China Planning For Sustainable Cities

TapeCutter writes "In a BBC article William McDonough says, 'The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. It ended because it was time for a re-think about how we live.' The Chineese appear to agree with him and have commissioned McDonough's company to create an environmentally sustainable village as a pilot project for the more ambitious idea of sustainable cities. McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart have also written a book on the subject, Cradle to Cradle, previously reviewed here on Slashdot."

Comments

Easy for China To Do

[Anonymous Coward]

China would have a much easier job of planning like this when the people there can't challenge the government.

In a free country that lived by the rule of law, the people have a right to object and challenge such reshaping of the land. Not in China, sadly.

Re:Easy for China To Do

[Freexe]

Chinese philosophy of not given its citizens many rights its one of the worst things about the country, but there ability to do good is also alot greater, I think that this is one of the examples of the advantages.

If we are all going to live on this planet I don't think we can all do what we like or the planet is going to run out of resources. Sometimes we need to be told/made to do things that we dont want to (Like polution and population control) and china have acted quickly and sensibly on both these issues.

We might see it as not having any rights or an abuse, but the same thing (just to a lesser extent) happen in the west anyway

Re:Easy for China To Do

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel helpless about my government's behaviour too. Voting doesn't seem to work (my choice being crushed last election). The only thing that demonstrating to express my dissatisfaction against the current administration does is summon police with tear gas.

I live in the USA.

I'm upset with my government, but do understand that it was indeed the majority choice. I think the majority were easily-manipulated idiots, but that's another conversation.

Anyway, the main hope that I have for China is that capitalism is alive and well there. People are free to earn and spend money, with all that entails. Western companies have invaded - including McDonalds and WalMart, in this case defining a new standard and experience for consumers and stimulating local competiton. China is open for business. Living conditions are the best ever, illiteracy is at an all-time low and life expectancy is at an all-time high. And it is beneficial for their society to generate consumers with disposable income.

If I had to live in a communist country, modern China doesn't sound so bad. Where communism turns miserable is when foreign trade, capitalism and consumer choice are excluded - see North Korea.

Re:Easy for China To Do

[demachina]

" Sometimes we need to be told/made to do things that we dont want to (Like polution and population control)"

Uh, China might have an advantage in population control now though they were way late in starting, but its my understanding China is a disaster on pollution control. Thanks to central planning and the desire to industrialize fast, they've massively overbuilt coal fired power plants and coal fired steel mills and put them next to pretty much every city. As they abandon sensible bicycles for cars in an effort to catch up to American's in wasting energy and pollution, I think some cities have air so bad its not just a long term health risk, it is an immediate health risk.

One reason they have so many mining disasters is they mine so much coal. They along with the U.S. are probably the two leaders at fueling CO2 buildup and global warming.

Problem with central planning is if the central planners make bad choices they can do a lot of damage fast. For example they have almost always opted for economic growth over environmental protection. Thanks to central planning they can grow their economy really fast and destory their environment really fast too. They can also insure no tree huggers get in their way, in contrast to the U.S. The fact enivornmentalist have clout in the U.S., though less then they did thanks to Republicans being in power, is one reason U.S. economic competitiveness is falling while our environment is improving some. Though environmental protection is just one of many, others being out of control health care costs, uncompetitively high wage rates, bad education, and workers lacking motivation.

Re:Easy for China To Do

[timeOday]

I do think you make one good point - we ship our dirty industries to China, in part to make an end-run around expensive annoyances like environmental law, then complain that China isn't environmentally friendly. Hmm.

Re:Easy for China To Do

[maxpublic]

Sometimes we need to be told/made to do things that we dont want to (Like polution and population control) and china have acted quickly and sensibly on both these issues.

Great. You get decide what needs to be done, and how it needs to be done, for the rest of us. You're undoubtedly one of those 'better minds' who has the right to force your neighbors to live the way you want them to live, all in the name of the 'greater good'.

We might see it as not having any rights or an abuse, but the same thing (just to a lesser extent) happen in the west anyway

In America we don't have any population control. If the government here were to even think of imposing such a thing every elected official and bureaucrat who didn't skedaddle for Europe would be hanging from the nearest flagpole - and good riddance. We *don't* need a government that has so much power it can decide something as basic as whether or not its citizens can breed.

Max

They'll need them

[winkydink]

seeing as most of there current cities are polluted beyond repair. Clean drinking water from the tap? I guess if you're cholera-resistant.

