Tag: ecopolis

Regenerative Iowa City, Part Four: Transportation and Future Habits

February 1st, 2016

In May 2015 I wrote a proposal as a final project for a class called Literature of the Anthropocene. My proposal was in regards in turning Iowa City into a regenerative city. While I hope we as a city take the initiatives needed to make this a reality, I’m going to be posting my long essay in a series of small parts in order to spark conversation on the environment, climate change, community, and where the future of humanity should go from here, starting in a place like Iowa City. This is the final post of my “Regenerative Iowa City” series.

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Infrastructures such as roads have become necessary identifying features of towns, but the way we utilize them remains harming and greedy to the environment around us. The switch from driving cars to get to places in Iowa City should refocus its efforts into other modes of transportation. Though in the winter months there is not much one at a distance from campus can do other than drive their car or take a bus to get downtown or to class, during the warmer months employing a bike-sharing program, which is currently in the works, would help “reduce the carbon impact of transportation and promote a healthier lifestyle” (Kuehl). Designing for proximity helps enhance efficiency in travel in the city while reducing transportation emissions. Biking and walking, rather than driving, allows more activity than cars. Iowa City is a “walkable, bikeable community” with “bike-friendly destinations” (Kuehl). After all, “the swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot” (Thoreau 48). More than speed, Thoreau attempts to invite people to think that the benefits of traveling on foot—or, in this case, also by bike—far outweigh what we perceive to be faster solutions in getting to places but at a higher cost environmentally and from our own pockets. As the implementation of the bike-sharing program heads into further discussions about costs for bike use and locations where bikes can be rented, this is one goal Iowa City can and will achieve in the coming year.

Despite this gain, one obstacle to stumble and struggle through will be that of a communal behavioral change. Our habits in the way we use energy is unsustainable (Future of Cities Forum 14). The explosion of urban growth contributed to the mass consumerist and “survival of the fittest” mindset, instilling fear into the minds of the entire world’s population. We believe we need capital in order to survive, in order to establish a hierarchy of success. Our focus on monetary increase and demand segregates us from truly seeing what goes on around us, both in the environment and in our personal lives. Material gains are not goods like the relationships we have with those around us that inspire us to foster a healthy lifestyle. However, the farther we have reached in urban areas, the easier it was to consume beyond our means “or faster than ecosystems can regenerate” (Future of Cities Forum 4).

It is also beyond our environment—our consumerist and capitalist habits affect our governments, food production, and ourselves. That is why transforming policy and turning to locally grown foods are small steps to take when imagining Iowa City as regenerative. The Future of Cities Forum suggests we “promot[e]…a city that allows behaviors that have no or low effects on our environment” (14). We must realize that we cannot keep up with the demands of ourselves: more productivity does not mean we can sustain it. In fact, if we spent more time in sectors of medicine, social work, and education we would “directly improve the quality of our lives” (Jackson). If the University of Iowa turned away from preparing students for a workaholic lifestyle by diversifying the types of classes students take beyond the General Education program and ensuring workloads are not impossible, as well as Iowa City lowering the hours in its work week by presenting a livable wage on just, say, 20 hours per week, we would spend more time taking care of each other, as well as our surroundings. We would collect a common purpose around a regenerative city in maintaining it and keeping our output in check with our input instead of staring emptily at a phone or sitting at a desk for ten hours a day. Getting moving and getting excited about things is what keeps us going and makes us a great species. Peter Marland of the Future of Cities Forum suggests we “[i]nnovate, explain, implement,” in that order (16); if we “innovate” ideas for a better city, then we must “explain” to every single affected person and then “implement” our ideas with others into a regenerative Iowa City.

