Sustainability

Tejon Ranch by Nick Jensen
EcoJustice Radio, Sustainability

Centennial Project: Suburbs Sprawl, Health & Environment Suffers

youtu.be/34yVCPAJE2k

Tejon Ranch Centennial Specific Plan (or Centennial) is a massive planned city in a unique, rare, fire-prone wilderness of grasslands and mountains, a residential and commercial development in LA County. Nick Jensen from the California Native Plant Society, and Jack Eidt from Wild Heritage Planners and SoCal 350, discuss the dangers to urban sustainability, fiscal health of LA County and the impacts on wild and endangered plants and animals with host Jessica Aldridge.

Iannis Xenakis
Sound, Urban Land

Iannis Xenakis and the Notion of a Cosmic Utopia

youtu.be/yztoaNakKok

Iannis Xenakis, the Greek-French experimental composer and protege designer for the famous architect Le Corbusier, advanced theories of the vertical “Cosmic” city as the only sustainable way forward. Here, he wrote this essay in 1966, decrying decentralization (read: suburban sprawl) in favor of building up, up, up…5 million inhabitants to be housed in a single megastructure, a hyperbolic paraboloid of more than 3,000 meters high and 50 meters wide.

Roselie Enriquez, affordable housing in san francisco
Urban Land

How Cities Can Build Affordable Housing

youtu.be/SJdWYXIr_qE

Alan Durning lays out how many cities have succeeded in building affordable housing with some lessons from unexpected places. Yet constrained housing markets come about from economics, environment, and geography, and sprawl remains a scourge that affordable cities have allowed. No silver bullet here, but ideas…