A great article in today’s New York Times about “daylighting” the Cheonggyecheon River in Seoul. Daylighting refers to uncovering streams buried under pavement. Three miles of elevated freeway were removed, a plant-rich stream restored, and central urban land was converted from car-centric to people-centric.

Benefits include:

• summer temperature reduction by 5 degrees Fahrenheit
• improved storm drainage, which global warming has worsened
• reduction in small-particle air pollution from 74 to 48 micrograms per cubic meter
• less auto congestion despite the loss of vehicle lanes
• bio-diversity gains include 25 versus 4 fish species, 36 versus 6 bird species, and 192 versus 15 insect species
• 90,000 daily visitors, including walking and picknicing
• higher real estate values for adjacent buildings
• political gains for former mayor, now South Korean President Lee Myung-bak (also formerly head of construction at Hyundai Corporation)
• restoration of the historic center of a 600 year city

Government officials and urban planners from Los Angeles, Singapore, San Antonio, and Yonkers have expressed interest in restoring urban streams. Sadly, the article did not mention anything about Tokyo, where most of its historic canals and rivers are covered by streets and elevated freeways.

Mori Minoru’s Mori Building is Tokyo’s largest urban real estate developer. His Vertical Garden City idea and Urban New Deal Policy are private enterprise visions for a re-made city that is at once more densely populated, more environmental and green, and more profitable for the largest developers. 

I had the intriguing experience of being invited to witness a presentation by Mori Building company for a US journalist. Asked to remain silent so as not to detract from the journalist’s work, I witness one foreign journalist, a simultaneous translator, a guide from the Tokyo Foreign Correspondent’s Club, two Mori Building Public Relations officer and one urban planner. This is clearly a business where image is created through tremendous resources.

On the one hand, there is much to be admired about Mori’s vision. He has a clear vision for improving urban life, by providing more outdoor space and greenery, lowering the heat island effect, and promoting cultural on a global scale. Notable achievements are his Roppongi Hills’ top floor Mori Art Museum, and the many roof gardens, vertical and balcony greening, bird eco-systems, wastewater recycling, rooftop rainfall capture, efficient heating and cooling systems, rice and vegetable gardens.

On the other hand, under the guise of increasing greenery and reducing earthquake and fire hazards, Mori is one of the loudest voices for destroying low level or horizontal housing in order to create residential skyscrapers. The Vertical Garden City has a rational side since high-rise living could free more ground space for parks, yet it also overlooks the lives and culture of those who must be removed for this vision to become reality. 

Much of Tokyo’s charm is the organic nature of neighborhood formation, and the activities of small landowners and residents who create lively streets. It is great that Mori Building is analyzing how green space lowers the heat island effect, but are there not other ways to improve safety and the environment than concentrating land in one person’s control, destroying and rebuilding?

For all of the grand visions, on the day of my tour, I was most impressed by a small feature not discussed by the Mori staff. Inside Roppongi Hill’s Mohri Garden, a restored traditional Japanese garden dating back to the Edo period, are “approximately” 10,000 “Space Medaka,” descendants of fish born in space on a 1994 on the Space Shuttle Columbia. Dr Kennichi Ijiri of Tokyo University continues to study these fish, and the public is charmingly invited to care for these extraterrestrial creatures as well: “Please watch over these new Roppongi Hills residents.”

The tree may need to be removed as part of the Fernside re-surfacing project to re-establish the curb line, restore the drainage flow line, and minimize ponding problems. At the time of construction, determination of tree removal will be made with the consultation of a licensed arborist. Every effort will be made to retain the tree.

Anyone may protest its removal. Protests must be in writing, stating the reason for said protest, along with the name, address and signature of the person making the protest, and must be postmarked or delivered before April 13, 2009, to the City Engineer, 950 West Mall Square, Room 110, Alameda 94501-7575.
…..
Should you have questions or require further information, contact Trung Nguyen, Assistant Engineer, at (510) 749-5851, Monday thought Thursday, 9 am to 5 pm.

The thought that always comes into my head when I see these things things plastered on a beautiful old tree in a leafy neighborhood is: Why does it look like the city simply has no interest in maintaining whatever remains of its tree-lined, attractive, and livable neighborhoods, but continues to dismantle and downgrade them, even under the guise of improvement? I say that because nothing says “a neighborhood in decline” like one where mature trees are being cut down in bunches. And because this is Fernside, and I’ve seen the kind of street work that afflicted it around Lincoln Middle School and south of it, let me say upfront—no amount of haphazardly slapped concrete, obnoxious striping, and planter boxes with some flowers in them can make up for the loss of a beautiful, broad, old-fashioned street with a stately tree line, like the one endangered here.

