Livable Low-carbon City

Strike. Verb. A disaster, or other unwelcome phenomenon that suddenly occurs and has harmful or damaging effects on something. 

Zoning has afflicted our cities - some might say even damaged them - through their lack of flexibility and sterility. A hundred years on, the experiment of zoning is a massive failure. 

However, it doesn't have to be this way. Other countries don't even have single use zoning li...

Housing prices in the US are completely out of balance. Affordable housing is difficult to attain in entire metropolitan areas. There are few options for middle class households, and even fewer for working class residents.

We need a reset on the American dream.

From one that is sprawling, unaffordable, lonely, carbon intensive, and exclusive – to one that is community-oriented, multigenerational, family-friendly and sustainable. One ...

Aufstockungen is the German term for vertical additions. These are rooftop additions common throughout European cities - where many structures were built with concrete, block, or stone.

Vertical additions offer a really interesting path towards re-compacting (densifying) existing neighborhoods in an incredibly sustainable manner.

They preserve more affordable, existing housing.

They reduce sprawl.
...

Our cities are full of ghost projects. Lost opportunities. Potentialities that could have prioritized safe streets or public health. Transit station with homes for cars, instead of a neighborhood for people. Streets that prioritize speeding cars, instead of safety and sustainable mobility. 

But the reality of our cities, at least in the U.S. – is that we don’t realize those opportunities. 

Often, these ghost projects were eliminated ...

Several of our friends and colleagues are currently going through divorces and other changes in their family household structure. Many of them were homeowners. However, Seattle - as many other cities in the US, has a pretty severe housing shortage. There are very limited options for housing that is affordable for single parents or those co-parenting... Let alone housing specifically designed for single parents. Over the last year, ...

Nestled at the southwest edge of the Black Forest, close to where France, Germany and Switzerland all come together - is the Green City of Freiburg. I spent a year living and working in Freiburg in 2003-2004, with a really amazing architecture firm ( Pfeifer.Roser.Kuhn Architekten) doing incredible things around low energy buildings and dowel laminated timber. The city, despite its smaller size - with a population of roughly 220,00...

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we have had fairly significant wildfire smoke for the last six weeks. For the most part, wind patterns have kept much of the Seattle Metro from experiencing the worst of it. That changed this week, as weather patterns shifted and the dense wildfire smoke cloaked our region for several days, thrusting both Seattle and Portland into the cities with the worst air quality globally.

Unfortunately...

A few months ago, Larch Lab was contacted to start discussions of an ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) focused on climate adaptive urbanism, influenced by the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.

With the effects of climate change becoming more frequent and intense than anticipated – we can no longer wait ten to twenty years to adapt to this new normal. Larch Lab believes we need an ARPA-esque project to facilita...

Transit Oriented Development (TOD) in the United States lacks the vitality, affordability, access to nature and open space, and high quality urban spaces found in new European ecodistrics/TOD.  They are also much more auto-centric than would be found in EU cities - leading in part to a lower quality of life than should be possible. This is in part due to poor building and land use practices.

In today's episode, we di...

In a warming world, heat will increasingly be deadly.

The IPCC has stated that extreme heat events are due to global warming – and as we are failing to curb emissions – there is a high confidence they will only get worse. Even if your building doesn’t overheat today – it may well in the future.

 In this episode of the Livable Low-Carbon City, we'll explore the problems with overheating, and some of the ways ...

US cities don't have a missing middle problem, they have a missing *mid-rise* problem. 

A problem that is reflected in the depths of our housing crises – and in the inability to meet climate goals. 

In this episode of the Livable Low-Carbon City, we'll explore the problems with Missing Middle housing and why it is inadequate to meet the demands of today's housing shortage - and why we need to be foc...

In this inaugural episode of the Livable Low-carbon City podcast, host Michael Eliason explores different types of vertical access for urban housing - and the effects these have on livability, sustainability, and climate resiliency. 

Projects discussed in this episode include:

• Vienna House, Vancouver. Public Architecture + Communication. 
• Gleis21, Vienna. Einszueins Architektur.
• Ørsted Gardens Apartments, Frederiksberg. T...