Following the 2008 "Re-imaging Cities: Urban Design After the Age of Oil symposium, Penn IUR solicited manuscripts on environmental and energy challenges and their effect on the redesign of urban environments.

1. Working
Paper
Dimensions,
Scales,
and
Measures
of
Environmental
Design
William
W.
Braham
“Systems
that
reinforce
their
productive
processes
develop
and
displace
those
that
do
not.”
-­‐-­‐H.
T.
Odumi
Sustainability
has
never
been
a
very
useful
measure
for
designers,
though
it
has
become
a
nearly
ubiquitous
design
goal.
The
concept
of
“sustainable
development”
originated
as
a
compromise
between
the
growth
and
no-­‐growth
positions
within
the
environmental
movement,
promising
the
admirable
goal
of
growth
within
limits,
or
growth
with
minimal
impact,
though
the
question
quickly
becomes
“how
sustainable
is
sustainable
T
enough”?
It
has
proven
to
be
a
useful
term
for
indicating
a
general
ethic
or
direction,
but
like
the
addition
of
“green”
or
“smart”
or
“clean,”
sustainable
has
largely
come
to
mean
AF
“somewhat
better
than
we
are
currently
doing.”
The
successes
and
failures
of
the
term
may
largely
be
due
to
its
generality,
but
in
common
usage
there
are
two
deeper
problems
with
the
concept:
it
relies
on
a
basic
ethic
of
restraint
and
a
static
notion
of
nature.
R
From
an
ecological
perspective,
any
form
of
design
involves
a
diversion
of
resources
from
some
other
activity
and
the
development
of
new
arrangements
and
configurations.
D
Even
in
the
most
restrained
forms—renovation
or
recycling—human
design
and
construction
use
excess
capacity
in
the
pursuit
of
more
resources.
Put
more
directly,
design
is
the
expenditure
of
power
in
the
pursuit
of
more
(or
continued)
power,
even
when
it
is
done
with
care
and
forethought.
Power
comes
in
many
forms,
and
this
formulation
begs
the
more
philosophical
question
of
“power
to
do
what,”
but
the
common
view
of
sustainability
offers
a
deceptive
picture
of
impact-­‐free
growth
extending
into
the
distant
future.
It
is
perhaps
closest
to
the
discredited
notion
of
the
climax
forest,
a
perfected
ecological
steady-­‐
state
of
complex
interdependence
and
industrious
productivity
attained
in
the
temperate

2. Working
Paper
biomes
of
Europe,
Asia,
and
North
America.
While
those
great
forests
are
models
of
ecological
richness,
they
are
hardly
peaceful
or
unchanging,
either
in
their
extents,
their
mix
of
species,
or
their
productivity.
The
system
ecologist,
H.
T.
Odum,
was
deeply
critical
of
the
underlying
assumptions
of
sustainable
development
because
he
saw
that
just
as
natural
systems
were
fundamentally
dynamic
entities
competing
for
resources,
so
too
were
social
and
cultural
systems.ii
Species,
populations,
temperatures,
and
markets
all
rise
and
fall
in
the
competition
for
power.
Observing
that
things
ebb
and
flow
in
the
competition
for
resources
may
seem
commonplace,
but
the
task
for
designers
is
to
develop
concepts
that
provide
more
precise
T
guidance
within
the
ever-­‐changing
systems
into
which
their
design
are
projected.
Drawing
AF
on
the
work
of
Odum
and
other
ecologists,
two
immediate
challenges
present
themselves
to
designers:
understanding
the
right
scales
or
dimensions
for
environmental
design
decisions
and
developing
the
right
measures
with
which
to
evaluate
them.
R
Scales and Dimensions
D
Architects
are
necessarily
concerned
with
buildings
and
building
sites,
but
environmental
flows
and
effects
operate
at
many
other
scales
and
along
other
dimensions,
from
the
biochemical
to
the
global.
Herbert
Simon
has
argued
that
all
complex
systems
organize
themselves
into
discrete,
interrelated,
and
hierarchical
sub-­‐systems.iii
While
he
uses
the
term
“hierarchic”
to
describe
their
interrelationships,
he
means
to
include
systems
with
different
kinds
of
structure
and
order,
from
the
rigidly
hierarchical
cell-­‐tissue-­‐organ
structure
of
biological
bodies
to
Deleuzian
“bodies
without
organs”
such
as
the
weather
systems
that
produces
transient
sub-­‐systems
like
high-­‐pressure
zones,
cold-­‐fronts,
and