But to the issue at hand: Because the notice says the reason for the proposed removal is curb and drainage issues, I went out yesterday and took some pictures of the curb at the tagged trees’ location. (The sidewalks, you can see, are fine, and work has been done on them recently, so they are by no means a hazard). The curbs is where the tree roots have done damage, and I’m sure there are some ponding issues as well (as corroborated by a resident I ran into while taking pictures). But are they any worse than what’s on any other street featuring large trees? No. Similar problems on other streets have been handled successfully by trimming the roots and rebuilding the curb around them. Using this approach to save our mature trees has resulted in precisely the kind of streets the city loves to brag about to out-of-town visitors, put on promotional brochures, and highlight in real estate ads.

Obviously, a compromise is necessary when dealing with old trees and even older infrastructure. What’s important is that trees are considered just as crucial a public benefit as curbs and working culverts. This understanding is explicit in the city’s own comprehensive sidewalk repair program which council adopted back in 2007. Tree removal in this plan is the very last option, topped by many others. We simply can’t afford, both literally and metaphorically, to be taking trees down wholesale any time street or sewage work needs to happen. Because, if we decide that the state of affairs on Fernside is absolutely unacceptable from a curb standpoint, that dooms a good deal of other streets as well. And if we decide that a perfect curb or flawless drainage is more important than a mature urban forest, Alameda will lose—quickly—much of its property appeal and overall charm, and it will become an even bigger heat island and contributor to air quality and global warming issues—something nobody I know is looking forward to.

So what to do?

First things first—protest the removal. The notice clearly says “may, not will be removed” and that “every effort will be made to retain the tree.” I choose to take that at face value at this time. Good thing is, some of the neighbors are firmly behind keeping their trees, and are willing to work with the city for a solution that addresses both the infrastructure problems and keeping the mature trees, using all the tools and methods at Public Works’ disposal. An arborist report should be provided as is routine but I would appeal to the city to focus its effort on working with the neighbors to keep the trees rather than pursuing an opinion slanted towards removal.

Two, attend the meeting to show you really care. Wringing one’s hands and feeling bad is not enough. People need to stand up for the trees or risk bidding them goodbye, along with their shade, wildlife, noise-reducing qualities, and yes, your property value.

To help save the Fernside trees, call and write Public Works using the info on the notice, above. Just so you know, you can protest a tree removal and attend the meeting regardless of where in Alameda you live.

I also pulled maps of Paris, the contender

and Alameda, just for kicks

If you look at the green mass in comparison to the hard mass, Sacramento wins hands down! Paris may have the same number of trees per capita (or more, if you want), but because the buildings are taller they dominate the view, not the trees. In terms of heat island effect, I have to declare it the loser. (There is no such thing as Google world heat map, is there? There’s this neat picture though.) Still, nothing a Paris rooftop garden program wouldn’t fix…

The Alameda map is interesting because we do have a reputation of being a city of “tree-lined streets,” “leafy neighborhoods,” [instert your favorite real estate catch-phrase here]. The Gold Coast area is not too bad (see how many trees there are in people’s back yards). You don’t want to look at the east, or worse, the west end though—it’s just greyness all around. Zoom to your favorite neighborhood to see where it is in comparison to say, Montmartre.

For audio-visual completeness, here’s a short NPR story about Sacramento’s trees. Story is a couple years old, but what’s that in the lifespan of a sequoia? A wink. And the word “neighborwood”? To die for…

1:5:10:274 EcoTip: Cool pavement is more reflective so it doesn’t build up as much heat as asphalt. This has the advantage of increasing the amount of light available because it is reflected off of the ground. When light is absorbed by asphalt or other dark surface materials the wavelength changes to heat energy that can contribute to the heat island effect in cities and higher cooling costs for individual buildings. The temperature of asphalt can be as much as 70 degrees F (40 degrees C) hotter than light colored paving.

Source: Heat Island Group

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 Additional Information:

Suggested Review: :273

You can learn more about the heat island effect cool roofs and cool pavement from the Heat Island Group  

Tomorrow’s 1:5:10:365 EcoTip is about how cool pavement can also benefit from being pervious.

Would you like to receive an email alert for each new 1:5:10:365 EcoTip? Sign up for a Google Alert.

The bottom line is that dark roofs and pavement absorb heat and add significantly to global warming and climate change by trapping heat in urban areas.  Just painting roofs white and paving roads with a lighter colored material could offset more than 10 years of emissions growth.  

The paper says that replacing a dark colored roof with a white roof on an average American home would offset 10 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.  And that’s for just one house!

