In our first current events minisode, Tessa Martinez and Alysha Helmrich discuss the Australian wildfires and their implications on Sydney’s infrastructure. They then explore Portland’s new way of filtering their water supply before it reaches the sewers- rain gardens!

Listen to the full Infrastructure and Climate Change episode here.

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If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes, e-mail us at [email protected] or find us on Twitter @FutureCitiesPod. Learn more about the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN) at www.sustainability.asu.edu/urbanresilience.

Climate change is a large source of uncertainty for infrastructure managers. It is easy to feel immobilized by future uncertainty, however, that does not have to be the case. In this podcast, the hosts interview a city practitioner, social scientist, and climate modeller to understand how infrastructure managers integrate climate modelling data into the decision process.

Associated Links/Websites:
Referenced:

• SETS Infrastructure podcast epispde: https://www.buzzsprout.com/125676/1084280-sets-infrastructure

Participants:

• Geneva Gray: @kawaiiness
• Alysha Helmrich: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alyshahelmrich/
• Rui Li: www.linkedin.com/in/li-rui-11ASU
• Dr. Marissa Matsler: @oh_the_urbanity
• Dr. Ken Kunkel: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6667-7047
• Portland Water Bureau: @portlandwater

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If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes, e-mail us at [email protected] or find us on Twitter @FutureCitiesPod. Learn more about the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN) at www.sustainability.asu.edu/urbanresilience.

In this episode, Dr. Marissa Matsler (@oh_the_urbanity) talks with Dr. David Manuel-Navarrete about the evolutionary forces working against wider adoption of green infrastructure in cities today. They discuss his recent publication in Anthropocene titled "Intentional disruption of path-dependencies in the Anthropocene: Gray versus green water infrastructure regimes in Mexico City, Mexico", in which he uses human niche theory to analyze the feedback loops which encourage cities to continue investment in grey infrastructure at the expense of green infrastructure solutions that could help with the social and environmental challenges of climate change. Dr. Manuel-Navarrete shares more about his case study research in Mexico City and his transdisciplinary approach to science. This interview is wide-reaching touching on historic infrastructure transitions, the ways in which humans differ from termites, the need to bring the subjective and the objective together in scientific inquiry, and a hopeful message describing how we can work collaboratively to change our current destructive path dependencies. You can listen to Dr. Manuel-Navarrete discuss some of these topics in Spanish in our previous episode, Paradigmas Insostinebles en Nuestras Ciudades.

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If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes, e-mail us at [email protected] or find us on Twitter @FutureCitiesPod. Learn more about the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN) at www.sustainability.asu.edu/urbanresilience.

We're not the Mob but we here at Future Cities still care a lot about waste management! Co-host Jason Sauer talks with Dr. Erin Rivers (@soilandthecity) about how solid waste, AKA trash, is potentially exacerbating flood risk in cities by clogging up green and gray drainage infrastructure. We discuss trash reduction and removal efforts in Baltimore (Mr. Trash Wheel!) and beyond, and how a reframing of who is responsible for trash has benefits far beyond our work on green infrastructure and urban resilience. Apologies for in advance for the cuts at the beginning: I (Jason Sauer) was sick when I recorded this and had to cut out a lot of noise my sinuses were creating. TMI!


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If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes, e-mail us at [email protected] or find us on Twitter @FutureCitiesPod. Learn more about the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN) at www.sustainability.asu.edu/urbanresilience.

This month's guest, Justin Stewart (@thecrobe), studies air quality and atmospheric microbial communities in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He tells us about how he got interested in microbes and about some of the challenges of studying these organisms in the air. He explains how several components of air quality (including ozone, PM2.5, and microbes) vary across the city, how they can affect human health and ecosystem function, and how those air quality might change in the face of extreme weather events and climate change. We discuss what the city has done to combat poor air quality (spoiler: not much) and whether microbes could actually play a role in helping to make the air safer for everyone to breathe. 

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If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes, e-mail us at [email protected] or find us on Twitter @FutureCitiesPod. Learn more about the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN) at www.sustainability.asu.edu/urbanresilience.

