Worldchanging: Bright Green

The Ghost of a Green Los Angeles

Alex Steffen — 2010-02-09T14:02:12-08:00

Today, I took a long walk through the old neighborhoods of Long Beach: craftsman bungalows, Mission-style courtyard apartment buildings, quaint and walkable streets, old trees shading the sidewalks, the beach breeze blowing through. It put me in mind of the L.A. that might have been, the one that was proposed time and again, and overruled by boosters and developers and the politicians they owned.

L.A. might have been a paradise, of course, had it come up differently. Had it been a city of walkable neighborhoods, street cars, home solar, wild rivers, undeveloped beaches, gardens of water-sipping native plants (all proposed more than 100 years ago), it might have ended up the greenest major city on the planet, and a marvel of livability. Instead, of course, it's Gatsby's green light for all America.

Thinking about that, in turn, put me in mind of this passage from my unpublished 2002 America future book. It's an uncorrected piece, full of juvenile phrases and probably even some outright inaccuracies. Presented solely for your amusement:

It's hard to even find the Los Angeles River. It doesn't appear on my map, at all, and it takes some serious poking around on the Net to find a map that indicates in any detail its course. I reach it, not far from Downtown LA, by climbing through a weed-covered gap in a chainlink fence and crossing some litter-strewn, gravelly railroad yards.

I look, and behold the handiwork of the Army Corps of Engineers: huge slabs of concrete, with some murky water trickling between them. Remember the scene in Terminator 2, when the T-1000 has stolen a truck and is chasing a young, dirtbike-riding John Connor down a wide concrete tunnel with no roof? That's what rivers look like in LA. The Corps has never met a river they didn't think would look better in a little concrete.

If we'd stopped LA a 150 years ago, we find little reason to stay. LA in 1850 was a charming little way station amid the arid hills, the setting for a scenic little mission built by the Spaniards (with forced Indian labor), a scattering of prosperous farms, and a growing number of orange groves. Though prettier, LA didn't offer much more than, say, Bakersfield.

Except for the weather. LA's weather is perhaps the best in the world (a Georgian cabbie driving me home from a party I went to told me that the Crimean seafront's weather is much nicer, but I can only take his word for it): the days are nearly always sunny and warm, but the ocean breezes keep off the worst of the desert heat. It's nature's little climate-controlled wonderland, nearly year-round. It's easy to see why the orange groves and truck farms of this City of Angels got turned into one of the largest cities in the world in less than a century. The weather here isn't just good, it's hedonistic. It's a debauched sunshine. It's a slutty breeze.

Boosters in that ur-LA saw something you and I probably would not have seen: potential. They realized that to Easterners and Midwesterners used to muggy summers and winters where the snow fell deep and cold, LA would seem like Paradise on Earth, and that's marketable.

Market they did. By the turn of the century, these boosters had built a national folklore about Southern California, one that survives into the present day. In that folklore, people are always picking citrus fresh from the tree and swimming on pristine beaches, and eventually, driving around in convertibles and surfing with aspiring movie stars. It was, in many ways, the invention of a lifestyle, perhaps even of the concept of lifestyle. The invention of motion pictures only spread the myth wider and planted it deeper into our national subconscious. It's the Big Rock Candy Mountain, or as close to it as we can get in North America, and people flocked here to get their piece of it.

And when the flocks arrived, the boosters were ready to sell them real estate. As Mike Davis writes, "A picturesque conjugation of beach, desert, mountain and citrus grove – emblazoned on millions of postcards and orange-crate labels – once defined Los Angeles in the imagination of the entire world. Nature [was the basis for]… the greatest continuous real-estate boom in history."

LA, he explains, was marketed by real estate developers who hyped the very things their subdivisions were destroying, like pristine beaches, beautiful rivers and the world's largest citrus forest. Time after time, local civic activists, including the Olmstead brothers (best know today as the designers of New York's Central Park), would attempt to make the point that growth could be accommodated in ways which left this ocean-side paradise intact, and time and again their plans and pleas were ignored.

After the orange groves were surveyed, platted and bulldozed ("[G]reat glaciers of concrete and asphalt have scoured the valleys of the last traces of orchard and vineyard."), land-speculators turned their eyes toward the flood plains and river deltas. The problem was, rivers are unpredictable beasts, inclined to flood and twist around in their courses. This makes them biologically rich, but financially unsound real estate. A unseemly cabal of local politicians, bankers, developers, the Los Angeles Times and the Army Corp of Engineers emerged, determined to bring the beast to heel, by encasing the entire river in concrete if need be.

Their plan did not go without protest. The Olmstead brothers put forward a plan to preserve the river channels as nature preserves, parks and open space. Their plan was not embraced by the powers that be, and shortly later, as Davis says, LA solved its river problems by killing its rivers.

Then it went after other peoples' rivers, and grew a vast sprawl that slumps across its valleys today, while its residents brace for fires and mudslides, earthquakes and rising seas, and ultimately the day when, as everyone senses they will, the oil pipelines and aquaducts run dry. The LA we actually built is a blatantly temporary city, that (unless much changes) will leave behind it a sense mostly of loss.

Still, the other LA, the one we didn't build, floats through the real one, and some days, like today, you can see what it might have been.

Or is it still what may be? I was on a panel at the Copenhagen Climate Summit for Mayors with L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa in December, and he was pretty eloquent about the challenges and possibilities of retrofitting L.A. into a more bright green city. While the structural challenges remain massive (especially water supply and climate vulnerability), LA also has an ideal climate for clean energy, green building and smart transportation choices. A concerted push (in an improved economy) might actually be able to build on the strong bones of the old L.A. and recapture some of the potential the Olmsteads and others saw a century ago.

P.S.: If you want to think more about a green L.A., a good a place to start is with the writer Jenny Price and her essay, Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in L.A.

Image credit: The Photography Collection at the Los Angeles Public Library

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Alex Steffen in Features at 2:02 PM)

State of Green Business Forum: San Francisco

Agnes Mazur — 2010-02-09T14:00:45-08:00

The annual publication of the State of Green Business Report drew sustainability experts of all kinds to San Francisco in the first of two U.S. events presented by Greener World Media. While the State of the Union delivered in Washington was a stark reminder of the impact of a tough economic year, the State of Green Business Forum gives hope to sustainability supporters and solid indicators of the steady growth of a green economy.

(Company Commitments: Percentage of S&P 500 Companies Reporting Reduction Targets. Source: Carbon Disclosure Project. Click image to enlarge.)

