Week 2 Discussion: Environmental Sustainability, Housing Projects

Respond to these follow responses you must write a response to these statements with some solutions or questions you feel need to be answered. Remember your answers to these statements must be number.
1a. I think that there are a lot of opportunities to change our cities quite dramatically. I'll use an analogy, I dont think this happens easily when you have too many cooks in the kitchen. These cooks have a different customer base, specialties, and preferences themselves.
Eventually everyone in the design process as well as the political and public entities have to agree on something, but I believe that the vision of the city can be nurtured through unconventional ways. One way which I believe is successful, is holding many design competitions where the designers can use their expertise to create functional and innovative solutions. When the competition designs are reviewed there is a spark in the imagination of the public, regulatory agencies, and political authorities. Where before there was dull visions, same old same old, now there can be an awakening in what can be. Many people unfamiliar with design get trapped in what is, rather than what can be. I think practicality limitations like budget certainly need to be considered, but more radical solutions are needed to update our cities and to break the mold of standard faulty design. the parameters are changing for what our cities need, and the same old systems will not work with climate change, urban densification, and all the other problems we are seeing.
ofcourse the designers dont have the final say, but I believe there needs to be more creativity to create long term solutions. It is also the designers job to understand the budget concerns and to address why their design is practical
2a. There are different stakeholders involved in design at the site scale than design at the city scale. Designers and architects must answer to property owners while being constrained by the limits of municipal zoning laws. Planners must answer to their constituencies, and larger governing bodies. Unless specific interest or legal constraints are provided on sustainability measures, these factors do not ultimately influence the bottom line when making decisions around planning and design. Additionally, these activities can take place in a somewhat siloed fashion unless explicit efforts of collaboration are taken.
Sustainable development inherently calls for a different “bottom line” so-to-speak than has traditionally governed development and design: for people to live and work in a way that does not cause harmful environmental impacts. Our infrastructure and buildings are at the very heart of this. A net zero building on it’s own is great, but doesn’t exist in a vacuum. If the municipal infrastructure around it causes wasted energy and pollution, there is still a major problem at hand. Likewise, a city with a sustainable infrastructure that includes energy hogging buildings also falls short. Finding meaningful solutions to these issues means reaching across disciplines and across sectors to help reach mutually beneficial answers to many different interests and stakeholders.
1b. Communication on all parts of the development would be key. How one would treat a sustainable housing development would be a little different from how one would attempt to implement a reclaimed marsh land for water treatment, but there is much overlap.
Of course the first thing you'd want to do would be to get the town/area/local government involved immediately. Like what was said in the powerpoint, if the plan is already developed/done by the time it gets presented to the town, it can come upon alot more fire and resistance than if it was shared with the town in the beginning. Even if the outcome is the same, the stakeholders in the town want to know that they have a voice in what is going up around them. 
Charettes are great way to do this. You bring the idea in and get feed back. It gets a little more developed. Everyone does their research. It's brought back. More feed back is gathered. This repeats until a design is reasonably agreed upon (of time runs out). Just at the Rocky Mountain Institute points out (https://www(dot)youtube(dot)com/watch?v=hIX-J83lmaI), when using the integrated design process (when it's just the designers and engineers and planners and such involved and maybe not the whole town), there's a lot of talking, separating, researching, and returning and talking, so that everything can improve. And things aren't 'value engineered' out at the end. That part's done already.
2b.As discussed in the first discussion question, bringing many different people to the table - hearing many voices at the table can help to get an overall idea of the views of the general public, and those other stakeholders that are involved. 
Sustainability is tricky because it has not been something people have just come to accept and adopt. because of this education is a real key strategy when trying to engage the public and policy makers. Giving people honest truthful facts about the benefits and advantages of building more sustainably and then letting them form their opinions from your information rather than trying to force it on a population that may have its reservations.