Hello Cool Cities

"Whenever and wherever societies have flourished and prospered rather than stagnated and decayed, creative and workable cities have been at the core of the phenomenon.” -- Jane Jacobs (1916-2006)

As some of our members have noticed, Hello Cool World has been working on a lot of projects recently about urban issues, the stress of globalization on the environment and sustainable cities. As our population grows and traditional energy sources decline, it seems likely that the future of humanity lies in cities: there's nowhere else to go. The majority of us already live there and the cracks are beginning to show. Aging infrastructure, high levels of pollution, housing shortages, gas guzzling through the endless crawl of urban sprawl – these are just some of what ails the world's metropoli. If they really are our future then we’re going to have to design them, and live in them, a better way.

One project with global reach that we had a part to play in was Habitat Jam, a 72-hour round-the-clock online jam session around issues of urban sustainability, held in December 2005. It was part of the preparations for the third session of the World Urban Forum held in Vancouver the following June. With participants from all over the world, it was the largest online live chat of it's kind ever! The Jam was funded by UN Habitat, The Government of Canada and IBM, which offered up the use of their own "jam" technology. We were part of the core jam team and had a role managing the content structure and exploring what an "actionable idea" might look like. We also prepared the post jam long form report (500 ideas!) that was reviewed and condensed by The International Centre for Sustainable Cities (ICSC). Part of the fun was getting to geek out with the techies from IBM, discussing data and how to analyze it, while also working with a group of amazing folks active in high level international networking. The distilled content gathered can now be viewed as 70 actionable ideas linked off Habitatjam site, as well as having been incorporated into the Global Urban Sustainability Solutions Exchange (GUSSE) website, yet another resource for those contemplating the future of our cities.

RADIANT CITY

Our most recent project is Radiant City, a film about urban sprawl that opened in Canadian theatres March 30. By filmmakers Gary Burns & Jim Brown, Radiant City enjoyed sold out benefit screenings and strong openings – it’s been held over and moved to new theatres so you can still catch it around the country.

For all you non-Canucks, we’ve put lots of great video footage on our campaign page including The Corporation alum Mark Kingwell and suburbia’s most vociferous critic, James Howard Kunstler. But our favourite part of the campaign was designing these fun sprawl fact buttons based on the film graphics for people to post on their websites.

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES

Coming to U.S. cities this summer! DVD is a hot seller at our web store (Canada only).

Before we strolled through suburban dystopia, we entered the stunning realm of Manufactured Landscapes, a disturbingly beautiful film by Jennifer Baichwal centred on the work of renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky. Burtynsky makes large-scale photographs of ‘manufactured landscapes’ – quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines, dams – that are aesthetically gorgeous and horrifying at the same time. The film travels with him through China witnessing that country’s massive industrial revolution, visiting the dumping grounds of “progress” like the Three Gorges Dam that displaced over a million people.

Says Mark Achbar: “Manufactured Landscapes left me with this thought: If we treat the earth as disposable, we should not be surprised when it treats us the same way."

A CRUDE AWAKENING: The Oil Crash DVD

With oil companies spending their obscenely high profits on mergers and buying back their own shares, it begs the question: Have we peaked? And more importantly, can we survive the crash?