At the PG&E Auditorium in downtown San Francisco, Joel Makower presented the 2010 State of Green Business Report -- a compilation of over 1500 news stories, blogs, and media collected from all sources of Greener World Media, including GreenBiz.com, GreenerBuildings, ClimateBiz, and others. Editors ploughed through massive amounts of information to come up with 10 major trends in green business and 20 indicators of progress towards a green economy.

The good news is that despite the economic challenges of 2009, sustainability has not diminished on the radars of companies looking to go green. Among the trends noted, the report indicates that 2009 was a time when the idea of the green economy realized its worth, with promises of a cleantech revolution (including a future of alternative energy, a smartgrid, and electric vehicles) and green jobs that would restore America’s status as a world leader in technology echoing from investors, innovative startups, corporate giants, and the White House.

The bad news is that many out of work Americans are still waiting for these green jobs to materialize. Explanations for the lack of green jobs were that companies either didn’t have a budget for hiring, opted to hire from within, or had expectations of green expertise and experience candidates just don’t have yet.

In response to companies’ needs, universities are preparing to train the next generation of environmental experts. The State of Green Business report noted a rise in offerings for sustainability programs, including sustainable MBA programs, and the first doctoral degree in sustainability offered by the Rochester Institute of Technology. In order to make sense of the diverse offerings in this emerging field, prospective students can consult the Aspen Institute’s Guide to Socially Responsible MBA Programs, or GreenReportCard.org.

Breakthroughs in corporate commitments to sustainability were also noted in the report, including GE’s plan to cut water used by 20 percent by 2012, Cisco’s commitment to cut emissions by 25 percent, also by 2012, and JohnsonDiversey’s investment of nearly $14 million to reduce its carbon footprint. The launch of Walmart’s Sustainability Index, which asks nearly 60,000 suppliers to answer questions about greenhouse gas emissions and measure to reduce solid waste, along with a recent ruling by the SEC requiring companies to report climate risk were major steps towards corporate environmental accountability.

(10 Large Carbon Neutral Commitments. Source: GreenBiz.com. Click image to enlarge.)

Consumer attitudes towards sustainability were also a topic of interest at the Forum. In an age of green marketing and the proliferation of information about products from cradle to the grave, decisions can be difficult even for a conscious consumer. Surveys indicate that although consumers claim to want to shop green, they don’t buy companies’ green claims. According the report, nearly 60 percent of people surveyed would like to see more regulation of green claims. Dara O’Rourke, founder of the GoodGuide, spoke of the need to make the information accessible in an easily understandable manner right at the point of purchase. Wendy Cobdra, president of Earthsense, cited the Green Confidence Index as a good resource to gauge Americans’ changing perceptions of environmental responsibility in leaders, institutions, and organizations.

Of course, the promise a green economy raises interest in new business opportunities in cleantech. With the help of a panel of executives from Best Buy, Autodesk, and Serious Materials, Marc Gunther of GreenBiz explored how the fields of business and sustainable technology are merging. Rick Rommel of Best Buy emphasized that market demand for green products will ensure their appearance on the market, illustrating with a local example of Best Buy selling electric scooters and bikes in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as Portland and other cities on the West Coast. Kevin Surace, CEO of Serious Materials, attributed the immense success of his company to listening to customers’ needs (as well as complaints) and designing better building materials.

As for the role of policy in the State of Green Business, Van Jones made a brief appearance via telephone to emphasize that the green economy is alive and well. In a dialogue with Joel Makower, he urged businesspeople to see the connections between economic opportunity and prosperity through the lens of sustainability, and gave an update that a good amount of green stimulus money from the government is still on the table. The session continued with a panel that affirmed that the lack of an agreement to emissions limits in Copenhagen did not mean businesses were off the hook. The recent World Economic Forum in Davos was also mentioned as an international checkpoint in the race towards a green economy.

Peggy Liu, co-founder of the Joint US-China Coalition on Climate and Energy (or JUCCCE), portrayed China as a viable and eager partner in this race rather than a threat. Through her work in spreading sustainability practices throughout China, Liu has spotted opportunity for Western companies to lend their expertise in customized solutions to environmental problems on an enormous scale. China’s commitment to going green, its economic strength and political ability to accomplish vast initiatives rapidly, and its need for solutions makes it a perfect market for emerging green technologies.

The day rounded out with a panel of powerhouse tech companies discussing the role that IT can play in making the world a greener place. Microsoft, IBM, Intel, and SAP shared a stage to present scenarios of a conscious, tech-enabled future. Possibilities ranged IBM’s traffic prediction tool in Singapore to Microsoft’s Smart Home. As for green technology the world of business, SAP and Microsoft announced a partnership with the Carbon Disclosure Project last year that helps streamline the process by which companies report their greenhouse gas emissions.

Agnes Mazur is a sustainability enthusiast based in San Jose, Calif. After completing her studies in Political Science, Spanish, and French at San Jose State University, she worked as a reporter in her native city of Warsaw, Poland. She has since returned to the Bay Area where she works as a policy analyst for C3 and contributes to various efforts in sustainability including organizing an urban gardening project, researching up-and-coming green businesses, and attending various conferences about environmental sustainability. She hopes her love of world travel, nature and innovation can help change the world.

Image credits: Greener World Media

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Agnes Mazur in Features at 2:00 PM)

Light and the Bright Green City

Alex Steffen — 2010-02-09T11:41:11-08:00

It's become a common slide at conferences: a map of the Earth at night, with the wealthier and denser areas shining brightly. Africa seen at night is largely dark, and this is often the point of the slide: look at how much energy some people have access to, and how little others do (which is true: almost 90% of Africans lack ready access to electricity, according to the World Bank), and, by inference, what gaps in economic prosperity persist.

But these maps don't actually display prosperity, or even energy use: instead, maps of brightness illustrate light pollution and energy waste. The blazing lights our satellites photograph while whizzing above us in their orbits, well, that's light that's serving no useful purpose (unless you want to think of our glowing cities as a form of art meant for distant eyes). Light seen from space is bouncing off illuminated surfaces, or being shone directly from bulbs aimed up. Neither is helping us on the ground see our cities better.

We could, we should, be treating light as precious, and getting clever about illuminating our lives with only the light we need. Using the minimum needed lumens would not only save a fair bit of energy, it would also bring the night sky back to our cities; it's the light bounced back by the atmosphere that hides the stars.

Seen from above, a bright green city would be only a smudge of light.

(PS: if you want to follow my twitter stream from TED, you can find me at @AlexSteffen.)

