{"id":2667,"date":"2011-10-05T13:08:47","date_gmt":"2011-10-05T17:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/?p=2667"},"modified":"2011-10-06T16:25:24","modified_gmt":"2011-10-06T20:25:24","slug":"preparing-toronto-for-a-post-carbon-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/2011\/10\/preparing-toronto-for-a-post-carbon-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Preparing Toronto for a Post-Carbon World"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have funding for a 2-day symposium in the spring of 2012 on the topic “Sustainable Cities in a Post-Carbon World”. Here’s my current blurb for the event – I’m still tweaking the wording, so constructive comments are welcome (and watch this space for more details on date & venue, etc)…<\/em><\/p>\n

Cities house half the world’s population, consume more than two-thirds of the\u00a0world’s energy, and produce more than 70% of the global CO2 emissions.\u00a0The triple threat of climate change, peak oil, and ecosystem loss poses a\u00a0massive challenge to cities, as they depend on huge inputs of energy, food,\u00a0and materials from the surrounding regions. Cities are also particularly\u00a0vulnerable to the effects of climate change, as urban landscapes amplify\u00a0extreme heat events, with potentially disastrous impact on public health\u00a0and urban infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Modern cities grew up in an era of cheap fossil fuels. As that era ends,\u00a0our cities can only be sustained if they can make a rapid transition to\u00a0energy efficiency and renewable fuels, and build greater resilience\u00a0into their urban infrastructure.\u00a0Such a transition will mean re-thinking\u00a0almost every aspect of city life: buildings, lifestyle, transportation, public\u00a0spaces, water and waste management, energy efficiency, social justice\u00a0and participatory decision-making. The technologies that\u00a0will be needed, in general, already exist. But the social and financial\u00a0structures do not. The path by which rapid, wide scale\u00a0deployment can occur is unclear: cities grew not so much by design, but\u00a0through emergence as\u00a0complex organisms. The hardest questions are not\u00a0so much what a sustainable city might look like, but how we get there.<\/p>\n

The goal of this two-day symposium is to explore new ways to bring together\u00a0governments, universities and civil society to accelerate this transition\u00a0to post-carbon cities. With Toronto as a model, we aim to build an action plan\u00a0to engage the university with city government, NGOs, and community groups, to leverage the\u00a0inter-disciplinary expertise from across campus to address this\u00a0challenge.<\/p>\n

The symposium will include a mix of talks, panel sessions, workshops,\u00a0student posters, hands-on activities and movie screenings. Topics will\u00a0include clean energy, smart grid, transport, urban planning,\u00a0policy making, city governance, community building, data analytics,\u00a0public health and green growth\/economic development.<\/p>\n

Our objectives are to develop new trans-disciplinary thinking for the\u00a0transition to a post-carbon world; to build new collaborations; and to\u00a0better integrate current research with urban policy, leading to solutions\u00a0for sustainable urban development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have funding for a 2-day symposium in the spring of 2012 on the topic “Sustainable Cities in a Post-Carbon World”. Here’s my current blurb for the event – I’m still tweaking the wording, so constructive comments are welcome (and watch this space for more details on date & venue, etc)… Cities house half the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":393,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/393"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2667"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2670,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667\/revisions\/2670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}