In this month's episode we sit down with Matt Smith, a PhD candidate at Florida International University, to talk about Hurricane Dorian and some of his research comparing urban wetlands in Portland, Oregon and Valdivia, Chile. He tells us about storm surges, sea level rise, and the comprehensive Miami-Dade County Hurricane Readiness Guide. Wetlands, as it turn out, are valuable infrastructure surrounding Miami for dealing with sea level rise and mitigating the effects of hurricanes. He also found through his research that urban wetlands in Valdivia and Portland had fairly similar nutrient dynamics. Matt contends that more cities ought to explicitly consider wetlands in their resiliency plans as key infrastructure solutions capable of improving water quality, mitigating floods, and more. 


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If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes, e-mail us at [email protected] or find us on Twitter @FutureCitiesPod. Learn more about the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN) at www.sustainability.asu.edu/urbanresilience.

This month, we sit down with two PhD candidates from Arizona State University, Jason Sauer and Yuliya Dzyuban, to talk about their recent trip to Hermosillo, Mexico. We learn the difference between "enchilada" and "enchilado", how temperatures differ in new and old buses, and the unique ways in which people from Hermosillo react to flooding in their city. Despite lacking some of the resources that residents of other cities might have, locals in Hermosillo illustrate a strong capacity to react to and cope with extreme events. Yuliya and Jason wrap up the episode with haikus about their research! 


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If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes, e-mail us at [email protected] or find us on Twitter @FutureCitiesPod. Learn more about the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN) at www.sustainability.asu.edu/urbanresilience.

Both infrastructure disasters and infrastructure funding bills are back in the news, so
Jason Sauer sat down with Dr. Sam Markolf to talk about a paper Sam published last year about disasters and better infrastructure design. We talk about how old infrastructure “locks us in” to living with its consequences and how it creates path dependencies in creating future forms and functions of cities. We end up talking a lot about Miami, but the lessons here also apply to cities across the US and around the world!

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If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes, e-mail us at [email protected] or find us on Twitter @FutureCitiesPod. Learn more about the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN) at www.sustainability.asu.edu/urbanresilience.

Hospitals are critical to the health of any city, providing essential care to the communities that they serve. Unlike many other buildings, hospitals can't simply close and send everyone away during an extreme event since it would be dangerous to the patients in need to critical care. In this month's episode, Stephen Elser interviews two leaders from the CannonDesign firm, whose work includes designing hospitals to be resilient to a wide variety of disturbances. We discuss what it means for a hospital to be resilient, the use of landscaping to create "healing environments", and the importance of tailoring a design strategy to meet specific needs. We also hear about their past work in Nantucket Island, Miami, Houston, and Manhattan and the types of design used in those cases.

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Mike Cavanaugh and Brett Farbstein are, respectively, the Directory of Sustainability and the Directory of Resiliency at CannonDesign. To learn more about the firm and the work that they do, visit www.cannondesign.com. 

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If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes, e-mail us at [email protected] or find us on Twitter @FutureCitiesPod. Learn more about the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN) at www.sustainability.asu.edu/urbanresilience.

Extreme heat and how to cope with it are two major areas of interest in cities like Phoenix, Arizona. Recently, Maricopa County (where Phoenix is) partnered with a group of researchers at ASU to develop new technologies and solutions that are deployable in local communities to help reduce urban heat and improve air quality. This partnership illustrates that extreme heat and its adverse impacts on human health are highly important not only to researchers, but also to those responsible for implementing adaptation strategies. This month, Dr. Yeowon Kim interviews Mark Hartman, the Chief Sustainability Officer at City of Phoenix, Melissa Guardaro, a graduate fellow of UREx SRN, and Charles (Chuck) Redman, the founding director of School of Sustainability at Arizona State University and project director of UREx SRN, about their collaborative efforts on mitigating and adapting to adverse impacts of extreme heat in the metro urban area of Phoenix, Arizona.


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If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes, e-mail us at [email protected] or find us on Twitter @FutureCitiesPod. Learn more about the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN) at www.sustainability.asu.edu/urbanresilience.