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Alex Steffen in at 11:41 AM)

De-Industrializing the City

Alex Steffen — 2010-02-08T12:27:43-08:00

One of my favorite quotes by Bjarke Ingels:

"Engineering without engines. We should use contemporary technology and computation capacity to make our buildings independent of machinery. Building services today are essentially mechanical compensations for the fact that buildings are bad for what they are designed for—human life. Therefore we pump air around, illuminate dark spaces with electric lights, and heat and cool the spaces in order to make them livable. The result is boring boxes with big energy bills. If we moved the qualities out of the machine room and back into architecture’s inherent attributes, we’d make more interesting buildings and more sustainable cities."

These are all ideas very much at the core of green building, but there's a focus here that I think is important: that sustainable cities involve removing machines designed to do ecologically stupid things, and that new technology should reorient the city around the human body.

Fewer machines. Smart surroundings for people.

So much of the ecological destruction caused by contemporary prosperity is the by-product of crude, brute-force industrial solutions to fundamental urban problems (and magnified by the modernist glorification of those solutions).

Burning petroleum to drive pistons and turn wheels to move a big chunk of metal around the city is what you do when you haven't yet figured out how to make the normal needs of daily life readily findable and accessible: it's conquering space through BTUs, rather than data and design.

Building giant dams and piping rivers of water from those dams to distant cities, then piping away other rivers of polluted water to be treated in giant industrial vats with massive doses of chemicals before being dumped (semi-polluted) into the nearest river or ocean -- well, that's what you do when you are powerless to defeat bacteria with anything but brute force and petrochemicals. More complex, living systems (complete with rainwater harvesting, passive green infrastructure and graywater re-use) are already possible, and with lab-on-a-chip-level technologies, they can be made at least as safe as the 19th century water supplies most of us depend on now.

Hell, even manufacturing itself -- with its tsunamis of product directed at retail shelves -- is a brute-force, mechanized approach to providing the things we want. Much of what is manufactured is utterly transient in our lives: we use it, it breaks, we throw it out. Much of the stuff we buy is not used at all, or only a few times in a lifetime: its major purpose is to be stored as a symbol of wealth, safety or status (think outdoor gear, power tools, obscure kitchen devices). A lot of stuff is made, never touched, and thrown away (think of recent clothing store scandals). All of this stuff is industrial society's answer to the problems of household needs and human aspiration; all of it will look ridiculous in the very near future, when people aim to have access to stuff that they actually like and use, avoiding accumulating stuff that merely impoverishes them and clutters their homes (already "stuff" is acquiring negative connotations). We sit in environments designed to hold and display credit-leveraged objects, rather than promote the highest possible quality of life.

I could go on, but I think the point is made. Want to see the city of the future? Start looking for machines to replace.

(Image: Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieus, public domain)

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Alex Steffen in Emerging Technologies at 12:27 PM)

Vote Today and Help Us Win $5K!

WorldChanging Team — 2010-02-08T11:43:01-08:00

Just by clicking a button, you can help us win a $5,000 grant from Brighter Planet.

Worldchanging's project proposal, Advocate for Climate Neutral Cities, has just been accepted for Brighter Planet's Project Fund, which provides seed money for people and projects working to help others fight or adapt to climate change. Our idea to create a climate neutral cities mini-magazine is one of nine projects up for the grant money.

Brighter Planet members decide—as a community—which projects to fund. The project with the most votes at the close of a voting period receives the grant. Join today to cast your vote for Advocate for Climate Neutral Cities.

PLEASE HELP US BY TAKING ONE MINUTE TO VOTE

STEP 1: Click here to create an account
STEP 2: Confirm your account
STEP 3: Vote for ADVOCATE FOR CLIMATE NEUTRAL CITIES

Each member has three votes. Obviously, we'd love for you to use all three votes on us.

For more information on Brighter Planet's Project Fund, watch this video:

Microgrants for Climate Projects from Brighter Planet on Vimeo.

For more information on our idea, head to our project page. Here you'll also find this week's discussion question: "What is your city or municipality doing to combat climate change?" The conversation will also take place across our Twitter and Facebook accounts. Once the conversation gets going, we'll post the comments as a new feature on the site.

Thanks,

The Worldchanging Team

Image credit: Theresa Thompson, Flickr.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Features at 11:43 AM)

Visions Desirable, Present and Future

Mark Tovey — 2010-02-08T11:03:59-08:00

Here at WorldChanging, we often have conversations about how best to envision desirable futures. Not just on how to collaborate on designing them, or accelerate development on the kind of technology that would get us there, but how to portray inspiring green futures that people would want to live in.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Mark Tovey in Features at 11:03 AM)

Headlines from Worldchanging Canada (December 2009 - January 2010)

Mark Tovey — 2010-02-08T10:32:39-08:00

Where Did We Go Wrong on "Green Jobs"?

Alex Steffen — 2010-02-05T18:12:15-08:00

I was in a meeting today with some smart folks that got me thinking again about "green jobs," specifically Van Jones' message about the intersection of environmentalism and social justice. They're not polished thoughts, but I thought I'd share them and see what folks think.

Ever since Van Jones got essentially lynched by Glenn Beck's teabaggers, I've been wondering why it was so easy to target him, why the green jobs message (which seemed to me at the time uncontroversial) so clearly failed to connect, and why the green jobs conversation in Northern Europe seems to be going so much better.

Racism is a correct, but too easy, answer. There's plenty of racism in Europe, too, and not all the people who got riled up to take down Van Jones were racists. There's something more afoot here, I suspect. I think it has to do as well with the form of social justice green jobs came to connote.

Part of what appealed to me about Jones' pitch was explicitly the idea that one set of solutions I really care about -- clean energy and green technologies -- might be an answer as well to a different set of problems I also care about, economic injustice and racism in America. Save the planet, give justice to the poor: that's a slam dunk argument to someone like me. I suspect many other progressives felt exactly the same way.

But I don't think that's how it played to other people. To other people -- especially working class people in industries whose economic woes have been pinned (mostly dishonestly) on environmentalists -- "green jobs" may not have read "planet/justice" but rather "elitists/welfare." I suspect that for some, green jobs sound like programs for liberal elitists to take money from hardworking people and give it to lazy poor people. For racists, "lazy poor" is also code speak for black, of course, but you don't have to be racist to be a pissed off working person in the U.S.

What's different in Northern Europe? Well, in many countries the whole cultural context is different, since the welfare state is so well established that many regular people hear "us" not "them" when social programs are mentioned. But there's something else that's very different.

Most of the time when I've heard the environment and employment being discussed in Europe, it's in the context of economic development, industrial strategy, progress. I've heard leaders talking about country X moving forward to be a front-runner in wind power, or smart grid technology, or green building expertise and how that will drive prosperity, business growth and new jobs. The emphasis is put on how bright green industries will benefit the entire nation or region or even Europe as whole, rather than a specific social class.

