The three summits of Mount Rainier: Liberty Cap, Columbia Crest,and Point Success (unaltered image)

Most of us would consider a trip to a state or national park to be a chance to get away from the pollution that plagues our cities. But it’s seldom easy to escape the effects of urban, industrial air pollution. Now, with a new art project called ECLIPSE, the web viewer or park visitor can see real time air quality data “imposed” on the otherwise scenic landscapes of our state and national parks.

ECLIPSE, based on an open source program, is the handiwork of artists Cary Peppermint and Leila Christine Nadir of EcoArtTech, and is a sponsored project of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. for its website turbulence.org.

So, how does it work? Just select a State/National park from a drop down menu, click the “apply AQI (air quality index) conditions” button, and ECLIPSE then performs two “data scraping” functions…if air quality data is available for that park, the program sorts through Flickr.com for images tagged with that particular park’s name, then, the program “corrupts” or alters the image to reflect air quality data (culled from the most recent AQI updates on the www.airnow.gov website) of the nearest, large city within a 65 mile radius.

The air quality rating system uses the following scale: good – fair – moderate – unhealthy – very unhealthy –hazardous*. The AQI rating is a measure of particulate matter in the atmosphere, based on a range of 0 – 500 parts per million, with “good” being 0 - 50 ppm, and “unhealthy” being 151 ppm or higher.

Airnow.gov maintains 300 monitoring stations in cities across the country. With the ECLIPSE program, the more pollution present in the atmosphere of the park’s nearest city, the more visually “corrupted” the image becomes. This alteration process utilizes various algorithms that affect color, saturation, and contrast, and, additionally, impose intermittent mirroring, deletion, or cropping functions on the image’s data file.

Air quality is determined by the presence of particulate matter in the lower atmosphere. Particulate matter is a complex mixture of moisture and small particles of dust, soot, soil, various acids (e.g., nitrogen or sulfur containing acids) and trace metals.

The artists’ website notes that, In 2008, the EPA’s own Clean Air Scientific Advisory Council (CASAC) protested that the EPA was not upholding its mission to protect air quality standards according to
the scale.

*Note that U.S. air quality ratings are different than Canada’s AQ rating system, for example. The U.S. system has more gradations of air quality in which “moderate” in the U.S. system is rated as “unhealthy”  on the Canadian scale. The site offers a visual comparison of air quality ratings between the US and Canadian indexes.

A new report ranks ten leading world cities on their greenhouse gas emissions. It also examines how and why the emissions differ.

As the report says, over 50% of the world’s population lives in urban areas. Leading cities of the world, global cities, are the places where greenhouse gas emissions really need to be cut. The greenest city from the study is Barcelona and the worst is Denver.

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Today Alex Bogusky, Chairman of Crispin Porter + Bogusky is set to speak at SXSW on the topic of bike sharing.   CPB is one of the three founding partners of B-cycle, a concept which has been quietly gaining support in cities around the U.S. and which has been launched, under another company, to a degree of success in Paris.

The question is, can it succeed here?  The opportunities for success and a few challenges follow…

The right backers.

Announced as the brainchild of Humana, Trek and Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, B-cycle has hit the ground spinning.  Their web site alone shows how the creativity of an advertising agency can be a powerful partner in establishing immediate appeal with a target audience.  As a world-class ad agency, they will have done a thorough job researching their prospect segments to create a plan that addresses the B-cycle adoption drivers (e.g. is the docking station next to a coffee shop?) vs. simply crafting a utopian concept.

Trek, the bike that Lance Armstrong rides and therefore the default supporter of LiveStrong, has also built a solid reputation over the years for supporting programs that bring the benefits of cycling to a broader audience beyond the elite riders that many of their specialty bike lines appeal to.  They have deep pockets and bring a sincere open-minded passion for creating access to the sport.

And with Humana, a health insurance provider, as the third partner, the effort to bring B-cycle to market takes the tone of a citizen effort vs. a commercial effort.   An important cue in the endeavor to address such lofty issues as human health and the environment.

