Habitat III, UN Conference in Quito, Ecuador

Franco Monsalto, eDesign Dynamics Engineer, at the Habitat III United Nations Conference in Quito, Ecuador. October, 2016

Last week, Dr. Franco Montalto was introduced as the new Director of the North American Hub of the Urban Climate Change Research Network. The announcement took place at Habitat III, the United Nations Conference on Housing and Urban Development held in Quito, Ecuador October 17-20, 2016.

 
The Urban Climate Change Research Network
 is a network of more than 750 researchers from around the world studying the impacts of climate change in cities. The newly formed North American Hub will promote collaboration between UCCRN researchers and city leaders across North America. At Habitat III, Dr. Montalto presented preliminary ideas developed with other colleagues regarding the new Hub's structure and mission. 

 

HABITAT I, HABITAT II AND THE HABITAT AGENDA

The United Nations General Assembly convened the Habitat I Conference in Vancouver, Canada, in 1976, as governments began to recognize the need for sustainable human settlements and the consequences of rapid urbanization, especially in the developing world. At that time, urbanization and its impacts were barely considered by the international community, but the world was starting to witness the greatest and fastest migration of people into cities and towns in history as well as rising urban population through natural growth resulting from advances in medicine.

The Vancouver commitments were reconfirmed 20 years later, at the Habitat II Conference in Istanbul, Turkey. World leaders adopted the Habitat Agenda as a global plan of action for adequate shelter for all, with the notion of sustainable human settlements driving development in an urbanizing world.

Forty years later, there is a wide consensus that towns' and cities' structure, form, and functionality need to change as societies change. Cities have continued to expand outwards beyond their peri-urban areas, often due to weak urban planning, poor urban management, land regulation crises, and real estate speculation factors. It is now well understood that slums and related informal settlements are a spontaneous form of urbanization, consisting of a series of survival strategies by the urban poor, most borne out of poverty and exclusion.

Habitat III, and the New Urban Agenda as a result, represents an opportunity to make concrete the ideals of Habitat II in designing policies, planning urban spaces for all, and providing affordable urban services and utilities by looking to the cities as an incredible force of global development and facing the challenge of how to manage the urbanization process to improve citizens' lives

Franco Montalto, eDesign Dynamics Engineer, at the Habitat III United Nations Conference in Quito, Ecuador. October, 2016
Quito, the capital city of Ecuador, is located at 9,200 feet above sea level. With a population of 2.6 million people, Quito is the second most populous city in Ecuador, after Guayaquil. The historic centre of Quito has one of the largest, least-altered, and best-preserved historic centers in Latin America. Quito, along with Cracow, was the first World Cultural Heritage Sites declared by UNESCO in 1978.

ROOFS ARE SPROUTING GREENERY


Dr. Montalto was recently quoted in an article on Philly.com about Philadelphia’s increasing population of green roofs and their many benefits and possibilities.

Across the city, the tops of buildings and parking lots are sprouting greenery like never before. The number of green roofs in Philadelphia has tripled since 2010, according to the Water Department, which tracks the roofs because they absorb storm-water runoff.

The city now has 111 green roofs, roughly 25 acres’ worth. An additional 64 roofs are in the queue. The completed ones range from a tiny poof of greenery atop a bus stop shelter - installed at 15th and Market Streets as an attention-getter in 2011 - to one of the latest and biggest, one-acre-plus of greenery at Cira Centre South in University City.

The region’s universities have not only been installing roofs, but also avidly studying them.

Among questions Drexel associate engineering professor Franco Montalto and his colleagues are pondering: Can we grow food crops, use native species (instead of desert-adapted sedum species), or create more biodiversity on green roofs in the urban Northeast? How differently do green roofs constructed on steeply sloped roofs perform? Can we adjust the design of the green roof to maximize its habitat value, such as attracting pollinators?

Read the full article at philly.com HERE >

Photo credit: DAVID SWANSON

LESSONS ON POST-RESILIENCE


Writing from Venice, Italy, Dr. Montalto was recently featured on The Nature of Cities. He spoke on coastal resiliency, from his own experience, living in this city where dealing with flood waters (acqua alta) is a fact of life.