Environmentalists in the U.S. use "green jobs" to mean that, too, but I don't think that meaning's stuck. In fact, that usage may have actually helped undermine some of the message of prosperity-through-sustainability that we've tried to put forward, attaching instead the idea of social redistribution. I suspect that for much of America, the idea "wind power will generate green jobs" now carries some negative connotations.

It may be that what we need is a completely different message. Jobs are no doubt a part of that message, but I suspect emphasizing skilled work, the trades, American productivity and putting it in a context of rapid technological shifts and international competition is probably more the way to go. Some people are already doing some good work there.

But we may need to go farther. We have a strong argument to make that dirty energy and out-dated industries aren't just planet-killers, they're millstones around the neck of the American economy, dragging it under. I think acknowledging the conflict between old gray industrial America, and new bright green post-industrial America and being clear which is better for more people is a winning strategy. If we move forward quickly into a bright green future, most people will benefit from the prosperity we'll create (and we'll save the planet). It's not jobs vs. the environment, it's dying jobs vs. thriving jobs. That's an argument we can win in middle America.

I'd really, really like to think that the call for social justice that made "green jobs" so attractive to a lot of us can still be a central part of the story we're trying to tell, but here's the thing: I'm not sure that's true, and I feel pretty strongly in my gut that if we are going to be successful at weaving social justice into the strategy, it'll unfortunately be by staying clear of the phrase "green jobs" altogether.

And that bums me out, to be honest. I want the things I fight for to address the wrongs in this country, and the world. I'd rather not be put in a position of having to advocate indirectly for righting those wrongs. But the only direct articulation of the connection we have may be doing more harm than good now.

I may be totally wrong, and I may not be explaining myself very well (though it's the very end of the day Friday, so this will have to do), but this is how it seems to me. We absolutely should lay claim to being the party of the future, but we may need to find new ways to put forward our social justice goals.

How do you see it? How would you explain the possibilities of sustainable prosperity? How do you see social justice fitting into those possibilities? Can "green jobs" be rehabilitated?

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Alex Steffen in Bright Green Economy at 6:12 PM)

PermaCorps, Haiti: Sustainable Disaster Relief pt.2

Alex Aylett — 2010-02-04T11:56:49-08:00

Responding to disasters requires doing a lot with a little as quickly as possible. After my post on the use of solar power as part of the Haitian recovery, a few readers pointed me to aid efforts that are using permaculture techniques to meet pressing demands for clean water, food and shelter. There is even talk of creating a permaculture relief corp: the "PermaCorps."

Permaculture's motto is that nothing goes to waste -- which is perfect for situations where there is never enough to go around in the first place. Its community based work is also an inspiring contrast to the shock doctrine approach to emergency aid.

Modern permaculture goes beyond its agricultural roots to include everything from waste, water, and energy systems to building techniques. By looking at all of these as interlocking parts of one larger system, permaculture can use what would normally be considered "waste" from one system as input for another. Composted sewage becomes fertilizer; buildings and landscaping provide both shelter and catch and purify drinking water.

Disaster Response
Geoff Lawton is the managing director of Australia's Permaculture Research Institute (PRI), one of the world's leading permaculture organizations. In an interview with ABC radio, he described how permaculture relief differs from traditional emergency aid in meeting both immediate and longterm needs:

"Present problems can be future solutions. ... If possible, and it is usually possible, the systems that you put in are an asset to the people. That asset is in leaving living systems on the ground. You go from sanitary considerations, to systems that then go on to increase soil fertility and lead to better nutrition and more vitality to get [the population] out of this disaster and move forward."

Permaculture techniques have been used in some of the world's worst disaster zones. The PRI, in collaboration with the UN High Commission on Refugees, has worked in Macedonia after the Kosovo crisis, Guatemala following the civil war, in Northern Iraq, Sudan, and Indonesia after the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004. They do everything from large scale planning to community built and maintained gardening systems that allow people to begin providing for themselves again.

Permaculture projects, like blackwater systems and instant gardens, are designed and built with the communities that will use them and keep them running. That hands-on approach contributes to the success and durability of the projects, but it also has psychological benefits that can't be overestimated. Amidst devastation, it provides people with an opportunity to be actively engaged with something positive and meaningful.

PermaCorps, Haiti
A variety of organizations including PRI USA were already active in Haiti prior to the quake, and have since turned their attention away from the country's deforestation and soil fertility problems to help deal with the impact of the earthquake.

Within days of the quake, work had begun outside Haiti to assemble a larger group of volunteers. Some of these are expatriates from Miami's Haitian community, where permaculturist Cory Brennan was working the weekend of the quake. Others are being drawn in from the broader international network of permaculture practitioners. But, understandibly, much of this is seems to be happening in a relatively adhoc way.

Evan Schoepke, a permaculturist, blogger and student based in Washington state, was one of the first to call for a more organized permaculture relief corps, or PermaCorps. The vision is of something that would begin in Haiti but maintain a continued presence for future disaster work. He is currently assembling two small teams who will be leaving to joining other permaculturists in Haiti in the coming weeks:

"This is a project that really couldn't have happened until right now. No permaculture organization exists that is specifically set up to respond to these kinds of events and help with relief, recovery and redevelopment."

Disaster Leapfrogging
In the short term, permaculture techniques meet the crucial needs of daily life: compost toilets reduce the risk of sewage born disease, rocket cook-stoves and gardens provide food, engineered catchments and filtration systems provide drinking water. But recovery from disasters is a longterm processes. The real promise of permaculture is in providing systems that can sustain themselves beyond the redevelopment period. Like renewable energy, they are approaches that can help rebuild Haiti on firmer footings.

Permaculture's community driven approach is also an alternative to the much criticized top down and economically driven "disaster capitalism" approach to aid and reconstruction. (See Naomi Klein's arguments at the end of last month.) In amongst everything else, these projects may be a real opportunity for some "disaster leapfrogging."
---

To Get Involved or Donate See:
www.oreworld.org
permaculturehaiti.org
www.permacultureguild.us
oursoil.org

This piece originally appeared on Alex Aylett's blog, OpenAlex

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Alex Aylett in Refugees and Relief at 11:56 AM)

Why Our Bright Green Futures Will Be Weirder Than We Think

Alex Steffen — 2010-02-04T10:49:17-08:00

I've been thinking about how weird the future is getting.