It starts with us. If we elevate ourselves onto a pedestal, we dehumanize ourselves into mere parts of the machine. We must learn to love ourselves if we ever hope to make a lasting impact in helping our planet. Twist the definition of the Anthropocene, and see human dominance instead as the growth of human compassion. See love and kindness over work and capital in the way humans treat each other as they work together to foster a healthier and more environmentally-friendly city. See how stress decreases if we don’t depend on education to prepare us for a job or working overtime to get education and things like food, water, clothes, and shelter; see everyone have more time to explore themselves and nature around them. See us think about ourselves in conjunction with animals and plants, not above. Living in a regenerative city, and the planning and preparation for it, would benefit us individually as well as fostering a self-aware community that understands unhealthy actions, habits, and consumptions leave lingering traces that grow with each passing day. A place like Iowa City has the capacity to take care of its citizens and its surrounding students in order to create a more inclusive, communal, and circular environment. With projects and organizations like Ecopolis working within our city, I believe there is hope to start small and locally in the pursuit of making us regenerative in our habits, lifestyles, education, and productions. Battling the adverse affects of industrialism and the Anthropocene is more than just “making a difference”: it requires innovation, communication, and implementation. A regenerative Iowa City can be one of the first examples of many in the discussion of becoming a more environmentally-conscious world.

Figure 3 – The developing proposal in Iowa City for an “Ecopolis”-like venture in which infrastructures, agriculture, modes of transportation, and sustainable energy gives those of us in the city a means to cultivate for our regenerative city.

Works Cited (Part Four)

Jackson, Tim. “Let’s Be Less Productive.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 26 May 2012. Web. 06 May 2015.

Kuehl, Eric. “Bike-sharing Program Coming to Iowa City.” Little Village Magazine. Little Village Magazine, 7 May 2015. Web. 7 May 2015.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Boston: Beacon, 2004. Print.

World Future Council and Energy Cities. “Imagine a Regenerative City.” Future of Cities Forum. 2014. PDF File.

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Copyright © Alyssa Cokinis, 2015. All rights reserved.
Regenerative Iowa City, Part Two: Policy and Education

January 18th, 2016

In May 2015 I wrote a proposal as a final project for a class called Literature of the Anthropocene. My proposal was in regards in turning Iowa City into a regenerative city. While I hope we as a city take the initiatives needed to make this a reality, I’m going to be posting my long essay in a series of small parts in order to spark conversation on the environment, climate change, community, and where the future of humanity should go from here, starting in a place like Iowa City.

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Altering policy in order to suit the needs of the environment, as well as ourselves, would benefit people in the long run. “Technology and policy go hand-in-hand,” so we need to make the “installation of renewable energy a cost-effective proposition” (World Future Council). Policy leans toward fiscally-pleasing options; people naturally assume renewable or regenerating energy sources cost more money. However, though the initial investment may seem daunting in the end it will be worth it for the environment and for us, to redefine what exactly the “Anthropocene” is. For example, “[i]n Germany the total cost per household to implement these renewable energy schemes is just five Euro per household per month” (World Future Council). Because of this, eighteen percent of Germany’s electricity comes from hydroelectric power, solar power, and wind farms while 300,000 new jobs in the past ten years have been created (World Future Council). Eighteen percent may not seem like very much, but in the short amount of time renewable energy sources have been tapped into it is a lot. “Networks of interconnected solar, wind, hydropower, and geothermal systems are now under development” in Germany and other countries around Europe who “implement…energy sufficiency whilst simultaneously commercializing relevant technologies” (World Future Council). If initially Iowa City and its inhabiting companies could employ something similar, showing that the investment is actually a small incentive, we move on our way into a more environmentally-friendly city. The state of Iowa is already a leader in wind power, so installing solar energy in Iowa City would help decrease our carbon footprint (“City of Solar”). We need to also acknowledge that “urban planning should no longer be the exclusive domain of a handful of stakeholders, but a process for public participation that brings together policy makers, entrepreneurs, and the civil society” (“Ecopolis Iowa City”). However, how is it we can get people of all socioeconomic backgrounds on board with this renewable and everlasting investment? We need to alter the wage gap.

