URBAN PLANNING

Sinking Jakarta, Capital of Indonesia, to Be Relocated

Resettle more than 10 million people?

06 May 2019 From Paul Münzner Filed Under: 2019, Featured, URBAN PLANNING

Jakarta is the economic, politic and cultural center of the Southeast Asian country Indonesia between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It is not a new discovery, but, nonetheless, worth repeating since the government is discussing the relocation of its sinking and largest city of Indonesia – the capital of Indonesia – again. There is no need to explain in detail why it’s not an easy decision to move the fourth most populated city in the world with more than 10 million inhabitants. However, it’s urgent – and becoming increasingly relevant and important every day. It is time to act!

Jakarta is predicted to be unliveable by 2050

Everyone who has been in the north of Jakarta, probably noticed that the water is pressing into the city. This problem has not been caused solely by a rising sea level. Since 1970, Jakarta sunk around 4 meters. And the city continues to sink every year due to the enormous and increasing groundwater requirements from households and industry. The daily need for groundwater of this high populated metropolis results in a declining groundwater level, which, in turn, leads to sagging earth masses.

Sinking 17 cm (6.7 inches) Every Year

But as Indonesia can call itself the world’s largest island country with an area of more than 1.9 million square kilometers – consisting of more than seventeen thousand islands – apparently there are some reliable alternative locations to the fastest sinking capital in the world, Jakarta.

Like Us? Subscribe To Our Mailing List For Free

I agree to have my data transferred according to the privacy policy.

Indonesia’s capital is actually located on the island Java. New information about possible locations were announced after a cabinet meeting of The National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) end of April 2019. Due to The Jakarta Post, the new capital will probably not be on Java anymore. “The President has decided in the meeting to move the capital outside Java,” Bappenas head Bambang Brodjonegoro said in a press conference after the meeting last Monday due to The Jakarta Post.

Current geographical location of the city of Jakarta

Bearing in mind the fast population growth of Jakarta, a central location in Indonesia would just be fair and the best when it comes to accessibility. “We want to have a capital that represents the nation’s identity and improves the efficiency of the central government and establish a smart, green and beautiful city,” Bambang said. “The capital relocation must serve the strategic vision of our long-term development agenda.”

Due to The Jakarta Post, the government has selected two regions so far: The heart of the island of Sulawesi or Kalimantan on Borneo island. Kalimantan might be the better choice as some geologists worry about earthquakes and tsunamis on Sulawesi.

Such a movement can take around 10 years. A few countries have already gained experience in moving their capital: Brazil or Kazakhstan.

San Francisco Bay Area Soon With New Resilient Public Places?

Tackling The Adverse Effects of Extreme Climatic Conditions - Ideas That Turn the San Francisco Bay Area into a Vibrant and Resilient Community

31 January 2018 From Paul Münzner Filed Under: Featured, URBAN PLANNING

San Francisco is known for many things, chief among them being a popular tourist destination. Structures and monuments that include the Golden Gate Bridge and the Fisherman’s Warf are just two of the many that are frequented by tourists and natives alike. Then, of course, there are more natural attractions like the rolling hills, the summers and many beaches. It’s not all fun and games in San Francisco though.

The US city has borne witness and been a victim of countless tragedies and natural disasters. The fires and Great 1906 Earthquake and the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake are perhaps some of the worst. People have reacted to all this though. Each disaster has only been an incentive to push forth new mediums that ensure the safety of lives and property in the event these disasters should break again.

Resilient By Design - View of San Francisco Bay Area Waterfront Hassel, MVRDV and more — CLICK TO ENLARGE (MVRDV and HASSELL+)

Large International Team Contributes to a Resilient Waterfront of the San Francisco Bay Area

HASSELL is at the forefront of this. Along with 10 international, multi-disciplinary partners that include MVRDV, Lotus Water, Deltares, Goudapel and 6 more, HASSELL has revealed a design strategy that is intended to act as a buffer against harsh and extreme climatic changes in the San Francisco Bay Area. The team has an idea that turns San Francisco waterfront communities into mediums that cater to and satisfy various needs of the people and communities as a whole. For one, these waterfront communities can be more than just public, recreational centers; but also emergency centers.

Everything HASSEL and the other contributors aspire to achieve is part of the Resilient By Design initiative, which is intended to see the birth of better and more efficient means of tackling the adverse effects of extreme climatic conditions. The team drew inspiration from the disasters of prior decades, primarily the 1906 earthquake of San Francisco.