One of the most creatively interesting aspects of zero impact as a goal is the way in which it transforms our understanding of many of the "solutions" now on the table. When we see our goal as eliminating our ecological impact -- or at least eliminating any impact beyond a globally equitable share of the total impact the planet can absorb (for climate, that appears to work out to about one metric ton of CO2 per person per year, for instance) -- and we're committed to achieving that in a set time frame (like, now, or 20 years, or 40 years), we have to judge the steps we take in a new light.

Some solutions that sound great fail to be able to deliver sufficient change quickly enough to be very important. Others deliver change -- perhaps even lots of change -- but are dead-end paths: beyond a certain point, they can deliver no more benefit, and they also don't make the next solution set any easier. Still others may offer some level of benefit but actually impede progress beyond that level, to the point of being harmful distractions. It's not at all clear that every little bit helps: some solutions can get in the way.

A few thought-experiment examples, in the context of climate change:

1) Local food. Given that a fairly small percentage of the actual carbon footprint of food comes from transportation, emphasizing local food is not a very important solution, in terms of lowering our climate impacts. Indeed, in some cases, less efficient local production means that local food actually can come with a higher carbon footprint than imported food. There are other excellent reasons for buying local (like protecting your foodshed), but a world of people eating local food would still be melting the ice caps.

2) Electric cars. Electric cars are clearly better than gas-burners, no matter what kind of gas they burn. Electric cars are inherently more efficient, getting as much as four times more mobility out of the same amount of energy. If that energy is wind, solar or hydro, their driving emissions are very, very low (not zero, because clean energy is not completely zero-impact itself). The hitch is that the problem with cars isn't just what's under the hood: it's everything, from manufacturing, maintenance and disposal, to the entire system of infrastructure they demand and the social/environmental effects of auto-dependence on our towns and cities. By some rough reckonings, even cars that are produce no emissions still have about 2/3 the total systemic lifecycle impacts of internal combustion vehicles.

Cutting one third of our auto-related emissions is still a big win, but it's a long way from zero. And it's not at all clear that driving electric cars helps us make the larger transitions (towards walkable transit-oriented development, for instance), that zero-impact cities clearly demand. Electric cars may (or may not) be a critical stop-gap technology, but that doesn't make them a transformative one.

3) Clean coal. Coal plant carbon capture and storage/sequestration (CCS) may or may not reduce CO2 emissions from coal plants (it's still an unproven technology). But even if it does, it will only reduce, not eliminate, the impacts of coal-burning; worse, it gives political cover to dirty coal power today, and helps keep in place massive coal subsidies around the world, making it tougher for clean energy solutions to compete fairly in the marketplace. I'd argue that investments in CCS may reduce emissions somewhat, but actually make getting to zero less likely.

Targeting zero, or any other ambitious-but-necessary goal, forces us into direct, uncomfortable contact with the degree of unsustainability manifest in nearly every system around us. Zero slams us right up against the reality that the Swap won't work.

Neither will any other solution we're familiar with. The conventional human responses -- relocalism (draw in, bunker down, look to survival, plan for community in the aftermath) and nostalgic retreat (embrace a return to some vision of pre-post-industrial society; go back to a time when, we imagine, things were more sustainable, or more, if you're a fundamentalist, more righteous) -- are both completely understandable, but they're forlorn hopes. I've explained why we know this in great detail elsewhere.

The world we need is one we've never yet seen. That's terrifying for many people, but it can also be exhilarating: though it is true that the sort of solutions we need are probably non-intuitive, radically innovative, downright weird, that also means that we have an opportunity to re-examine the broken fundamentals of our current model of prosperity and redesign them. We could well end up, yet, with a future that is far better than our present.

If we do end up with a bright green future, it will not look like today's world, but with light rail, gardens and solar panels slapped on top (it may include all those things, but those things are nowhere near enough by themselves). It's already emerging as very different than the Futurama fantasy of cars full of happy consumerist nuclear families driving through gleaming modernist landscapes; Futurama plus green roofs will not do. The new urban landscape we're building will by necessity need to be structurally different than suburban modernism, but the biggest changes may be not in the physical systems, but in the cultures and economies that birth them. The weirdest thing about a bright green future may even be how different we ourselves are, once we get there.

Indeed, I've often paraphrased Bucky Fuller that we shouldn't aim for beautiful solutions, but if our solutions aren't beautiful once we've found them, they're probably not fully developed. Now I think as well that if our solutions aren't really weird, they're probably not ambitious enough.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Alex Steffen in Sustainable Design at 10:49 AM)

Walkable Neighborhoods Key to Stable Real Estate Says New NRDC Report

Sarah Kuck — 2010-02-03T16:17:15-08:00

Big, red 'For Sale' signs flapping in the wind are the tumble weeds of the 21 century. Signaling emptiness and recent catastrophe, these markers of market disaster are said to have proliferated because of predatory lending and lax standards. But a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) shows another cause of the rapid foreclosure rate: car dependency.

Looking at data from more than 40,000 mortgages throughout Chicago, San Francisco and Jacksonville, Fla., the researchers behind the Location Efficiency and Mortgage Default report found that the rate of mortgage foreclosure actually decreased in neighborhoods that were more compact, walkable and connected to public transportation (after accounting for important factors like income). According to a recent NRDC release:

"The effect of location efficiency is clear when comparing foreclosure probabilities for two homebuyers with exactly the same profile in terms of credit score, debt-to-income ratio, and loan-to-value ratio in differing neighborhoods. The research shows that the buyer in the more location efficient area will be less likely to default. (For a dollar and cents example, check this blog post.)"

Able to be less reliant on their cars, people living in walkable, connected neighborhoods had the flexibility to save money on transportation -- a household expense that can be more than 17 percent of American homeowners' total costs.

To create stability in the real estate sector, the link between transportation costs and foreclosure rates needs to be addressed, say the experts at the NRDC.

The report strongly focused on 'location efficiency' as a way to create this stability. Location efficiency is a phrase that describes how easy it is to live in your neighborhood without a car. If it's easy for you to walk to work, places of interest, grocery stores or the bus stop, then your house is highly location efficient. NRDC researchers say that understanding this concept will be key to predicting mortgage performance and could be a helpful new tool for addressing the continuing mortgage default problem.

Some people get why compact, walkable cities make sense in an instant; others need some convincing. That's why quality research like this, that backs up big picture thinking on bright green cities, is important. Research like this helps people stand up and say no to proposals for more roads and parking lots, and helps others realize that spending more money to live in the city center equals money well spent. Now to get policy that reflects this and politicians who support it. But that will take political will.

