Regional and Urban Design Committee

This message has been cross posted to the following Discussion Forums: Committee on the Environment and Regional and Urban Design Committee .
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As climate change mitigation and resiliency are growing topics within our profession, see ULI Boston's proposal for how to deal with the rise of sea level around the Greater Boston area.

Are these the right steps? What should other communities be doing?

http://boston.uli.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2012/04/ULI_LivingWithWater-Final1.pdf

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Drew Deering AIA
AIA National RUDC C-Chair
Chicago IL
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Here is what I wrote to The Boston Globe under the title Puny solutions won't beat back surge of floodwaters:

 

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2014/10/03/puny-solutions-won-beat-back-surge-floodwaters/R3hDScZVM1tQ4PxrRCBDlJ/story.html

I had participated in the ULI charter, and had repeatedly raised the point that focusing on 4 small portions of the region's endangered area needed to consider a Netherlands-like approach to dealing with the problem of flooding, i.e. a regional approach. At that scale, the much larger forces of nature begin to appear manageable by our puny human efforts because we can bring our ingenuity to the task of designing solutions for the problem at hand. 

 

I'm actively engaged in pondering how to organize and fund a 2- or 3-day charrette akin to the Fort Devens Charrette held by the BSA a couple of decades ago, where multi-disciplinary collaboration resulted in a series of very interesting options for the abandoned military base. Such a charrette would yield much food for thought!

Anybody interested in helping organize such an AIA-sponsored charrette? 


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Peter Papesch AIA
Papesch Associates
Boston MA
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