Peak Oil

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess China is preparing for the peak oil event. We should be doing that same in North America.

Re:Peak Oil

[SQL Error]

There's good reason to believe that "Peak Oil" is already here. This is it. These are the painfully high gas prices we were warned about. (Historically speaking, gas prices today are horrifying. Ask your parents.)

The question each of us must ask is:

What will you do when gas reaches $5 per gallon?

Move to Alberta and get rich?

As of now Japan, China, and the EU are dumping tons of resources into this, but I've yet to hear anything about the US government acting on it.

There's one big problem: There is no viable alternative to oil, even at current prices. But if the price keeps going up, there will be. Gas will never hit $10 per gallon, because even without subsidies biofuels cost less than that to produce. We don't need to dump tons of resources into it, because the situation will correct itself automatically. From the perspective of biofuel producers, Peak Oil is just a business opportunity.

When we run out of oil, it doesn't mean we run out of fuel, it means we run out of cheap fuel. We use oil because it's cheap. When it's cheaper to use alcohol produced from corn, we'll use that instead.

This will slow economic growth, of course, but there's not going to be any economic collapse outside of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. In the big picture, oil doesn't really matter that much.

Re:Peak Oil

[WazzTheWizz]

It simply amazes me when Americans talk of gas (petrol) being expensive at $2.20. You guys are practically getting the stuff for free. Try comparing your price with the UK ($7.00 a gallon, pretty much anywhere in Europe or even Australia (where driving distances are also very large). At the ridicuolously cheap US prices, it's no wonder the stuff is wasted in big gas guzzlers.

Re:Peak Oil

[dabigpaybackski]

It simply amazes me when Americans talk of gas (petrol) being expensive at $2.20. You guys are practically getting the stuff for free.

Sure, if you don't consider the 400-plus billion we spend annually on "defense." It's a collossal subsidy.

Inevitable

[Bullfish]

If we are going to survive this type of development is what is required. The rate of development in the world with former developing countries not only approaching western levels of living, but western levels of consumption, in accelerating not slowing. While people make not want to "go backwards" in terms of how they live, it may be the only alternative if they want to live.

Whether or not this particular project will succeed, sustainable cities are coming and it's a good thing. Right now, it runs contrary to the type of lifestyle promoted in the west as the very economy is based on consumption.

Ultimately we are going to have to choose to control that consumption. That has only really shown up so far in the emergence of hybrid cars etc, though that is largely due to a desire to wean ourselves off oil controlled by hostile regimes. Fear of what the environment is going to become really isn't taken seriously yet.

Re:Inevitable

[Anonymous Coward]

Consumption is a problem? Does the west consume hybrid cars? If everyone "consumed" solar panels to generate power for their houses, would that be bad?

Re:Inevitable

[pyat]

> Living in a slum on the outskirts of Bombay or
> Mexico City may suck, but living on a small farm
> is even worse.
Really?
Thinking about this, I doubt that can be true. I know small farmers, and I know that mostly it's a fairly ok way of life. Depends what farming you're doing, but often there isn't as much work as you'd expect. Mostly it's very seasonal, so there are periods when it's very hard, and other times when you're not doing much at all (at which time you start mending fences and doing work on your buildings and so on).

I think the problem that drives people into the slums in "Bombay or Mexico City" isn't that the alternative work open to them is farm-labouring. The push-factor that drives them to livein squalor is that they are landless and exploited. Small farming on a freehold of good land is fine. Small farming where you are paying heavy rent to a landlord, and may have been born into enough debt to effectively enslave you is a nightmare. Another factor driving people off the land is the limited divisbility of the resource (one son takes over the farm, daughters marry, rest have to seek a living elsewhere).

In fact, I wonder if many of these migrants to the 3rd world cities are actually former small farmers, or whether they in fact farm-labourers working for the owners of large unmechanised farms.

Finally, on the point of efficiency. Large farming is much more labour efficient (as you say). But in terms of yield per square-meter, I think you get better land-efficiency from smaller more labour intensive farming. Plus, the smaller-farming regime makes it easier to establish biodiversity in the food-supply and avoid risky monocultures.

Re:IP Laws will keep the idea from gaining tractio

[Scoria]

But the innovation will continue, as China is both influential and strong. They will simply move to disregard both American and European claims of intellectual ownership.

What if sustainability isn't efficient?