Image credit: respres, Flickr CC

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Sarah Kuck in Features at 4:17 PM)

Local Stock Exchanges and Micro-Equity Investments

Sarah Kuck — 2010-02-03T15:20:54-08:00

Over on Small-Mart: Ideas and Tools for Building Healthy Local Economies, economist Michael Shuman is talking about a different way to stimulate the U.S. economy: local stock exchanges and micro-equity investments.

In his article, Local Stock Exchanges and National Stimulus, Shuman makes the case for reforming old laws that could open up local businesses to local investors.

Outdated federal securities laws have left Main Street dangerously dependent on Wall Street, and overhauling them may well be a key to economic revitalization. The good news is the local businesses could get a huge investment boost with some modest securities reforms that would cost little or nothing.

It's a thorough piece that does an excellent job of explaining why and how local stock exchanges might work, and why they don't exist today. For more thoughts on how the U.S. can nurture local economies and micro-equity, head to Small-Mart.org.

Hat tip to Alex's Twitter feed (@AlexSteffen) for this great resource

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Sarah Kuck in Bright Green Economy at 3:20 PM)

Re-seeing the Waterfront

Alex Steffen — 2010-02-03T15:15:32-08:00

Seattle is in the midst of a fierce debate about the future of its waterfront. It's aging seawall needs to be replaced, a project the Mayor wants to take to the voters in a $241 million ballot measure. An elevated freeway -- the Viaduct -- that currently runs along the waterfront is structurally unsafe, and Seattle's in the middle a long battle about whether and how to replace it, with the Governor currently favoring a deep-bore tunnel for a bypass freeway and others favoring switching to a model based on transit and the existing street grid instead. Several major upcoming projects at the Port of Seattle will remake the waterfront as well. On top of all this, rising seas are going to demand that extensive protective measures be built all along Seattle's shorelines in order to protect low-lying areas from floods during storms and high tides.

So, Seattle's going to be redefining its connection to the ocean, like many other coastal cities (just more so). Done really wrong, vast amounts of money will be wasted on infrastructure and development not resilient enough to handle the stormy century ahead. Even done "right" though, the sea walls and flood defenses we need could end up cutting the people of Seattle off from the sea on whose shores we live, while worsening the already serious ecological plight of Puget Sound.

One frequently proposed answer is building "soft" coastlines and habitat at today's sea level: building rising beaches and planting sea grass and other restoration efforts. This may not be smart, given what we know about sea level rise and its risks: it may neither provide the long-term protections we need or the climate-adaptive restoration that reality demands.

At the same time, we do want to reconnect with the ocean as maritime people, so we don't want a coastal Berlin Wall either. Whether that connection demands recreated salmon habitat we know is doomed to be submerged in short order, well, I don't think so. But we could get more creative. We could use the entire waterfront as a sort of giant window into the marine world, providing observable flows (rainwater running off through green infrastructure, for instance) tools for making visible the invisible (art projects that illuminate data pulled from sensors, like the work Sabrina Raaf does, or a walking trail that follows the life cycle of salmon, or some sort of urban habitat wildlife encounter project (ala Natalie Jeremijenko) and efforts to flow the ecological reality underfoot into the augmented reality that is becoming urban life (imagine that every time an augmented view screen turned towards the sound, it revealed news about the seasonal life beneath the ocean's surface, or that every sewer drain carried a tag about where its overflow dumped into the Bay). Perhaps, even, residents could in some way "play" the waterfront, helping different visions of our shoreline emerge through their actions and attention.

Some will say that we need that shoreline to be habitat, but I think efforts to make cities behave like nature can be misguided. The vast majority of a city's impact happens outside its city limits, and often far more good can be done by changing a city's footprint than trying to change its physical structure. I think a city full of citizens more deeply connected culturally to the waters of their home place is a much bigger win than a few hundred yards of incredibly expensive artificial habitat. Though perhaps you can have both.

The point being that we may be thinking both too literally about ecological connection and too timidly about climate adaption, and any real answer to both may demand that we change as much in our heads as at the water's edge.

(image: creative commons, Beaster)

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Alex Steffen in Biodiversity and Ecosystems at 3:15 PM)

My Favorite Neighborhood

Jay Walljasper — 2010-02-02T13:57:18-08:00

A rousing success story that shows how great streets foster great communities

Last year Project for Public Spaces and I published the Great Neighborhood Book, which offers hundreds of ideas from around the world about making community improvements on issues ranging from crime prevention to environmental restoration. Since then almost everyone I meet asks: What's your favorite neighborhood?

I should have an answer ready. But each time the question arises, my mind starts wandering through the great places I've explored through the years. Is it the Plateau neighborhood in Montreal, where I became infatuated with cities years ago as a college student? Maybe Trastevere, the old bohemian quarter of Rome my wife Julie and I visited as newlyweds? Or what about Harter Heights, which I enjoyed strolling through recently on a trip to South Bend, Indiana?

To settle the matter once and for all, I wrote up a list of all the wonderful corners of the urban world I've had the pleasure of visiting. Then, with great deliberation, I began to cross off names until only Jacobsburg remained. It is, in my opinion, is the finest neighborhood in America. To keep the suspense going, I will let you figure out the surprising city where Jacobsburg is located. But here are the things I love about it.

Bustling 19th Street in Jacobsburg-- one of the best streets in one of the best neighborhoods in America.

Jacobsburg grew up slowly in a variety of architectural styles between 1890, when streetcars first reached this wooded spot along the river, and 1920, when the boom in automobile sales opened up distant suburban tracts for development. Buses now ply streets where rails once ran, but the corner business districts that popped up to serve trolley riders are still the heart of the community. Butcher shops and haberdasheries, however, have now given way to ethnic eateries and vintage clothing shops.

One of the traits I most admire about Jacobsburg is a knack for being quaintly old-fashioned and au courant cosmopolitan at the same time. At one of my favorite streetcorners in the world, 19th St. and Holly Avenue, a delicatessen run by an old guy named Rocco and his son Gus looks out across the intersection at a high-fashion coffeeshop with fair trade beans from 14 countries and the best selection of design magazines this side of Tokyo. On the other two corners sit the Mogadishu Star, a Somali restaurant, and Krazy Kat Komics, a used and rare comic book store. Within a few steps you'll come across a Reconstructionist synagogue, the largest fan belt dealer in the state, a Carnegie library, a Caribbean seafood restaurant once written up in Food + Wine magazine and a laundromat made famous in an R&B song.

Years ago, the neighborhood was an Eastern European enclave with a sprinkling of Jamaicans who first came to the area as farm laborers during World War II. Today it is a veritable United Nations, thanks in part to the nearby college whose diverse student body keeps the streets lively all day and most of the night.

