Captain Plan→it
About
San Francisco Civic Center’s victory garden installation.
“The city of Cambridge, Mass has teamed up with MIT to produce a Solar Tool that allows people to type an address into a website and get a detailed account of that roof’s solar electric potential. This is probably the most detailed service now existing and every building in Cambridge is covered. You can learn how much of your roof sees enough sun for a PV installation, how large that PV installation can be, how much it will cost, how high your Federal and state tax rebate will be, how much electricity it will produce in a year, and how much carbon it will displace.”
“At 24.5 acres, Millennium Park is the largest green roof in the world. It covers two parking garages, a railway, and an opera hall.”
Great photo essay at PBS on the green roofs of Chicago.
Today urban areas — ranging from Times Square to a small town in India — cover perhaps 3 to 5% of global land. But Seto and her co-authors calculate that between now and 2030, urban areas will expand by more than 463,000 sq. mi. (1.2 million sq. km). That’s equal to 20,000 U.S. football fields being paved over every day for the first few decades of this century. By then, a little less than 10% of the planet’s land cover could be urban. “There’s going to be a huge impact on biodiversity hotspots and on carbon emissions in those urban areas,” says Seto.
The bulk of that great urban expansion will be in Asia — where more than 75% of the increase in urban cover is projected to occur — and in Africa, where urban land cover will be 590% above the 2000 level of 16,000 sq. mi.
Green Roofs on Wanda Plaza
Wanda Plaza is not a particularly eco-conscious shopping center, and in some ways epitomizes Shanghai’s identity as big-box retail and shopping heaven. That is why I was surprised to see green roofs (sometimes called blue roofs) on the complex. These installations are clearly for waste water management, as they look to be primarily for drainage and not recreation. I nearly jumped for joy when I saw this, which was awkward because I was in a meeting- it took self control not to whip out my iPhone and take a picture immediately… afterwards I was able to sneak a few quick shots, hence the blurriness and poor lighting (darn it).
I’ve actually been waiting to blog this post until I had some better shots. Two of the four pictures were taken at a later date, and are better quality. They are also taken from another view of the plaza, which should give you some idea of the sheer size of the center (i.e very large).
Green roofs are great for the following reasons:
Reduce the urban heat island effect Insulate a building, keeping it cool in the summer and warm in the winter
Reduce flooding from rain water, lessening the load of waste water on the sewage system
Absorb pollutants
Reduction in energy costs for building Improves roof’s lifespan
Creates natural habitats insects, birds, and other animals
I also get caps-locked EXCITED! when I find a green roof!