[RyanFenton]

Penn Jillette and Raymond Teller's (Penn & Teller) great show Bullshit did a great show last season on recycling. In short, recycling does allow reuse of some resources, but does not appear to damage less environment, or use less energy, or even consume much less space than just throwing everything away.

As far as the pure basis for modern cities are concerned, would this lead to a truly successful competitive society as a first priority? I'd certainly hope so - and applaud China for looking into it, but I don't know if "sustainability" in this sense is necissaruly efficient, long-term compared to using the best resources for the circumstances.

Ryan Fenton

Re:What if sustainability isn't efficient?

[RyanFenton]

I certainly agree - I'm more than a bit of a liberal in terms of environment, and environmental policy (and almost everything else). But until the market will sustain the active recovery of used materials, a non-socialist capitol-based society just won't realistically reward such action. That makes it quite inneficient to recycle plastics and the like, even for the more socialist nations.

What would be probably most efficient, under those circumstances, would be to work on policy to limit the use of unsustainable materials, like with CFC's and the like. But if that ends up costing more than what people are willing to accept... then the only practical choice is to use up the cheap-to-use resources, until the environment will accept the use of the more expensive-to-use resources.

It does point to a certain blind consumption on the part of humanity - but such is what we as humans value socially before anything else. Energy (laziness) first, immediate gain next, then the more esoteric considerations like progress and betterment.

I wish China the best - they'll likely end up with a lot of pure research gains that will help the world with a project like this. I don't think they'll end up with their goal, however, of a truly sustainable city, without compromises that few would accept. I wish the US would try more things like this - a commitment to general research would help humanity as a whole a lot more than what we've seen in the last 20 years. It just won't ever really give us the answers to the questions we pose when we start - that's what makes it general research, and also what makes it unprofitable and fascinationg at the same time.

Re:What if sustainability isn't efficient?

[SQL Error]

I don't claim to be an expert, but plastic is a by-product of oil. When the oil runs out, no more plastic.

Nope, wrong.

We make plastic from oil because that's the cheapest way to do it. We can make it from coal instead (which we have in sufficient quantity to last hundreds of years) or from plants. It will just cost more.

Re:What if sustainability isn't efficient?

[greg_barton]

Penn Jillette and Raymond Teller's (Penn & Teller) great show Bullshit did a great show last season on recycling.

You know, I really wish Penn and Teller would do an episode of Bullshit about themselves. Seriously doubt it, though. One common characteristic I see in self proclaimed skeptics is that they rarely apply their craft to themselves.

Sometimes I think they just have run out of ideas and just need to make filler shows. In the case of that particular episode, they were attacking a strawman the entire time. A ten year old could refute their argument. They constantly harped on the "recycling takes more energy" argument, while completely ignoring that lower energy usage is not the point of recycling. Not to mention that it's painfully obvious that, if you put effort into reusing a nonrenewable resource, you will expend energy in that effort. Duh.

Re:What if sustainability isn't efficient?

[patternjuggler]

in my area if you want to recycle plastic bottles you need to take off the lids, remove the labels and make sure they are empty. What am I, the milk lady?... Who the hell has glass bottles? Can I put jars in here? Oh, only if I remove the lid and the label and clean out the jar. To hell with that.

Wasn't it you that said something in a grandparent post like: "People with no imagination see any change to the status quo as the end of the world. Thank god there's people who see change as an opportunity and a challenge." ?

Re:IP Laws will keep the idea from gaining tractio

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not interesting it's stupid. Not every problem in the world centers around IP laws and the answer isn't always free stuff. Profits drive innovation sadly. Take away the incentive and you take away much of the innovation. Some of the IP issues are like frivolous lawsuits in that they should have never been granted the patent in the first place but cutting the heart out of patent laws isn't the answer. Starting to be a constant drone about IP laws even worse than the Microsoft bashing was. Don't mod people up because it's trending. It's like screaming Manchester in a certain pub so you get a cheer. It's a cheap shot.

Re:IP Laws will keep the idea from gaining tractio

[Jeremi]

Yup, you're a cynic. A realist would know that it's the vested interests (real estate developers, big box retailers, and purblind NIMBYism) that will keep this from happening in the U.S.

Re:IP Laws will keep the idea from gaining tractio

[greg_barton]

Profits drive innovation sadly.

In the case of sustainibility, survival drives innovation, not profit. Or, in the immortal words of Plato, "Necessity, who is the mother of invention."

