3 Cool Ways to Cool Our Cities

Images courtesy of the UK Space Agency and University College London (UCL), Arup, City of Los Angeles Bureau of Street Services, Andrew Serger, Alyson Hurt, Conservation Design Forum, Raeki, United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Plant Architects, Stefano Boeri Architetti, Jorge Ayllon Garcia, Tyler Caine, Google, Masdar, Foster and Partners, Google Earth and the City of Melbourne.

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© 2018 The B1M Limited

[Bellerophon]

Greening cities is something we need more of. People also forget that trees, plants and shrubs are natural acoustical dampeners.

[kayrosis]

These are some COOL ideas. But I imagine the most impactful, and one of the easier to implement ideas is green roofs, whether they can be turned into little parks, or be covered in wildflowers to support the bee population, there's an abundance of "land" if you start to green your cities' roofs.

[dielfonelletab]

Studies show the best way to keep a city cool is to play smooth jazz at every corner. 😎🎺🎷

[tecramos]

Place a giant set of sunglasses over the city and you will cool the city.

[GIguy]

I’ve lived all of my 15 years here in Toronto, and the green roof initiative is actually making quite a big difference downtown, especially in the summertime when it’s over 100° and humid as hell. That’s one thing you didn’t mention in the video, and that’s how we cool or buildings inside. Many years ago the city initiated eight deep cold water project, whereby they sunk massive intake pipes, to sit at the bottom of Lake Ontario, which is then circulated throughout several of the skyscrapers downtown, to cool them down naturally, saving millions in electrical costs, not to mention helping to save the environment. It works really well, as more and more skyscrapers take it vantage of this cold water, it’s one of the many advantages of living on the shores of the Great Lakes. The one thing that struck me when I went to Manhattan for the first time was how much hotter it was specifically inside the city itself, and how much cooler it was as soon as you drove over the bridge to the Jersey side, which is a much cooler. I hadn’t really realized how much heat the city can attract. There’s no way to compare Manhattan to Toronto, but I never found or downtown extraordinarily hotter than the rest of the city/province, but I do know that the further north you go the harder it gets, but if you live near the lake or write on it as I do, the temperatures are always much cooler, saving me a fortune and electricity bills. I’m just wondering if any other cities have used this technology to cool their buildings as well? Lake Ontario is not a warm body of water, even on the hottest of Somers, we’re lucky if the shallow areas get to about 20°C, but the bottom of the lake is always freezing cold, allowing us to naturally cool are buildings via a series of pumps and controls. I have noticed however that has are in sane growth spurt continues, as we add dozens of new towers to work skyline each year, the city is getting hotter, so I’m hoping these technologies can help avoid living in stagnant air mass. So many of our streets are completely wall-to-wall skyscrapers for as far as you can see creating natural wind tunnels, but again, something that helps keep the city cool, especially if the wind is blowing off the lake. We are on the northern shore of Lake Ontario, so the further north you travel away from the downtown core the hotter it gets, but with seas hundreds of new skyscrapers that have been built since this craze began in 2005, The problem is getting worse and worse, and there are still hundreds of towers either under construction, propose for construction, or approved and waiting to start construction. I estimate the average tower here to be approximately 150 to 200 m tall, but, the latest craze is towers over 250 m, with four in the works Well over 300 m, so it’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few decades. If you’re not familiar with Toronto, the city has undergone a complete transformation to such a degree that even I have a hard time recognizing my own city from the waterfront, the only thing that gives it away is the CN Tower, But if the trends continue unabated, we won’t even be able to see the CN Tower for much longer, as it’s already surrounded by condominium towers nearly 300 m tall. The city is building so many skyscrapers, you simply wouldn’t believe it, take a picture of our skyline from 2005, When this building boom began, and compare it to a picture of a skyline today, you wouldn’t believe the difference, it literally looks like a completely different city. A local newspaper, just for fun, took a picture of our current skyline and digitally erased the CN Tower from it to see if anybody could recognize what city it was, the results? They asked 5000 Torontonians we’ve lived here their entire lives to identify the CD in the picture, 90% of those asked had no idea what city it was, they couldn’t believe it was Toronto, until they show them the picture with the CN Tower, that’s how much we’ve grown, and it just gets busier and busier each year, I can only imagine how it will look in another 30 years

[CitiesoftheFuture]

This are very interesting Ideas for the Future! Great Video!

