Infrastructure Ecology a B Have Vast Repercussions in the Mechanics of Their Operation
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CONDUIT URBANISM: RETOOlING REGIONAl markets, infrastructure, and land use systems that share ECOlOGIES OF ENERGY AND MOBIlITY and organize complex and interdependent transportation Geoffrey Thün and kathy Velikov networks, economies, ecologies, and cultures. The largest and most populous of the emerging North It is by now doubtless that the question of infrastructure will American megaregions is the Great lakes Megaregion, which 5 dominate the concerns of architects, landscape architects, includes Chicago, Detroit, Toledo, Toronto, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, There remains no consensus between research agencies urbanists, and planners for the foreseeable future, both as Cincinnati, Montreal, Milwaukee, Columbus, Indianapolis, and as to the definition of the a site of research and analysis and as a field of potential St. louis.5 As a regional territory it controls one-fifth of the boundary of the GlM, as identification parameters intervention. The participation of design i ntelligence within world’s supply of fresh water and 10,900 miles of shoreline, and methods vary from study this area is urgent: not only is the current stock of traditional constitutes the world’s largest concentration of research uni- to study. See for example Delgado, Epstein et al. 2006 infrastructure in a state of physical decay, it is in many cases 1 versities, and is home to 30 percent of North America’s and Methods for Planning the Pierre Belanger, “landscape Great Lakes MegaRegion. inadequate to meet the needs of contemporary urbaniza- as Infrastructure,” Landscape 11 percent of the world’s Forbes’ 2000 international company The authors, and others, have tion and of social and ecological urgencies. The concept of Journal 28:1-09: 79-95. headquarters.6 Daily, over $900 million worth of goods, or pointed to the necessity of including the footprint of the infrastructure is currently undergoing a re-evaluation and 2 25 percent of bilateral trade, crosses the Canada-US border. Great lakes Watershed within shifting from its being understood as an organizational and See for example lars lerup Visualization of the Great lakes Megaregion power- the megaregion boundary, After the City, 2001; Aaron as a means of acknowledging logistical construct in support of urbanization, to recognizing Betsky, “Making ourselves shed (FIG. A), highway freight volumes (Fig. B), commodity- the profound relationship at Home in Sprawl,” in Pst Ex between ecological and it as a constructed ecology in complex interdependency with Sub Dis: Urban Fragmenta- shed (FIG. C), and economic clusters (FIG. E) exposes its hydrological systems and biophysical systems, economies and politics.1 For significant tions and Constructions, 2002; interdependent systems of mobility, energy, and economy. the broader economic and as well as the seminal text by cultural structures that are amounts of the contemporary population, infrastructure Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: Within this area, Southern Ontario’s Highway 401 holds the typically prioritized in defining has become the prevalent form of urbanism itself, serving The Architecture of Four dubious honor of being North America’s busiest highway. the megaregion boundaries. Ecologies, 1971, and kazys A figure that blends the 2 as a primary locus of public life and social space. Varnelis (ed) The Infrastruc- In Toronto, one section expands to eighteen lanes and typi- watershed boundary with tural City, 2009. that identified by the RPA Vast territories shaped by distributed infrastructures cally carries 420,000 commuter and commercial vehicles is utilized in this study. dedicated to the logistics of transport, storage, distribution a day.7 As the primary conduit for both commuters and freight and eventual disposal of goods, the accommodation between Montreal and Windsor/Detroit, this artery is over- of expanding populations and to the provision of energy and services3 have become the prevailing landscape of urbanized 3 areas. This is a highly controlled and organized terrain, Charles Waldheim and Alan Berger, “logistics landscape,” whose dominant spatial types are generated as byproducts Landscape Journal, 27:2-08: of optimization logistics, where, dislodged from traditional 219–256. discourses of meaning and signification, architecture, and 4 space become one of many techniques of organization and The Megaregion, first identified by French geographer Jean instrumentality. Yet this situation has the potential to empow- Gottman’s 1961 Megalopolis, is now more commonly er architecture and design in new ways. Due to the inter- referred to as “Megaregion” connected nature of infrastructure ecologies, small-scaled and has become the focus C of several prominent