3. Working
Paper
hurricanes.iv
Simon
makes
the
point
about
hierarchic
systems
to
argue
that
different
problems
or
questions
belong
to
specific
sub-­‐systems.
Water
use
and
storm
run-­‐off
in
a
building,
for
example,
are
questions
about
the
capacity
of
the
local
watershed,
while
the
environmental
cost
and
value
of
building
products
are
now
thoroughly
global
matters,
involving
multiple,
interconnected
systems
of
manufacturing,
transportation,
installation,
and
disposal.
The
first
task
of
environmental
design,
then,
is
identifying
the
sub-­‐systems
with
which
a
project
will
interact.
The
marvellous
thing
about
complex
ecosystems
is
the
number
and
variety
of
sub-­‐
systems
involved,
and
the
degree
to
which
they
operate
at
different
scales,
overlapping,
T
interpenetrating,
and
cooperating.
Stationary
elements
like
plants
and
trees
(or
buildings)
AF
are
penetrated
by
mobile
populations
of
microbes,
insects,
and
animals,
and
by
equally
mobile
flow
systems
of
water
and
air,
that
facilitate
subtle
exchanges
of
materials
and
then
can
suddenly
transport
vast
quantities
of
the
same
material.
The
challenge
for
architects
R
has
been
the
degree
to
which
the
discipline
is
conceived
formally
and
spatially,
as
an
activity
defined
by
formally
visible
boundaries,
and
whose
modes
of
analysis
and
D
representation
privilege
fixed
and
durable
elements.
Through
the
twentieth
century
designers
have
developed
and
experimented
with
many
methods
for
addressing
the
dynamic
aspects
of
buildings
(and
cities),
from
flow
charts
of
construction
sequences
to
CFD
analyses
of
temperature
and
air
flow
to
parametric
techniques
for
the
description
of
form.
But
as
ecologists
have
also
learned,
the
method
of
analysis
and
representation
depends
on
the
question
being
asked
and
on
the
sub-­‐systems
involved
or
the
boundaries
among
the
systems
that
are
being
considered.

4. Working
Paper
As
a
starting
point,
it
is
important
to
consider
the
different
scales
and
dimensions
of
the
systems
within
which
buildings
and
building
sites
operate.
The
most
intuitive
form
of
description
for
designers
would
be
spatial
scales,
extending
from
the
building
footprint
and
its
site
defined
by
ownership
to
its
neighborhood,
landscape,
watershed,
city,
region,
biome,
country,
and
continent,
each
of
which
involves
different
kinds
of
boundaries
and
elements.
As
Simon
suggests,
environmental
decisions
have
to
be
situated
within
the
relevant
ecological
sub-­‐systems
and
many
of
these
are
firmly
spatial.
Sim
Van
der
Ryn
has
also
argued
that
these
different
spatial
scales
are
maintained
by
critical
exchanges
of
energy
and
materials
between
scales,
so
human
design
must
consider
these
non-­‐spatial,
T
linking
systems
as
well.v
AF
The
situation
is
already
even
more
complex.
In
the
list
of
scales
above,
some
are
defined
by
the
sub-­‐systems
of
ecosystems,
while
others
are
social
and
political
entities,
and
the
two
don’t
often
correspond.
Or
more
precisely,
human
constructions
and
settlements
R
frequently
begin
with
the
scales
and
opportunities
of
natural
systems
and
then
grow
to
exceed
them.
As
Odum
once
observed,
all
material
and
energy
flows
are
always
already
D
doing
some
kind
of
work
in
the
ecosystem,
meaning
there
is
no
“free”
material
or
energy,
only
resources
diverted
from
other
uses.
Design
“with”
natural
systems
begins
as
the
diversion
of
energy
and
material
for
human
purposes,
can
quickly
turn
to
over-­‐use
as
different
thresholds
of
disruption
are
reached,
but
can
also
produce
new
hybrid
combinations
of
natural
and
human
systems.
The
most
spectacular
hybrid
so
far
has
been
that
between
human
civilization
and
the
energy
of
ancient
photosynthesis
in
stored
in
fossil
fuels.
That
hybridization
has
also
produced
epic
disruptions
in
natural
systems
as
it

