CITIES OF THE FUTURE

“Blue Water in Green Cities”

 

Wingspread Workshop

 

            SPONSORS:                 National Science Foundation

                                                CDM, Inc.  (corporate sponsor)

                                                The Johnson Foundation

                                                Northeastern University

            ENDORSED BY:            International Water Association                                   

            Location:                      Wingspread (Wind Point, Racine, WI)

            Date:                            July 12-14, 2006

 

Organized by the Center for Urban Environmental Studies

Northeastern University, Boston, MA

 

Objective

            Convene an interdisciplinary workshop of experts that develops visionary concepts on how to ensure that cities and their water resources become ecologically sustainable and are able to provide clean water for all beneficial uses. With urban waters as a focal point, this workshop will explore the links between urban water quality and hydrology, landscape, and the broader concepts of green cities and smart growth. The workshop will also address legal and social barriers to urban ecological sustainability and propose practical ways to overcome those barriers and also focus on sustainability during extreme hydrological events. 

 

Text Box: While there is a desire among communities, stakeholders and agencies to make urban areas and their water resources ecologically sustainable, there is no consensus regarding the definition of sustainability or the means of achieving urban aquatic ecosystem integrity. Addressing these problems begins with understanding the complexity of ecologically-sustainable urban communities, their connection to water and their ecological and hydrological resilience or vulnerability to extreme adverse stresses. Challenges, Vision and Need for the Workshop

            Urban waterways are the historic core of our cities’ economies and have the potential to be rich sources of biological diversity, contributing to the quality and economy of urban life. Over centuries, these water bodies have been impaired by urban development generating pollutants from both point and diffuse sources. The traditional goals of urban water management have been to provide a safe and adequate water supply, environmentally acceptable disposal of treated wastewater, and flood control. However, excessive discharges of pollutants, especially from diffuse sources (urban runoff and combined sewer overflows) and stream alteration to accommodate increased flooding, are keeping urban waters unacceptably polluted for human uses and impairing wildlife habitat. The fast-conveyance drainage infrastructure conceived of in Roman times to eliminate unwanted, highly-polluted runoff and sewage is now an impediment to solving the pollution problem – in spite of billions of dollars spent on costly “hard” solutions like sewers and treatment plants. A large portion of pollution is caused by the typical characteristics of the urban landscape: a preference for impervious over porous surfaces; fast “hard” conveyance infrastructure rather than “softer” approaches like ponds and vegetation; and rigid stream channelization instead of natural stream courses, buffers and floodplains, and development in the floodplains.

Text Box: In the future, urban landscape and drainage systems will be designed to mimic the natural hydrological cycle – recharging aquifers with reclaimed rainwater and returning the base and flood flows of streams to their predevelopment levels. Integrated tools to realize these goals are currently lacking. Elected officials in many major cities, community and business stakeholders, and environmental interests have been promoting ideas and programs that incorporate ecological principles into urban development – the “Green Cities”. Their “quality of life” goals are broad; and frequently, ecologically-balanced aquatic systems are not recognized as offering the enormous potential for improvement that is possible. There is a need to unify our thinking on these subjects and propose “soft” and “hard” approaches that together reverse the adverse effects of urbanization; repair ecologically damaged or even destroyed urban water resources; restore natural hydrology of streams; and recharge groundwater with collected rainwater, increased water conservation and reuse of treated effluents.

The grand challenge now facing the environmental and urban communities is to create a set of tools that can be used by government agencies and industry to develop and implement plans for restoration of impaired urban watersheds and maintain sustainable management of multiple-use urban water bodies and landscape and make sure that the cities are also able to cope with extreme hydrological events without major ecological and habitat damages. These tools are essential as communities “retrofit” their water infrastructure in older cities and design new systems for expanding or revitalizing urban centers. The proposed workshop will establish an agenda for achieving ecologically and hydrologically-balanced water use, drainage and wastewater disposal systems, as well as the remediation of damaged water bodies and watershed landscape – all contributing to the quality of life and economic vitality of cities.

 

Speakers and other participants

            Speakers and panelists will be selected by the Organizing/Steering Committee and participation will be by invitation. The invited speakers will be experts in diverse fields, including environmental law and regulation, urban landscape ecology, urban hydrology and diffuse pollution, environmentally beneficial infrastructure and conveyance design, water body restoration, urban development economics and others. The panels will be interdisciplinary and will also include participants and experts who are managers of urban drainage agencies, public officials, green city and smart growth initiative and environmental advocacy representatives. Some speakers and panelists will be international (Japan and EC countries). The total number of invited speakers will not exceed 15 and the total number of participants will be maximum 40. Travel and lodging cost for the speakers and panelist in need will be covered by the organizers. 

Deliverable

The workshop will forge interdisciplinary interactions among the participants and creation of research teams that will work on realization of the workshop goals. Each invited speaker will prepare a chapter on an assigned and agreed on interdisciplinary discussion topic, summarizing the state of the art and developing a vision of research and actions that would lead to sustainable urban landscape and receiving waters. The panel discussions will then deliberate on the topic ands develop recommendations. The edited proceedings will be then published as a book by IWA Publishing.

A proposal will be made to the workshop participants to continue, enlarge and formalize the group into an alliance/consortium of researchers, consultants, city officials, NGOs, and other stakeholders that would continue working towards the goals of clean (blue) water in new and retrofitted historical “green” ecologically balanced and sustainable cities and expand these efforts, with international partners, to encompass “megacities” of the Third World. Subsequent to the workshop, the alliance will, in a coordinated effort, seek funding and look for research ideas and develop a research agenda.

 

Location

Wingspread, Racine (WI). Frank Lloyd Wright designed this home for H.F. Johnson in 1939. Today it is an international conference center operated by the Johnson Foundation.  The environment of Wingspread and the marvel of Frank L. Wright creativity and architectural vision will stimulate the invited group to make a great contribution to the goals of the workshop.  FLW was a master of blending urban infrastructure with the natural environment, which is exactly what this workshop will try to accomplish.

The location (Racine) is in the midst of several urban landscape and stream restoration projects located in Northern Illinois and Milwaukee (WI) County. Racine is on a train line between Milwaukee General Mitchell International Airport Amtrak train station (15 minutes by train) and downtown Chicago Union Station (less than 1 hour). The convention center is also 15 minutes by car from the Milwaukee International Airport or 60 minutes from O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. Frequent bus transportation from both airports to Racine is also available. Transportation of participants to and from the Milwaukee International Airport will be provided by the Wingspread convention center.

The nearby restoration sites include the Des Plains River Experimental Wetland, Lake County Forest and Prairie Preserves, several “green” subdivision developments in Northeast Illinois, the Lincoln Creek and Milwaukee River restorations in Milwaukee. In addition, the office building of the Johnson Company in Racine is another architectural landmark of F.L. Wright  (a possible evening visit).

Organizing Committee

 

Paul Brown (CDM, Cambridge, MA and Los Angeles, CA)

Lee Breckenridge (Northeastern University, Boston, MA)

Jiri Marsalek (Nat.  Water Research Inst., Burlington, ONT) 

Vladimir Novotny (Northeastern University, Boston)

Peter Shanahan (MIT, Cambridge)                                               

Robert Zimmerman, Charles River Watershed Association, Waltham, MA)                            

Patrick  Brezonik (NSF – ex officio)

Steven Branca (The Johnson Foundation- ex officio)

 

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Wingspread

 

For information and possible invitation contact Professor Vladimir Novotny, Director of the Center for Urban Environmental Studies 

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