While the term “guerilla gardening” isn’t widely known, anyone off the street can likely recognize the name Johnny Appleseed. And the legendary Appleseed? Arguably America’s first guerilla gardener.
     Guerilla gardeners are environmental activists who take neglected urban spaces — literally — into their own hands. Plots of dirt such as those surrounding trees on a sidewalk or at a highway median are dug up, seeded, and watered so that beautiful (and carbon-consuming) trees, plants, and flowers emerge in what was formerly an eyesore of urban neglect. Today, there are guerilla gardening subcultures active in major metropolises throughout Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Australia.
     Vanessa Harden, an artist and active participant in London’s guerilla gardening scene, currently has an exhibition on display until March 21 at Salon Contemporary. Titled The Subversive Gardener, the exhibit features gardening tools that masquerade as such day-to-day items as purses, briefcases, oxford shoes, and even cameras. Inspired almost equally by spy gadgetry and biological systems such as seed dispersal, the items include the Mk II Agent Deployed Field Auger — a briefcase that conceals tools that can quickly drill holes in the ground — and the 2-round Tactical Gravity Planter — a purse that can hold two peat-potted plants on a built-in conveyor belt that easily drops them into their new homes.

Ecological design technology is based on the idea that manmade “machines” can be harnessed to mimic biological systems, giving us the power to restore environmental contaminants and neutralize the build-up of waste on the planet.
     John Todd, a marine-biologist, inventor, and designer, is using eco-technology to address the global wastewater crisis. Todd applies principles of bio-mimicry to create Eco-Machines, which are networks of biological systems built to strategically transform industrial sewage into usable water. Eco-Machines are custom built for size requirements, but they all look like a series of connected fish tanks, each tank a separate treatment zone utilizing anaerobic, flow-equalization, anoxic, and aerobic processes. Water flows through the tanks and sifts lastly through an effluent filter, such as a constructed wetland or fluidized bed, to catch leftover solids. All of this is accomplished without the use of chemical-based inputs that are used in sewage treatment plants, which eject chemically imbalanced water back into water streams, starving our rivers of oxygen with unwanted algal blooms.
     Living Machines are built to recreate the complexity of ecosystem relationships, which are fostered between microscopic algae, bacteria, protozoa, fungi, zooplankton, minerals, snails, fishes, and plants.

Almost fifty years since Chile’s 1960 Valdivia earthquake, history’s largest ever recorded at 9.5, a shattering 8.8 shakedown left Concepcion and the surrounding regions in ruin this past weekend. Yet another coastal calamity that shook Chile at it’s core in Santiago, the devastating blow is significant to Latin America as a whole and will have deep effects in the years to come. Concepcion, the second largest city south of Santiago, was considered by many to be the hub of the country’s progress, known mainly for its industry and education. Although the Chilean people have suffered 711 deaths thus far, according to the Associated Press, they were spared the unimaginable magnitude of death and destruction that has affected Haiti since its earthquake over a month ago. This is due to the country’s past experiences with earthquakes, its preparedness for future ones, stronger building codes and higher construction standards. Of course this has much to do with the vast differences between wealth and poverty in the two countries. Even so, there is tremendous humanitarian need in Chile with over two million people displaced from their homes across a much broader geographical area, and this should not be overlooked by the international community. Nearly 100 aftershocks have hampered the relief effort at this point, but rescue workers are doing everything they can. President Michelle Bachelete has assigned military troops to the rescue, and a curfew is being enforced in an effort to keep looting at bay.   

While the world’s attention has been focused upon Canada for the Winter Olympics, another northerly site worth noting has continued to be widely ignored. Far from gold medal glory, the oil sands in northern Alberta continue to be dug up, mined, steamed, and refined in what many have claimed to be the most environmentally damaging process on earth.
     The “tar sands”, as they’re most widely known, refer to bitumen (a dense, degraded form of oil) deposits that lie in the earth’s uppermost layers, heavily mixed together with sand. This form of petroleum is difficult to mine and even more difficult to refine into a usable form. The sands are such an expensive source of oil that it wasn’t until the 1990s that technology had advanced enough for the project to be economically viable. But with the reality of peak oil looming, the sands are now mined in earnest.
     One million barrels are currently culled each day from the sands (of which 80 percent goes to the US) and each barrel requires cutting down forest, the removal of two tons of earth to reach the sands, and the removal of two tons of the sand itself. The whole process unleashes five times more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than normal oil mining. Not only that, but barrels of water are used in the refining process to steam the bitumen from the sand, and the contaminated water left over is dumped into tailings ponds, which, as of a year ago, covered around 50 square miles.

The home is where a culture begins, and the members of the Alfredo Santa Cruz family are re-defining our culture/environment relationship by building homes from unlikely materials. The Casa De Botellas was created by the Santa Cruz family in Puerto Iguazu, Argentina, as a tool for promoting ecological and social responsibility. Although they are not architects or engineers, the Alfredo Santa Cruz family successfully designed their portable structures to be accessible, simple, and creative down to the last detail.
     The structures of the house and every piece of furniture inside are constructed entirely from used plastic. PET remains intact for 300 years, which is longer than cement, and more durable. This is an ingenious re-use that turns the hazard of slow decomposition into an asset.
     The walls are made from 1,200 PET plastic bottles, which support a 1,300-piece Tetra Pack roof holding 140-piece CD jewel-case doors and windows that surround plastic-bottle couches and beds. A self-invented casting technology keeps the bottles fused together without obstructing the visual symmetry.
     Creating environmental solutions from the ground up, the Cruz family provides free home building courses to address both trash and housing scarcity in Latin American countries, “realities that nobody can hide”.

