BIOS // ABOUT US
AUSTIN BOWMAN // JUNIOR // CHEMISTRY + LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
I am a second year EcoVillage resident as well as a mentor for the village. During my time in EcoVillage I have developed a passion for sustainable design and its overlap with human health. After graduating I plan to pursue a Masters of Architecture and Master of Public Health in order to ultimately discover and enhance the link between sustainable urban design and architecture and public health. I chose to come to San Francisco in part due to the great experience we had in Boston last year, it was an unbelievable learning experience and I think San Francisco will be a great learning experience as well. San Francisco is also a lot more sprawled than Boston so I am interested to see how their Sustainability Office deals with a city that is already sprawled.
MADDISON HIGHTOWER // FRESHMAN // ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE + PARKS, RECREATION, AND TOURISM MANAGEMENT
This is my first and sadly last year living in the EcoVillage at NC State. EcoVillage helped me start my time at NC State off on the right foot by allowing me to get involved in the community around me through hands on programming and volunteer opportunities. I decided to be a participant of the trip to San Francisco and the class that went along with it because I though it would be a great opportunity to go somewhere I haven't been to before and to explore a topic that interested me.
AUSTIN BOWMAN // JUNIOR // CHEMISTRY + LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
I am a second year EcoVillage resident as well as a mentor for the village. During my time in EcoVillage I have developed a passion for sustainable design and its overlap with human health. After graduating I plan to pursue a Masters of Architecture and Master of Public Health in order to ultimately discover and enhance the link between sustainable urban design and architecture and public health. I chose to come to San Francisco in part due to the great experience we had in Boston last year, it was an unbelievable learning experience and I think San Francisco will be a great learning experience as well. San Francisco is also a lot more sprawled than Boston so I am interested to see how their Sustainability Office deals with a city that is already sprawled.
MADDISON HIGHTOWER // FRESHMAN // ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE + PARKS, RECREATION, AND TOURISM MANAGEMENT
This is my first and sadly last year living in the EcoVillage at NC State. EcoVillage helped me start my time at NC State off on the right foot by allowing me to get involved in the community around me through hands on programming and volunteer opportunities. I decided to be a participant of the trip to San Francisco and the class that went along with it because I though it would be a great opportunity to go somewhere I haven't been to before and to explore a topic that interested me.
We will be evaluating San Francisco based on Jeff Speck's book Walkable City. Walkability, is only one piece of what we feel makes a community livable in terms of sustainability. With that said we searched long and hard for good criteria to evaluate San Francisco. The American Institute of Architecture (AIA) published the above principles as a guide to making a community livable. The content of the image is transcribed below:
1. Design on a Human Scale
Compact, pedestrian-friendly communities allow residents to walk to shops, services, cultural resources, and jobs and can reduce traffic congestion and benefit people's health.
2. Provide Choices
People want variety in housing, shopping, recreation, transportation, and employment. Variety creates lively neighborhoods and accommodates residents in different stages of their lives.
3. Encourage Mixed-Use Development
Integrating different land uses and varied building types creates vibrant, pedestrian-friendly and diverse communities.
4. Preserve Urban Centers
Restoring, revitalizing, and infilling urban centers takes advantage of existing streets, services and buildings and avoids the need for new infrastructure. This helps to curb sprawl and promote stability for city neighborhoods.
5. Vary Transportation Options
Giving people the option of walking, biking and using public transit, in addition to driving, reduces traffic congestion, protects the environment and encourages physical activity.
6. Build Vibrant Public Spaces
Citizens need welcoming, well-defined public places to stimulate face-to-face interaction, collectively celebrate and mourn, encourage civic participation, admire public art, and gather for public events.
7. Create a Neighborhood Identity
A "sense of place" gives neighborhoods a unique character, enhances the walking environment, and creates pride in the community.
8. Protect Environmental Resources
A well-designed balance of nature and development preserves natural systems, protects waterways from pollution, reduces air pollution, and protects property values.
9. Conserve Landscapes
Open space, farms, and wildlife habitat are essential for environmental, recreational, and cultural reasons.
10. Design Matters
Design excellence is the foundation of successful and healthy communities.
We look forward to sharing our experiences with you and hope that you learn as much as we do. // D,A,M
1. Design on a Human Scale
Compact, pedestrian-friendly communities allow residents to walk to shops, services, cultural resources, and jobs and can reduce traffic congestion and benefit people's health.
2. Provide Choices
People want variety in housing, shopping, recreation, transportation, and employment. Variety creates lively neighborhoods and accommodates residents in different stages of their lives.
3. Encourage Mixed-Use Development
Integrating different land uses and varied building types creates vibrant, pedestrian-friendly and diverse communities.
4. Preserve Urban Centers
Restoring, revitalizing, and infilling urban centers takes advantage of existing streets, services and buildings and avoids the need for new infrastructure. This helps to curb sprawl and promote stability for city neighborhoods.
5. Vary Transportation Options
Giving people the option of walking, biking and using public transit, in addition to driving, reduces traffic congestion, protects the environment and encourages physical activity.
