Going green with infrastructure: Sharon MacKay at TEDxAdelaide
The speaker argues that current methods of measuring city success, such as GDP, fail to capture complex elements like wellbeing and ecological health. To address this, they propose reframing city planning through three lenses: green infrastructure, prioritizing biodiversity corridors, and measuring the urban heat island effect. Ultimately, they advocate for shifting focus to measuring human input and deeply valued resources over purely economic metrics.
## Speakers & Context
- Speaker has experience working on projects in:
- Vancouver (private practice, home residential).
- Remote villages for Flying Flyer Minds in Far North Queensland.
- The first giant panda exhibit in the southern hemisphere.
- Shifted from private practice to the public sector approximately **18 months ago**.
- Initially struggled with government language and processes, feeling like being in a *"metaphorical fetal position."*
- Became aware that in government, *"what gets measured matters."*
## Theses & Positions
- Current city measurement methods (e.g., GDP, simple demographics) are inadequate because complex issues are reduced to hitting single, tangible targets.
- A more holistic approach is needed to measure city success, moving beyond economic indicators.
- The speaker proposes using three specific lenses to rethink city development: green infrastructure, ecological biodiversity corridors, and urban heat island mitigation.
- A city's true vibrancy and livability must be measured by its capacity to sustain its inhabitants and environment, rather than just economic throughput.
- The goal should be to quantify human input and core values, leading to tangible improvements in daily life.
## Concepts & Definitions
- **Livable City:** A metric used by the Economic Intelligence Unit; for Adelaide, it rated the city as the **fifth most livable city in the world**.
- **Happy Planet Index:** A global index rating tool for cities that considers ecological footprint alongside other measures.
- **Ladder of Life:** A tool where people rate their own feelings of happiness at any given time.
- **Green City Index:** One of several ranking tools available for cities.
- **Green Infrastructure:** A proposed lens for considering sustainable solutions for cities, linking natural systems to urban planning.
- **Urban Heat Island Effect:** A measurable temperature differential in cities due to built environments, becoming a critical indicator for city resilience.
## Mechanisms & Processes
- **Activity/Work Cycle:** The speaker describes the transition from private practice to the public sector, involving learning the bureaucratic language and understanding performance measurement.
- **Biodiversity Corridor Creation:** Establishing continuous ecological routes that are not intersected by major roadways.
- **Water Management Rethink:** Considering how to treat water before it reaches a river, potentially using subsurface water seepage to improve source quality.
- **Urban Heat Adaptation:** Proposing that buildings could transform differently throughout the day to adapt to the urban heat island effect.
- **Behavior Change Modeling:** Utilizing visible metrics (like lighting up smokestacks) to encourage collective shifts in energy usage.
## Timeline & Sequence
- **25 years ago:** Situation in the city was significantly different compared to today's perceived vibrancy.
- **Recently:** Vancouver implemented changes like changes to small bowel licenses and increased nightclubs, leading to a shift in character.
- **Last year:** The speaker's sister-in-law's location, Darker, ranked **140th** globally in livability, contrasting Adelaide's high ranking.
- **Today:** The speaker outlines three specific compositions/proposals for Adelaide focusing on the present and near-future.
## Named Entities
- **Adelaide, Australia:** Chosen focus city, currently growing the speaker's family; recently ranked the **fifth most livable city in the world**.
- **Darker, Bangladesh:** Comparison city where the speaker's sister-in-law is raising her family; ranked **140th** globally in livability.
- **Vancouver:** Previous place of residence; highly ranked in the Green Cities Index but subject to rapid changes.
- **Phuket:** Location where the speaker encountered the individual who suggested rating cities via social media.
- **Helsinki:** City where the *green cloud project* was performed.
- **Paul:** Mentioned in relation to the river Torrens.
## Numbers & Data
- Adelaide's ranking: **5th most livable city in the world** (by the Economic Intelligence Unit).
- Adelaide's improvement: *More livable than Sydney* and *getting closer to Melbourne*.
- Darker's ranking: **140th** in the global livability metric.
- World river water treatment consideration: Utilizing water seepage from **suburban areas**.
- Heat change in Adelaide: **3 to 6 percent degree change** during the day.
- Hopkins/Flinders University study: Measuring heat distribution using **frogs** placed across the city.
- Adelaide population projection: **20 million people in Australia** over the coming years.
## Examples & Cases
- **The Panda Exhibit:** The speaker's favorite work was on the first giant panda exhibit in the southern hemisphere.
- **Vancouver Green Space:** The Olympic Village was designed to create space for biodiversity, placing biodiversity at the forefront of the site.
