Livable Low-carbon City
Michael Eliason is a Seattle-based architect who has lived and worked in Germany. The Livable Low-carbon City explores the stories, places, and people working to make our buildings and cities more sustainable, enjoyable, and humane – in the face of a changing world. New episodes every other Friday. ish.
Episodes
13 episodes
13: the future of single family homes
Two years ago, a German newspaper ran a piece hinting that Green Party Bundestag member Anton Hofreiter was calling for a ban on new single family homes. Hofreiter had not been calling for a ban on single family homes, but rather
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Season 1
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Episode 13
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21:32
12: Strike Zone
Strike. Verb. A disaster, or other unwelcome phenomenon that suddenly occurs and has harmful or damaging effects on something. Zoning has afflicted our cities - some might say even damaged them - through their lack of flexibility a...
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Season 1
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Episode 12
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17:19
11: Better living through Baugruppen
Housing prices in the US are completely out of balance. Affordable housing is difficult to attain in entire metropolitan areas. There are few op...
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Season 1
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Episode 11
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20:59
10: Re-compaction with Aufstockungen
Aufstockungen is the German term for vertical additions. These are rooftop additions common throughout European cities - where many structures were built with concrete, block, or stone. Vertical additions offer a really interes...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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16:05
09: On Lost Opportunities
Our cities are full of ghost projects. Lost opportunities. Potentialities that could have prioritized safe streets or public health. Transit station with homes for cars, instead of a neighborhood for people. Streets that prioritize speeding car...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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16:51
08: housing and single parents
Several of our friends and colleagues are currently going through divorces and other changes in their family household structure. Many of them were homeowners. However, Seattle - as many other cities in the US, has a pretty severe housing short...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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27:24
07: Freiburg, a Model Green City
Nestled at the southwest edge of the Black Forest, close to where France, Germany and Switzerland all come together - is the Green City of Freiburg. I spent a year living and working in Freiburg in 2003-2004, with a really amazing architecture ...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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24:21
06: Smoke Signals: Passivhaus mandates now.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, we have had fairly significant wildfire smoke for the last six weeks. For the most part, wind patterns have kept much of the Seattle Metro from experiencing the worst of it. That changed this week, as weather patt...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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18:22
05: An ARPA for Climate Adaptive Urbanism
A few months ago, Larch Lab was contacted to start discussions of an ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) focused on climate adaptive urbanism, influenced by the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.With the effects of clim...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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39:08
04: Let's unf*ck TOD!
Transit Oriented Development (TOD) in the United States lacks the vitality, affordability, access to nature and open space, and high quality urban spaces found in new European ecodistrics/TOD. They are also much more auto-centric than wou...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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35:20
03: The Heat is On
In a warming world, heat will increasingly be deadly.The IPCC has stated that extreme heat events are due to global warming – and as we are failing to curb emissions – there is a high confidence they will only get worse. Even if your bu...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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31:56
02: Missing Mid-rise
US cities don't have a missing middle problem, they have a missing *mid-rise* problem. A problem that is reflected in the depths of our housing crises – and in the inability to meet climate goals. In this episode of th...
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Season 1
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Episode 2
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20:25
01: Ditching the Double Loaded Corridor.
In this inaugural episode of the Livable Low-carbon City podcast, host Michael Eliason explores different types of vertical access for urban housing - and the effects these have on livability, sustainability, and climate resiliency.
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Season 1
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Episode 1
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25:28