6. Build Vibrant Public Spaces
Citizens need welcoming, well-defined public places to stimulate face-to-face interaction, collectively celebrate and mourn, encourage civic participation, admire public art, and gather for public events.
7. Create a Neighborhood Identity
A "sense of place" gives neighborhoods a unique character, enhances the walking environment, and creates pride in the community.
8. Protect Environmental Resources
A well-designed balance of nature and development preserves natural systems, protects waterways from pollution, reduces air pollution, and protects property values.
9. Conserve Landscapes
Open space, farms, and wildlife habitat are essential for environmental, recreational, and cultural reasons.
10. Design Matters
Design excellence is the foundation of successful and healthy communities.
We look forward to sharing our experiences with you and hope that you learn as much as we do. // D,A,M
After what felt like days of flying we've made it to our first night at the hostel and we are loving the environment. We have been immersed into a melting pot of a living community with our fellow hostel residence's being from all around the world. At our hostel there are compost bins, water bottle filling stations, a small garden, and community gathering areas (pictured above) which are all necessary for a sustainable living environment. Like many other buildings in the Bay Area there is also no air condition since San Francisco has a temperate climate, instead rooms have multiple windows to use ambient air as a temperature stabilizer. // D,A,M
Today was Alcatraz and Berkeley exploration day. We saw some great examples of livable community strategies in both the University and the areas around it. Berkeley students had a student run food co-op that seemed very popular with students and Berkeley residents. A food co-op is good example of creating a neighborhood identity. The Berkeley area is known for its commitment to sustainability and the food co-op which sells local goods as well as goods from sustainable companies helps establish and uphold this identity. Berkeley also had a lot of mixed use development, there were apartments above shops and restaurants shared spaces with retail. The main street provided a good mix of food that catered to different income levels. By having options that can cater to any budget the area attracts more students, faculty, and residents to the area which can be accessed easily via public transit or walking. This stimulates the economy which is a principle of sustainability with regards to economy. // D, A, M
Food deserts, urban areas where it is difficult to purchase fresh produce, are a growing threat to sustainable living. One way that San Francisco is making it's communities both sustainable and livable is by having locally owned food markets in each neighborhood like the one pictured to the left in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. These markets not only strengthen the local economy but also help combat food deserts. // Maddi
So today we did Dylan's tour which allowed us to see a large portion of the city while gaining some background information. While riding around I kept in mind the AIA's 10 principles for a livable community, they seem like a solid set of guidelines. San Francisco actually met all of the principles today from what I could tell. The three I saw most were Design on a Human Scale, Build Vibrant Public Spaces, and Create a Neighborhood Identity. This city is very perdition friendly, and seems to have been designed on a human scale. The side walks were very wide and there were trees and poles along the sidewalks to protect the pedestrians. I loved seeing everyone comfortable with bringing their dogs out with them. I've always been told that its hard to maintain a dogs need for exercise and fresh air in big city because it "wasn't safe" for the animal. I think the large presence of dogs speaks a lot to walkability and how safe pedestrians feel. Having a pet is also shown to increase resilience to stress so from a design for public health standpoint the cities efforts in walkability can improve both mental and physical health. Vibrant public spaces were found throughout the city. One of my favorites was the Presidio (spanish for "prison"). The presidio is located off of the pacific coast and lies in the area underneath the golden gate bridge. Not only is there a huge attraction with the Golden Gate Bridge, there were also others including a large field for exercise as well as museums, and an immense amount of food trucks. There are also several 2 block x 2 block parks which seemed to be a gathering point for locals as well. Several of these had interesting interactive landscapes and some had public art. Lastly, neighborhood identity. This is where San Francisco really thrives! We learned all about the different neighborhoods including the Tenderloin, Buena Vista, Haight Ashbury, Downtown, Cole Hill, the LGBTQ neighborhood, and Presidio Heights. Each neighborhood had its own identity which was established through unique aesthetics and attractions. The LGBTQ neighborhood was amazing because we don't really have anything like it in North Carolina. There were a lot of places named after Harvey Milk, the first openly gay male elected to office. My feeling from San Francisco is that respecting the LGBTQ community isn't something the locals work hard to do, they simply treat them as equals which was really refreshing to see. Presidio Heights was neat because its always fun to gawk at houses you could probably never afford and we got to see a few celebrity estates including Jony Ive (lead designer at Apple) and Nancy Pelosi (Former Democratic speaker of the house).I learned a lot today and was able to get my bearings for the layout of the city so I look forward to posting tomorrow since I will be able to pay more attention to the design of the city. // Austin
Today we went on a tour of Recology which is the waste, recycling, and compost transfer station for the bay area. Earlier in our trip we noticed that San Francisco had a three bin system for waste disposal. The blue bins are used for mixed recycling (hard plastics, paper, metals, and glass), the green bins are for compost (meat, paper, green waste), and the black bins are for everything else. On out tour of Recology we got to see what happened after the folks of the bay area dispose of their post consumer waste. Only 20% of what comes to this facility ends up going to a landfill. This is mostly thanks to the mandate that was put in place by the city of San Francisco that requires everyone to recycle and compost. The goal of this mandate is to help the city reach its goal of reaching 0% post consumer product waste. Out of the 20% that ends up in the landfill, approximately 70% could be recycled or composted. Having such a successful recycling program has created over 1000 green collar jobs which is exponentially larger than the amount of jobs created to run and maintain a landfill.