land use adjustments in technology, new performative or typological and planning agencies. See constructs, or a reorganization of constituent elements may also Constantinos Apostolos Doxiadis’ 1968 The Emerging Infrastructure Ecology A B have vast repercussions in the mechanics of their operation. Great Lakes Megalopolis, as well as the regional plan- 6 Architecture’s agency lies first in being able to recognize ning visions of lewis Mumford, loaded to the point of near terminal gridlock. This condition Statistics sources: “Canadian the system and its agents, and second, in finding effective Clarence Stein, and Benton will be exacerbated by the provincial growth plan, which Census Data “(2006) courtesy Mackaye. Institutes currently StatsCan, U.S. Department means of implementation and intervention within this matrix. studying and publishing litera- projects that Southern Ontario’s population will grow by of Transportation, Research ture on Megaregions include: and Innovative Technology The highway system has arguably been the most 30 percent, or four million people, by 2030, primarily along The Brookings Institute, Administration, Bureau 8 instrumental factor in structuring settlement patterns and the lincoln Institute, the the Highway 401 corridor. On the US side of the border, while of Transportation Statistics; Regional Plan Association, “Trans-border Freight” (October economic development in North America. While the late the Metropolitan Institute rust belt cities and former manufacturing centers are still 2008), The Bureau of Economic at Virginia Tech, researchers Analysis, US Department of twentieth century witnessed the establishment of a fine- experiencing depopulation, there remains a population rise Commerce; “Regional Economic at the Taubman College 9 grained mobility network and the production of a low-density Urban and Regional Planning projection of 17 percent, or nine million people, by 2050. Accounts” (Sept 2008), Austin, Affolter Caine, Milway; “The urbanism, the twenty-first century will be defined by the Program at the University This situation is conflated with the demise of cheap of Michigan, as well as the Great lakes, A World leading consolidation of supersized, multicentered, networked urbani- Martin Prosperity Institute and plentiful carbon-based fuels and the projected transfor- Bi-national Economic Region” at University of Toronto’s (Mar 2007) as published by ties, as the interconnection and densification of proximate Joseph l. Rotman School of mation of energy from single-sourced fuel to a blended the Brookings Institute and the Management. CIA World Fact Book https:// urban centers create the emerging megaregions of North www.cia.gov/library/publications/ America. These urban formations4 can be defined as agglom- A GlM PowerShed. Chicago-Detroit-Toronto Electrical Interdependencies, 2009 the-worldfactbook/ (retrieved B GlM Freight Based Volumes and Trans-border Flows Feb 20, 2009). erated networks of metropolitan areas with integrated labor C GlM CommodityShed. Chicago-Columbus-Detroit Economic Interdependencies 24 Geoffrey Thün and kathy Velikov 25 Conduit Urbanism: Retooling Regional Ecologies Of Energy And Mobility matrix of inputs and sources – including solar, wind, nuclear, 7 See Ontario Ministry of Trans- carbon, geothermal, hydrological, and biomass. Parallel portation, “Goods Movement to the current crisis of carbon-based fuel supplies, planners, in Ontario: Trends and Issues,” Technical Report (Dec 2004). politicians, engineers, and industrial leaders foresee a future 8 of increasing demand for mobility – especially inter-regional Ontario Ministry of Infra- mobility – combined with the unprecedented intensity of structure Renewal, “Places to Grow: Growth Plan for the projected urbanization and a decaying transport and energy Greater Golden Horseshoe” infrastructure. (2006): 7. The American Association of State Highway The Great lakes Megaregion territorializes significant and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) 2007 report. amounts of renewable energy resources (FIG. D, E), with “A New Vision for the 21st approximately 7.2 gigawatts of hydroelectric energy, copious Century,” states that from 2007, “Truck volumes are potential for biomass energy production, and 1.5 – 2 kilowatt expected to double by 2035, hours per square meter of solar energy potential daily.10 How- and rail freight to increase by over 60 percent”: 57 ever, the region’s greatest possible powershed contribution (www.transportation.org; lies in 320 gigawatts of potential power that can be generated retrieved March 17 2008) annually from offshore wind farms, which, if fully exploited, 9 America 2050: http://www. could provide 25 percent of the power needs of the United america2050.org/great_lakes. States.11 However, these power sources require new territorial html infrastructures for transmission and