Walking through the flooded streets is another interesting experience. Everyone slows down—tremendously. It wasn’t initially clear to me why this was happening. Without cars, there’s always a lot of ground to cover in this city, and the average Venetian typically moves at a healthy gait. Feeling confident in my new stivali, I continued to move at this pace only to find out within a few minutes that I was suffering death by a thousand drops. It seems that each fast step kicks a few drops into the top of your boot. You don’t feel those individual drops, but keep it up and in a few minutes, your socks are soaked. I slowed down, realizing that alas, pazienza, everyone around me was used to this. When there’s acqua alta, it’s OK to be late, or to change the plan, or to cancel appointments. (Though, ironically, not for first graders. My daughter’s new teacher was careful to tell me that acqua alta is not an excuse to be late for school.) Venetians have adapted to contemporary acqua alta the way they adapted to life in a foggy lagoon over a thousand years ago. Life goes on despite it.

Read the full article in The Nature of Cities HERE >

INTERVIEW WITH URBAN OMNIBUS


Eric Rothstein was profiled in Urban Omnibus in January 2015 in an article entitled “Mitigate, Design, Restore: A Conversation on Hydrology and Habitat.”

In the interview, Mr. Rothstein discusses how he chose his line of work, some of eDesign Dynamics projects and collaborations in NYC, and the benefits - and challenges - of green infrastructure and habitat restoration.

Read an excerpt from the interview below:

How does restoration in an urban area like New York City differ from elsewhere?

Traditional restoration work is often led by ecologists and biologists because they know what they need to create. But in the urban, post-industrial setting, the foundations of ecosystems are basically screwed up. These soils are high in nutrients and pH because of all the concrete, so they favor weedy species instead of our native species, which thrive in lower nutrient and more acidic soils. Then there is the poor water quality of the runoff, which includes oil, metals, and various other contaminants. Aligned with that is the issue of “flashy” hydrology: we get much more runoff and we get it a lot faster. So before you can establish a sustainable ecosystem, you need to fix the soils, the hydrologic regime, and the water quality.

Do you have any particular hopes for further integration of ecological ideas into urban development?

To be truly green would be to design everything so that on balance it has a net positive effect on the planet. It’s really hard to offset the negative impact of a building, because of all the materials brought in and the pollution caused by construction and people living there. Most people say that the next best step is to do everything that’s feasible within the budget to have as little an impact as possible. I still struggle with the building scale. With park development, however, you’re taking something with no habitat value and creating both that value and an amenity for the community.

 The full article can be found HERE >

 

ALLEY POND PARK IN THE NEW YORK TIMES


The New York Times recently featured an article on Dr. Franco Montalto’s work in monitoring the ecology of Alley Pond Park and its recent inclusion in the US Forest Services Smart Forest program. The data being collected is part of his efforts in cooperation with the NYC Parks Department for city-wide monitoring of NYC Greenstreets and green stormwater infrastructure.

Franco A. Montalto, an associate professor in Drexel’s department of civil, architectural and environmental engineering, said that the availability of affordable digital sensors made it possible for him to gain access to that day’s recordings from Alley Pond Park on his iPad and instantly compare them with data from the two experimental storm-water runoff sites in the city.

But despite the high-tech tools, Dr. Montalto insists on having eyes and ears verify the data. To that end, more than a dozen high school, college and graduate students have periodically trekked to the site at Alley Pond to sift soil through their fingers and take photos.

“To believe the sensors, you need validation,” he said. “Bad data is worse than no data.”

Eventually, scientists working at Alley Pond Park would like local schools to make the research part of their lessons.

Read the full article at the New York Times HERE >

MORE RAIN THAN WE CAN HANDLE


Dr. Franco Montalto was interviewed by reporter Stephen Nessen of WNYC for their recent NYC 2050 series exploring the impact of climate change on New York City and beyond. Mr. Nessen’s report explores the implications of, and possible solutions to increases in the frequency of intense rain storms.

Speaking on the effectiveness of green infrastructure in the context of New York City’s Greenstreets program, Mr. Nessen reports:

According to Franco Montalto, a professor at Drexel University, who works with the city on its Greenstreets project, if placed in the right location, with curb cuts to allow water in, using sturdy plants that can withstand long droughts and long periods of heavy rain, and with add several layers of engineered soil, bioswales can absorb far more than an inch of rain water (which is what the city hopes they can absorb).