At our talk with Shawn Rosenmoss of the Department of Environment we learned a lot about sustainability initiatives and the process the department goes through to get the programs off the ground. A lot of their initiatives contribute to making San Francisco’s communities livable. Several of the initiatives related to preserving urban centers include installing a community garden, making them more accessible, as well as conserving the open spaces that already exist in the city. We learned that part of having a livable sustainable community requires trust of the municipal government. The department of environment makes it a priority to establish trust within the communities they help oversee. The best example given of this effort is the department aiding the homeowners in a neighborhood have a power plant shutdown due to its polluting of the neighborhood. The department also gets a huge influx of money in grants that they place into program pilots that are truly beneficial to the residents of San Francisco whether it be through retrofitting buildings so they are more sustainable or endorsing research into the overlap of sustainability and public health to better the lives of San Francisco residents. They also seemed very responsive to the demands or ailments of homeowners. The owners of homes and businesses used to have to assume the cost of photovoltaics on their residence/business. The Department of Environment pushed legislation that now allows the cost to be placed into property tax so if homeowners move the next homeowners assume the cost rather than the cost following the initial buyers. The last big point Shawn presented involved uniting a community around an idea or concept. This unity is what really gives the area its identity. She said at the Department of Environment they try to surround themselves with those who are passionate about sustainability and those who are not so they can address the concerns of both sides leading to a finished project that satisfies all of the citizens rather than those who are strong environmentalists.
NC State could learn from San Francisco's sustainability initiative. We share the belief that is possible to have a profitable economy and a healthy environment. All it takes is the courage to act and pass the policies that will create a healthy and sustainable community. Whether it be by increasing the accessibility of composting and recycling for students on and off campus, or by tackling a bigger problem like the plastic bag ban. We have learned that a large university like ours has power, and that power should be used to prompt change. This change would benefit the community and establish NC State as a leader in sustainability. //D, A, M
At our talk with Shawn Rosenmoss of the Department of Environment we learned a lot about sustainability initiatives and the process the department goes through to get the programs off the ground. A lot of their initiatives contribute to making San Francisco’s communities livable. Several of the initiatives related to preserving urban centers include installing a community garden, making them more accessible, as well as conserving the open spaces that already exist in the city. We learned that part of having a livable sustainable community requires trust of the municipal government. The department of environment makes it a priority to establish trust within the communities they help oversee. The best example given of this effort is the department aiding the homeowners in a neighborhood have a power plant shutdown due to its polluting of the neighborhood. The department also gets a huge influx of money in grants that they place into program pilots that are truly beneficial to the residents of San Francisco whether it be through retrofitting buildings so they are more sustainable or endorsing research into the overlap of sustainability and public health to better the lives of San Francisco residents. They also seemed very responsive to the demands or ailments of homeowners. The owners of homes and businesses used to have to assume the cost of photovoltaics on their residence/business. The Department of Environment pushed legislation that now allows the cost to be placed into property tax so if homeowners move the next homeowners assume the cost rather than the cost following the initial buyers. The last big point Shawn presented involved uniting a community around an idea or concept. This unity is what really gives the area its identity. She said at the Department of Environment they try to surround themselves with those who are passionate about sustainability and those who are not so they can address the concerns of both sides leading to a finished project that satisfies all of the citizens rather than those who are strong environmentalists.
NC State could learn from San Francisco's sustainability initiative. We share the belief that is possible to have a profitable economy and a healthy environment. All it takes is the courage to act and pass the policies that will create a healthy and sustainable community. Whether it be by increasing the accessibility of composting and recycling for students on and off campus, or by tackling a bigger problem like the plastic bag ban. We have learned that a large university like ours has power, and that power should be used to prompt change. This change would benefit the community and establish NC State as a leader in sustainability. //D, A, M
Today we went to the Heart of the City Farmer’s Market in front of City Hall. We spoke with Kate Crepes, the Executive Director of the market, who is overseeing the effort to make the Tenderloin neighborhood more livable. The Tenderloin district has a stigma for frequent crime and an overwhelming amount of homeless citizens. The crime and character of the neighborhood has driven away local groceries and made the Tenderloin a food desert. We learned today the residential neighborhood consists of single occupancy spaces that house low-income families such as single mothers and senior citizens. The market hopes to expose the true identity and strength of the district and how it can take part in sustainable health practices. The market is mixed use in function meaning the market serves to provide local citizens with economic strife a place to get healthy nutrient rich food at a lower price using social welfare programs. It is also located in front of several business buildings where more middle and upperclass residents work. The market allows these citizens to mix with the low income citizens and create a sense of respect as well as dispelling a stigma. The market also supports local farmers since they sell directly with no middle man taking some of the profit.