Together these three make a powerful force – not the least is their combined resourcefulness in developing health advocacy, attracting attention and navigating the tricky waters of a totally new consumer concept.

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In fact, it is estimated that for every acre of rainforest that is cut down, 50 acres of forest is revitalized areas that were once farmed, logged, or destroyed by natural disasters.

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[Curitiba, where Jaime Lerner served three terms as mayor. Creative Commons photo by Felipe Freeze]

He transformed the city of Curitiba, Brazil while he was mayor there and now helps urban planners across the world build and improve cities.

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But our affair with the car has blinded us to some of the obvious drawbacks, such as its lack of compatibility with urban life which leaves our cities clogged by semi stationary vehicles with fuming engines and fuming drivers.

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Photo courtesy of Gyre via Wikimedia Commons.

In “Global Change and the Ecology of Cities,” published in the Feb. 8 issue of Science, a team of researchers from Arizona, New Zealand and Australia argue we need to focus more on cities — and not just the “natural” world — to ensure a sustainable future.

“Cities, and the people in them, will ultimately determine the global biodiversity and ecosystem functioning,” says Jianguo (Jingle) Wu, one of the paper’s co-authors and an ecologist at Arizona State University’s (ASU) School of Life Sciences. “Sustainable urbanization is an unavoidable path to regional and global sustainability.”

The paper’s authors advocate a global approach to urban development that recognizes cities both cause and respond to environmental change. That strategy echoes an emerging school of thought that views cities as organic entities — a sort-of Urban Gaia, if you will — things that consume resources, produce waste and interact with their surroundings.
 
While the concept might sound bizarre, it might ultimately prove to be as effective a philosophy as James Lovelock’s Gaia view of Earth. After all, cities around the world are doing nothing but metastasizing, absorbing an ever-flowing influx of rural people either displaced from their traditional lifestyles and/or looking for a better future in a modernizing world.

As of today, according to TaskForce MegaCities, the world has anywhere from 16 to 39 megacities (population thresholds for meeting “megacity” status vary). In just seven more years, that number could approach 60. The trend is especially strong in Asia, which could be home to as many as 10 hypercities by 2025, according to one estimate.

Sustainably managing such urban growth could be key not only to better living in cities themselves, but a better Earth overall.

“The relatively young and highly interdisciplinary field of urban ecology has demonstrated how well-designed cities can actually have less overall impact on the environment than equivalent dispersed rural populations,” said Jonathan Fink, director of ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability. “The kind of counter-intuitive research results described in (the Science) paper show how an ecological perspective can help urban planners and engineers find ways for society to live more harmoniously with nature.”

The “C40 Large Cities Climate Summit” has partnered with the Clinton Climate Initiative to tackle climate change now, rather than waiting for action from national governments. At the Summit, mayors shared best practices, identified collaborative projects, and planned for future action together. The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, explained why:

"The fight to tackle climate change will be won or lost in cities…We are not going to simply talk about what we could do, while the window of opportunity for preventing catastrophic climate change disappears. Every city here today is a leader in at least one aspect of the fight to tackle climate change."

Some of the cities' intiatives include:

• New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s controversial proposal for a congestion charge for Manhattan as part of the city's multi-billion dollar Green Plan.
• Toronto Mayo David Miller explained “Zerofootprint Toronto,” which helps residents understand how every aspect of their lives impacts the environment, and creates a network for people to join with friends, neighbors, and coworkers to create a virtual eco-community to create initiatives and measure results.
• Curitiba, Brazil’s Mayor Carlos Alberto Richa described a bus rapid transit system for his city to cut down on pollution from cars.
• Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced GREEN LA, an action plan to reduce the city’s carbon footprint 35 percent below 1990 levels. Villaraigosa said it is the most ambitious goal set yet by a major American city.

Summit organizers also invited business leaders in an effort to involve the private sector. Both parties discused how to work together under the conviction that fighting global warming – through innovation, transportation, and energy efficiency – is profitable.

Peopleandplanet.net
Washington Post