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Conduit Urbanism: Opportune Urban Byproducts of Bundled Megaregional Energy and Mobility Systems

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Conduit Urbanism: Opportune Urban Byproducts of Bundled Megaregional Energy and Mobility Systems 364 Re.Building Conduit Urbanism: Opportune Urban Byproducts of Bundled Megaregional Energy and Mobility Systems KATHY VELIKOV University of Michigan GEOFFREY THÜN University of Michigan It is by now doubtless that the question of infra- mize the logics and logistics of transit and transport structure will dominate the concerns of architects, throughout the continent. The development of this landscape architects, urbanists and planners for integrated infrastructural network is far from acci- the foreseeable future. Not only is the current dental. Although separate interstate highways had stock of traditional infrastructure (roads, bridges, been constructed as early as the Lincoln Highway waste, water, power) in a state of physical decay in 1913, it was Eisenhower’s Federal Aid Highway and/or inadequate to meet the needs of contem- Act of 1956 that promoted the interstate highways porary urbanization and of social and ecological ur- as an integrated and complete network in order to gencies, but it is also becoming increasingly clear realize their maximum systemic potential.2 (Fig- that infrastructure itself is operating not merely as ure 1, left) The 1956 Act provided not only funding an organizational apparatus but is becoming a pri- for highway construction, but also gave a limit of mary locus of contemporary public life and social twenty years for each individual state to build out space for a large portion of the North American the network, so that mobility could operate coher- population.1 With mobility and energy infrastruc- ently and continuously throughout every part of tural transformations already underway, and with the nation. Over fifty years later, rapidly evolving its manufacturing base and population currently urbanization and energy needs demand a similarly shifting and growing, the Great Lakes Megaregion totalized approach that realizes a synthetic net- might capitalize on the intersections of necessary working of mobilities, energies and economies. infrastructural retooling and expansion by develop- ing an ambitious and robust regional vision that re- While the latter half of the twentieth century has conceives the entire network within an integrated witnessed the establishment of a fine- grained mo- physical, ecological and societal perspective. bility network (Figure 1, right) and the production of a low density urbanism, the production of a low NETWORK density urbanism, the twenty-first century will be defined by the consolidation of supersized, multi- The highway has arguably been the single most centered, networked urbanities, as the interconnec- instrumental factor in structuring settlement pat- tion and densification of proximate urban centers terns and economic development in North America create the emerging megaregions of North Ameri- during the second half of the twentieth century. An ca. This urban formation, first identified by French astonishingly efficient and strategically engineered geographer Jean Gottman’s 1961 “Megalopolis”3, is system comprised simply of permutations of near now more commonly referred to as “Megaregion” horizontal asphalt surfaces, it is configured to opti- and has become the focus of several prominent land CONDUIT URBANISM 365 Figure1: (left) Ribbon-cutting ceremony at the first section of I-94 completed in Wisconsin, September 4, 1958 [Courtesy Wisconsin Historical Society Archives]; (right) Truck Based Freight Flow into the Great Lakes Megaregion (freight density in tons), with US Megaregional Footprints [US Dept. Transportation]. use and planning agencies4. Megaregions can be tics of megaregional agglomeration economies5 defined as agglomerated networks of metropolitan as identified by globalization sociologist Saskia areas with integrated labor markets, infrastructure, Sassen. Through such a lens, the megaregion be- and land use systems that share and organize com- comes a primary socio-political unit, overshadow- plex and interdependent transportation networks, ing the agency of individual state, provincial and economies, ecologies, and cultures. even national boundaries and structures. Sassen’s position on the social possibilities of megaregions The geography of megaregions inevitably coincides is particularly interesting to note here. She sees with areas of maximal stress and congestion; popula- the polycentric regional urbanity as a potentially tion concentration and increased mobility and freight positive and powerful enabler for diverse popula- movement within current infrastructures, threaten tions and economies than that of the “global city”.6 immanent systemic failure. This geographic situation The megaregion spans and connects a more