Urban Neighbourhood

Roof Clothed in Green

Vancouver’s 6 Acre Living Roof – Growing Cities Series from Dave Budge on Vimeo.

The roof of the Vancouver BC Convention Centre is covered with over 2.5 hectares (6 acres) of native grassland. Usually closed to the public, here is a tour and interview with the landscape architect of the project, Bruce Hemstock.

Construction began in November 2004 on the Vancouver Convention Centre Expansion Project (VCCEP), a 340,849 ft² (31,665 m²) expansion. The new structure was built on the waterfront beside Canada Place, with 60% on land and 40% over the water. The architect for the expansion was DA/MCM + LMN Architects.

The building, now known as the West Building, opened to the public on April 4, 2009. It effectively tripled the capacity of the convention centre. The West Building features a “living roof” featuring native plants, and an apiary. The building will host the international media and broadcast centre in the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics. Connecting to the new centre will be The Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel. Wiki

Built over land and water, with floor-to-ceiling glass throughout that treats guests to phenomenal harbour and mountain views, the new West Building is a masterpiece of design, inspiration and sustainability. The building makes a commitment to green technology that can be found in every corner: the “living roof,” seawater heating and cooling, on-site water treatment and even a fish habitat built into the foundation.

More From the Vancouver Convention Centre

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Summer Lunch

A neighbourhood squirrel came over to take a drink from my smoothie when I wasn’t looking.

Trouble in Paradise: Zoo Installations and the State of the World

Zoo’s are rarely controversial places, pack a lunch, take the kids to see some animals having fun relaxing in their pens, nice and relaxing. However at Schönbrunn Zoo in Vienna it’s not quite so simple and idyllic. The zoo has been host to an art installation that paints the animal’s faux habitats in a more realistic, or unrealistic light depending on your point of view. The artistic duo of Steinbrener and Dempf have done a series of installations that don’t idealize the environment, and bring those environments into the zoo. Its hard to go many place and not see the impact that we are making on the planet and so the artists have created a number of ecological nightmare scenes in the animal habitats;

“this allows for a confrontation of nature vs. civilization and initiates a shift of context: The source materials – in this case: the original venues – are bared of their primary function, and open up for new connotations. Such a distortion of realities corresponds to the intention to explore issues of wildlife presentation on the basis of non-scientific and subjective methods. Thus, new perspectives arise, which can also be considered as a breach of taboo.”

“the viewer is forced to reconsider traditional modes of animal presentation and simultaneously to question the authenticity of concepts which are re-staging ‘natural’ environments while they are increasingly endangered. Present-day conceptions of zoological gardens aim at the presentation of animals in an idyllic and apparently natural environment, untouched by civilization. But this is a contemporary conception, since courtly menageries and kennels were adapted to the exposure of animals as decorative objects. Until the early years of the 20th century, animals were part of a preferably spectacular and exotic staging, to the entertainment and amazement of the public. The artificial and the sensational were foregrounded, without creating a realistic setting of the natural environment of the animals.”

So in order to shake zoo patrons out of their comfort zone the artists have penguins swimming under an oil pump, alligators float beside a bathtub and a monster truck tire, and rhinos get their water from beside a half submerged car.

It would be interesting to know what the animals think of the difference in zoo habitat, better, or worse?

http://www.steinbrener-dempf.com/

Metro Dogs: Commuting Canines

The Sun UK reports that there is a new breed of commuter riding the subway, well a couple different breeds. There is a set of stray dogs that have taken up the modern dream of a job in the city with a home in the suburbs. Experts studying the phenomenon have found that the dogs have learnt to judge the amount of time they need to be on the trains to make sure that they get off at the correct stop.

Its believed that the dogs started commuting in the late 1990s after the fall of the soviet union and industrial complexes left the centre of town and moved out to the suburbs. Back in the Soviet era dogs were barred from the system, but with the fall of of the union and as time goes on, they have become a fairly common sight.  They even have their own website;  www.metrodog.ru.

The commuting dogs  are studied by Dr Andrei Poiarkov, of the Moscow Ecology and Evolution Institute. The dogs most often choose the least crowded cars at the front and back of the train. Along with learning how to use the subway, the dogs have also learnt how to use traffic lights, and have also learnt how to come up with the most appropriate tricks for getting food out of their fellow commuters. When its adults eating shawarma, they walk of behind them and bark, hoping to surprise the food out of their hands, and dogs have always known that kids are a sucker for a cute face.

A group of Zoologists are studying Moscow’s stray dog population and how they are adjusting to life in a rapidly growing and changing city. Alexei Vereshchagin is one of those scientists and has been studying them since his original funding for wolf research fell apart when the soviet union did.

“The behavior of stray dogs is like theater” Alexei Vereshchagin

The dogs had a problem because they use the industrial complexes as shelters, but the best place to find food is in the middle of town. So the dogs learnt how to use the subway system to get the best of both worlds. Strays have also learnt other things like using pedestrian crossings to avoid being hit by cars, and wait for green lights or pedestrian walking signals, since most dogs are colour blind.

Its possible that the dogs learnt to use the subways by going down there for food, on of the chief tactics that they use to get food is to just lay down in busy subway passages and simply wait for someone to throw them a bone as it were. The dogs also appear to go out of their way to refrain from upsetting the paying metro riders, it is surprisingly rare to find dog poop in the metro considering the number of strays using the system.

One of the more interesting things that Vereshchagin has noticed is that the dogs in Moscow don’t have a lean and hungry look. Apparently the fall of the soviet union has resulted in the dogs being better fed.