5. Working
Paper
converts
that
stored
energy,
so
environmental
design
has
sought
to
both
understand
and
ameliorate
those
disruptions
and
to
develop
new
hybrids
of
equal
power.
[INSERT
FIGURE
1]
An
equally
critical
set
of
scales,
which
emerged
from
studies
of
commercial
office
buildings,
are
the
temporal
dimensions
of
buildings
and
their
elementsvi
(see
Fig.
1).
The
initial
diagrams
of
office
buildings
prepared
by
Francis
Duffy
distinguished
four
“layers
of
longevity”
of
commercial
construction
by
the
rate
of
their
replacement,
from
the
longer-­‐
lasting
building
shell
to
the
more
frequently
altered
furnishings.
That
description
acknowledged
real
differences
in
duration,
and
helped
formalize
distinctions
that
exist
T
among
the
groups
that
design
different
elements,
the
depreciation
periods
written
in
tax
AF
codes,
and
the
kinds
of
buildings
and
design
practices
that
develop
in
response.
The
“core-­‐
and-­‐shell”
building,
for
example,
and
the
tenant
“fit-­‐out”
are
different
temporal
dimensions
of
the
same
building.
Distinguishing
them
facilitates
the
changing
of
higher
velocity
layers
R
without
disturbing
the
slower,
more
expensive
ones.
Subsequent
studies
further
divided
those
four
layers
into
six,
and
then
seven,
layers,
each
distinguishing
different
kinds
of
D
change
in
buildings.
One
of
the
conclusions
reached
by
many
environmentally
minded
designers
is
that
the
separation
of
such
temporal
layers
improves
the
resource
efficiency
of
buildings,
allowing
for
easier,
less
disruptive
adaptations
and
more
efficient
recycling.vii
In
effect
this
has
involved
the
translation
of
commercial
building
practices
to
other
types
of
construction,
with
core-­‐and-­‐shell
residential
construction
and
the
development
of
residential
fittings
and
appliances
that
move
with
the
resident.
But
there
is
some
limit
to
this
tactic
when
we
recognize
the
other
dimensions,
or
sub-­‐systems,
into
which
these

6. Working
Paper
temporal
layers
can
be
divided.
Elements
of
the
same
layer,
the
furniture
and
equipment
of
an
office
for
example,
may
be
selected
or
purchased
by
different
groups,
have
different
rates
of
technological
obsolescence,
or
even
be
elements
of
different
cultural
fashions.
The
Aeron
desk
chair,
which
became
a
characteristic
element
of
the
dot.com
office
is
purchased
and
used
differently
than
the
filing
cabinet
it
sits
next
to
or
the
carpet
on
which
it
rolls.
[INSERT
FIGURE
2]
These
examples
add
the
even
more
complex
questions
of
human
use,
display,
and
meaning
to
natural
and
technological
systems,
further
linking
them
to
cultural,
social,
and
institutional
sub-­‐systems.
The
value
of
fresh
water
or
of
an
expensive
chair
is
negotiated
T
within
a
rich
system
of
exchange
in
which
scarcity
values
of
all
kinds
are
magnified
and
AF
enhanced.
What
is
the
built
environment
but
the
display
of
human
wealth
and
power,
not
merely
as
cultural
symbols,
but
in
the
most
precise
terms
of
design?
The
decision
about
the
appropriateness
of
an
Aeron
chair
for
a
particular
setting
is
a
matter
of
taste,
fashion,
and
R
budget,
but
a
budget
that
reflects
the
total
situation
and
resources
of
the
individual
or
institution
for
which
it
is
intended.
The
value
of
the
chair
in
this
example
derives
from
a
D
combination
of
the
underlying
scarcity
of
the
“natural”
energies
and
human
labor
required
for
its
production
and
the
particular
social
and
institutional
niche
for
which
is
intended.
Human
design
has
probably
exceeded
simple
survival
or
shelter
needs
from
the
very
start,
but
the
question
about
appropriate
scale
arises
with
the
recognition
of
ecological
connections.
[INSERT
FIGURE
3]
As
the
environmental
movement
has
argued
since
the
1970s,
the
ultimate
scale
for
design
is
the
biosphere
(see
Figure
3),
but
it
is
a
biosphere
of
many
sub-­‐systems
that
are

