Design Manifesto for Martinez
Designing for Environmental Future
Climate change and resource crunch will influence every aspect of our lives, from the energy we use to the houses we live. We should commit ourselves to decarbonization to slow down global warming and social justice by landscape architecture. The Green New Deal (GND) on climate change and jobs provides us a direction for sustainable development. Transforming gray infrastructure to green infrastructure by eliminating pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. For the Bay area, we can meet the power demand through renewable energy sources such as solar energy, wind energy and water energy. The electricity can be used to new industry forming microgrid. Also, it can feed into the local electricity grid. My goal is to build energy-efficient, distributed, and “smart” power grids ensuring affordable access to electricity. Furthermore, the projects should bring more job opportunities and help create numbers of green jobs, leading to a fairer society and sustainable economy.
To reach these goals, design strategies should defend social justice while adapting to the needs of changing times. Here’s some replicable design principles to follow:
1. Establish the armature of the site based on flow of matter and energy instead of violating it.
2. Heal injured sites and cities: revitalize the decaying industrial site, reconnecting it to the city and transform it into a thriving new urban industry that is clean and sustainable.
3. Adapt the built environment to renewable energy: concepts and strategies such as solar energy and rainwater management.
4. Decarbonize the energy systems by introducing renewable energy and focus on increasing resilience of microgrid distribution.
5. Fix societal problems like economic inequality and racial injustice by increasing job opportunities to the vulnerable groups.
6. Plant suitable vegetation to contribute to carbon sequestration.
7. Build resilient levees or floating islands in coastal areas to reduce the damage by storm surge and restore habitat.
8. Build a number of homes which don’t cost too much to rent.
9. LID some roads to reconnect the segregated places.
10. Provide easy access for people or animals to open space and green corridor such as bike lane or ecoduct.
Environmental designers can create a resilient system for a region by establishing the framework for different sources and technologies and a spatially diversified system. Finally, I believe we can make the policy like the Green New Deal become real and tangible in the infrastructure such as transportation systems, energy grid, parks, public spaces. We will point the way to strategies that are suitable for hundreds of coastal cities that are threatened by rising seas and energy crunch.
