[bio-Urban Design Research Cluster]

Main Ideas: 

City doesn’t only include the positive products but also negative ones like urban waste and suffering people.

Urban waste and underclass are usually ignored with some projects, but  it’s necessary to face these issues rather than simply covering with some new alien projects.

Waste could also be resource and can feed plants and algae, which can then be transformed to bio fuel.

Local people can collect these bio fuel for daily use or feeding animals. 

 

City as a Complex

 

Thousands of tons of wastes are produced in large cities every day. Most of these solid wastes are buried in the ground and most of the liquid wastes are discharged into the closest large body of water after some simple treatment or in the case of some developing countries, without treatment. In doing so, these wastes are only transferred, they are not dealt with in a proper manner that could solve the problem of human waste.  With such abundant amounts of  wastes produced in daily life, the truth of excess and unhealthy buried and dumped waste has been covered with beautiful urban construction projects  while the overall environmental situation is getting worse. 

A good example of this transference of waste can be seen in Dubai. The city itself has a beautiful urban landscape but its deserts are becoming places used for gathering urban waste. This waste seems to be dumped in the desert without any thought given to the negative environmental effects. The city is a complicated mechanism and it deals with many different parts of life effectively such as housing, traffic and crime, but it is quite disheartening to see that cities find it quite difficult to dealt with their own human waste in a proper manner. 

The waste situation varies in different parts of a city.  Cities are complex and the type of people and the type of and amount of waste differs in a city depending on whether a certain area caters to  residential, entertainment, offices or other types of development.  The age of a city is also very important. Resources to handle waste are not distributed equally, which results in the depression of some places in the city. These areas are usually filthy and have no controls on urban waste. These are the more problematic areas in the city and are in much need of renewal.  Influenced by the agglomeration effect, these areas continue in a downward trend if no new urban construction projects are undertaken. Therefore, they are commonly treated as mere problem areas by local authorities but also as money machines by some investors. 

It is undeniable that  new projects  bring life to these areas and with increased investments, some of the most evident pollution problems will be dealt with properly.  However, it is quite typical that these large projects, when it comes to the problem of human waste, simply try to transfer these problems to other places and they do not make the waste a part of cities’ natural circulation mechanism..

In the case of Tunis, the situation of wastes is much more serious than is seen in most areas.  The problem in Tunis is twofold.  Wastes in Tunis are not controlled and collected efficiently by the public sectors. The waste is also not recycled in the urban mechanism. Basically, this city sped up its industrialization in the 1880s during French colonization, but the sewage system keep up with the  high speed of industrialization. Since that time, pollution has become a very serious issue in the city, especially around Tunis Lake. From historical records, industries used to discharge the wastes directly into the lake without any treatment, causing a very unsafe environment for residents and workers around the lake area. Even today, Tunis has a policy that industries should deal with their own waste and there is no comprehensive industrial sewage system in Tunis. In areas of south Tunis, it’s not hard to find open channels of waste alongside a street and on the edge of the city. While there are some wastes which are getting collected, there are also some wastes remaining in the urban area destroying the living environment. For the collected wastes in the sewage system created by ONAS in 1980s, the solid wastes will be buried and the liquids will be discharged into the sea after a basic treatment. This, from a personal  view, could be even more harmful to the environment than ridding the city of waste in the manner they have been doing so for decades. Instead of burying waste in the city, the discharge of waste in the sea will lead to global pollution problems affecting many areas instead of only one urban area. 

During the restoration of the south lake in 2004, new land was reclaimed on which a new urban project was proposed. This proposal was in 2011 before the Arab Spring. It was an effort to attract more investments to help bring the city out of its financial crisis. This project proposed an alienated Western style living environment in this area. The answer to human waste in this project is similar to that in Dubai. Waste would be dealt with by transferring it out of the city, leaving nature to take care of the waste over many years time. 

 

Waste as Resources

 

As a city functions, it’s natural and inevitable to produce waste. Compared to the circulation system of the human body, the city functions in a similar manner. The production of wastes in a city is not a problem. The problem arises when waste is treated as a useless material, abandoned into nature. At the speed cities are being enlarged and residents are producing waste, nature cannot keep up at that same pace.  Efforts should be made to help solve this problem. 

With the global energy crisis raising traditional fuel costs, more and more researchers are beginning to make use of human waste through bio-methods in more inexpensive ways. This opens another door for dealing with wastes in urban area and makes it possible to realize a more self-sufficient and productive urban environment. In America, NASA has launched the OMEGA (Offshore Membrane Enclosures for Growing Algae) project which aims to extract biofuel and treat wastewater by raising algae. Algae somehow is becoming a highly favoured energy alternative. What’s more, algae is a very productive species, one of the fastest growing plants on earth, which could be used not only for biofuel but also other products like nutrition, food, antibiotics, cosmetics and others. The important things about algae are that it consumes urban waste and does not bring new waste itself and the companies researching its use are able to make high profits, one such company is Originoil, based in Los Angeles, CA.  

‘ ...... The system worked, and 15–30% of algae were harvested each day. The setup was able to remove 82% carbon dioxide on a sunny day and 50% carbon dioxide on a cloudy day. Nitrogen oxide was also lowered by 86% ...... High oil species of microalgae cultured in growth optimized conditions of PBRs have the potential to yield 19,000–57,000 l of microalgal oil per acre per year. The yield of oil from algae is over 200 times the yield from the best performing plant/vegetable oils ...... The calculated cost per barrel would be only $20. Currently, a barrel of oil in the U.S. Market is selling for over $100 per barrel ......’