[deu]

Wonderful ideas, would be very useful for urban and industrial centres around the equator. Cities like Lagos (Nigeria), Dhaka (Bangladesh) and Sao - Paulo (Brazil) could benefit from similar initiatives

[MudhaffarAdhwa]

Starting by doing what we can at our homes is always a good start

[MANISHMEHTAIIT]

Nice one.
For any problem Moving towards Nature is the best solution in every cases than moving towards new technologies..

[Alex-zpft]

Create a need for public transport, provide good public transport, narrow roads or remove them completely in some zones, heavily line the remaining streets with trees with large foliage and canopies and you will remove a ton of black asphalt. Also, increase density and design a cities with increased walkabillity to decrease the need of cars.

Cars should only really be needed if you want to travel distances of over 10 miles or even more if public transport is appropriate.

Also, tall buildings (for increased density) create shade at ground level to an extent and tal buildings can have natural ventilation at higher levels so no more energy used for ACs. If people were to implement that in cities, it would decrease a lot of carbon emissions and reduce the heat island effect.

Just as a bonus, removed roads mentioned earlier can be transformed in long narrow parkways, heck throw a ditch and create a stream if you have a natural river nearby to divert water.

[stevethaysen]

Thank god you mentioned Masdar City. I been waiting to see it on the B1M for ages. Please please please do a full length feature video on Masdar City!

[citiesskyscrapers]

I’d like to see a video about cities and natural disasters: how cities prepare to possible future natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes etc.

[roben]

You also mentioned the cooling effect of plants and green spaces in those "green buildings" episode. thanx B1M

[mikuelankelo]

I have spent the last hour or so watching these videos. This channel is great.

[simonjrobinson]

I'm amazed that more people aren't talking about Masdar given how innovative and effective it is.
I've been waiting years for reputable sources to make good-quality documentaries about it!
Still waiting...

[kartikeyajha]

Just stumbled upon on this channel and I must confess, the work you guys are doing is truly a class apart. Keep up the good work and it’s great to see a channel related to construction/realty is not doing grand homes and tacky interiors.

[GIguy]

Here in Toronto, we’ve been using deep water cooling to cool some of the biggest office towers downtown, for well over a decade now, which has saved millions of dollars, not to mention saving us from putting countless tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It’s such a simple concept. For those that don’t know Toronto is on the shores of Lake Ontario, one of the great lakes. About 15 years ago, give or take, they ran piping to lay on the bottom of the lake, and they put it quite far out, resting it on the lake bed, ensuring The water will always be cold, ice cold at those depths. I don’t know a lot about it, but a friend of mine is an engineer, who actually worked on the first deep water leak cooling project in the city, it was a massive undertaking, to run these pipes several kilometres to the bottom of the lake and all the way to the downtown core to cool first Canadian place, a 72 story office tower, in our downtown core. He said that ever since they got the system up and running, it has never faltered, and is far more effective than traditional air conditioning, not to mention a lot more cost effective and environmentally friendly.

[banyan]

You guys should do a Video on Manchester UK. The amount of towers in planning or under construction is absurd for a city in Northern England. The skyline is already starting to change and in 10 years time it will be unrecognisable. I think it would make for an interesting vid, but I'm sure you have some good content lined up regardless. Cheers.

[ralphsantana]

Great video. Particularly love the roof top gardens initiative. And I didn’t know about Masdar...this video made me look further into it. Keep up the good job, guys!

[AtomicFrontier]

Great video! One of the issues you didn't mention is how aircon warms up the surrounding area - meaning buildings need to use even more aircon which just accelerates the problem. I did a video (check out "Aliens and Aircon") on my channel that covers and alternative cooling system being used in Australia. It's super cool! Thanks!