HASSELL expects its design strategy to be flawless, which is why assistance was sought from a number of sources: Competent design firms, public officials, experts and even the locals all contributed in one way or another, either by assisting with the research involved in the strategy or by providing necessary and valuable information where required. Digital platforms have made this easier because it is another faster way for the people to make their voices heard on what facilities and structures they require the most. Feedback is as necessary as it is important.

Resilient By Design - Needs of San Francisco Bay Area Waterfront Hassel, MVRDV and more — Needed facilities for the San Francisco Bay Area - CLICK TO ENLARGE (MVRDV and HASSELL+)

The research concluded with findings that reveal faults in South San Francisco and possible design solutions for San Mateo County. More than that, the findings also made possible the creation of a network of public spaces that connect people and manage water. This network is intended to connect waterfront communities together and at the same time manage water in such events like floods.

Element Overview for the Resilient San Francisco Bay Area

Overview Elements of San Francisco Bay Area Waterfront Hassel, MVRDV and more for Resilient By Design — Element overview for the resilient San Francisco Bay area - CLICK TO ENLARGE (MVRDV and HASSELL+)

Resilient By Design - Disaster elements of San Francisco Bay Area Waterfront Hassel, MVRDV — Disaster elements - CLICK TO ENLARGE (MVRDV and HASSELL+)

Resilient By Design - Connectors at San Francisco Bay Area Waterfront Hassel, MVRDV and more — Connectors - CLICK TO ENLARGE (MVRDV and HASSELL+)

By creating high streets, broad green spaces and creeks, more channels for the runoff and passage of water are opened, which is necessary, considering the congested nature of all waterfronts’ transport infrastructure. Along the same vein, the waterfront communities can serve as temporary shelters in the aftermath of disasters. Conversely, and during more civil times, these San Francisco waterfronts can double as celebration centers.

There has been a projection that by the year 2100, there will be a 66-inch rise in sea level of the San Francisco Bay area, which altogether makes the community-based solutions developed by HASSEL imperative. Rise in sea level is just one of the many compounding issues waterfront communities face. Tidal waves, severe storms, tsunamis, flooding, and earthquakes all pose great threats to life and property. It is needed to adapt to the impacts of climate change soon enough.

Resilient By Design - Map2 of San Francisco Bay Area Waterfront Hassel, MVRDV and more — South San Francisco - CLICK TO ENLARGE (MVRDV and HASSELL+)

Resilient By Design - Map of San Francisco Bay Area Waterfront Hassel, MVRDV and more — CLICK TO ENLARGE (MVRDV and HASSELL+)

HASSEL has initiated a plan that is targeted towards a single goal: the continuation and sustenance of lives and property. These waterfronts are to be transformed into public places that serve a multitude of purposes, all of them making possible more efficient means of surviving adverse climatic conditions.

Overview Elements of San Francisco Bay Area Waterfront — CLICK TO ENLARGE (MVRDV and HASSELL+)

San Francisco Bay Area Waterfront - Resilient By Design — CLICK TO ENLARGE (MVRDV and HASSELL+)

Resilient By Design - San Francisco Bay Area Waterfront Hassel, MVRDV + — CLICK TO ENLARGE (MVRDV and HASSELL+)

Overview San Francisco Bay Area Waterfront -Resilient By Design — CLICK TO ENLARGE (MVRDV and HASSELL+)

Urban Planners Obsolete Someday? Planning Algorithms Gain Ground

13 February 2017 From Paul Münzner Filed Under: Featured, URBAN PLANNING

Urban Planners Obsolete Someday? Planning Algorithms Gain Ground

[mpc_button preset=”preset_192″ url=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ecourbanhub.com|title:Link||” font_preset=”preset_0″ font_color=”#ffffff” font_size=”20″ font_line_height=”1″ font_transform=”uppercase” font_align=”center” title=”HOME” icon_color=”#ffffff” border_divider=”true” border_css=”border-color:#ffffff;border-style:solid;border-radius:3px;” padding_divider=”true” padding_css=”padding-top:11px;padding-right:34px;padding-bottom:11px;padding-left:34px;” margin_divider=”true” margin_css=”margin-top:6px;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:4px;margin-left:10px;” hover_font_color=”#ffffff” hover_icon_color=”#0a0404″ hover_background_color=”#6ccfe8″ hover_border_css=”border-width:3px;border-color:#6ccfe8;border-style:solid;border-radius:3px;”]

Various computer programs facilitate the work of urban planners. Esri CityEngine, for instance, enables to analyze and compare building proposals from every angle and creates awesome 3D visualizations. Autodesk offers even more than one software solution. Autodesk InfraWorks, for example, supports transportation or site planning and even water analysis. Those interested in statistical data analysis are better advised with SAS/SPSS/STATA. It is, of course, also possible to decide for ArcGIS, Adobe Design Creative Suite, SketchUp, Maya, 3D Studio Max and so on and so forth. Is there a planning challenge which can’t be tackled with a certain software?

