Space-based solar energy - clean energy, Space-based solar | TerraPass: Fight global warming, reduce your carbon footprint

Finally, a decade later, I read that Japan and California are independently investigating Space Solar Power Systems (SSPS). These make sense, especially if remaining humanity will be concentrated in the arctic eventually. Here's what I originally proposed back in 1999: http://paulsuckow.tripod.com/mydream/id12.html

Insights and Quotes from Andres Duany 

from speech to the Houston MFA on 6/26/2007

• Bureaucracy can only slow down what a city does not want.  It can do nothing to speed what it wants for this is a function of liquid capital.
• The traditional neighborhood is preferred for daily life across time and cultures.
• New Urbanism seeks to level the playing field and let the market decide.

• Houston as a freeway city is profoundly unfair to the ~50% of residents who are too young, too poor or too old to drive.  Vehicle ownership sucks $9,000 per year [(AAA 3/26/2007 quotes $0.52 per mile for new vehicles)] away from alternative opportunities.
• The US, and especially Houston, TX are so privileged that it could afford both horizontal and vertical infrastructure.  Now as America becomes relatively poorer, horizontal infrastructure rules out the vertical.
• Additional horizontal infrastructure (streets, pipes, wires, low density buildings) is fruitless for the improvement of quality of life.  A premier road-building planner of the past century, Robert Moses, found out that the more road capacity he installed, the greater the traffic that filled it in a self-reinforcing cycle named the Induced Traffic principle.

• Quality of life is not the same thing as standard of living.
• A definition of quality of life:  The amount of uncommitted time and money people enjoy to interact with chosen others.

• "Houston is a city unassembled."
• A plan is like a template.  You must push something through it.  Houston has the material to push through, but has not yet formed the template.
• Houston may have one generation of economic energy left.  We should make a plan and do something lasting with that energy.

• Europe is the only region of the world that is designing the intelligent cities that will win the 21^st century.
• China is unfortunately following in the footsteps of the USA.  "Horrible US consultants are producing horrid development."
• The USA is finding that suburban sprawl is extremely hard to retrofit for improved quality of life, because suburban development is a discreet, concrete, interlocking and self-reinforcing system.
• Every city, including Houston, is competing with every other in the world.  It takes strenuous thought, coordinated planning and hard work to compete effectively.
• Remember the scope of city-building:  Architecture looks to five-year increments, urban planning uses a 25-year horizon, and the urban built environment generally remains a minimum of fifty years.  Why not do it right?

• Houston is defaulting to private government at the least level.  This inaction creates a low-boil monocultural lifestyle segregated by neighborhood association.
• The car has allowed people to sort to an extremely fine grain, for segregation is the natural condition.
• "We need an administration of the greatest diversity instead of the least cost."

• Slim (1 page), specific, outcome oriented codes are needed in Houston.
• Houston has little or no barrier of cumbersome preexisting code to overcome.
• "We must code for diversity."  The "transect" offers five levels of density tied to the environment into which they are built, allowing choice and diversity within an overall well-structured environment.
• "It all started with the fake shutter."  We need functional coded in, and fake removed.

• Compact, walkable communities only become expensive when there is a lack of supply for the existing demand.
• A cycle of gentrification always happens over a period of about a decade:
  • Risk Oblivious move into an overlooked area that needs a little work.  The urban pioneers have arrived.
  • Risk Aware move into the coolness under the umbrella of a developer.  The early adopters have arrived.
  • Risk Averse people follow the crowd.  The gentry have arrived.
• From a planning perspective, once through the period of gentrification, a development becomes a regular functioning part of the built environment.
• No city is stable.  It's either getting better or getting worse at all times.