Re:Separation?

[Jeremi]

Obviously a city can't be self-sustainable if its citizens wants things from outside the city.

It's not about what citizens want, it's about what they need. A city can sustain itself with or without access to neat gadgets from Japan. A city cannot sustain itself without water and food.

It seems to me that this concept just isn't practical, mainly because of the level of interdependence and globalization we've developed in the more modern nations.

Practical compared to what? Compared to the status quo, where there is plenty of fossil fuel to go around? Probably not. Compared to starving to death because you didn't plan ahead for clearly forseeable problems? Very practical.

I can imagine how it was

[fermion]

The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. It ended because it was time for a re-think about how we live.

You know Barney, this working with stone tools is so ice age. I mean, we are settled now. We have shoes and clothes. We are modern men.

I know what you mean Fred. We are no longer uncivilized. My family does not have to eat whatever happens to walk or grow nearby. I have a farm and domisticated animals. I can't be using my father tools. I need more!

And howdy. Instead of using wood and stone, why don't we go down to the walmart and by those new fangled bronze tools. They will let us plow the land so much better.

Yeah, let's rethink how we live. We need to move into te common era with bronze, and even those really expensive new iron tools. And I can't wait until that Jaquard Loom lets us have really fancy patterns in the woven cloth that will be developed any day now.

Which is simply to say mostly we do not rethink how we live. We master new materials, and the processes to create tools from those materials, and society just tends to naturally reform aroun the advantages, making our lives more confortable in the process. Mostly this has involved allowing us to stay in one place without a flea infestation.

The most annoying part of our civilization is the emergence of the useless marketing talk and the related jibberish.

Re:IP Laws will keep the idea from gaining tractio

[mboverload]

Survival drives nothing currently.

People are too apathetic and see our extinction as too far off to warrant changing their lives.

They have the experience...

[BobandMax]

The present Chinese regime certainly has the experience when it comes to brutally relocating their population and forcing them to live in places and ways they do not want. Maybe they can make it happen, or kill them trying.

Either way, problem solved!

Re:These kind of initiatives are pointless

[interstellar_donkey]

I think it's that kind of reasoning that has kept the bulk of American city development going in the wrong direction. People don't just make decisions based on total cost. If that were the case, nobody would buy steak when a perfectly acceptable and much cheaper soy based meal is available.

People make decisions based a lot on perceived value, as opposed to outright cost. Many Americans live in a city with mass transit available to carry them wherever they need or want to go, yet they'll still choose cars. The cost of monthly transit passes is significantly lower then the cost of purchasing a car, buying insurance for it, filling it with expensive fuel and having routine maintenance performed on it.

Despite being cheaper, the perception most Americans have is that mass transit is something beneath them (only poor people take the bus, right?). They see the automobile as a symbol of freedom and independence, and in their minds auto ownership has a much better value despite the higher costs of a car compared with utilizing transit systems.

It's because of this perception that American city expansion and development is done almost exclusively to accommodate the automobile, leaving alternative means of transport like walking (which is both cheaper and better for you then driving) forgotten or a cursory afterthought.

New housing developments are laid out in such a way that it becomes very easy to quickly and efficiently take your car to the market to pick up milk, but incredibly difficult to walk or bicycle to the very same store. Is it any wonder why Americans are so fat?

If we started building cities with pedestrians and mass transit in mind, ultimately the cost savings would be huge for the typical household. But it would fail unless work was done to modify the popular perception that traveling by a car is better then walking or taking the bus.

So when someone says "People will never switch to environmentally friendly hybrid cars because they're too expensive, so we're going to stick with the internal combustion engine for a long time", they would be better off saying "owning any automobile is too expensive. Let's start building our cities with non-car owners in mind".

Re:IP Laws will keep the idea from gaining tractio

[greg_barton]

Survival drives nothing currently.

I suspect that the average Chinese villager is a bit closer to survival mode than you.

Re:We've seen this utopian horse-hockey before

[be-fan]

Do you actually have any idea what this guys ideas really are? He's not trying to shove anything down anybody's throat. He's doing exactly what you're suggesting, taking new technologies (and some old ones) to make our current way of life more sustainable. Eg: designing factories that have natural light and airflow to reduce cooling and heating costs, as well as to make workers happier. Formulating chemicals specially so the factories that produce them produce environmentally-safe "wastes". There is nothing "utopian" about it. His basic idea is "people should have what they have, and more, and it can be done sustainable with improved technology".

