How Amsterdam is developing a collaborative economy that works for everyone. On 1st November at ShareLab we brought together over 200 people from government, business, academia, the third sector and the collaborative economy to explore how we can harness collaborative platforms for social good. We spoke to Femke Haccoû and Nanette Schippers from the City of Amsterdam, and Pieter van de Glind from shareNL, about their work making the Dutch capital a truly sharing city.
Cities, with their abundance and proximity of people and assets, are fertile ground for collaborative platforms. Amsterdam has long led the way on the collaborative economy, often being mentioned alongside Seoul in South Korea as a model for cities to follow and adapt. With its Action Plan for the Sharing Economy, launched this year, Amsterdam is demonstrating how cities can take a strategic approach to working with collaborative platforms. “We have always approached new trends with an open mind in Amsterdam, even if they are very disruptive,” she says. Unsurprisingly, it’s not all plain sailing. Sharing Cities Network. The Sharing Cities Network connects local sharing activists in cities around the world for fun, mutual support, and movement building. What is the Sharing Cities Network? Imagine a city where everyone’s needs are met because people make the personal choice to share. Where everyone can create meaningful livelihoods. Where fresh, local food is available to all.
Where affordable housing and shared transportation are abundant. Where the poor are lifted up, the middle class is strengthened, and the rich are respected because they all work together for the common good. Our dream at Shareable is that everyone gets to live in such a place. What’s missing is there’s no single city where all these models are brought together. This is a call to change that and the time to build sharing cities is now. So, we’ve created the Sharing Cities Network -- a grassroots network for sharing innovators to discover together how to create as many sharing cities around the world as fast as possible. Seeing a sustainable future - Alex Steffen. Mark Carney: most fossil fuel reserves can't be burned | Environment. The governor of the Bank of England has reiterated his warning that fossil fuel companies cannot burn all of their reserves if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change, and called for investors to consider the long-term impacts of their decisions.
According to reports, Carney told a World Bank seminar on integrated reporting on Friday that the “vast majority of reserves are unburnable” if global temperature rises are to be limited to below 2C. Carney is the latest high profile figure to lend his weight to the “carbon bubble” theory, which warns that fossil fuel assets, such as coal, oil and gas, could be significantly devalued if a global deal to tackle climate change is reached.
The movement has gained traction in recent weeks, with the World Bank leading an initiative with 73 national governments, 11 regional governments, and more than 1,000 businesses and investors to build support for a global price on carbon emissions during the United Nations climate summit in New York. Mark Carney: most fossil fuel reserves can't be burned | Environment. BIVOUAC. Asian Cairns by Vincent Callebaut. Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut has developed a concept to introduce natural ecosystems into cities with designs for "farmscrapers" made from piles of giant glass pebbles for a site in Shenzhen, China (+ slideshow). As a response to the rapid urbanisation going on in the country, Vincent Callebaut wanted to completely rethink the current structure of cities and do away with suburbs.
"The more a city is dense, the less it consumes energy," he explains. He continues: "The challenge is to create a fertile urbanisation with zero carbon emissions and with positive energy. This means producing more energy that it consumes, in order to conciliate the economical development with the protection of the planet. " The architect proposes a new type of urban habitat based on the rules of the natural world, with stacks of giant pebbles housing entire communities. Residents of each tower would also work there, reducing the need to travel. The project was commissioned by private Chinese investors. 1. MVRDV-designed markthal housing + market hall opens in rotterdam. Oct 01, 2014 MVRDV-designed markthal housing + market hall opens in rotterdam MVRDV-designed markthal housing + market hall opens in rotterdamphoto by ossip van duivenbodeall images ®provast, MVRDV to conclude a five year construction process, the markthal in rotterdam is holding its opening ceremony today, featuring an inauguration by queen máxima of the netherlands. led by developer provast and designed by architecture office MVRDV, the structure combines two dissimilar program types, composed as a housing building which arches over an indoor market hall. the facility offers public access for eating, drinking, and shopping, while also accommodating 228 apartments featuring externally facing balconies. apartment balconies and windows articulate the horse shoe-shaped exterior façadesphoto by ossip van duivenbode the hall’s steel cable net façade is the largest of its kind in europe and capable of withstanding heavy stormsphoto by ossip van duivenbode photos by daria scagliola+stijn brakkee.
Wooden skyscrapers could be the future of flat-pack cities around the world | Cities. When American engineer William Le Baron Jenney designed the world’s first skyscraper in Chicago in 1884, no one believed in his unconventional technologies. His lightweight steel frame relieved a structure of its heavy masonry shackles, enabling it to soar to new heights.
Perplexed by this trade-in of solid brick for a spindly steel skeleton, Chicago inspectors paused the construction of the Home Insurance Building until they were certain it was structurally sound. Of course, Jenney’s revolutionary edifice provided a blueprint for city skylines across the world. By 2011, China was reckoned to be topping off a new skyscraper (500ft or taller) every five days, reaching a total of 800 by 2016. Toronto, now North America’s fourth largest city, currently has 130 high-rise construction projects under way. As a result, buildings are slowly choking the atmosphere. For Vancouver-based architect Michael Green, the sky is the limit for wooden buildings. Food City - CJ Lim. In Food City, a companion piece to Smartcities and Eco-Warriors, innovative architect and urban designer CJ Lim explores the issue of urban transformation and how the creation, storage and distribution of food has been and can again become a construct for the practice of everyday life.