- **Highline (NYC):** Example of using older infrastructure (like a railway line) as a biodiversity corridor.
- **Green Cloud Project:** French artists in Helsinki lit up their smokestack proportional to the collective energy use, resulting in behavior change.
- **Biodiversity Threat Example:** The speaker noted that the platypus thrives in "brown muddy water," contrasting the assumption that clean water is always ideal.
## Tools, Tech & Products
- **Economic Intelligence Unit Livability Metric:** Global ranking tool for cities.
- **Happy Planet Index:** Global index tool for cities.
- **Green City Index:** Ranking tool for cities.
- **Quality of Life Survey by Monocle:** Tool called by the speaker the *"hipster amazing tool."*
- **Human Development Report (HDR):** Government tool used to allocate major funding and aid projects.
- **Social Media Network Analysis:** A proposed mechanism to rate cities based on online conversation and personal sentiment.
## References Cited
- **Economic Intelligence Unit:** Source of the Adelaide livability ranking.
- **Harvard University:** Associated with the *Happy Planet Index*.
- **Hassle:** Group that conducted work in Vancouver ranking parklands importance relative to roads.
- **Flinders University:** Partnering in the study measuring heat impact using frogs.
- **Andy:** Mentioned as a national group doing work on holistic city wellbeing measurement.
## Trade-offs & Alternatives
- **Measuring Infrastructure:** Traditional metrics favor designing for cars, leading to success in infrastructure but potentially neglecting ecology.
- **River Aesthetics:** The expectation of *"crystal blue water"* might conflict with ecological reality, as some species, like the platypus, prefer *"brown muddy water."*
- **Energy Visibility:** The trade-off between invisible energy use (which drives climate change) and making it visible to induce behavioral change.
- **Built vs. Natural:** The need to build structures (e.g., hospitals) while simultaneously needing to mitigate climate impacts (heat island, pollution).
## Counterarguments & Caveats
- The simple act of getting people to move to a city is not guaranteed to create a *"more vibrant city"* or the desired outcome.
- Relying on single indices (like livability) oversimplifies complex urban dynamics.
- The *green cloud project* only captured *energy use* at a specific moment, which is not a permanent solution.
## Methodology
- **Comparative Analysis:** Comparing Adelaide's metrics/success to Darker's low ranking and Vancouver's history of rapid change.
- **Lens Application:** Applying three proposed lenses (Green Infrastructure, Biodiversity, Heat) to solve current urban challenges.
- **Indicator Measurement:** Utilizing biological indicators (frogs, platypus habitat) to measure invisible environmental health components.
- **Retrospective Analysis:** Using past successes (like the Olympic Village design) as models for future intervention.
## Conclusions & Recommendations
- The measurement of a city must evolve to capture human wellbeing, biodiversity, and environmental resilience, moving beyond GDP.
- Consider using **green infrastructure** as a primary lens for urban planning.
- Implement specific proposals for Adelaide:
1. Using the platypus as a KPI for river health, treating water *before* it reaches the river.
2. Implementing biodiversity networks that protect corridors (like using high-capacity roads like Highway One as corridors).
3. Making the **urban heat island effect** a visible, measurable indicator, allowing buildings to adapt dynamically.
- The conversation must evolve to focus on *human input* and *valued things* over mere economic output.
## Implications & Consequences
- Failure to change measurement standards means cities risk making decisions based on incomplete data, potentially leading to environmental decay or inability to adapt to climate shifts.
- Successfully integrating biodiversity corridors into large infrastructure projects will revolutionize how we view linear development.
- Making invisible issues, like heat buildup or water pollution, visible can drive fundamental shifts in citizen and governmental behavior.
## Verbatim Moments
- *"What gets measured matters."*
- *"I've chosen Adelaide Australia because this is where I'm growing my family and have chosen to leave and I'm also going to compare it to darker in Bangladesh where my sister-in-law is growing her family."*
- *"The global liveability metric is it considered things like crime rates each quality of education and also infrastructure."*
- *"on that Happy Planet Index which is also a very well-known global index rating tool for cities darker actually comes 11th."*
- *"or the way that we celebrated not surprisingly Australia k100 and second."*
- *"what is the question that you are left with? What is it that you want to know?"* (Implied questioning structure leading to the main point).
- *"maybe using the platypus as a metaphor ironically we discovered during some work that plaintiff was actually don't mind where they spend actually quite like it in your brown muddy water"*
- *"maybe we need to be able to see how urban heat island effect instead of it actually to see invisible"*
- *"What we need to do is think about how we measure how our human input into our cities and the things that we really value and how can we actually measure those values so that we can get more tangible outcomes rather than some things like GDP."*