News

May 22, 2023

National links: How ancient cooling designs could help us fight climate change

LinksBy Jeff Wood (Contributor) August 4, 2023 Al Fahidi Historical Neighborhood in Dubai, featuring a "Barajeel" by Dubai Media Office on X. How ancient passive cooling techniques could help us

LinksBy Jeff Wood (Contributor) August 4, 2023

Al Fahidi Historical Neighborhood in Dubai, featuring a "Barajeel" by Dubai Media Office on X.

How ancient passive cooling techniques could help us reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Can Montreal’s newest light rail line serve as a model for the rest of Canada? Dallas will soon have a hike and bike loop.

Borrowing cooling design from the Middle East: Air conditioning accounts for roughly 4% of global carbon emissions every year. In the United States, 88% of housing units have air conditioning to cool the building down. But in historically hot areas, ancient building designs have been repurposed to provide cooling to new buildings using wind while also allowing in natural light. Barajeels, or wind towers, can cool buildings up to 50 degrees Fahrenheit depending on the prevailing winds. And dome ceilings can help keep heat from rooms in the building. We could learn from these designs and build more passive cooling into our buildings. (Anna Gordon | Time Magazine)

Can Montreal’s new LRT line be a model?: Montreal, Canada, opened its latest transit expansion last week — called the Réseau express métropolitain, or REM — the first section of a 41.5-mile light rail network by a private company. The line has been lauded for its quick construction and opening. Some hope it’s seen as a model for the rest of Canada. But the process will be hard to replicate given the political intervention given to this project to limit lawsuits from landowners and routing the tracks through lower-density areas. (Thomas MacDonald | Toronto Star)

Dallas will soon finish construction of hike and bike loop: After $90 million and 10 years of planning and construction, Dallas is getting closer to completing a 50-mile hike and bike trail around the city. The program is led by business leaders in Dallas who see a need to connect trails together in the city. They’ve kept a low profile but hope that in the next 10 years, the trail system will be a symbol of the city. (Christine Perez | D Magazine)

List of Top 100 influential contemporary urbanists released: Architect, urban designer, and author Jan Gehl tops out the list for his efforts to refocus design and planning to the human scale. Alex Baca, GGWash’s DC Policy Director, and Kristen Jeffers, founder and editor-in-chief of The Black Urbanist, who also serves as contributing editor to GGWash, made it onto the list.

Miyawaki method for reforestation: A method of quick reforestation developed by Japanese professor Akira Miyawaki has the potential to speed up city greening around the world. The method includes planting native trees and plants in close proximity to each other so they grow faster in competition for resources in their early lives. The Miyawaki method supports greater biodiversity and carbon capture than single-species plantings which makes it possible for a faster regeneration process. (Chermaine Lee | Fair Planet)

Dan Doctoroff reckons with his legacy: From 2002 to 2008 Dan Doctoroff, Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding in the Bloomberg Administration, had a hard-charging attitude to get things done that he believed would improve the city. His ambition led to other projects but also failures including Sidewalk Toronto. But after an ALS diagnosis in 2021, he’s had to rethink some of the ways he approached city change and people. (Justin Davidson | Curbed)

Quote of the Week

“It was mostly populated by Black people. I-70 came through in 1967 and bisected the neighborhood. And what we’re doing is looking at the impact of these urban highways on these communities, how they divided and damaged them.”

Ohio State geography professor Harvey Miller discussed in WXVU how they used old fire insurance maps and machine learning to show disappeared neighborhoods.

This week on the podcast, Paula DiPerna joins the show to talk about her book Pricing the Priceless: The Financial Transformation to Value the Planet, Solve the Climate Crisis, and Protect Our Most Precious Assets.

Continue the conversation about urbanism in the Washington region and support GGWash’s news and advocacy when you join the GGWash Neighborhood!

Jeff Wood is the Principal of The Overhead Wire, a consulting firm focused on sharing information about cities around the world. He hosts a weekly podcast called Talking Headways at Streetsblog USA and operates the daily news site The Overhead Wire.