From the leader of New Urbanism (in Atlantic Cities):
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Andrés Duany, the cigar-chomping, Cuban-born architect who was a founding member of CNU, with yet another addition to the planning lexicon: lean urbanism.
The lean urbanism concept, he says, is like a software patch, or a workaround – ultimately a guide or a tip sheet to navigate the complicated, and often very expensive, maze of working in the built environment …
“Infrastructure has become so gold-plated and extraordinarily expensive,” Duany says. “Now, they will say the rules are necessary to protect health and safety. But we’re going to do the empirical studies to show that’s not the case.
“Take the electrical code. Most of us are living with the old electrical code, and we’re just fine. Electrical wires run in tubes, originally 30 amps, then 60 amps. You could pull it through the same tubes. Now it’s 120 amps, and the wires don’t fit in the tubes anymore. If you have an apartment or an apartment building and you want to renovate, you have to rip up everything. How many are being burned alive under the old code? Nobody. The rationale is to require things that are gold-plated. And the people who show up at the hearings are the electricians.”
Duany describes lean urbanism as “not a philosophical approach, but a narrow seam of activity, a sharing of secret knowledge.” Tactical urbanism – the unsanctioned demonstration projects of creating a parklet or “chair bombing” a street – might be thought of as at one end of this spectrum. Groups like CNU, the American Planning Association, the Urban Land Institute and SmartGrowth America are operating at a higher political level, pushing policy reform. Lean urbanism, as Duany defines it, seeks to occupy the space between, helping guide urban development in a more practical manner.
And then the limitations. Vancouver’s urban farmers have been operating lean and mean, with the city’s blessing but without official bylaw certification. Unfortunately their unofficial status means they can’t get business insurance because they can’t get (nor do they otherwise want) a business licence, so some of them are packing it in.
The city is working on a business licence, but that immediately gets tangled up in conflicts with bylaws limiting commercial ventures in residential areas, figuring out terms and conditions, having to formalize uses that upset some neighbours etc etc.
Gold plated certification for a backyard “farm” is another variation of gold-plated electrical systems: unnecessary on the ground, but maybe, unfortunately, necessary for other frustrating reasons
Lean Urbanism – Electrical Code
“Take the electrical code. Most of us are living with the old electrical code, and we’re just fine. Electrical wires run in tubes, originally 30 amps, then 60 amps.
Back at the turn of the century, as many of you know, there was a standards war between GE and Westinghouse, lead by technologies from Edison and Tesla.
Edison offered small, in-city, generators, with low voltage DC current.
Tesla offered large, remote generators with high voltage AC current.
Now, we’ve come around to a world where most of our devices — are actually DC…hence we have outlets jammed up with transformer blocks to give us USB scale power.
If we could get them to make DC refrigerators, a/c, stoves…then we would essentially wire the whole house in DC and use 12v or 6v directly…cutting out the need for many of the safeguards.
Also, for power, we could go back to Edison’s idea of local generation, by using fuel cells.
Many countries such as Japan (and some US states) are already going there!
Fuel cell CHP passes the point of no return
http://www.cospp.com/articles/print/volume-15/issue-2/features/fuel-cell-chp-passes-the-point-of-no-return.html
I was thinking about this too. It would be useful it we had two household circuits: 120V AC and 12 or 6V DC. So many devices are DC that it is true, there are adapters everywhere. However, I wouldn’t eliminate the 120V AC. First of all the AC part is what allows for the easy stepping down of voltage, and such low voltage DC wires would be bulky to get enough power to things like ranges. Of course a change like this would just complicate the electrical code.
Another example of excessive government regulations, as a result of excessive public sector unionization, under the disguise of “more safety” more and more rules for more and more overpaid people. No wonder housing is so unaffordable for many. Gee, I did not hear Mr. Green, our Mayor Gregor Roberston talk about it – ever – when discussing housing affordability.
Look at the UK who is starting to rip up some building codes.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cutting-needless-red-tape-for-house-builders
Canada could learn a lot here, but will this happen here on the Left Coast ? Only an anti-union, pro-business, conservative government can accomplish that, so likely not in BC.