With the deliberately provocative proposition that New York is “almost all right”, the first Urban Age series of conferences on the future of the world’s cities started off with a bang in 2005. In the five years since, the conferences have taken place in nine “megacities” (defined as a city with a population of over 3 million) around the world. In each, the present state, and future, of a city is debated from all angles by scientists, sociologists, urban planners, geographers, and economists, among others.
      Citing surprising and sobering statistics — more than half the world population currently lives in cities; urban areas contribute 75 percent of human carbon dioxide output into the atmosphere — Urban Age posits that the fate of cities in the 21st century will determine not only the fate of human lives but the future of our planet. Urban Age therefore aims to influence the ideas of city policy-makers and planners to create more socially responsible and environmentally sustainable urban practices — to create, in their words, a “grammar of success for metropolitan areas”.
     The amount of information gathered at each conference is staggering. The issues range from the large-scale (investment and economic development, sustainability and energy consumption) to the particulars (public life and urban space, housing and neighborhoods). It’s all beautifully presented online for urban dwellers to access at urban-age.net.

There’s a distinctive project in the works to bring sustainable development to developing countries, and it combines two things rarely found in the same sentence: bamboo and bicycles. The Bamboo Bike Project aims to help people in impoverished countries by teaching them how to make their own bikes out of — that’s righ t— bamboo.
     Bamboo is the largest member of the grass family and the fastest growing plant on earth (shoots can grow more than two feet per day). The self-replenishing speed with which it grows makes it an ideal and sustainable construction material in impoverished, tropical countries. Or anywhere for that matter. It’s also exceptionally strong, and makes a surprisingly lightweight bicycle. Co-founders John Mutter and David Ho initially learned to make the bikes from a man who wanted to sell the bikes as a boutique item to wealthy customers. Rather than keep the bamboo bikes a niche item, Mutter says, “Our objective is to make them in large numbers and sell them for as little as possible.”
     “I’ve been to Africa and some other poor places,” continues Mutter, “and if you’ve ever been to a place like that you realize that while bicycles [in rich countries] are just sort of personal transportation and a means of getting exercise, anywhere where incomes are low they represent a lot more than that.”

Los Angeles has always had a knack for turning one man’s trash into another man’s table. Fortunately, custom furniture gurus, Viesso, know how to make it look great too. Constructed entirely out of reclaimed wood beams salvaged from rundown LA buildings, Viesso’s new Koper table is an eco-savvy cross between Jenga and a Rubik’s Cube. Fun, earthy, and versatile, the Koper has a certain charm not typically attributed to home furnishings. Viesso is something of a pioneer in furniture design, reconstructing the entire shopping process by encouraging individuality, efficiency, and smart innovation. Far from sifting through a showcase full of generic furniture, each table, sofa, and bed is customizable, offering earth-friendly options and materials. To further reiterate Viesso’s commitment to the planet, all products are manufactured locally. True to Viesso form, the Koper table ranges in sizes from 16” X 16” to 36” X 36”, with the option of a marble top. Custom tables start at $244.

The world is divided into three types of people: those who are conscious about the environmental damage we inflict on our planet, those who do not care, and those who are inclined to care but need some prodding. Sometimes it takes an artist to put things into perspective, to provide the visceral impact that can shock us into awareness. Edward Burtynsky’s new book, Oil (Steidl, $128), is just the ticket.
     Burtynsky has long been fascinated with what he calls “human-altered landscapes,” the vast vestiges of industrial activity. After a while he realized that oil production is the force behind many of these landscapes. Burtynsky began photographing human-made sites that have direct and remote relationships with oil. These include oil fields, refineries, car lots and scrape yards, and highways. The ten-year project resulted in a book containing a hundred panoramic shots from all over the world.
     This panoramic view is certainly an eye-opener. Let’s just say that whenever we take an exit from one highway to another, we don’t really think about the intricate anthill infrastructure of the roads. And, of course, some of us would rather not think about the mechanical ugliness of an oil refinery, the unfamiliar, repelling apparatus that we rely on for the modern world to function.

In the 1800s, Brooklyn and Queens had the highest density of agricultural land in New York City. Today, the city landscape has changed, with total unused land of about 10,000 acres, all broken up into thousands of vacant lots, private backyards, and underutilized squares. Space in New York City is a highly valuable commodity. Walking down any city street, one can see urban dwellers creatively squeezing every inch out of the precious space they occupy. To BK Farmyards, a Brooklyn-based urban farming business, these structural limitations are the seedlings for a radical, community-based farming solution to food-sustainability issues.
     Contrary to our current chemical and land intensive agri-business model, it doesn’t take a lot of land to feed people — 250 square feet can feed 4-5 people for 6 months, according to BK Farmyards owner Stacey Murphy. BK Farmyards converts underutilized urban land, from private backyards to traffic circles, into edible gardens that grow crops, culture, and community. Their vision is large social change through use of tiny spaces: transforming the design and function of small plots into a decentralized, agricultural network connecting food producers, landowners, and consumers.