SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY BLUEPRINT AND INFRASTRUCTURE.

There are numerous ways of reducing “infrastructure” costs to support communities of the future. Unfortunately the patterns of urban design forged by land planning that civil engineers are still conforming to a two century control of mile square surveyed grids across America.

This status quo approach may be good for easy surveying of straight lines to allow for access to residences thus founded inside square grid planning. This continuing pattern is still found in cities and new suburban edge expansions. Maybe this lemming like land planning attitude has to do with neat parceling of lots for land sales. The infrastructure cost for this pattern of city building burdens the buyer and the housing contractor to bring his workshop to the site at hand. This habit has not changed for hundreds of years.

Tons of building materials are carted from great distances to each virgin site. The site becomes a mining field that has to be prepared by a great amount of trenching, filling, grading and compaction. In fact the “oversight fees” in Greater Bakersfield for provision of these services now averages about $11,000 per residence. To fully examine this kind of city building one does not clearly appreciate the cost of delivering these essential infrastructure services to homes, schools and businesses with much practicality or efficiency against any alternatives. It is obvious that land consumption to support the theme of single-family homes this way, absorbs vast energy resources on huge tracts of land, only served by miles of road accessibility.

Comparative evaluations of settlements all over the world with the aerial technology of “Google Earth” capable of zooming in and out on any place on this earth, allows one to examine many different cultural settlement patterns. In fact the world thus revealed is the laboratory of urban design and land planning.

Securing an understanding of this displayed satellite view of cities, should lead to gaining knowledge as to how older communities established all over the world have seen fit to respectfully follow the terrain to allow for easy pedestrian access. These together with many other habitation patterns are worth reviewing including the costs of infrastructure service. All cultures have not adopted the Roman Army Camp process of urban design placed on flat land for convenience of a parcel sale and “left –right” vehicle access, found so prevalent in America.

So a few pertinent questions should be asked of urban designers. What exceptional urban design patterns, costs and efficiencies from all building placements have been translated by means of fresh infrastructure concepts? Do these infrastructure systems attend to service conditions all the way from the supply side, as well as, the waste reduction side for future sustainable cities? Do these new patterns shorten distance to reach daily human activities?

Let’s not only point fingers at the politbureau in their vain attempts to control urban development with policies and codes. The current set of municipal design standards offer few incentives to create alternative urban design futures, and have few directional forces capable of leading new urban growth and change. Neither do the private sector urban developers recognize potential infrastructure reductions, requiring instead different installation of the over-designed status quo systems. So we urban dwellers in these settlements then cannot lament the fact of wasted materials resources and energy still un-necessarily lost simply because someone did not want to think about revised urban design patterns and new standards.

Establishing criteria for some selected principles the following thoughts are suggested for examination: -

FOR CLEAN AIR – A Wind Rose will reflect air source directions to capture and direct air changes required for good health. Building design should allow for passive airflow movement. Natural plant production, conservation of timber and biological resources for CO/2 sequestration is essential.

FOR CLEAN WATER – Steady well water supply to storage from underground aquifer resources for distribution for potable use in all land uses must minimize distance. Captured annual rainfall should be purified and held as an alternative resource. Storm water off impervious surfaces should be guided to streambeds. Aquifer recharge should be a major consideration.

FOR FOOD AND FIBER – Set aside prime agricultural lands for food and fiber production to reduce transportation costs. Flood, sprinkler and drip irrigation methods should be carefully considered.

FOR ENERGY AND COMMUNICATIONS – Select appropriate solar, wind, geothermal, natural gas, methane and biotechnologies for electrical energy generation. Decentralized distribution of these facilities should be introduced to curb future “brownouts”. Arrange communication towers to cover wireless broadband coverage for cell phones and computer use.

FOR ECONOMY OF EXCHANGE - Allow for job growth and change to occur in labor of head and hand to common exchange in currency, assessed in costs and benefits thus allowing for life cycle values.