7. Working
Paper
largely
and
messily
hybridized
with
human
systems.
The
object
of
architectural
design
is
an
entity
of
many
scales
and
dimensions
that
focuses
local
and
global
systems
to
produce
and
support
a
building
for
some
period
of
time.
Environmental
design
operates
in
both
directions,
tracking
all
those
scales
and
dimensions
in
their
many
connections
and
evaluating
the
discrete
projects
that
they
enable.
The
first
tool
of
environmental
design
may
be
the
ecological
boundary
diagram
drawn
around
a
project
to
track
the
various
exchanges
and
flows
in
natural,
technological,
and
human
systems.
That
boundary
provides
a
site
for
making
visible
the
spatial,
temporal,
and
institutional
systems
specific
to
the
project.
But
environmental
design
is
not
merely
a
question
of
the
scarcity
or
efficiency
of
T
the
many
flows
across
the
project
boundary,
of
simply
using
fewer
resources.
Any
real
AF
measure
for
environmental
design
has
to
take
account
of
the
accumulation
of
wealth
and
the
uses
of
power.
R
Measures
The
opposition
between
scarcity
and
excess,
or
between
efficiency
and
luxury,
is
D
common
to
debates
about
sustainability,
which
are
frequently
framed
in
moral
terms
and
lead
to
the
condemnation
of
waste
and
the
lauding
of
frugality.
The
apparent
paradox
is
that
natural
systems
exhibit
no
such
restraint,
growing
to
the
limits
of
available
resources
and
increasing
in
complexity
as
they
grow.
I
don’t
mean
to
reduce
environmental
design
to
a
narrowly
competitive,
survivalist
ethic.
Natural
systems
typically
grow
through
a
variety
of
forms
of
cooperative
interactions
whose
interdependencies
only
increase
as
eco-­‐systems
develop,
so
the
challenge
is
to
understand
other
forms
of
growth.
The
difference
lies
in
the
scale
of
the
explanation.
George
Bataille
argued
that
while
individuals
and
their
economies

8. Working
Paper
are
necessarily
governed
by
scarcity
(and
efficiency),
that
“living
matter
in
general”
is
governed
by
the
steady
and
luxurious
flow
of
energy
from
the
sun,
which
must
be
expended
either
in
growth
or
in
some
form
of
“luxury”.viii
With
the
term
“luxury”
Bataille
meant
expenditure
without
immediate
“return,”
but
that
is
itself
a
perspective
of
the
individual.
Luxury
is
partly
a
question
of
which
scale
or
system
is
considered
and
what
kinds
of
returns
are
accounted
for.
The
prosperity
and
fecundity
of
eco-­‐systems
are
what
matters,
but
that
fecundity
can
be
experienced
as
luxury
by
its
individual
parts.
The
fundamental
point
made
by
Odum,
which
he
had
developed
from
Lotka’s
work
linking
energy
use
and
evolution
in
the
early
twentieth
century,
was
that
natural
systems
T
don’t
compete
to
minimize
their
use
of
energy,
but
to
maximize
their
power,
their
ability
to
AF
accomplish
useful
work.ix
In
seems
as
if
that
should
be
the
same
thing,
as
if
a
more
efficient
use
of
energy
would
yield
more
power,
but
sustained
maximum
power
only
occurs
at
a
medium
rate
of
efficiency
and
leads
to
a
quite
different
ethic
of
design.
In
natural
systems
it
R
develops
into
a
whole
cascade
of
cooperative
uses
and
feedback
interactions
that
maximize
the
total
power
flowing
through
the
system.
D
During
the
energy
supply
crises
of
the
1970s,
Odum
used
to
scandalize
his
students
by
saying
it
was
folly
for
America
to
voluntarily
renounce
its
use
of
oil,
since
it
would
just
be
used
by
other
countries
to
make
themselves
stronger.
The
point
is
twofold.
The
obvious
point
is
that
resources
will
be
used,
so
the
critical
decisions
are
how
to
use
them
well.
The
more
subtle
point
is
that
the
systems
which
prevail
over
time
are
those
that
“reinforce
their
productive
processes,”
meaning
that
they
not
only
obtain
more
power,
but
enhance
the
systems
and
processes
that
support
them.
From
some
perspectives
the
expenditures
involved
in
reinforcing
productive
processes
may
look
charitable,
wasteful,
or
luxurious.