In some cases, surveying engineers are already replaced by drones

If no, what kind of software is recommended to replace a costly urban planner? You don’t take it very seriously? In this case, it’s worth remembering technical drawers with their outdated drawing boards – which may nowadays only be useful for museums. Another topical example are surveying engineers. More and more, they get replaced by drones. They are excellent for mapping roads, highways, and railway infrastructures – drones can in many ways do the job faster, cheaper and safer than surveying engineers.

However, urban planners will assuredly not be redundant overnight. Instead, it is much more a question of how many and which working packages will be replaced by algorithms and robots in the future. The imitation of human behavior with a much better performance through artificial intelligence has been already showcased in a number of certain tasks.

The next step is to teach machines to do the same thing

It’s official. When it comes to solving complex problems, a smart human is still able to find better solutions than a machine. What’s the magic ingredient? It turns out that the missing talent that could make planning algorithms more efficient is linear temporal logic says a group of MIT researchers.

The group presented its findings at the annual conference of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, and the work will be ongoing. Now that we know why people are better at solving complex problems, the next step is to teach machines to do the same thing.

The researchers have begun their work with automated planning algorithms that can help with problems such as efficient flight route planning, saving fuel, reducing fight time, and maximizing the number of passengers on each plane. The principles used to do this could then be applied to other forms of complex problem-solving.

How the New Planning Algorithms Fared With Input From MIT Students

To test the performance of International Planning Competition (IPC) award-winning planning algorithms, the researchers pitted them against MIT students with high-level problem-solving skills. Three classes of problem-solving were tested: the ability to solve a problem while satisfying a rigid set of constraining factors, numerical problems with parameters that include a degree of flexibility, and temporal problems that added a time-based element to the exercise.

Both the algorithms and the MIT students were given half an hour to produce a solution. When evaluating the student’s solutions, the researchers interviewed them, observing that linear temporal logic was widely used to add constraints that had not been specified when the problem was initially defined.

By adding these constraints to the code, the plans produced by algorithms were substantially improved, with researchers identifying a 10 to 16 percent improvement in the planning algorithm’s ability to solve the various types of problems, and the researchers noted that the solutions were much closer to those that had been calculated by human beings.

“In the lab, in other investigations, we’ve seen that for things like planning and scheduling and optimization, there’s usually a small set of people who are truly outstanding at it,” says Julie Shah, an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. “Can we take the insights and the high-level strategies from the few people who are truly excellent at it and allow a machine to make use of that to be better at problem-solving than the vast majority of the population?”

Talk to the Machine: Turning Strategies into Code

Since situations requiring help from planning algorithms are affected by a multitude of factors, high-level strategies used in problem solving would vary. But with natural language processing techniques having reached an advanced level, the MIT researchers believe that a free-form description of a problem-solving strategy could be transformed into the kind of linear temporal logic that makes sense to an algorithm. The hope-for result? Improved planning algorithms that will make use of the best both human and machine logic can contribute.

The Team Around the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project (ESCR) in New York is Growing

The so-called application of a multi-barrier system approaches the problem in a number of ways

06 February 2017 From Paul Münzner Filed Under: Featured, URBAN PLANNING

The team around the East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) project in New York is growing. CH2M, a consulting firm in Colorado, USA, is chosen by New York’s City Department of Design and Construction (DDC) to support upcoming design activities in the development, approval and implementation phases.

The East Side Coastal Resiliency project is a result of Hurricane Sandy in October 2012. After this disastrous flooding, higher demands were voiced to increase flood protection and resiliency. Thus, as a mitigation measure, this integrated coastal protection system is intended to protect against future floods. Additionally, the project should be accompanied by a fundamental redesign of the waterfront with open access and offer additional recreational spaces for everybody.

Construction start for the East Side Coast Resiliency Project is planned for late 2017

CH2M’s Project Manager Jonathan Goldstick states: “Our engineers have been working on the City’s waterfront for more than 35 years and have extensive experience addressing sea level rise and climate adaptation. We’re looking forward to partnering with the DDC to integrate flood protection into the community fabric of Manhattan.”