di- is conflated with the demise of plentiful and cheaply verse range of economic and social milieus: mid- accessible carbon-based fuels and a time where en- sized cities, middle class neighborhoods, service ergy is projected to transform from single-sourced enclaves and exurban enterprise zones have the fuel to a blended matrix of inputs from a variety of opportunity to share and have access to infrastruc- sources, including solar, wind, nuclear, carbon, geo- tural improvements, thereby allowing for the possi- thermal, hydrological and biomass. Parallel to the bility of more dynamic relations and more equitable current crisis of carbon-based fuel supply, planners, opportunities for various populations. politicians, engineers and industrial leaders foresee a future of increasing, as opposed to decreasing, de- FIELDS mands for mobility combined with an unprecedented intensity of projected urbanization. The largest and most populous of the emerging North American megaregions is the Great Lakes Such a vision could opportunistically combine the Megaregion (GLM) which includes the cities of Chi- agendas of regional mobility and renewable ener- cago, Detroit, Toledo, Toronto, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, gies with potential new urbanities centered around and Cincinnati and in some cases extends to the the existing highway infrastructure, and connect Atlantic port of Montreal, the and the Midwest cit- existing urban centers and other modes of trans- ies of Milwaukee, Columbus, Indianapolis and St. port such as air, water and rail with critical resource Louis.7 However, its geographic, ecological, and supply. This infrastructural network could harness resource-related territory should also tactically ex- strategically differentiated economic clusters, re- pand this boundary to include the watershed of the inforcing and supporting the diverse spatial logis- five Great Lakes. As a regional territory it controls 366 Re.Building Figure 2: (top left) GLM PowerShed: Interlaced Electrical Interdependencies (Chicago | Detroit | Toronto) 2009 [NREL / OPG Data]; (top right) GLM Highway Freight Volumes [US Dept. Transportation / Ontario Ministry of Transportation]; (bottom left) GLM Commodity-Shed: Interlaced Economic Interdependencies (Chicago | Columbus | Detroit) [US Dept. Transportation]; (bottom right) YYZ-DTW-ORD City: Time-Space Compression at 300km/hr (Toronto-Detroit-Chicago) one fifth of the world’s supply of fresh water and Southern Ontario’s Highway 401 holds the dubious 10,900 miles of shoreline, constitutes the world’s honor of being North America’s busiest highway largest concentration of research universities and (Figure 2, top right). The section of the 401 that is home to 30% of North America’s and 11% of the cuts through Toronto has been expanded to eigh- world’s Forbes’ 2000 international company head- teen lanes, and typically carries 420,000 commuter quarters8. Daily, over $900 million worth of goods, and commercial vehicles a day9. Being the primary or 25% of bilateral trade, crosses the Ontario-US conduit for both commuters and freight that runs border via the highway system within the GLM. between Montral and Windsor/Detroit, this artery is overloaded to the point of near terminal gridlock, Visualization of the region’s current Power-shed and this condition will continue to be exacerbated by (Figure 2, top left), Highway Freight Volumes (Figure the provincial government’s aggressive 2005 growth 2, top right), and Commodity-shed (Figure 2, bot- plan, which projects that Southern Ontario’s popula- tom right) geographies further reinforces the neces- tion will grow by 30 percent, or four million people, sity of conceiving of a synthetic, regionally-scaled in the next twenty-five years, primarily through im- interdependent infrastructure of resource develop- migration10. The plan proposes to concentrate den- ment, distribution, and projection. These mappings sification in certain urban and exurban centers, the serve to illuminate a spatial matrix that anticipates majority of which are located along the Highway 401 the emergence of a synthetically networked hybrid corridor, which the report identifies as the major eco- infrastructure to support and propagate emerging nomic driver for the region. On the US side of the urbanisms. However, the geographic data also illus- border, while rust belt cities and former manufactur- trates the infrastructural crisis facing the region. ing centers are still experiencing depopulation, there CONDUIT URBANISM 367 Figure 3: (left) GLM Renewable Energy Resource Geography: Wind, Solar, Hydroeletric and Biomass Source Potentials [2008 NREL / OPG Data]; (right) Conduit Urbanism: Interconnected renewable energy datafield, regional economic concentrations and intensified mobility lines [NREL / Brookings Data] remains a population rise projection of 17%, or nine assessments of environmental impacts,
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