California already requires new flat commercial structures to be built with reflective roofs and next year new and retrofitted residential and commercial buildings will need to have reflective roofs.

I really like those green roofs where people have planted grass and plants to reduce cooling costs.  But reflective roofs accomplish much of the same thing and you don’t need to mow them.  Now that’s win-win.

When Transportation Alternative’s absolutely wonderful Tour de Queens (enjoy the Street Films video above) rolled into Maspeth on Sunday under the blaze of a record-setting June heat wave, we were subjected to a brutal lesson in urban planning and natural history.

The Newtown Creek is infamous for being home to the largest oil spill in U.S. history, and to heavy metals and other industrial pollutants. Increasingly, lay greens are becoming aware of the combined sewer overflows that plague the waterway with pathogens after rainstorms. What’s less known is that, apart from airport landing strips, you won’t find hotter a hotter place in New York City than the banks of the Newtown Creek. The area’s sewage and swelter share the same origin: a concrete and asphalt “hardscape” instead of a landscape. In the absence of trees, grass, and other plants, water rolls off the impermeable surfaces and floods the sewage system while sunlight beats down on unshaded streets that reradiate heat.

NASA used Landsat to map our “urban heat island,” where temperatures are over seven degrees Fahrenheit hotter than surrounding region. Maspeth was of particular interest to the NASA researchers because it was both particularly afflicted and a prime candidate for mitigation, with low, flat-topped, strong buildings that could bear the weight of green roofs.

The natural history element I alluded to above is of greater concern to bikers than NASA: Oh, the hills! Maspeth sits on the western end of the Harbor Hill Moraine (as you can see in the U.S. Geological Survey map below) that was plowed up by glaciers over 10,000 years ago.

The image below is Helen Ho’s photograph of the Queens Museum’s celebrated New York City panaroma model, with pink tape showing our route over the hills and through the mini-torrid zone. 

I wrote for the Village Voice about the Urban Heat Island phenomenon (including diet, lifestyle, and city planning tips to survive it) and various animal heat adaptations last year. One part that didn’t get published is the fascinating possibility that migrating birds are leaving New York City plumper than they arrived because they needn’t burn as many calories to stay warm at night. I spent a morning in the woods of Bronx Park observing Chad Seewagen, a Wildlife Conservation Society ornithologist, investigating this hunch. My friends Robin Lloyd and David Berreby later wrote up items about Chad and his work for Live Science and the New Yorker, respectively.

These days, however, most species are working hard to shed heat. Humans are particularly lucky in that we sweat copiously, a gift from our tropical heritage that remains with people of all ancestries. Bear in mind, however, that parents can undo in their own kids’ resilience by raising them with air conditioning; sweat glands that aren’t activated in infancy remain dormant for life. Dogs are among the species that have wet noses, long tongues, and very wrinkled nasal passages to allow for heat exchanges with the air.

My favorite evolutionary solution is the carotid rete, a fine web where arteries dump heat into veins and the upper respiratory system so that blood rising to the brain is significantly cooler than the rest of the body. Gazelles have an extraordinarily well-developed carotid rete, but humans are much less impressive in that regard. It’s usually brain temperature that dictates when an animal must stop or pass out, so you can imagine how useful such a tool is for hunters and especially fleeing prey.

And so I might have been the only volunteer marshal ready to scream, “A carotid rete! My kingdom for a carotid rete!”

Heat Island what exactly to say about this flick… I myself enjoyed it. Heat Island” ( ヒートアイランド) is based on a crime thriller book written by Kakine Ryuosuke. The story is about a street gangster (Yu Shirota who plays Aki ) who runs around Shibuya causing trouble. Within Aki’s crew, a member seeks payback on a man who made him look like a fool, and was beaten up by in a bar one night. After gaining his revenge on him he steals a black bag that has a great deal of money, however that money was actually taken from an illegal casino operated by the Yakuza so now both groups are after Aki and his mates to get back the money.

Guess who else is in the movie :3

Yep Yep Van’s in the movie, she owns a bar called Pink Pink :3

Ok Iron Man, now wow what a movie this was, Treeluv you need to see this flick. Out of all the marvel films that has been released this one is TOTALLY worth it. Iron Man actually has a good plot/story, its not stupid, awesome animations etc etc… overall it was just brilliant. So far with the success at the box office they already have made news that there will be a 2nd and there is a released date already which is insane since its only been out in theaters for 4 days. If you haven’t seen it yet and you are a Marvel fan this is a must see. :3

(This post has been edited since it was originally published and may be added to as images are discovered)

From Oricon Style site

From Cinemacafe.net

From Cinema Buzzlog (needs to be investigated further)

From MoPix

From Gyao Cinema