If I had things my way, I would eliminate money altogether. I believe it a horrible, haunting entity that only exists in our minds rather than the physical paper we shuffle in our hands at cash registers or the digital numbers indicating our checking account balance. It baffles me why we need to work, usually around eight or up to even twelve or fourteen hours per day, in order to put food on our tables, keep our homes, and attend higher-level education institutions. It feels as though we “spend the best part of [our] lives earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it” (Thoreau 49). However, since it seems unlikely that at this time money would ever be eradicated completely, it is prudent that wages designated to people at work creates a means to help live their life, as “a living wage is an important part of a living city” (Ecopolis). Citizens should have the right to food, water, clothing, a home, and education without taking out loans or drowning in debt: they should make enough to live, not just survive. These are the things “necessary to life” (Thoreau 10). Taking more care of ourselves will in turn help stabilize the economy. People will be happier if they can afford their most basic needs, if they can actually live. Furthermore, we need to better educate ourselves on the concept of energy in order to start taking steps toward transforming Iowa City into a regenerative place.

This is where the University of Iowa comes into play. Iowa City is a unique college town in that the downtown area crosses with the university and gains most of its success due to their college student consumers. The University of Iowa should employ itself with the City of Iowa City government, along with citizens of differing trades, in order to maximize the transition of Iowa City into a regenerative city. Education should focus less on marketing a student for a job after graduation and instead with “[m]uch time…spent on discovering and experiencing nature and one’s talents” (Future of Cities Forum 4). In the novel Walden, Henry David Thoreau explores the concept of college. He believes we require labor before we even begin to talk or study; it is “better to lay the foundation” ourselves (Thoreau 46). Perhaps students do not have to build the infrastructures ourselves, but we should have some responsibility in understanding where food comes from, how it grows, and why local options are healthier and leave less of a carbon footprint than shipments of food coming in by truck, which could also be employed even more by university dining halls. Agricultural classes focusing on local and regional food production would be a benefit to the community, the land, and the students at the university.

Works Cited (Part Two)

Biggers, Jeff. “Ecopolis Iowa City: As State Leads in Wind, Can Iowa City Become ‘City of Solar.’” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 22 Jan. 2015. Web. 5 May 2015.

Biggers, Jeff. “Ecopolis Iowa City: Community Forum Launches Regenerative City Initiative.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 19 Nov. 2014. Web. 5 May 2015.

Ecopolis.org. Facebook, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2015. <https://www.facebook.com/ecopolis.org>.

Girardet, Herbert. “Regenerative Cities.” World Future Council. October 2010. PDF File.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Boston: Beacon, 2004. Print.

World Future Council and Energy Cities. “Imagine a Regenerative City.” Future of Cities Forum. 2014. PDF File.

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Copyright © Alyssa Cokinis, 2015. All rights reserved.
Regenerative Iowa City, Part One: The Anthropocene vs. Nature

January 11th, 2016

In May 2015 I wrote a proposal as a final project for a class called Literature of the Anthropocene. My proposal was in regards in turning Iowa City into a regenerative city. While I hope we as a city take the initiatives needed to make this a reality, I’m going to be posting my long essay in a series of small parts in order to spark conversation on the environment, climate change, community, and where the future of humanity should go from here, starting in a place like Iowa City.

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Regeneration is not about immortality: sustainability pulses at its core. Creating a cycle sustains regeneration for generations to come. Placing this idea into the context of a city allows the city truly to survive on what it needs, reducing excess in waste and material gain. After all, “[c]reating regenerative cities thus primarily means one thing: Initiating comprehensive, political, financial and technology strategies for an environmentally enhancing, restorative relationship between cities and the ecosystems from which they draw resources for their sustenance” (World Future Council). Therefore, I propose Iowa City, under the Ecopolis mentality already formed, transform itself into a regenerative city. Throughout this proposal, with the aid of writings and my own thoughts, I will discuss ideas for change, how the process of a change will help both us and the environment, and ultimately the benefit of turning to an idea such as a regenerative city.