• People build a city.
• We must wake up every morning and ask ourselves, "Well, what am I going to do now?"
• What if this generation woke up in Houston and decided to plan a city for keeps?

in conversation with one of my good Chinese friends in Chongqing:

[1:15:22 PM] Paul Martin Suckow says: oh, you must not feel well at all my dear

[1:15:18 PM] rose says: no I dont feel well at all tonight

[1:15:22 PM] Paul Martin Suckow says: shall i tell you a story to keep you occupied?

[1:17:12 PM] rose says: yes 

[1:17:24 PM] Paul Martin Suckow says: well, then, here is the story of The 3 Gorges Gruff.

[1:17:38 PM] rose says: good

[1:18:23 PM] Paul Martin Suckow says: 

ONCE upon a time there were three gorges that were to eat up the hillside to make themselves fat, and the name of all three was "Gruff."

Eating their way toward the hill, they came upon a bridge over the cascading Yangtze River they had to pass under; and on that bridge lived a great ugly troll, with eyes as big as saucers, and a nose as long as a billiard cue.

So first of all came the youngest Gorge Gruff to cross under the bridge.  His name was Three Gorge Gruff.

"Claw, scratch, snatch, scratch" went the young gorge, on its way below the bridge.

"Who's that ripping out the dirt under my bridge?" roared the troll.

"Oh, it is only I, the tiniest Gorge Gruff, and I'm going up the hillside beyond to make myself fat," gurgled the gorge, in such tiny voice.

"Mind you now, I'M coming to gobble YOU up," bellowed the troll.

"Oh, no! please don't take me. I'm too little, that I am," said the growing gorge. "Wait a bit till the second Gorge Gruff comes. He's much bigger and tastier too."

"Well, be off with you," said the troll.

A little while after came the second Gorge Gruff to pass under the bridge.

"Scratch, glubber, chop, glurb, snatch, glop!" went the next gorge.  His name was Two Gorge Gruff.

"Who's that ripping out the trees under my bridge?" roared the troll.

"Oh, it's the second Gorge Gruff, and I'm going up yonder hillside to make myself fat," said the gorge, who hadn't such a small voice.

"So now I'm coming to gobble YOU up," said the troll.

"Oh, no! Don't take me. Wait a little till the big Gorge Gruff comes. He's much bigger and he's so much better for you."

"Very well! Be off with you," relented the troll.  And the second gorge began happily to rip up the hill beyond, near the youngest Gorge Gruff.

But just then down the stream rushed big One Gorge Gruff.

"Crash! Claw! Crash! Dash! Crash! Claw! Crash!" went the gorge, for he was already so big that the bridge creaked and groaned above him.  Its foundations strained.

"Who's that tramping down everything in its way under my bridge?" wondered the troll.

Well, come along, gestured the fearsome Troll!

And he warned, "I've got two great spears,

And I'll rip your eyeballs out through your ears;

And I've got two great stones,

With which I'll crush you to bits, body and bones."

"Well, here I come," said the biggest Gorge Gruff. 

"I've two fast streams beside my main,

I'll rip YOUR eyes out, and yes you'll feel pain;

And I've got MILLIONS of small smooth stones,

With which I'll crush YOU to bits, body and bones."

That was how the big gorge answered the Troll.

And then up he flew straight at the troll, and poked his eyes out with his streams, and with mounds of river rock crushed him to bits, body and bones, tossing his remains into the cascade, and after that big One Gorge Gruff went tearing up the hillside after his brothers.

There the three gorges got so fat they were not able to meander home again. And even if their walls have collapsed from time to time, why, that means they're fatter still; and so,

Today they sit all three filling with water, powering all China because of their large size.  There they'll live joyfully with the people forever, The 3 Gorges Gruff.

Dam, snip, snap, snout.

This tale's told out.

* * * * *

The Three Gorges, modified by Paul Suckow, from the Three Billygoats Gruff by Asbjornsen and Moe

Asbjornsen, Peter Christen and Moe, Jorgen. East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon. George Webbe Dasent, translator. Popular Tales from the Norse. Edinburgh: David Douglass, 1888.