Like Us? Subscribe To Our Mailing List For Free

I agree to have my data transferred according to the privacy policy.

Recommendation

Imagine New York Would be Under Water

The coastal project starts from Montgomery Street and ends at East 25th Street in Lower Manhattan. In order to strengthen New York’s coastal defenses against flooding, sea level rise and other climate-related hazards, different physical and social resiliency measures will come into play. This so-called application of a multi-barrier system approaches the problem in a number of ways. Various (=multi) types of measures (=barrier) will either eliminate or minimize their impact.

The following examples give some ideas of possible barrier options.

A storage tank in East River Park will manage sewer overflows.
Inland flooding management will consider pumping and storage alternatives.
Planned floodwalls, marginally moved towards inland, leave the park open and provide larger capacities to store water in case of a flood.
Planted embankments provide green and recreational space.
Vigorous plants on the embankment’s surface protect against flood erosion.
Plants and trees will also be robust against salt water.

Apart from the protective characteristics, public space, outdoor gathering, and waterfront accessibility are still all in focus. Furthermore, it is intended to ensure the access to the parks and coastal sections. Only during the construction period, the access will understandably be limited. Expenditures for design and construction will be funded by a federal grant of $335 million compiled by the city, state, and federal agencies.

Citywide Building Energy Model For Boston Developed

Building Energy Model simulates energy use in a 200-by-200-meter grid for the City of Boston

24 February 2016 From Paul Münzner Filed Under: URBAN PLANNING

A citywide building energy model for Boston has been developed by researchers at the MIT Sustainable Design Lab (SDL) and the MIT Lincoln Laboratory and the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) as cooperation partner. According to MIT, the new tool enables to plan the energy future of Boston on an unprecedented scale and spatiotemporal detail. It calculates the needed gas and electrical energy for each individual building (about 92,000 total) in Boston with a time resolution of one hour, one day or a year. “Nobody has ever modeled a city the size of Boston at this level of detail,” Reinhart says. “It’s also the first time that these data are being used by a city to guide energy policy decisions.”

Besides buildings, this holistic solution involves photovoltaic systems, battery storages, ground source heat pumps, and combined heat and power systems

As announced by the City of Boston and the BRA, the new building energy model is an integral part of the Boston Community Energy Study. It supports stakeholders and decision-makers to figure out saving potentials and opportunities regarding greenhouse gas emissions, energy demand and costs in Boston.

“Community energy solutions such as targeted energy efficiency, district energy, microgrids, local energy generation, and energy storage represent an opportunity to fundamentally change the way our energy system works,” says Austin Blackmon, chief of energy, environment, and open space for Boston, “but to get there we need a better understanding of the existing system and a way to identify the most promising solutions.”

One important aim of the model is the identification of more holistic solutions instead of isolated analyses of buildings. For example, photovoltaic systems, battery storages, ground source heat pumps, and combined heat and power (CHP) systems outside of a building, adjacent buildings or sites across Boston, are taken into consideration to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce costs. “If you have a building consuming a lot of electricity at certain hours, you need buildings around them that can use that waste heat,” Cerezo says. “Our model is built for figuring out where those things happen.”

In order to process the data and develop the model, the approximately 92,000 buildings in Boston have been classified in 48 different building types. Furthermore, twelve use categories were specified to distinguish the different characteristics influencing supply and demand of energy over the time. The geographic information systems dataset of Boston with its building geometry, property tax assessment records, and the several types of parcel use are also taken into account.

Building Energy Model for Lisbon and Riyadh currently being developed

According to Reinhart and Cerezo, their decision-making tool is designed to focus on problem areas, for example, peak electricity demands of buildings on hot summer days, and to identify worthwhile saving opportunities.

“Every city has long-term goals,” Cerezo, a PhD student in the Building Technology Program, says. “But nobody knows exactly how to plan for and measure them. With this model, the city has a map to help them target and reach those goals.”

The SDL team is not confined to any borders and now working on new models for Lisbon (Portugal) and Riyadh (Saudi Arabia). They are also validating their Boston model by comparing the calculated results with the real energy consumption. “We’ll do this using any building-level energy dataset that we can get our hands on, so the models become more and more accurate,” Reinhart pledges. “Ultimately, our goal is for every city in the world to rely on a citywide energy model to meaningfully manage its future energy supply and carbon emissions.”