Food City investigates the reinstatement of food at the core of national and local governance -- how it can be a driver to restructure employment, education, transport, tax, health, culture, communities, and the justice system, re-evaluating how the city functions as a spatial and political entity. Global in scope, Food City first addresses the frameworks of over 25 international cities through the medium of food and how the city is governed. It then provides a case study through drawings, models, and text, exploring how a secondary infrastructure could function as a living environmental and food system operating as a sustainable stratum over the city of London. Hong Kong protesters use a mesh network to organise - tech - 30 September 2014. Hong Kong's mass protest is networked.
Activists are relying on a free app that can send messages without any cellphone connection. Since the pro-democracy protests turned ugly over the weekend, many worry that the Chinese government would block local phone networks. In response, activists have turned to the FireChat app to send supportive messages and share the latest news. On Sunday alone, the app was downloaded more than 100,000 times in Hong Kong, its developers said. FireChat relies on "mesh networking", a technique that allows data to zip directly from one phone to another via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Ordinarily, if two people want to communicate this way, they need to be fairly close together. But as more people join in, the network grows and messages can travel further. Mesh networks can be useful for people who are caught in natural disasters or, like those in Hong Kong, protesting under tricky conditions.
But they also come with risks. More From New Scientist Promoted Stories. Megacity China: the ultimate in urban migration. Joanna Carver, reporter (Image: Wu Hong/EPA/Corbis) NO, YOU haven't slipped into a dream within a dream within a dream. This megacity, which you'd be forgiven for thinking is the dream-limbo city featured in the movie Inception, is Qingdao. It won the accolade of being China's most liveable city in 2009 and 2011. It is home to 8.7 million people. One of the main criteria for the prize is that the city must have a beautiful environment. Chinese slang for urban sprawl is tan da bing, which means "spreading pancake". Of course this means more housing, more public transportation and consequently more pollution. Only 1 per cent of China's urban population is breathing air considered clean by European Union standards.
China aims to generate 20 per cent of its energy from renewable sources, so in August this year its government committed to spending $290 billion to help achieve that. City Visions. Flood Wall Street: Photos from the Front Lines. Monday, after the historic 400,000 People's Climate March (PCM) the day previous, over 4,000 students, professors, scientists, activists, journalists, and others marched on Wall Street to demand an end to capitalism. With the hashtag "FloodWallStreet" the photos and stories from this march have trended Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites all week. The protestors and their demands were simple: end the capitalistic system that is not only vastly accelerating global climate change, but disproportionately affecting members communities on the front lines of extreme energy extraction.
Before the Flood, speakers included impacted front line residents like youth activist Ta’Kaiya Blaney who explained that recently in her community oil sludge trailing ponds spilled into two of the world’s biggest salmon runs. Following the People’s Climate March, #FloodWallStreet was one of the first steps of humanity taking bold action on climate change.
All photos by Spencer H. TreeHugger | Your source for green design & living news, commentary and advice. Skinny micro-housing designs lets you live between buildings. With more and more people choosing to live in cities, there is less and less affordable housing available, meaning that some municipalities are trying out things like micro-housing or relaxed zoning laws to meet up with the demand. Of course, not all of these micro-developments have to sit on vacant land; Danish designers Mateusz Mastalski and Ole Robin Storjohann have created a series of clever urban infill concepts that could occupy the residual spaces between buildings, yet remain lit with natural daylighting and looking surprisingly spacious. © Mateusz Mastalski and Ole Robin Storjohann Titled "Live Between Buildings," the project proposes several designs sited in various cities like New York, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Helsinki and London.
Coming in various configurations, the surfaces are all covered with transparent roof windows to let the maximum amount of light in. . © Mateusz Mastalski and Ole Robin Storjohann The LIVE BETWEEN BUILDINGS project is a new way of living in the city. Video production company run out of modern green garden shed in London. The shedworking movement has never really caught on in North America like it has in the UK, and perhaps the reasons can be most clearly seen in this interesting shed shown recently on Alex Johnson's site Shedworking., built by Green Studios in South London. It clearly demonstrates how different things are. Baldwin House from video/Screen capture The story really starts on the street. In South London, the terrace houses may be hot properties now, but they are often really small, with only two bedrooms and probably not much of a cellar or basement.
So if you want to work from home, a basement, loft or spare bedroom office isn't an option. Baldwin rear yard from video/Screen capture Yet behind these tiny houses, you often find long deep backyards; that's where the outhouse used to be, at the bottom of the yard. . © Green Studios I thought rules were tough in London, but in America they would be complaining about height! Lots more photos of different models at Green Studios. Solar Forest Keeps Cars Cool And Juiced. Home » Squint/Opera. Margination: An attempt to create a different sort of local economy. By Lauren Hittinger In North Troy there's a group of nine individuals trying to promote economic development and social change with very different approach.
This collective, working under the name Margination, is an ongoing experiment in collaboration and interdependency -- sharing financial resources, expenses, even housing. Their goal is to use the skills of group members to provide secure work and secure housing to demonstrate that anyone with determination can flourish inside of a local economy. The members of Margination are a diverse group, from different backgrounds and professions, having previously worked in fields such as education, tax prep, and housing. None of them is originally from the Capital Region. Most of the group met while doing social service and nonprofit work outside in Chester, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. "We didn't want to be professionals driving into these communities and then leaving," says Jesse Marshall, Margination member. Screen Shot 2014 09 12 at 18 10 10. Cities.