The Sun UK

The Wall Street Journal

Urban Wildlife, your other neighbours

Sometimes its easy to forget that we are not alone in our cities. Most of the time when we think of the urban jungle we don’t consider the animals that live around us. Every so often I am reminded that it isn’t just us people living here. Stories of Falcons nesting on sky scrapers, the deer that are sometimes spotted in a park in the center of town, or something as simple as spotting a woodchuck in the neighbours yard through the slats of the fence.

This was the case the other day as I was sitting in my garden after a round of planting and watering, I heard a rustle on the other side of the fence and expecting to see another one of the cats that my neighbour just leaves food outside for. (Don’t even get me started about that) I turned around to see a woodchuck munching away on the dandelions in the neighbours yard. I love seeing wildlife in the city, I have on occasion risked my olfactory senses to see if I can get close enough to take a picture of the skunks that inhabit our neighbourhood as well. Seeing the wildlife we share the city with it reminds me of why I try to be green and especially why I don’t litter. The city isn’t just our environment its their’s too.

From Hinterland Who’s Who

• is sometimes completely black or completely white
• is one of Canada’s largest true hibernators and the subject of a great deal of medical research
• spends much of its time eating and sunning when not hibernating or caring for young
• is the major hole-digging mammal over much of eastern North America, and in some places in the west, providing all sorts of animals with shelter

The woodchuck Marmota monax—sometimes called groundhog—is a rodent and belongs to the large group of mammals Rodentia, which includes squirrels, prairie dogs, and chipmunks.

Within this large group the woodchuck is considered one of the marmots.

Among North American rodents, only beavers and porcupines are larger than the marmots. Woodchucks are stocky little animals with a flattened head. They commonly weigh 2 to 4 kg, and large ones may be heavier in the autumn. They measure 40 to 65 cm total length, including a short bushy tail about 15 cm long. Fur colour varies from place to place and between individual animals. It ranges from yellowish to dark reddish brown, with an intermediate brown colour being the most common shade. The fur is usually grizzled in appearance because of light-coloured tips on the hairs. The belly fur is commonly straw-coloured and the feet black.

Because woodchucks are burrowing mammals, their feet have sturdy claws and their legs are thick and strong. Their forefeet, the principal ones used for digging, each have four well developed claws, and the hind feet have five. They escape from enemies by diving into burrows, which may account for the fact that their top running speed does not exceed 15 km per hour.

The Street as a Nutcracker

We  urbanites are not the only ones present in the city. There is another urban environment that shares the neighbourhood with us and some of them have figured out how to get us to crack their nuts.

Bats Dying in the Wind (Turbines)

It happens time and time again, we come up with a fantastic new technology that will be the solution to many if not all of our problems only to find out that it brings a problem that we were not aware of before. Such is the case with wind turbines. Turns out they are only environmentally awesome and good for the planet if you hate Bats.

Scientists have discovered that wind farms and wind power generating wind turbines are killing bats. It isn’t the obvious thought of, bats being too stupid and flying into spinning blades… see bats detect the propellers just like they detect anything else using ‘echolocation,’ the bats are not actually flying into the propellers, simply flying too close to them. It turns out that wind-turbine blades create an atmospheric-pressure drop around themselves. This pressure drop is causing the bats to die of internal hemorrhaging due to barotrauma when they  fly into the low pressure zones around the turbines. The bats are unable to see these low pressure pockets, much like we are unable to see a temperature change in the water at the lake.

Image from Gizmodo.com

Turns out that the respiratory systems of bats are more like other mammals, being balloon like with two directional airflow and a pair of thing flexible sacs surrounded by capillaries. When the pressure drops suddenly the sacs (lungs) over expand and often times burst. Bird lungs are much more rigid and therefore able to handle pressure changes much more easily.

The implications are a little frightening when you think about it… as wind power expands in popularity so too could the miquito population, more and more of them don’t get eaten by bats. There are a whole bunch of reasons we don’t want that not least of all the irritation factor and the spread of blood borne pathogens.

Scientists say that there is no obvious way to reduce the pressure drop at wind turbines without reducing their use and effectiveness.

Sustainability -1, Bats -1.

via Why Wind Turbines Can Mean Death For Bats

Also Why Are Wind Turbines Killing Alberta’s Bats

Bobcats, not your usual neighbors

Just don't accept an invitation to dinner

“They are great neighbors, and as long as they don’t want to baby-sit my kids, it’s not a problem.” s

In Lake Elsinore a family of bobcats took up residence in the back yard of a foreclosed house for a week or so. It seems that the felines decided to move themselves into the back yard of the house perhaps using it to keep an eye on their own offspring much like the other parents in the neighbourhood were doing upon learning of their arrival. Some neighbours are nervous, some are pretty happy with the sudden reduction of the rabbit population, but most didn’t feel too threatened by the cats who for the most part just lounged around on the top of a wall while people snapped photos of them. Though it appears that there is only this one photo lying around the Internet at the moment. If anyone from the neighbourhood reads this and would like to send us some more we would be eternally grateful.

While it is just as easy to come home and find a bobcat in your yard when you still live in your house, the residence of these cats in a foreclosed suburban home can make you think about just how quickly the animal kingdom would be willing to move in if we pesky humans aren’t around.

Seen In the City Photo Series

Mr Groundhog

* As another ongoing series we are launching the Seen In The City Photo Series here at Urban Neighbourhood. To keep it simple we will just be posting the photo with a caption. Enjoy!