If you're taking exception to the "sustainable village" bit, use your head. Much of China's population lives in villages. Making a better village fits right in with "living as you are now, except better and more sustainably".

Re:These kind of initiatives are pointless

[Zibblsnrt]

(If that's not good enough for you, then freedom really isn't your thing. You're more into tyranny -- making peoples' choices for them, because you've decided you're better than them.)

Actually, yeah. When it comes to people who see the idea of any obligations to anything other than themselves as evil, I do consider myself better than them.

Most of those people seem to have trouble realizing that there is such a thing as cost aside from what they pull out of their wallet. And yet they continue to make their glorious, "free" decisions, despite happily fettering themselves in their own ignorance, something which seems to be the rage these days.

'Cause, see, thinking of anything other than yourself (like, for example, the neighbors, or your grandchildren's ability to hit middle age in their forties rather than their twenties) must be tyrannical communistic doom, false dichotomies also being the rage these days. If it involves any sense of non-personal responsibility, it's bad bad bad!

Do I have contempt for that attitude? Yes, I do. Am I better than people who trumpet it? Yes, I am.

-PS

Almost 300 Comments and not a single one...

[Anonymous Coward]

has yet to point out the real goal here, even though there have been at least 2 Slashdot stories on the topic within the month (and maybe even a dupe or two.)

Putting 2 and 2 together it seems clear that China's goal is to build sustainable colonies on the moon.

HEY MODS! WTF?

[NegativeOneUserID]

Insightful? INSIGHTFUL??!!! ..... Please tell me that was just someone's mouse slipping and they didn't actually intend for that to get moded insightful.

I could be mistaken on this, but I am almost positive that parent post is not an actual bank robber. I doubt you are gaining any insight into the mind of how a bank robber actually thinks and feels.

Re:These kind of initiatives are pointless

[QuantumG]

It's pretty obvious why he's pissed off. Your original post summed it up. Everything is built with the motorist in mind, and therefore not being a motorist has costs that equal or exceed being a motorist. As such, these people who have chosen not to minimize costs have taken the option away from others.

Re:These kind of initiatives are pointless

[curious.corn]

Such as this?. Move along, the Far West is gone, get it over. There's a lot to gain in teamwork (not the corporate football rethorical tripe) and being part of it doesn't mean you'll die a terrible comunist death. You're paranoid...

Cheap Oil

[amightywind]

It simply amazes me when Americans talk of gas (petrol) being expensive at $2.20. You guys are practically getting the stuff for free. Try comparing your price with the UK ($7.00 a gallon, pretty much anywhere in Europe

We in the US are equally amazed that you in Europe are willing to pay 80% fuel taxes to your rapacious socialist governments.

Re:Cheap Oil

[Knuckles]

Because, you know, it might actually be better to not change your whole life and culture to confirm to the needs of cars, car culture, and car economy, but the other way round

Re:These kind of initiatives are pointless

[Eric S. Smith]

everyone should be free to drive to the supermarket while I'm "free" to inhale their car exhaust.

One possible choice you might make is to tone down your obsession with minor pollution.

Minor, eh? Let's just claim that pollution is good for you. Your "how dare you make decisions for others" position is spoiled by the fact that those saintly "others" are cheerfully injuring the rest of us. Maybe we should all choose not to breathe.

Could be worse, though. They could all decide to be clever and save money by riding around on two-stroke scooters. God forbid that we should require better emissions standards, though, because that might restrict choice and some Good Thing or other.

Re:The most important step:

[bigpat]

He said, yes, freedom and liberty are important, but he believes, to a chinese person, even before he gets his full freedom, he'd rather have an education.

Sure and that is why we don't give full legal freedom to children. But at some point children must grow up and take on responsibility for their own lives and choices. That is what freedom is about.

You, communism and many western politicians present us with a false choice, between freedom and other things.

But freedom as it concerns a government is seperate from material things provided to people, but rather it is the concept that people have natural rights that the government will not take away. Freedom is that people are not arbitrarily interfered with by the government when they communicate with one another. Freedom is that people are not forced to perform work for others or by the government. Freedom is that people are not prevented by the government from moving or relocating from one place to another nor are they forced to do so. Freedom is that people be secure in their person and property and not be forced by the government to do anything to their bodies or give up their possessions.

Freedom is not about what a government can do for people, but what the government can't do to people.