What do I like most about Jacobsburg? Well, I could mention plentiful trees shading the sidewalks or the pleasing sequence of three-and four-story buildings with front stoops where people sit out to socialize on warm evenings. Then there's the newly refurbished Riverwood park (which everyone says was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, but wasn't) with a swan pond, skateboard ramps, a weekend farmers' market, summer band concerts and a café with better pastry than you'll find in Copenhagen.

And how could I ignore the invincible spirit of neighborliness, apparent even to a casual visitor? Current residents explain that the neighborhood set aside its own ethnic tensions in the 1960s and came together to fight a freeway that would have essentially leveled the place. That sense of civic engagement endures to this day. The local business association sponsors an annual Spring Festival with a 30-foot maypole in the playground of St. Stanislaus School. Meanwhile a VFW Post, a commedia dell'Arte theatre troupe, a Baptist congregation, a Mexican motorcycle club and a gay men's chorus are among the dozens of local organizations that collaborate to raise money for the neighborhood food shelf.

But if forced to name one thing that makes this neighborhood so great, I would have to say it's the streets. That sounds prosaic, I know-how can mere asphalt compete with Rocco's famous Ukrainian sausage or the boysenberry-fig Danish at the Parkview Café? Please let me explain.

The streets of Jacobsburg-thanks to far-sighted urban planning at the turn of the 20th century and lots of vigilant neighborhood activism ever since-are places for people more than conduits for cars. From my first visit in the early 1990s, I remember being amazed at how liberating it felt walking the streets in a place where pedestrians take priority over automobiles.

Nineteenth Street, like busy streets all around the country, was widened in the 1970s. But after two kids were killed by speeding cars on successive Saturdays, the neighborhood rose up demanding that the road be scaled back to two lanes. It took twelve years, but City Hall finally agreed and the whole area soon blossomed into a favorite destination for visitors from all over town. They come to browse shops, dine in restaurants, drink beer, tour art galleries, see shows at the clubs, but most of all to simply be part of the crowd strolling up and down the sidewalks.

This popularity means the streets carry a lot of traffic in both cars and buses, but not at the expense of pedestrians. Careful attention has been paid to make walking a pleasurable activity. The sidewalks are wide enough to function almost as town squares, so you'll find sidewalk cafes, whimsical sculpture, flower patches, buskers and plenty of benches to sit down for a conversation.

Parking is scarce but that's not been a deterrent to ever-growing economic vitality. Residents generally walk or bike around the neighborhood, and motorists are willing to park some distance away since the side streets are both safe and interesting, thanks to the heavy foot traffic. A new transit line connecting Jacobsburg to the university and downtown has become the preferred way for many folks to arrive. Bike trails proliferating across the city are also helping lighten the traffic load.

One last thing I want to mention about Jacobsburg is the wealth of great pubs, which live up to an older sense of the word -- meaning "public house" -- rather than the current definition as "a place to drink." Families encompassing three generations can be found in the booths at corner taverns like The White Eagle or Syl & Mary's eating supper right alongside laborers celebrating quitting time and students commemorating the end of another day of classes. The great majority of these pubs share a virtue that English novelist George Orwell described as "quiet enough to talk," in a 1946 essay about his favorite London pub, The Moon Under Water.

But The Moon Under the Water existed only in Orwell's imagination, a composite of the qualities he found in pubs across England. And the same is true of Jacobsburg, a neighborhood that I dreamed up out of wonderful experiences I've had on the streets of many American cities. I named it after urbanist visionary Jane Jacobs. Holly Avenue honors William H. (Holly) Whyte, the far-sighted champion of public spaces whose work inspired Project for Public Spaces. The photo you see is actually Chapel Street in New Haven, Connecticut, which was 95 percent abandoned in the 1980s but sprang back to life after developer Joel Schiavone convinced the city to undo an earlier street widening.

But rather than being uselessly Utopian, I see Jacobsburg as the future that's possible for neighborhoods everywhere as people work to create great streets and public spaces in our communities.

We would love to hear your thoughts on the best real neighborhood. Nominate your favorite neighborhood online at PPS's Great Public Spaces page.

This piece originally appeared on The Project for Public Spaces

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Jay Walljasper in Community at 1:57 PM)

Jane McGonigal on Gaming for Good

Suzie Boss — 2010-02-01T18:04:00-08:00

A Worldchanging Interview

Solving the world’s biggest problems will require a superhuman outpouring of energy, passion, creativity, and collaboration. Fortunately, Jane McGonigal has a strategy for unleashing people’s capacity to take on hard challenges: playing games. A celebrated designer, researcher, and future forecaster, McGonigal specializes in alternate reality games that engage massive online audiences in real-world issues ranging from energy shortages to health pandemics.

McGonigal brings to the task both academic credentials (Ph.D. in performance studies from U.C. Berkeley) and veteran gamer instincts (as a kid, she hacked games on the Commodore 64). As director of game research and development for the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif., she frequently collaborates with global partners on game development. Her new book, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Happy and How They Can Change the World, will be published later this year by Penguin.

I caught up with McGonigal by phone as she was putting the finishing touches on her latest project. EVOKE, which she is developing for the World Bank Institute, promises to deliver “a crash course in changing the world” when it launches in March.

Suzie Boss: For the uninitiated, what are alternate reality games?

Jane McGonigal: When people think of computer or video games, they often think of playing in a virtual world that doesn’t exist in reality. But alternate reality game designers are trying to get people to play in the real world. We want people to bring the same curiosity, wonder, and optimism that you feel when in your favorite video games into your real lives and real problems.

SB: Your games sound pretty different from commercial products like World of Warcraft.

JM: There are two big distinctions. First, alternate reality games are not in a virtual environment. They’re built on top of social networks, so we use ordinary online tools like online video, blogs, wikis, and being part of a network. It’s not about graphics and avatars. Second, it’s real play and not role play. You don’t adopt a fictional personality. You play as yourself.

SB: Do your games actually change how people act in real life?

JM: CryptoZoo is a good example of a game oriented to changing your everyday behavior. I developed it for the American Heart Association with the mission of changing the way people think about physical activity. Right now, many of us think of physical activity as requiring you to carve out an hour and changing into your gym clothes. You think you have to go to a special place to sweat. It feels separate from our everyday lives and not integrated into what we do when we’re hanging out with our friends. CryptoZoo inspires people to say, let’s be active for the next five minutes. We teach people to see real streets, real parks, real physical environments as opportunities for playing the game.

SB: How does it work?

