Jemeinshu Wuin
OVERVIEW
The Jemeinshu Wuin or “Desert Water Spring” proposition for the indigenous Wayúu communities is a humanitarian project for these denizens of the harsh La Guajira desert in northern-most Colombia. It seeks to improve the quality of life of this highly vulnerable population, strengthening their resilience and adaptation to ongoing desertification of their homeland through intermediate technologies that provide critical infrastructure services, overcome dependency on fossil fuels, and promote their immersion in a model “circular economy” model based on regenerative tourism, conservation of their cultural practices and customs, and development of new micro-enterprises. The plan was prepared during Spring/ Summer 2020 by students, graduates, and faculty of the The Spitzer School of Architecture and the Grove School of Engineering as part of City College of New York’s Sustainability in the Urban Environment Program, City University of New York . The full report can be viewed at:
In Print….
“Resiliency and Regeneration in the Pannonian Region of Hungary: Towards a Circular Economy for Kőszeg and Beyond”
This is an illustrated report of a research and planning initiative completed in Fall 2018. It was funded and jointly coordinated by City University of New York and the Institute of Advanced Studies, Kőszeg. It incorporates the work of seven American (CUNY) students and seven Hungarian students—undergraduate through Ph.D students—who spent the month of June assessing opportunities for this historic town to revitalize its economy and bioregion by attaining a high level of integration across its multiple resources.
https://issuu.com/hillabrown/docs/resiliency_and_regeneration
NEW BOOK:
"Through rich and carefully selected examples, the book convincingly shows how infrastructure can be re-conceived to be more efficient, interconnected, and sustainable. Importantly, it also shows how infrastructure can play a crucial role in building the collective imaginary of future societies."
Hashim Sarkis, Dean, School of Architecture and Planning, MIT
This is a fascinating book which treads the line between academia and practice, bringing invaluable insights to infrastructural ecologies as a fruitful way to view the challenges of development. The authors draw on myriad real examples of best practice and display profound understanding.
Peter Guthrie, Professor of Engineering for Sustainable Development, Cambridge University
"INFRASTRUCTURAL ECOLOGIES: Alternative Development MoDELS for Emerging Economies"
MIT PRESS, Spring 2017
Many developing nations, particularly least developed countries, lack basic critical infrastructural services—affordable energy, clean drinking water, dependable sanitation, effective public transportation, and reliable food systems. Few of these economies can afford and support the complex and resource-intensive systems based on Western, single-sector, industrialized models. In this book, Hillary Brown and Byron Stigge propose an alternate model for planning and designing infrastructural services in the emerging market context. This new model is holistic and integrated, resilient and sustainable, economical and equitable, creating an infrastructural ecology that is more analogous to the functioning of natural ecosystems.
Brown and Stigge identify five strategic infrastructure objectives and illustrate each with examples of successful projects from across the developing world. Each chapter also highlights exemplary preindustrial systems, demonstrating the long history of resilient, sustainable infrastructure. The case studies describe the use of single solutions to solve multiple problems, creating hybridized and reciprocal systems; “soft path” models for water management, including water reuse and nutrient recovery; post-carbon infrastructures for power, heat, and transportation such as rural micro-hydro and solar-powered rickshaws; climate adaptation systems, including a multi-purpose tunnel and a “floating city”; and the need for community-based, equitable, and culturally appropriate projects.
MAY 2014 ISLAND PRESS
book
Next-Generation Infrastructure: Principles for Post-Industrial Public Works
The 2007 bridge collapse in Minneapolis-St. Paul quickly became symbolic of the debilitated interstate highway system—and of what many critics see as America’s disinvestment in its infrastructure. The extreme vulnerability of single-purpose, aging infrastructure was highlighted once again when Hurricane Sandy churned its way across the northeast United States.
How can our complex, interdependent utilities support an urbanizing world, subject to carbon constraints and the impacts of climate change? How might these critical networks be made more efficient, less environmentally damaging, and more resilient? Such questions are at the heart of the approaches and initiatives explored in Next Generation Infrastructure. With a better understanding of the possible connections between different services, not only can inadvertent disruptions be reduced, but crosscutting benefits and lower costs will be possible. Next Generation Infrastructure highlights hopeful examples from around the world. Five bold organizing objectives are proposed that, in the hands of decision-makers and designers, will help bring about a future of multipurpose, low-carbon, resilient infrastructure that is tightly coordinated with natural and social systems.
The innovative projects highlighted in Next Generation Infrastructure encourage us to envision infrastructure within a larger economic, environmental, and social context, and to share resources across systems, reducing costs and extending benefits. Through this systems approach to lifeline services, we can begin to move toward a more resilient future.
Available through Island Press http://islandpress.org/ip/books/book/islandpress/N/bo8070749.html or through Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/Next-Generation-Infrastructure-Principles-Post-Industrial/dp/1610911814
Hardback and Paperback: 224 pages Publisher: Island Press (May 15, 2014)
ISBN-10: 1610911814; ISBN-13: 978-1610911818
What they are saying about “Next-Generation Infrastructure”
..."Hillary Brown is a brilliant guide to one of the most important, though mostly overlooked, aspects of a resilient society." David W. Orr, Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics at Oberlin College
“Hillary Brown understands that—for our grandchildren’s sake—we must rebuild America and, in doing so, re-imagine our interconnected infrastructure systems to make them more efficient, environmentally safe and resilient in this age of global urbanization. This fascinating and important book should be required reading for our elected officials and policy-makers.” Felix Rohatyn, Former Chairman, Municipal Assistance Corporation, Former Ambassador to France