9. Working
Paper
William
McDonough
often
cites
the
seemingly
excessive
number
of
blossoms
and
fruit
on
a
cherry
tree
as
an
expenditure
that
looks
wasteful
if
measured
according
to
the
efficiency
of
the
tree
itself,
but
whose
waste
serves
as
food,
compost,
shelter
and
supports
other
aspects
of
the
eco-­‐system
that
supports
it.
Those
luxurious
display
by
the
tree
reduces
its
efficiency,
but
increases
the
power
and
prosperity
of
the
whole
eco-­‐system.
It
is,
or
course,
difficult
to
measure
prosperity,
especially
when
we
remember
the
dynamic
ebb-­‐and-­‐flow
nature
of
any
complex
system.
As
marketing
specialists
know
well,
the
luxuries
of
one
generation
become
the
needs
of
the
next,
and
that
cycle
easily
and
quickly
reverses
itself
when
conditions
change.
Odum’s
measure
of
prosperity
combined
T
his
argument
about
useful
power
with
the
system
diagram
of
the
whole
biosphere,
enabling
AF
him
to
start
with
original
environmental
energies—solar,
tidal,
and
geologic—and
trace
the
sequence
of
energy
transformations
through
which
they
pass.
He
coined
a
new
term,
“emergy,”
to
describe
the
cumulative
memory
or
embodiment
of
energy
involved
in
the
R
cascade
of
transformations,
with
“solar
emergy”
as
the
common
unit,
so
all
comparisons
or
measurements
were
in
similar
units.
He
developed
that
emergy
approach
into
an
elegant
D
accounting
system,
though
it
involves
many
approximations,
and
together
with
the
total
system
diagram,
captures
much
of
what
we
seek
when
we
ask
about
sustainability.x
Systems
prosper
that
manage
to
maximize
their
flow
of
solar
empower.
[INSERT
FIGURE
4
HERE]
The
vital
aspect
of
Odum’s
accounting
is
the
emergy
diagram
itself,
which
uses
systems
language
to
describe
the
cascade
of
energy
transformation,
feedback,
and
recycling
required
in
a
complex
eco-­‐system.
It
is
the
richness
of
interaction
that
“reinforces
productive
processes,”
and
for
which
environmental
design
needs
some
measure
or
tool
for

10. Working
Paper
evaluation.
Ulanowicz
has
used
information
theory
to
calculate
the
amount
of
order
in
a
system,
which
he
combined
with
the
total
flow
of
resources
to
develop
a
simple
numerical
measure
of
system
prosperity,
but
it
seems
to
be
the
emergy
diagramming
that
offers
the
most
potential
as
a
design
tool.xi
The
potential
of
these
diagrams
for
design
have
barely
been
tapped,
and
can
reveal
the
kinds
of
interconnection
and
recycling
opportunities
that
designers
turn
to
instinctively,
but
whose
evaluation
has
been
limited
to
their
role
in
single
processes.
The
levels
of
complexity
developed
in
natural
systems
can
be
difficult
to
understand,
or
design,
when
the
scale
of
analysis
is
too
modest.
Diagramming
the
spatial
and
temporal
dimensions
described
above
can
also
extend
the
potential
of
the
diagrams
in
T
design
projects,
identifying
new
sites
for
innovation.
Odum’s
law
of
maximum
empower
AF
offers
an
antidote
to
the
paradoxes
of
sustainability,
acknowledging
the
pursuit
of
power
necessary
to
all
forms
of
growth,
while
providing
a
model
of
the
cooperative
prosperity
that
sustainable
design
has
sought.
R
i
Howard T.Odum, Environment, Power, and Society for the Twenty-First Century: The Hierarchy of Energy (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2007). p. .
ii
Howard T.Odum and Elisabeth C. Odum, A Prosperous Way Down: Principles and Policies (Boulder: University
D
Press of Colorado, 2001), p. .
iii
Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, 3rd ed. (The MIT Press, 1996).
iv
Manuel DeLanda, A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History (New York: Swerve Editions, 1997).
v
Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowen. Ecological Design (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2005), p. 51.
vi
Francis Duffy, The Changing Workplace (London: Phaidon Press, 1992).
vii
Ed van Hinte et al. Smart Architecture (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2003), p. .
viii
Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy (New York: Zone Books, 1991).
ix
Howard T. Odum, Systems Ecology: An Introduction (New York: Wiley, 1983).
xx
Howard T. Odum, Environmental Accounting: EMERGY and Environmental Decision Making (New York:
Wiley, 1996).
xixi
Robert E. Ulanowicz, Ecology: The Ascendent Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).

11. Working
Paper
29.
Dimensions,
Scales,
and
Measures
of
Environmental
Design
William
W.
Braham
Figures
T
AF
R
Figure
1.
Temporal
layers
of
building
design
D
Figure
2.
Herman
Miller
Aeron
Chair

12. Working
Paper
T
Figure
3.
Emergy
diagram
of
the
biosphere
AF
R
D
Figure
4.
Emergy
diagram
of
a
university
campus