Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
with other ingredients become the basis for hydrogen energy production with far
better energetic and environmental efficiency than coal burning.
Austin's Green Building Program is an example of ambitiously advancing a city into an
anticipatory learning environment where the idea of a holistic understanding of the city
was not only possible but also desired by many. As a result, Austin continued along the
Development Ladder into an almost evolutionary position pushed by explicitly embrac-
ing music and the digital arts, underpinned by a strong environmental ethic. Our contin-
ued work with the community yielded a sharper image of Austin's evolving place on the
Development Ladder and a more refined definition of the Development Ladder itself. As
we analyze El Paso/Juarez as a generic system condition, where would we place it?
31.5 Development of the ProtoCity
In 1960, the English psychiatrist and cybernetics pioneer Ross Ashby developed a model
to conceptualize the brain's process of adaptation. 6 He described the brain as “goal seek-
ing” and in constant pursuit of equilibrium. In his model the organism interacts with its
environment and settles on an equilibrium defined within certain limits at a given point
in time. Thirty years later, in 1990 while developing Austin's Green Building Program,
CMPBS imagined the city as a brain and adapted Ashby's conceptual model as a tool to
understand the interaction of the City's public and private sectors. The model that evolved
placed public bodies in the role of the environment (better described as the keepers of the
commons) and the private sector as the organism trying to respond to the environment
but also effecting and helping to develop policy. Monitoring occurred via the commissions
that kept close ties with the city reporting to them if and when environmental problems
arose (Figure 31.5).
We have since determined an inherent problem with these early, seminal iterations of
our ProtoCity methodology. The original model considers the city/region in homeostasis
without accounting for change; we have since determined that a dynamic representation
is required as shown in our 2008 rendition.
For example, urban vegetation may increase in extent and diversify with increased
urbanization, just as locally produced, organic food may become more available.
Additionally, a damaged ecosystem such as is present in Juarez and El Paso not only
needs to be repaired but the city must also proactively intervene to the point of revital-
izing and regenerating at a system level well beyond its present condition. A further
adaptation of Ashby's diagram provides opportunity to create dynamism in the limits of
a system. This is accomplished through introducing ProtoScope.
31.5.1 ProtoScope
Any type of development benefits from understanding where you are coming from in terms
of trends and where you are trying to go in terms of best practices. ProtoScope provides the
basis for triggering a city/region to move to the next stage of the Development Ladder by
increasing the capacity to create the context for change. It may be introduced at any stage
of the Development Ladder and is appropriate for any community on the edge of change.
ProtoScope entails the following three phases (Figure 31.6).
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