Ayhan Demirbas, 2010, ‘Use of algae as biofuel sources’

As the experiments conducted by Utah State University in 2010 show, algal biofilm could even work better than the normal ponds for raising suspended algae. These types of studies are helping to solve the problem of waste in a more direct and productive manner. These methods of recycling waste will be helpful in creating a healthier urban space for residents and workers in cities all over the world. Not only can waste be taken care of in a healthy way, but there will be a possibility to ‘grow’ energy from waste produced in our ever increasing sized cities. 

 

City for Locals

 

With the development of depressed areas, sometimes residents are forced to migrate out their habitat. This process is seen in the original residents being replaced by new middle class groups. This process is typically called gentrification. One might assume gentrification usually only happens in developed countries, on the contrary, more and more cases of gentrification are beginning to emerge in developing countries and even in some small cities with urban renewal projects. The process of exclusion and displacement results in increased living costs, social unbalance and other conflicts in the affected area, which then drives away the original residents. This exclusion can be very bad for the vulnerable groups who currently live in areas where major development projects are to be undertaken. 

Further, the phenomenon of gentrification is actually a process of transferring problems to other places in much the same way as waste is handled in some large cities. . When this occurs, the problems a depressed area faces are not addressed, but those problems are simply covered up  with a totally new environment by transferring the original residents to suburban areas. During this displacement, the original residents do not benefit from the development of new projects or the amount they benefit cannot match the changes they incur in their  living environment. Even after these projects are finished, the original residents remain to be the vulnerable underclass group and more problems arise in the areas to which they migrate. To put it in more simple terms, the problems are just hidden from the new central urban areas. 

Based on these ideas, new projects should make an effort to really benefit the local people with the improvement of living conditions. At the minimum, locals should have an easier access to fuel and a better environment in which to perform their necessary daily activities. In the case of Tunis, the situation of the people is tightly connected with the waste conditions. By applying biofuel techniques, it will be possible to reverse the current use of waste as merely fertilizers and create much needed energy, making the original residents one of the main beneficiaries.

 

Machinic Landscape

 

Bio-waste Machinic Landscape is a concept proposed based on the three main ideas introduced earlier;  city as a complex system, waste as bio-resources, and city for benefits of locals.  Just as the name describes, this concept is to turn the land around the Tunis Lake into a machine, which could realize the transformation of urban wastes into biofuel in an eco-friendly way. By using ‘machine’, it means the process will involve industrial mechanized construction and biological methods working together.  Therefore, this concept contains four main ideas:  waste, bio-method, machine, landscape. The bio-method mainly involves making use of algae because of its outstanding characteristics. 

This process should be undertaken as a large scale project. Since the pollution and depression are common issues the south lake area faces, a small scaled mechanism cannot help deal with the problems and would have only a limited ability to benefit the local people.  The bio-waste mechanism should involve this entire area and form a new manufactured productive landscape, which could consume the urban wastes and produce enough energy for both locals and investors. To make this bio-digester system more adaptive and interactive with the urban system, this new mechanism should be related with people’s daily activities and to the natural circulation system. Based on this landscape, new landscape will then also emerge and further evolve. With the bio-waste landscape primarily functioning, other investors could be further involved for construction of roads and living units, which will make use of the wastes and consumption of biofuel more accessible. This will then further promote the formation of the bio-waste landscape and the whole system will become tightly connected. After a certain number of years, the manufactured productive landscape will achieve stability and could begin to import urban wastes from other areas, helping to achieve  sustainable development in Tunis.

The idea of a machine in this landscape model is based on a certain mechanism which can create products by the input of materials and fuels. In this design model, the landscape will raise algae to make use of urban waste by producing biofuel. Since the construction of this manufactured landscape will be large scale, it would be best  to make this an industrialized process which would make it much easier to control. There are two main factors in this process: the density of wastes and air in the water. The increase of waste density will cause the refraction of light in the water and also produce poisonous bacteria, sensors should be included in the mechanism to detect waste density of the landscape. There should also be a mechanism to distribute wastes to other places when the density in a certain area becomes too high. In this landscape model, it will be best to have tentacle like structures which with their movement, will help facilitate the flow of waste.  This is also best because algal biofilm needs more surface area on which to grow and tentacle structures could stop wastes dropping deep where algae will not grow as well due to a lack of light. 

Another big factor in this mechanism is the amount of air in the water. Although anaerobic bacteria can also help with the decomposition of organic matter, it also creates odours which could drive people away from this area. Therefore, the tentacles should also be responsible for sensing and keeping the oxygen level in the water to inhibiting the growth of anaerobic bacteria and happening of anaerobic reactions which is a main cause of odours. With controlling these two factors, the bio-waste machinic landscape could function smoothly and productively.

With these ideas, some physical-model tests were launched to explore what type of landscape could be formed in the process of collecting waste in certain places and how they could form a network with one another. Some research studies and digital simulations were  also carried out to explore some adaptive and dynamic systems that could possibly form a stable and productive network. 

Based on the ideas mentioned above, this project  explores the formation of an urban network for a more productive and self-sufficient city. With limited time and resources, some research is not fully developed. The techniques on how to form this urban network remain to be further clarified. But by treating urban waste as one of the main resources in the mechanism of a city, this project begins to face the urban waste problem directly and  explores  a more coordinated relationship between the network of city, nature and people in ecological and sustainable ways. As a result and realization of this idea, the project in this portfolio will provide a possible urban morphology by involving algal and other techniques and factors.