At a Greenstreets in Cambria Heights, Queens, Montalto outfitted the plot with sensitive measuring devices. He found during Sandy and Irene, this plot of land absorbed all the rain water that flowed in, more than seven inches, and didn’t dump any of it into the streets or sewers.

See Mr. Nessen's report at WNYC HERE >

TNOC GLOBAL ROUNDTABLE


Franco Montalto

In March, 2014, The Nature of Cities blog launched their monthly global round table seeking to have industry experts and professionals answer specific questions pertinent to the expansion and improvement of green spaces in urban environments.

This month’s question, on which Dr. Franco Montalto weighed in, was:

Many believe that better information on the monetary value of ecosystem services is critical for getting cities to adopt more green infrastructure solutions to issues such as storm water management, heat island, storm surge, etc. True? What are the key knowledge gaps for convincing cities to invest in ecosystems services?

Dr. Montalto's response below:

Decision makers (and individuals) always try to get the most out of their money. However, I believe that we could generate a lot more public support and associated investment in ecosystem services if they were better calibrated to the values, needs, and goals of diverse urban residents.

By modifying the configuration of urban spaces, we can change what happens there, i.e. we add and subtract functions to that particular urban space. A small but rapidly growing body of researchers from different disciplines (including yours truly) are working in lock step with practitioners to study these projects. I am confident that this work, though in its early stages, will ultimately produce robust empirical, statistical, or physical representations of these dynamic conditions, enabling us eventually to predict the various functions obtained from discreet modifications to urban space.

A related, and much more fundamental question, however, is why and how we modify urban spaces in the first place. Stated differently, given that there are an infinite number of ways that we can design/redesign/modify a space, be it a living room, a rooftop, or a wall, how do we settle on any one concept? Research here is less prevalent.

I believe that many green infrastructure advocates often mistakenly assume that a common set of values underlies such decisions, and expect that consensus regarding ecosystem service goals should follow. In my opinion, there is absolutely no reason to believe that such assumptions would be true. Anyone who grew up in a city remembers how differently you perceived the kids from your block compared to the kids on the next one. Even if you grew up in the suburbs, you remember how different the neighborhood on your side of the tracks was from the one on the other side. Our cities are dynamic networks of enclaves (voluntary clustering for example by ethnicity, lifestyle, or sexual orientation) and ghettos (default and/or imposed involuntary segregation of minority groups). In the US, zoning and other land use policies have also segmented our cities into commercial, residential and industrial areas, and physically separated high income from low income households on parcels of different sizes. We’ve got neighborhoods that are “where it is at”, neighborhoods that are “up and coming”, and neighborhoods that may- or may never- be; we’ve got contested, dangerous, sacred, and safe spaces; and both public and private land. The folks who live, work, and circulate through urban neighborhoods see different opportunities, face different challenges, have different goals, and, therefore, desire radically different things from the spaces around them. As any community planning meeting will demonstrate, most proposed changes to communities generate debate. If the transition to more enhanced urban ecosystem services is to be meaningful in scale and impact, it too will generate significant debate and discussion, and different strategies will emerge in different places.

I suppose that on a very basic level, it is safe to assume that we all want cleaner, healthier, more efficient cities, and broad typologies of ecosystem services (e.g. clean air, clean water, etc.) can be mapped to these goals. But in this usage, the ecosystem service concept is, to me, too general to be actionable and will therefore only generate lackluster support from the public. On the other hand, if the growing body of ecosystem service practitioners is willing to get down and dirty, more nuanced (and therefore more relevant = politically powerful) ecosystem service goals that address the real needs, goals, and aspirations of community residents can be developed. If you were a city council person, would you expect more phone calls from your constituents if you touted the need for cleaner water, or if instead you articulated your support to efforts that would create opportunities for gardening for local seniors; cut off the ability of thieves to access the backs of our houses; and eliminate persistent puddling in the streets after rainstorms?

The challenge is that as diverse as our communities are, is as diverse as these customized ecosystem service goals will be. It takes time and effort to inventory community needs, and the responsibility for doing so does not fall squarely on a water department, a public works department, or even on local politicians. Yet, by definition, ecosystem service goals need to be elicited directly from the public. They will be varied and responsive to the needs of different urban constituencies. They will vary from community to community, and from city to city. They will need to be adapted and changed over time, as communities change.

