Contemporary Challenges (Asynchronous Session)
The Arctic Circle: Climate Change, International Law, and Indigenous Heritage View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Keshia De Freece Lawrence
The Arctic, a region adapting to climate-related, and human-made factors at an unprecedented rate, and at the political whim of eight countries. This paper, based on a masters dissertation considers issues from the Arctic Circle. In particular, the Arctic’s geographical location; legal persona, cultural, and scientific significance. This study further promotes the concept of utilizing international, civilian stewardship, and scientific research as a means of climate action, which in-turn, needs to be supported through international environmental policies. This work analyses the Sub Arctic field research conducted by the author, in addition to its application towards an international, legally binding document, designed to reflect the challenges of climate change in the extreme North. This study pushes the limits for global environmental policy and action by addressing the inequity presented in selective-environmental governance and the climatic repercussions of these inequities, particularly for indigenous and rural populations. In addition, a comparative examination of Antarctic research and policy to the Arctic poses questions for the new environmental world order. Land and natural resources are foundational to global resilience, and human sustainability. The current age of anthropocene is at the crux of environmental degradation and the changes being studied throughout this research process.This paper expresses the prudent need for the utilization of international environmental policy, founded in sound-science, in order to create progressive systemic change in the most biodiverse and sensitive, locations of the world.
Community Formation in the Anthropocene: The Squatter Settlement versus the City Planners View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Joe Nalven
City planners and politicians view spontaneous and illegal settlements as a threat and an opportunity. By contrast, the squatters strategize to manipulate the planning and political process to create a stable community. The outside researcher can seek a representative sample of communities in like situations or, alternatively, can study adjacent communities seeking to ally or compete with each other to gain formal recognition and become part of the existing urban framework.This common set of antagonisms in the community formation process can be extrapolated to an imagined anthropocene - one that requires a kaleidoscopic perspective that is, at once, formal and informal, normative and spontaneous, representative and case-study oriented.
Design Patterns for a More Food Secure Future View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tonya D Miller
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the forefront issues of food security. This qualitative study expands on the concept of urban farming by developing an interior design model that promotes habits for long-term food security. A case study analysis revealed design patterns in urban and alternative farming that have the potential to impact the methods of educating the community on scalable sustainable agriculture and long-term food security. These design patterns provide insight for urban planners, apartment and condominium developers, and individual residents living without access to private green spaces. This study demonstrates how urban farming can be scaled to fit the needs of a development or individual. This design model has the capability of educating urban residents and public officials on the future of urban food production and the need for innovative and approachable methods to sustain the growing city populace, even during uncertain times.
Geographies of Revitalization: How Low-income Housing Tax Credit Capital ‘Stacking’ Impacts Housing Clustering View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ashton Schottler
As part of a larger study which analyzes the political economy of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) in the St. Louis Metropolitan Area, a series of semi-structured interviews were conducted between the 23rd of June 2020 and the 13th of August 2020 with four stakeholders of affordable housing development via the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) in St. Louis, Missouri. Resultantly, their perspectives indicate that the inability for low-income housing to enter suburban “areas of opportunity” has less to do with ‘NIMBY’ neighbor opposition, but rather, is the result of secondary funding restrictions. In this paper, the stakeholder interviews are discussed within the context of a political economy framework in the form of five lenses (developed by Byiers, Vanheukelom & Kingombe, 2015) in order to expound how a projects ‘capital stack’, or total capital invested in a project, influences the geographic clustering of projects in St. Louis. Specifically, this paper addresses how the prolific use of revitalization grants along with the LIHTC has directly impacted the geographic distribution of low-income housing projects in St. Louis and subsequent consequences of revitalization projects on housing opportunities.
High Altitude Architecture: The Beginning of the Anthropocene View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ana Maria Machedon
While scientist all over the world try to define the Anthropocene, a multi-disciplinary approach towards this concept opens new possibilities in finding unconventional premises for the era dominated by human actions. One possible beginning of the Anthropocene, as suggested by the Anthropocene Working Group, is related to the first nuclear bomb in 1945 and the nuclear tests in the 50’, with significant impact on the entire planet in the 60’. Coincidentally, in the same time, in a completely different context, an isolated and apparently irrelevant event marks a turning point for a new age in building the environment. In 1953 Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay reached for the first time the highest peak on Earth, the Everest summit. This represented symbolically the last and most difficult redoubt of wild, dangerous and virgin territories. From that moment a peripheral anthropic phenomenon started to intensify: high altitude architecture. The result was a significant and probably irreversible mutation in human relationship towards nature. From basic shelters to hi-tech buildings and infrastructure, high altitude architecture enhanced mass access into dangerous and inaccessible zones. The new built environments had slowly lost the character life-threatening zones, where the lack of oxygen and extreme natural phenomena restrict human living. Mountains have been consequently transformed into brands and products ready to be consumed. Building at high altitudes had fundamentally changed the human approach towards nature and altered nature’s dominant character, marking on a conceptual level, a possible beginning of the Anthropocene.
