WANTED: Killer Modeling Tool to Sell Sustainable Urban Villages! Part 3 | Beyond Suburbia | Making Sustainable Real!

By Brian Skeele, on March 16th, 2011

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — New construction of U.S. housing units plunged in February, erasing a sharp gain in January and coming close to an all-time-low level. March 16,2011

Bed ZED is different. We’re not in Suburbia anymore, Todo!

If we want to revitalize the US Economy, we have to do things differently.

If we work with the 1/3 of the Boomers, and 88% of the Millennials that want to move into vibrant, alive, pedestrian friendly walkable neighborhoods, we can resurrect the construction industry and send us on a path to a prosperous, positive future! What is required is using a whole systems approach and designing for an exponentially more efficient way of life…

Up to now, we have been on a monoculture kind of world view, zoning to spatially separate the functions of our lives, using cars to connect us-an “isolating-the-systems-of-our-lives” approach. As these systems within systems get creatively and synergistically re-imagined, opportunities for new products, processes, and jobs will drive economic development. “Wastes” fr0m one component becomes feedstock of another.

This is all a profound process of proposing scenarios and getting feedback from a myriad of view points. Like a giant 3D puzzle.  As costs of living of proposed choices and scenarios are tabulated, renewable energy players and building designers compare individual to community applications, searching for economies of scale that give users the biggest bang for their bucks.  Composting enthusiasts, water recycling mavens, food production farmers, food processers,  open space/season extending planners, landowners, and density transfer policy wonks all collaborate to achieve high quality neighborhoods within a much more socially, economically, and ecologically affordable lifestyle, connected as much as possible with short distances, bicycling, walkable, and transit friendly realities.

All of this complexity is crying out for a Killer Modeling Tool which gives the design participants crucial feedback, so they know when they are making sustainable real!

Image courtesy of Inhabitat.com