I am suggesting that instead of viewing ecosystem services as some new, noble, post-Brundtland, 21st century, game changing theoretical concept, let’s just think of this term as a name for our ever-improving multi-faceted abilities to map local to global, built to natural, and people to nature. If we can demonstrate the relevance of the concept in this way, very little convincing of the need for investment in ecosystem services will be required. It will be obvious.

The complete list of responses may be found at The Nature of Cities HERE >

QUANTIFYING GREEN ROOF BENEFITS


Dr. Franco Montalto and his team of researchers at Drexel University were recently featured in an article in The Environmental Monitor detailing their work in quantifying the many benefits of green roofs in urban environments. The article details their work in monitoring a green roof in the Bronx, New York, and how with their findings they have been able to develop specific urban crop equations for the estimation of evapotranspiration for engineering design.

Below is an excerpt from the article:

As it turns out, a key metric to charting urban green roof success is evapotranspiration, a combination of evaporation and plant transpiration. To learn more about ET and establish better procedures to estimate ET from green roofs, a group of researchers from Drexel University set up an experiment in Bronx, N.Y. Their work, published in the American Society of Civil Engineers’ journal, will make ET estimates for urban green spaces more accurate.

“There are different ways of estimating evapotranspiration. Many of the empirical methods are based on energy and water balance computations, and use crop coefficients to consider variability due to plant type,” said Franco Montalto, associate professor of civil, architectural and environmental engineering at Drexel University. “A big question is whether these equations are appropriate for green roofs and other urban green spaces.”

The full article may be found at The Environmental Monitor HERE >

INTERVIEW WITH CWPA


Franco Montalto

For their Spring 2013 Watershed Science Bulletin, the Center for Watershed Protection interviewed Dr. Franco Montalto about his experience researching, developing, and monitoring green infrastructure within urban watersheds.

Interview excerpt below:

Q: How do you define GI?

A: I define GI broadly as decentralized engineering, enhancement, or protection of multifunctional landscape features. Although the principal driver for, and characteristics of, each GI project will differ based on local conditions, all GI projects provide multiple benefits.

I wear three hats that include practitioner, researcher, and community stakeholder. As a practitioner at EDD, I am typically tasked with developing GI designs that reduce the rate and volume of runoff generated on urban catchments. However, these same designs can also provide new urban microhabitats; become a source of nonpotable water; remove pollutants; or aesthetically enhance a streetscape, alley, courtyard, playground, or park. As a researcher, I quantify how much water directed to specific GI facilities evaporates, replenishes the soil moisture, or infiltrates. These hydrologic processes underlie many important ecosystem services. Urban evapotranspiration, for example, wicks heat away from the city, mitigating the urban heat island effect. By replenishing soil moisture, GI practices can enhance the ability of urban vegetation to sustain prolonged droughts, though they can also create waterlogged conditions that are detrimental to certain types of vegetation. Infiltration can recharge local aquifers but, if promoted in the wrong places, can also create basement flooding problems or otherwise interfere with the functioning of underground infrastructure, such as buried utilities or subway tunnels.

Read the full article HERE >

DR. MONTALTO ON MORNING EDITION


Dr. Franco Montalto commentated in a report by Christopher Joyce on NPR’s Morning Edition to discuss the use of green infrastructure in protecting the New York metropolitan area from high energy storms such as November’s Hurricane Sandy.

Transcript excerpt:

Engineer Franco Montalto of Drexel University says [beaches] could be “nourished” — built up with sand or sediment to create dunes that hold back the water. “And the evidence seems to be that places that had rehabilitated beaches suffered less damage than places that didn’t,” Montalto says. For years, the Army Corps of Engineers has built sand dunes along East Coast beaches. Although many got swept away by Sandy, they’re relatively cheap to rebuild. It’s the kind of defense that Montalto calls “green infrastructure.” He says the green strategy has multiple benefits.“You know, a beach nourishment project could have value in terms of protecting houses, it could add habitat and could sort of enhance the value of this beach,” Montalto says. New York is seeking about $10 billion to prepare for the next big storm. Some experts, like Montalto, say you get more bang for your buck with a “distributed” defense — dunes, wetlands, bigger stormwater culverts, even urban parks that slow down the flow of water. They’re cheaper and designed to fit the needs of a particular community.

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