JM: CryptoZoo is about chasing these imaginary, bigfoot-like creatures called cryptids. Each cryptid runs in a distinct way. It has specific style of interacting with the environment. Summit monkeys, for instance, swing around any poles they see and run up and down steps. Slaminas run backwards, without stepping on any cracks. (The website includes field reports that describe creatures’ behaviors, along with videos created by players.) So if you’re walking down the street and notice telephone poles and a staircase at city hall, you might say, “Let’s chase the summit monkeys through this block.”

SB: Has CryptoZoo gotten people moving?

JM: That’s the cool thing. Gamer-type people do not necessarily see themselves as athletic. So when we’ve organized CryptoZoo events—such as a late-night cryptid chase through Manhattan at the Come Out and Play Festival—we gather data. At the start, only one in eight people considered themselves athletic. But just from playing the game, they ran more than a mile. They were sweating. Their heart rates were up. These were the same people who had said earlier, “I hate running. That’s not what I do.” But then they did it. It was transformative. The experience changes the way people see themselves. Games are really good at showing us that we’re capable of more than we thought.

SB: Is there more going on here than old-fashioned play?

JM: A lot of people are interested in play. I’m more interested in game play. And here’s the difference: Play is exploratory, open-ended, improvisational. It’s very free. All animals play. Game play is different. It’s outcome-oriented, goal-oriented, and structured. Humans are the only species we know of that comes together to structure an experience where we all understand the rules and work toward the same goal. In fact, cognitive scientists now define the ability to play a game as the distinguishing cognitive trait of the human brain.

People have been playing games as long as we’ve had civilization. As I explain in my book, the earliest dice games were played during times of famine. Whole societies would come together and play these games as a way to diminish their suffering and create social resilience. I interpret that history to mean that games are a way to get massively many people to rally around a common goal.

SB: And that brings us to EVOKE, your new massively multiplayer change-the-world game. Give us a preview.

JM: EVOKE is about rallying as many people as possible around social innovation goals. The goal is to build up our global capacity to change the world in as short a time as possible, for as many people as possible. I call it a crash course in changing the world.

Every week for 10 weeks (starting March 3), there’s going to be a new episode about social innovators working out of Africa. They travel around the world solving epic crises, like food shortages or power outages in major cities. (Game narrative is a graphic novel written by Kiyash Monsef, McGonigal’s husband, with illustrations by Jacob Glaser.

Players take on three missions each week. They learn—basically, filling their brain with information about the topic. They act—doing something in real life to implement what they’ve learned. And they imagine. What could they do about this problem today if they had a team, money, and resources? That’s what social innovation is all about—scaling up local solutions to make big, sustainable solutions that can spread.

The first week, the episode is about a scenario 10 years from today when there’s a major famine in Tokyo. Players learn about the issue of food security. They do something in real life to increase the food security of at least one person they know. And then they imagine a bigger solution.

Meanwhile, real experts (from the field of social innovation, World Bank Institute, and other domains) are watching, mentoring, and giving feedback. At the end of the game, we’ll set up year-long mentorship for people who have ideas. They’ll get support to develop their ventures. We want the game to be a springboard to real action.

SB: Who do you hope will play?

JM: Young people in Africa are our ideal audience. We’re working with universities throughout Africa to get the game into classrooms. Then there’s a wider audience of people anywhere in the world, but especially in areas of high poverty where there’s an urgent need for social innovation. I’m imagining mostly young adults—under 35 (although there’s no age limit).

Finally, there’s a third level. And that’s anybody who knows anything and is willing to funnel that knowledge toward people who can do a lot of good with it. They can participate as a mentor or ally. By coming once a week and spending 15 minutes, they can offer players attention, positive feedback, and ideas. The idea is to create a critical mass of engagement and attention so we have a big swarm of people who come and do something together.

SB: What sort of numbers are you hoping for?

JM: If we could get 50 students in Africa to work their way through the entire game, and get to the point where they have a social enterprise ready to pitch, that’s a huge win. That would be fantastic. Then, I always set a lucky number for people who feel that their life is transformed by the game. They’ll spend enough time participating so that the rest of the work they do afterward is influenced by their new powers, new capabilities, and new allies. My magic number is 1,100. Beyond that, I’d love to see 10,000 people signed up and participating.

SB: I notice you sometimes use superhero lingo when you talk about games (i.e., developing “new powers”). Is that deliberate?

JM: Anytime you work really hard at something you care about, you do develop strengths and abilities. That’s how we humans learn. With games, the level of emotional engagement is so intense. With the bigger games I’ve designed, people play them like a full-time job, sometimes for 40 hours a week. When you put that much time in—and you do it because you love it—you’re going beyond normal learning or normal skill acquisition into the world of superpowers. It’s heroic effort, and you wind up with all these great attributes and assets.

SB: Where did your own passion for gaming come from?

JM: I was a computer geek growing up, hacking my own games on the Commodore 64. But I never thought of gaming as a viable career path. Then when the first-person-shooter genre came out, I fell out of gaming for a while. My brain doesn’t enjoy that. Meanwhile, toward the end of college, I worked in parks and recreation in New York. We put on big game festivals at parks and schools, and I saw the power of games to bring people together and create community. Those were athletic, playground-type games. Once that became possible to do with technology—with all the narrative and interaction of computer games—that was an exciting moment.

SB: Recently, you blogged about how you created a game to help you recover from a concussion. What happened?

JM: I had a fluke accident last summer and slammed my head into a cabinet door. I was in the middle of working on my book and suddenly, I was in this fog. If I tried to read or write, my brain would basically shut down. This dragged on for weeks. There was no purpose in my days. Everything just stopped. It was bleak. So I started making up a game. The idea was, I’d become this Buffy-the-vampire-slayer-type hero and slay my concussion. I came up with missions and allies so I could get my friends and family to help me. It was a cry for help, and it started to work.

I might eventually take it further.

SB: Finally, you’ve said you’d like to see the Nobel Peace Prize go to a game designer someday. Why?

JM: Games wield enormous power in our culture. They’re controlling the attention and getting the most energy and passion out of many, many people.

The commercial gaming industry is our innovation lab. By making games purely for entertainment, we learn more about how to make people happy and how to develop these superpowers.

But if you don’t do something real with these powers, it’s a waste. If we’re not developing games that use all that insight and all that powerful technology for good, it’s a big, tragic waste. So, my benchmark for the games I want to help create is that they should only be games that serve a humanitarian purpose, that give people a chance to tackle urgent problems like poverty, that lead to world peace. These are big human goals that I think games are capable of tackling.

Images courtesy of Avant Game

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Suzie Boss in Features at 6:04 PM)