FOR MOBILITY – Are “public ways” and parking lots that provide access to buildings designed to reduce materials resource consumption? Are they designed to use readily renewable or locally available materials? Are the pathways offered for pedestrian, bike, equestrian, light rail and/or roadways designed for appropriate axle/weight loads? Must all these pathways “beds” be designed for more than a hundred years of use? What are the operational and maintenance costs for each of these pathways? Should some of these “public ways” be the only dispersal carrier of storm water? Do all these pathways need to be light for night use? Should these pathways serve multi purposes? (Fire, emergency, police, goods, packages, refuse and construction) Should future public right of ways be reserved for new forms of mobility? Are the streets and intersections leading to sites designed to provide the most efficient flow of vehicular traffic? What are the capital and operational costs for the all the cumulative street intersection traffic controls? What alternative utility network will service alternative fuel vehicles or multi-modal access and how should this be integrated? Can we produce two-seat light weight vehicle that get high mileage per unit of energy use with a short distance range but allowing for multi modal exchange for greater distances?

FOR SAFE STRUCTURES – Build structures to respect floods, earthquakes, fire safety and wind velocity. Use majority materials from sustainable resources locally and carefully measure the salient energy conversion and transportation costs. Acknowledge the technology of established earthquake codes.

FOR HANDLING WASTE PRODUCTS – Recycle, reuse and reconstitute materials to minimize toxic elements for energy production or releases safely back into natural organic cycles.

FOR A BALANCED NATURAL SETTING – Balance man-made settlements with that of the indigenous nature to reserve fauna and flora in spaces of natural undisturbed settings.

FOR OTHER UTILITY SERVICES – Energy supply such as electricity - should this be placed underground in a utility tunnel, on the ground or above ground? Where should water storage supply and purification plants be located? Similarly where should wastewater treatment plants be located downstream with gravity service advantages? Why is exterior building lighting and adjacent street lighting designed to prevent our enjoyment of the night sky with light overspill? Has open space been integrated into the site design so that it can serve multiple purposes? What are the standard proportions of balance between “open spaces” and built spaces? How can forestry requirements be applied to shading of “public ways.”? What proportion of built spaces would balance air quality enhancement through vegetative uptake of pollutants? How should prime agricultural land be separated between corporate industrial production and lands and for organic agriculture production? How should agricultural lands be integrated into communities? Why should telecommunication towers be masked artificially to look like trees? Why should rainwater gutters and water tanks not become standard practice for housing in desert climates? (Consider that one square foot of roof area with one inch of rainfall supplies an equivalent of 0.522 gallons of water. A 3,000 square foot roof would then source 1,566 gallons of water. Is this a sufficient amount worthy of saving into a water tank for use by the household? Bakersfield’s annual rainfall is +/- 6 inches per annum. Only 3 inches fell this year 2008. This would produce 4,698 gallons in this particular rainfall year. This quantity would serve a household of three for 204 days of the year.)

A new community that considers storm-water issues in urban design should entertain low-impact development techniques, which increase infiltration and watershed response times, thus reducing storm water runoff peak flows and volumes to equal or below that of the existing undeveloped condition.

The potential savings that could result from reduced or even eliminated underground pipe systems; detention basins, major conveyance channels, roadway culverts, and bridges that could result depend upon better urban design patterns and practices.

In fact new technologies should be applied for consideration in the following categories: -

Rain water capture and storage from roofs of building structures.

Salt water desalinization mechanisms.

Salt water resource to produce food, fiber and electricity production.

Sewerage waste conversion to energy production.

Solid waste separation and subsequent conversion for electrical energy production.

Solid waste separation waste stream products for recycling and reuse.

Solar energy capture for electricity production.

Wind energy capture for electricity production.

Biomass production such as wood chips, methane or algae use for electricity production.

Liquid flow pressures in pipelines for electricity production.

Building structures for energy use reduction.

Water recycling for alternative food and fiber production.

Solar still structures for water capture and underground cistern storage.

Urban design sustainability results from the integrated consideration of all elements found in development of places that enable our society to live, work, recreate, worship and grow food and fiber. The contemplated “green” habitable structures then in combination with the infrastructure system should then create a unique balance of both resource withdrawal and used product return to reconstitute Nature’s abundant resources.

To be sure, what goes on in this new architectural trend of “green” buildings has a significant impact on the infrastructure serving these habitable and support building structures. Are we urban designers realizing the full benefits of the efficiencies achieved inside the land-use patterns that are prescribed, as well as, the form of delivery for these infrastructure pathways in service of these places?

Graham Kaye-Eddie

M.U.D.