Ecocity World Summit
- Conference Venues
- April 22-23
- Academic & Talent Scouting Sessions: UC Berkeley Extension South of Market Center, 95 Third Street (at Mission), San Francisco. 415-284-1081. www.unex.berkeley.edu
- April 24-26
- Ecocity World Summit Main Conference: Nob Hill Masonic Center, 1111 California Street, San Francisco, CA 94108. 415-292-4702. www.masonicauditorium.com
Located atop Nob Hill in one of San Francisco's oldest and most celebrated neighborhoods, the Nob Hill Masonic Center is a versatile facility hosting a variety of events. Its intimate auditorium and convenient location have made it the concert hall of choice for performing artists. The cable car runs outside the front door, and the views are spectacular. There's no other facility in the city quite like it.
2008 Sessions Presentation Archive
Here you will find a growing library of Ecocity World Summit Main Conference and Academic Sessions slideshows. We will be adding to this archive and updating it frequently over the next few weeks. We hope this archive will serve as a useful resource to those who attended Ecocity Summit 08, and also for those who were unable to attend but are interested in the information presented.
- SATURDAY, APRIL 26, MAIN CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS (keep checking back as we complete the inventory)
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- Historic Cities, Timeless Lessons for Today and Beyond
- We can learn a great deal from ancient models, especially if they still exist, contaminated by subsequent events that they might be. If car-free is something of great value to study, as the conference organizers believe, then simply to be built long before cars has lessons to think about. Sudarshan Tiwari, architect and city historian of the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal, knows the cities there intimately writing colorful books on the weaving together of traditions, city-building and the natural and agricultural worlds: call it urban ecology. Going way back seems important for a sense of time when your conference is looking into the deep future. So what scholars sometimes call the oldest city in the world, Catalhoyuk, is represented here too, by Ruth Tringham, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley and archeological team member in excavations at Catalhoyuk. Moderator: Melinda Kramer, co-founder, Women's Earth Alliance.
- 1. Sudarshan Tiwari, architect and city historian, Kathmandu, Nepal
- Redesigning Cities — Starting Small, Planning Large
- Stepping out and building and living an ecocity vision is happening in various forms. The concepts are hardly mainstream yet, certainly not in their fullness, so starting small is what the committed can actually accomplish. Lois Arkin launched an ecovillage in a big city — Los Angeles Ecovillage, Los Angeles, California and from that base is doing her best to influence LA itself. Joan Bokaer inspired then co-founded Ecovillage at Ithaca. Now she is working to influence the whole city to move away from cars and toward higher density pedestrian friendly centers. Architect Phil Hawes has been mind bending with building all sorts of things, the visible part of ideas far larger and more powerful: "green" and traditional hotels, a ship made of concrete that sails the world, the famous experiment called Biosphere 2 in Arizona. Moderator: Skip Wenz, publisher, internet magazine Ecotecture, Portland, Oregon.
- 1. Joan Bokaer, Ecovillage at Ithaca, New York
- 2. Phil Hawes, Natural Systems Developers, LLC
- Biofuels and Peak Oil
- Can we feed people off the land and cars too? What if we impress lands that are not good agricultural lands to the task, lands now too dry or infertile to produce crops? How would that work? World peak oil production is coming right when demand goes through the ceiling. What does that imply? Could one thin layer of chlorophyll under the sun and a somewhat thicker layer of soil make up for underground lakes of oil hundreds of feet thick that took 150 million years to be deposited and cooked up? What of the effect of Big Oil money pouring into universities and influence on the research agenda and what about the involvement of genetic engineering for road fuels?
- Presenters: Tadeusz Patzek is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley and a former chemist for Shell Oil Company. Michael Poremba is with San Francisco Informatics | SF Post-Carbon.
- Moderator: Elizabeth McCarthy is Editor, California Energy Circuit, Berkeley.
- 1. Michael Poremba, SF Informatics and SF Post-Carbon, San Francisco, CA
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- Tools for Reshaping the Built Environment
- Maybe the largest challenge in reshaping cities is in removing what isn't working - or rather is working to cover important natural features like creeks, create massive energy dependence, climate change and the like. The "willing seller deal" in which a property in the wrong place for imposing on nature, heating the planet or polluting locally can be bought when the owner is ready to sell, leading to removing the building entirely, is a key element. The real estate/legal device called a Transfer of Development Rights can tap into developers capital flow by allowing the developer to develop more in a good location if he or she puts money into a fund to pay for removing the "improvement" (buildings, walls, driveways, etc.) in the wrong place. Rick Pruetz, living in Los Angeles, is the top national Transfer of Development Rights expert, and Gordon (Gabby) Barrett has been working with the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, South Lake Tahoe, Nevada, as its TDR program director for more than 15 years. Replicating their approach could be the beginning of rolling back sprawl and all its harms. Maggie Skinderian is Director of the Johnson Creek program in Portland, Oregon where they don't have to wait for the developers' money to move - they just wait for the owner ready to sell then spend city tax money to buy up buildings on the creek's flood plain while the right hand of city government builds in the right places. Moderator: Richard Register, Ecocity Builders
1. Rick Pruetz, TDR expert
- Carbon Markets
- I don't know if you understand how carbon credits and carbon trading in the marketplace work, as hundreds of millions of dollars change hands, but your own conference organizers don't really get it. Not thoroughly anyway. Now's our chance! Would it be easier just to tax and spend for ecocity changes, starting from a notion of needing to re-map, redesign and rebuild cities in the ecocity mold, or will fine tuning what we have now trading businesslike advantages back and forth ever mindful of saving a little carbon do the trick? J Andrew Hoerner, Director of Research at Redefining Progress, Oakland, California and James D. Fine of Environmental Defense in Sacramento, California, a researcher and advocate for accurate and accountable use of carbon credits to sequester carbon or prevent it from going into the atmosphere in the first place can educate us a lot. Jason Smith, Vice President, ClimateCHECK, greenhouse gas management services provider, San Francisco, figures these things out for a living. One this one, our moderator is not just a passive observer but a celebrated renewable energy expert, author, and critic of the carbon trading, if one seeking what might be best in it - or in the alternatives that might get us to slowing and even reversing global heading faster. He's Peter Droege, author, "Renewable City," Sydney, Australia.
- 1. Jason Smith, ClimateCHECK, San Francisco, CA
Thursday 1 - Friday 1 - 2 - 3 - Saturday 1- 2 - Academic Sesssions 1 - 2 - 3 - 4
