UNDERCITY Takes Us Beneath the Streets, To the Highest of Heights

In his new film UNDERCITY, director and cinematographer Andrew Wonder profiles urban historian (read adventurer) Steve Duncan as he explores the underbelly of the Big Apple. From abandoned subway stations to the city's oldest sewer system to the very top of the Williamsburg Bridge, Wonder catches it all in remarkable form and stunning clarity.

Note: Watch it full-screen and in HD.



For more coverage on the topic, check out these pieces at npr.org and The New York Times.

Nissan's "New Way," Leading the Way

Last September I posted a series of Nissan commercials which all riffed on the topic of innovation. A central theme, of course, was sustainability and the measures Nissan is taking, particularly with the 100 percent electric Leaf, to transform automobiles from gas guzzlers to zero-net carbon emitters (if the electricity used to power the car is produced with renewables, that is).

A few days ago I saw the following commercial on TV. I thought it was new at the time, but after I found it on the web I realized it was posted last June. Regardless of its production date, I think Nissan may be upping the ante as the Leaf rolls off of the assembly line in select markets. It will become available nationwide by the fall of 2011. The video below describes how the Leaf contributes to the paradigm shift of electric vehicles by assigning old meanings to new components.

See what I mean below:

William McDonough on Cradle to Cradle, the Importance of Delight and Celebration in Design

Andrew Michler of Inhabitat recently caught up with green architect and materials life-cycle guru William McDonough at Greenbuild 2010. My first exposure to McDonough came in the spring of 2009 when I read his acclaimed book, Cradle to Cradle, in one of my environmental studies courses. In the book, McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart advocate for a "transformation of human industry through ecologically intelligent design," or reimagining our current system of cradle-to-grave production into one where "waste equals food" and materials are upcycled to maintain their chemical integrity.



Michler and McDonough touch on many topics covered in Cradle to Cradle in the interview, and I've included some of the highlights below.

When asked about the difference between recycling (read downcycling) and upcycling, McDonough said that traditional recycling techniques not only take a tremendous amount of energy to operate but also degrade the material inputs into inferior accessory products. There can be tremendous value in keeping materials in their current form:

It’s like a Herman Miller chair that ends up in Mexico City fifteen years from now, if somebody throws it out the back and into the dumpster. Well, the scavengers will just come and grab it. It’s worth something. The reason it’s worth something is that’s steel, and that’s aluminum, and that’s polycarbonates, and that polyethylenes. It’s no longer a chair, it’s part of the materials intelligent pool. So the design is that aluminum can come off and go back to aluminum, the steel goes back to steel. They’re not monstrous hybrids that can’t be separated.

He also explained how these principles and the Cradle to Cradle product certification system he's developed are about more than solving environmental problems:

To me this is also a stewardship issue, but the great part is that it reaches beyond the construction site – it touches on health care, education and wanting to make buildings better.

Howard Williams, VP of Construction Specialties, agreed with McDonough and offered the following insight: "Ten years from now, this may still be GreenBuild because it’s going to be the original name, but no one is going to be talking about green. The reality is that it’s going to be either good design or bad design."

There are a lot of other interesting tidbits covered in the interview - including how McDonough has incorporated a butterfly sanctuary into a recent building design in Barcelona - that I don't cover in my synopsis above. McDonough is one of the most captivating environment thinkers of our time and recommends some pretty straightforward but radical changes to our current way of doing things, so click here if you're interested in learning more.

What I've Been Reading and Watching This Week, 12/10

1. In this Grist article entitled "Confessions of a recovering engineer," Charles Marohn explains why the priorities of the general public when it comes to street design are fundamentally at odds with the factors first considered by the professionals who design them, and the consequences this disconnect has for road safety.



2. In this Brown Daily Herald Op-Ed, my good friend and fellow environmental leader at Brown, Spencer Lawrence, spells out why fighting climate change is the greatest challenge of the 21st Century and why you should pitch in even if you could care less about tree-hugging.



3. The CNN clip above highlights a small house in Tokyo the size of a parking space. In a city where density is already high and space is limited, seemingly extreme measures like these are necessary for further growth. (Seriously, it doesn't take long cruising around Google Earth to figure out that Tokyo may have just used about every square foot available.)



4. The above video is also about reducing something's typical scale, but instead of a house the size of a car, it's a car the size of a, well, small refrigerator. From the geniuses at TopGear (the BBC version, the US one is pretty awful), 6-foot-4 Jeremy Clarkson drives this Peel P50 microcar to, and through, BBC headquarters. You have to see it to believe it.



5. According to this TreeHugger article, Rhode Island may become home to the first offshore wind farm in the United States, boasting 200 turbines and a 1,000 Megawatt capacity with transmission lines stretching from Massachusetts to New York. This project is one of the largest in development anywhere in the world.

Lock it Up... In the Air?

A few months ago I put together this post entitled Lock it Up, in which I explained my excitement over my then-new (well, then-new-used) red Schwinn 10-speed. I also made some comments about how and how not to lock up your bicycle properly to prevent theft.

If you remember (or just read/reread) my previous post, longtime NYC bike mechanic Hal Ruzal graded the locking jobs of bicycles he found on the streets of the Big Apple. You remember Hal, don't you? The guy who looked like a perfect cross between Bill Nye the Science Guy and Bob Marley?

Don't believe me? See for yourself:





Celebrity lookalikes aside, one of Hal's main points was that in reality, any bicycle thief can steal any bicycle secured with any amount of hardware, it's just a matter of how much time they want or feel comfortable taking to jack it. More locks = more time = less likely to be stolen. Pretty simple right?

I think I may have found something that might just buy you all the time you could ever need, and that Hal would give an A++ for its security and creativity.



Designed by the German company Conrad, this lock puts your precious two-wheeler in a place only ninja thieves and roving bands of monkeys can access. Lucky for you, the last time I checked there weren't very many ninjas or monkeys in the market for bicycles.