The Anthropocene—or the human-dominated epoch in Earth’s natural history that we reside in today—started during the Industrial Revolution, which exploded urban growth (World Future Council). Before that, over the course of 14,000 years we, as humans, domesticated plants and animals. We took the land and created farming; we found animals and made them food or pets. The change from small family farms or simple hunting for food transformed into a mass commercial endeavor for an ever-growing consumer society. This increasing global influence impacted material production through labor, capital, and land. The introduction preceding Virgil’s poem “Georgics”—this specific version translated by Janet Lembke—explores this idea and also the potential disappearance of family farms in Virgil’s day. “Labor—sheer, ceaseless hard work—is the only barrier between the farmer and ruin,” and this is exceptionally true when looking at how humans gained the ability and perhaps the agency to stay put, to refrain from nomadic tendencies and develop more intricate cities that stretched farther than they ever thought (Lembke). The flourishing of agriculture became the underpinning of civilization and helped civil communities exist and have a stronger presence than before. I believe this is not the start of the Anthropocene but lays the groundwork for the beginning of a human-centered age of the Earth. To this day we focus on the concept of labor, but we have created different labors to make our lives easier, not to keep up that “hard work” Lembke talks about in the introduction. We must cultivate to survive, but our need for distribution now overpowers our ability to cultivate effectively, whether that is in regards to plant life or the excess of animals killed just for our food cravings. In the attempt to make life easier, to make everything painless and numb, to retreat ourselves into our little square houses, we are isolating ourselves from helping the environment as well as each other for sustainable reasons.

The Anthropocene also thrives on an influx of limited, unsustainable energy. It is so easy to throw out food and other items we deem as waste, to have that taken to the dump, perhaps flushed into our oceans, but we never give it a second thought because the convenience outweighs our negative output into nature in our minds. The impact of what we do in the United States stretches so far that developing countries attempt to mimic us and our behaviors, which in turn increases their own carbon footprint when before these countries may have lived less earth-harming lives. We rely on capital for what we have now, as well as renewable and regenerative sources, so often people will mistake the investment in renewability as unlikely or too expensive. We think in dollar signs instead of nurturing the land that provides for us. The introduction of capital marks a shift in our cultural awareness, in which our growth as a species is marked by Industrial Expansion (MacDuffie). The question as to what we can do has also shifted. Allen MacDuffie wonders, have we become our own energy, and are we a sustainable one at that?

Figure 1 – The comparison of our current linear city metabolism versus a prospective circular city metabolism.

In order to remain a sustainable entity on this planet, we need to adopt the way nature works. We currently work as a linear metabolism, in which we consume resources and create an excess amount of waste and pollution without much thought to how it affects the surrounding and, sadly, declining ecosystems. A circular metabolism remains more ideal because it reduces consumption and pollution rates while also recycling a majority of things in order to create renewable sources of energy and food. Employing a circular metabolism instead of the linear system we currently hold would benefit us and the planet greatly (see Figure 1). It is not about taking the energy nature has and making it more efficient for us, but rather for us to use it exactly as it should be used. And, besides, “[u]nless we learn from nature how to create circular systems, an urbanizing world will continue to be an agent of global environmental decline” (World Future Council). Nature works in a circle, so if we can mimic her movements so there is zero-waste, then every output has another input, and so on. To do this we may need a change the way we approach government and policy.

Works Cited (Part One)

Lembke, Janet. “Introduction.” Virgil’s Georgics: A New Verse Translation. By Virgil. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. N. pag. Print.

MacDuffie, Allen. “Energy, Evolution, and Victorian Ecological Thought.” Energy Cultures in the Age of the Anthropocene. Old Capitol Senate Chamber, Iowa City. 6 Mar. 2015.

World Future Council and Energy Cities. “Imagine a Regenerative City.” Future of Cities Forum. 2014. PDF File.

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Copyright © Alyssa Cokinis, 2015. All rights reserved.

Tag: ecopolis

Regenerative Iowa City, Part Four: Transportation and Future Habits

Regenerative Iowa City, Part Two: Policy and Education

Regenerative Iowa City, Part One: The Anthropocene vs. Nature