few people – whether legislatures, or cabinet officials, or bureaucrats and agencies like the patent office. We construct our institutional practices around the notion that this is the best way that we have to make decisions. Even though we do not have a system of monarchy or aristocracy, we still believe in the notion of political expertise, and the notion that we have to rest power at the center.

What exacerbates this problem is that we are making long-term decisions that affect the fate of our planet. The fate of our economy, and of major systems of health care and education and environment, are being decided by people who are in short-term political positions. We have a disconnect between the long-term effect of what we do, and short-term electoral cycles.

We have to look at the ways we can reengineer our institutions to take advantage of the expertise that comes from outside the center, and bring it into the way that we make decisions.

Read the full article on Worldchanging

The Buckminster Fuller Challenge is an annual international design Challenge awarding $100,000 to support the development and implementation of a strategy that has significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems. It attracts bold, visionary, tangible initiatives focused on a well-defined need of critical importance. Winning solutions are regionally specific yet globally applicable and present a truly comprehensive, anticipatory, integrated approach to solving the world’s complex problems.

» Applications are now being accepted: How to Enter

» Deadline is Monday, October 4, 2010 at 5pm, Eastern Standard Time

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A competition proposal to develop a floating city has developed into ‘the world’s first off-the-grid floating building’ in Rotterdam.

Towed into place in the Rijnhaven harbor late this spring, the 10,764-square-foot pavilion is made of three geodesic domes designed by Bart Roeffen, a local architect. It grew out of a competition proposal for a floating city developed by Roeffen and fellow students at the Delft University of Technology. “We thought it was a brilliant idea to promote Rotterdam as a city on the water to anticipate the effects of climate change,” says Arnoud Molenaar, program director of the Rotterdam Climate Proof Program.

The city is expanding its current harbour by 20% and this expansion has created the space for up to 5000 similar floating structures that could potentially use the harbours and docks that are being superseded.

Original article by Cathryn Drake on Metropolis Magazine

As designers, we believe that envisioning the future leads to new choices and opportunities. Living Climate Change, an online community hosted by IDEO, presents a conversation designed to move the dialogue about climate change toward inspiring, human-centered scenarios that create new possibilities for business and society.

The Living Climate Change Video Challenge invites you to show us your vision of a future shaped by climate change, as we move along the path toward reduced carbon emissions.

The Challenge

Create an original video that envisions how climate change will impact our lives over the next 20 to 30 years. Looking beyond the doom and gloom and the policy discussions that have dominated the debate, how would you envision a human-centered, sustainable future? Which behaviors will change? Which will be preserved?

The Details

Open to individuals and teams of all ages.

Two age categories: 18 and over, and Under 18 (with parent/guardian permission)

Grand Prizes

One prize of US$3,000, plus a “Deep Dive” half-day workshop with IDEO in each age category (winner to be chosen by our judges).

Honorable Mentions

One prize of US$500 in each age category (winner to be chosen by our judges).

Most Popular

One “Most Popular” selection in each age category to be selected by the DESIGN 21 online community during the public judging period, May 31 to June 10.

Judges include:

* Dr. Milton Chen, senior fellow and executive director emeritus of the George Lucas Educational Foundation

* Grace Chen, director of design (math/science instruction), Teach for America

* Allan Chochinov, editor in chief, Core77.com

* Mat Hunter, chief design officer, Design Council

* Gary Hustwit, independent filmmaker

* Xeni Jardin, co-editor of Boing Boing

* David Kelley, founder & chairman of IDEO and the Stanford “d.school”

* Bill Moggridge, director, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum

* Sir Ken Robinson, creativity and education expert

* Experts on design and climate change from IDEO, UNESCO, and DESIGN 2

Deadline for Submissions: Tuesday, May 25, 2010 at 6pm UTC

Results Announced: Monday, June 28, 2010

Visit the website for entry details and registration.

