Articles by Andy Brett

Robert Neuwirth gets down and dirty

While the housing market here gets ever more media attention, over one billion people -- a sixth of the world's population -- live in "squatter cities," where deeds and titles to land are non-existent.

A closer look at the media, however, reveals this column today on that very subject. Carol Lloyd reviews "Shadow Cities," by Robert Neuwirth, a fascinating first-hand account of four of these squatter cities (I would be remiss if I did not note the coverage it got over at WorldChanging as well).

Among other things, Neuwirth:

• notes that in some places, "squatter infrastructure" rivals the official infrastructure;
• highlights the fact that these cities have simply developed on their own, free of government control until attempts are made to shut them down; and
• contrasts the notion of property in squatter cities with American notions (Carol Lloyd expounds on this in her article).

(And there's no way to do his work justice with three bullet points, so I apologize for that.)

The lessons here for cities in the developed world are many; I'm still trying to get a handle on them myself. Neuwirth is "perhaps the first journalist to travel the globe living in the most deprived and violent shantytowns." I'd love to be the second.

In addition to the book, Neuwirth also has a blog on squatter cities. Lloyd's article, Neuwirth's blog and lecture, and the coverage at WorldChanging all provide excellent further reading.

Senate includes renewables in its energy bill

Via Green Car Congress, the Senate rejected the Cantwell amendment [PDF] to the energy bill that would have reduced the amount of foreign oil imported in 2025 by 40% from the EIA's baseline projections [PDF].

By my calculations, even if we reduced the amount of oil we import in 2025 by 40% off the baseline, we would still import just as much oil as we did in 2003, since the EIA projects that number to grow by 2.4% annually (darn that compound interest!)

One amendment did get the paper clip of approval, though: the Bingaman amendment [PDF] that mandates electric utilities generate a certain percentage of their power from renewables, with that percentage increasing to 10% by 2020.

This should make achieving Action 1 of the Urban Environmental Accords a snap for most cities.

Don't worry, all you free marketeers out there: A utility that is just terribly bad at producing renewable energy can purchase credits if it's more efficient for them to do so.

The Bingaman amendment also does not include nuclear in its definition of renewable. Just solar, wind, geothermal, "ocean energy" (which I assume is tidal), and biomass.

New Urbanist goals seem practical and environmental alike.

You can't read about cities and urban planning for too long before you come across the concept of New Urbanism, which recently held its 13th annual congress in Pasadena, Calif. The movement gained notoriety after The Truman Show was filmed in the New Urbanist town of Seaside, Fla.

If that was all there was to the movement, given the plot to the movie, people might have jumped ship on the idea a long time ago, since from what I remember, the town seemed, well, quite scary. Too planned, and too controlled. You might even say centrally planned.

But the fiction of the movie doesn't quite match up with the facts and the ideas of New Urbanism.

News from the GM front.

From the genetically modified food front:

• The New York Times published an editorial yesterday, "Genes and a Hoe," detailing the use of GM corn in Kenya.
• Greenpeace has claimed that illegal GM rice has spread to southern China, via China Daily and The Guardian.

There is a laissez-faire part of me that feels that we should just allow this stuff to be produced, for two reasons.

If it's going to mean cheaper food, people who are having trouble just surviving are going to be able to do so more easily. To me this takes priority over a lot of things; like I've said before, I don't think it's reasonable to expect a person who's just surviving to care about the issues the developed world cares about. If you are concerned with these issues, you can individually choose to buy non-GM food, as many in Vermont, to name one example, have done.

Barriers to it will likely be jumped anyway, as in bullet #2 above.

On the other hand, there are some issues here (and one in particular) that may come close to trumping those arguments. The most significant is biodiversity, as GM crops tend to weaken the variety of species in the area they are produced. The reason that ecosystems (and cities) are so chaotic and complex and resilient and adaptable is that they contain so much diversity, which mass-produced GM foods reduce.

For me the jury's still out, although I'm leaning toward the pro-GM food camp.