Chicago-based UrbanLabs won a History Channel national contest yesterday to design a 22nd century city. The small design firm came up with a compelling design called "Growing Water" to convert the whole city of Chicago into a living system that replenishes Lake Michigan with treated wastewater.
UrbanLabs beat out teams from New York and Los Angeles to win the competition, which was judged by famed architect Daniel Libeskind, in addition to public voting through the web.
While using living systems for water treatment is not new (Vermont professor John Todd is generally recognized as the innovator of this low-tech low-impact approach), UrbanLabs has scaled up the concept to meet the needs of an entire city's watershed.
At the heart of living systems are invertebrates, fish and plants that process the impurities out of wastewater without toxic chemicals. Combined with natural oxygenation, the process makes dirty water clean enough to be reused for most needs. Seattle's High Point neighborhood completed in 2005 an award-winning stormwater treatment system that was inspired by living system design.
Besides envisioning an attractive plan for replenishing Lake Michigan's water with the the one billion gallons that Chicago now uses each day and mostly diverts to the Mississippi, Urban Labs also integrated attractive transportation, recreational and residential elements into the design.
Kudos to UrbanLabs for coming up with a plausible solution to what will be some of this century's most vexing urban challenges: have enough clean water to use while protecting natural water resources.
I'm a Chicago guy transplanted to DC. Interesting article. I work for ACORE (American Council on Renewable Energy) and we have a RE trade show coming up in a few weeks in Las Vegas. For any young professionals interested in a career in this field we have a package deal to attend. It's called Power-GEN Renewable Energy & Fuels (PGRE&F) It's March 6-8.
Here’s the link: http://www.acore.org/pgreypre.php
Posted by: Bill | February 14, 2007 at 12:10 PM
Hi Bill. Funny you bring it up, because we'll be attending. See you there!
Cheers,
Ken.
Posted by: Ken Ott | February 15, 2007 at 01:39 PM
That's really interesting...I can't wait to see someone working on a project to make my hometown of Houston in any way sustainable, or at least less of a concrete nightmare...I heard that Houston gives off more pollution/heat than any other US city...don't know if it's true but it still makes me sad to hear.
~Laura
http://www.smellslikegreenspirit.com
Posted by: Laura Callier | August 17, 2007 at 08:01 PM