Image: Congress Avenue Bridge, by jessicareeder via flickr CC

University of Virgina professor Timothy Beatly premiered his new film, The Nature of Cities, at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden’s Gillette Forum on October 29th. The film is an interesting overview of various ways in which nature and sustainable architecture are being incorporated into European and American cities. Geared towards people outside the design and science community, it’s a great introduction to the concept of urban nature.  The film has several interesting vignettes, like a car-free development that is so eerily quiet you can follow the sound of waves to find a nearby beach. Or a week-long bio-blitz of a canyon in San Diego that allows kids who were previously warned about the ‘danger’ of the local canyon to explore it and identify the native plants and insects.

The most striking story in the film features the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas, famous for its bat colony. The city has gone from trying to torch the bats under the bridge to setting up a protected area where crowds of people assemble to watch 1.5 million bats emerge in the evenings. Now, new bridges in Texas are being specifically designed to house bat colonies. Imagine if more of our buidings and infrastructure were built this way! It’s fascinating to see the shift in construction from environmentally harmful, to environmentally neutral, to environmentaly positive.

Source: How It Grows

I’m having a wabi sabi moment. Thoughts of simplicity, tranquility, and balance envelop my senses even as I feel a lively intelligence hovering around me. I’ve escaped into Tadao Ando’s Suntory Museum, on Osaka’s carnivalesque waterfront, and I’m strolling through white interiors, looking at an array of fam­iliar objects. They tell a story about how inventive forms, in conjunction with material and technical innovation, can result in an iconic family of industrial designs.

These products-from a breakthrough 1956 phonograph with a clear acrylic cover to an elegant shelving system that was recently updated with thin, strong materials-are part of a traveling exhibition, Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams. The accompanying film illuminates this work’s strong moral underpinnings. Rams, a mid-20th-century heir to the Bauhaus, was ingrained with the ethos of specifying minimum resources in the service of maximum performance, while never forgetting the elusive concept of beauty. What he made, and what he can teach us, needs our full attention as we reevaluate our own design culture. And while his past is our prologue, we face unique problems that call for a new era of invention-invention with an ethical underpinning.

Watching the film-a chorus of German and English voices extolling Rams’s importance to what used to be called “good design”-and contemplating the prudent use of resources in times of global scarcity, I recall a prescient conversation from two years ago. I was teaching ethics at New York’s Parsons the New School for Design, hoping to provoke a discussion around the morality of using environmentally safe materials in new product design, when a young man challenged my premise. “What makes you think that we would design a product at all?” asked my student, who saw his role as much more than a creator of new stuff. “Maybe what the manufacturer really needs is an evaluation of available resources, a study of capabilities, a look at a new client base, or even a system of communication-and then, perhaps, a product design.” He was not convinced that another toaster, TV, cell phone, or chair was what was actually needed.

Here was a future designer arguing for an expanded role for the field. He saw himself as a knowledgeable collaborator who could exceed his clients’ expectations; he was familiar with the kind of research we’ve come to expect of firms like IDEO, which began life as a product-design consultancy and is now a source of useful information about how people behave and what they need to be happy and healthy in classrooms, hospitals, and other spaces. Yes, he was deeply interested in the ethical issues he’d be facing, and he foresaw himself facing these challenges through action and skill.

While I’m immersed in Rams’s century, I remember my student’s eager face and forceful argument, and feel that what’s brewing now will be as important as the contributions of those who went before us. And so here is our wish list for the design ethos of the 21st century: we need objects that are not only beautiful, affordable, enduring, functional, ergonom­ic, accessible, sustainable, and well made but also emotionally resonant and socially beneficial. If we can figure this out, we’ll indeed enter a new era of creativity that may, once again, yield the good design we all crave-as well as satisfy that young man who made me think.

“Cities would need innovative regional sustainability plans and would have to create economies of scale when purchasing sustainable technologies for public benefit, such as solar-energy products.”

Rob Melnick is executive dean, Global Institute of Sustainability, and Presidential Professor of Practice, School of Sustainability, Arizona State University

To read more of the article visit The Arizona Republic

Best,
Ferne Edwards
Sustainable Cities Network moderator