[Revi]

Check out this mega eco mall! Many megawatts of renewables to power it. I think this guy is a visionary. It will become a mecca for those who want to live in the 21st century. It's one of the more hopeful things I've seen in a while. And it's being built on a brownfield site!

I'll post the website next.

[Revi]

Here's the Grist article on it:

http://www.grist.org/news/muck/2005/05/ ... index.html


Grist article on DestiNY

[seldom_seen]

Not everything that glitters is gold. There was a prior thread on this "eco" (cough) mall. I think it is supposed to have over 10,000 parking spaces for all the environmentalist shoppers.

Behind all the fancy "eco" marketing, you have just another monstrous enclosed shopping mall that people drive their cars to.

[smallpoxgirl]

Great for guilt ridden liberal shoppers, but horrible for the environment. For example, this thing is using 32 megawatts of photovoltaic cells. PV cells take enormous amounts of energy to produce. They can be in operation for 10 years or more before the amount of energy they cumulatively produce exceeds the amount that was used to manufacture them. This thing is also using massive amounts of biofuels, which have very significant negative impacts of their own.

Besides all the holes in the green-ness of the actual structure, the basic fact remains. You can not consume your way to sustainability. Buying consumer crap, no matter how well green-washed, is bad for the earth. If you want to stop killing the earth. Stop shopping! Shopping and the feel-good eco sensitive shopping mall is just passifying your own guilt. It's not helping the earth.

[Hawkcreek]

--

[smallpoxgirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Hawkcreek', 'O')K, but can I at least buy more guns and ammo before I quit??
Please!!!

[o2ny]

Right, but don't you think battle-testing some of the green building practices that are developed on a project of this scale can be useful? Sure it's another mall and people are going to drive for miles to get there in their SUVs and buy useless crap from Crate & Barrel and the Gap. But in the end this might be a project that gives future developers useful information about how to deploy renewables on a massive 'city-wide' scale- which might be used in a walkable city type project. I really think that instead of trashing this idea as 'greenwashing' we should really be grateful that at least they're trying something like this. They probably would have built a mall there anyway- at least it can serve as a way to vet some of the new green materials and renewables in a real world situation.

[smallpoxgirl]

That's like being thankful that your rapist used a condom. "Ohh well. If he hadn't done it, somebody else less considerate would probably have raped me anyway."

The building practices they are using are not anything approaching sustainable. Photovoltaics are not an ecologically friendly technology. They are highly poluting. Biofuels in very small quantities can maybe be made in ecologically friendly. Using 30 megawatts of them is a horrible destructive waste. No way around it. The practices being used in this project are a destructive mess. Scale them up to a city and they will be just a bigger mess.

This project has no more than a veneer of sustainability. i.e. greenwash. It looks green if you're a yuppy liberal who doesn't really care to think to deeply about things or to make any significant alteration in your behavior. If you really dig into what they're doing, it's probably as destructive as the average mall if not more so.

[o2ny]

Ok let's just give it all up and go home, forget about even trying...

The way I see it, it's a baby step. This project, as destructive as it may sound, is at least movement in the direction that we need to go. It may spur interest and/or investment in sustainabilty and renewable building design. It will certainly draw attention to some of the ideas developers need to be thinking about. Some of it may be flawed (although I have never heard of photo-voltaics being environmentally destructive), but even if it is proven as a total disaster, at least we have some data on how NOT to build a sustainable city/mega-plex.

So go up there and lie down in front of the bulldozer if you must, but in my opinion we should stop nit-picking and get *something* built... we need to start throwing stuff at the wall and see what sticks.

[smallpoxgirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('o2ny', 'O')k let's just give it all up and go home, forget about even trying...

[o2ny]

The way we see ourselves must change- there is no doubt about that. We have been ingrained with consumerist habits and a detachment from nature to the point that we could not survive without some of the exhorbitant luxuries that we now call necessities. The mindset must change, and grass-roots, 'viral' activities to get this message across is important. Communites are important- and this website is an example of a community where important and ground-breaking ideas can be exchanged.

But I think for the most part these kind of messages only reach those who seek them, and we only have so many ways to spread the word without holding a political office or shareholder's stake in some major corporation. It's always the same, the people who really have the power are the ones with the cash... they get to dictate how the majority of the population thinks and behaves, and mostly they 'dictate' them to prop up their own wealth and their buddies. Just the way it is right now. So the way I see it is the fact that some republican, developer billionaire would even attempt a project like this mall is actually astounding, and I agree with the original post- visionary- because now we have some serious money going into a project that will get attention, and may be able to change they way developers think about future projects. It may get local politicians to start demanding more renewable features in new buildings, little by little. None of this is for certain, but it seems to me like the *intention* is there, and it's a good one.

Here's the last section of the article:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')nd then, of course, there's the obvious fact that it's a mall -- a massive temple to American-style hyper-consumerism.

Still, all this doesn't negate the breathtaking ambition of Congel's plans to construct a zero-energy retail mecca -- a powerful symbol that profits and cheap fossil fuels aren't inextricably entwined. Who else in this country is willing to commit the staggering sum of an estimated $20 billion to such a vision? Who else is willing to grandstand for renewables with a project as eccentric as a zero-energy mega-mall? At a time when Republican leaders are pushing a myopic, five-year-old energy bill with massive handouts to Big Oil and King Coal, Americans should applaud the optimism and sheer audacity of Congel's dream.

[smallpoxgirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('o2ny', 'a')lthough I have never heard of photo-voltaics being environmentally destructive

[smallpoxgirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('o2ny', 'S')till, all this doesn't negate the breathtaking ambition of Congel's plans to construct a zero-energy retail mecca -- a powerful symbol that profits and cheap fossil fuels aren't inextricably entwined.

[americandream]

Lol...an eco mall..what will they think of next! Oh...BTW, I presume the place is gopnna be built out of hemp and clay and horses/goats (poor horses and goats) hair...its fossil fuel free.....suppose there'll be not a speck of plastic to be seen.

[jaws]

I had this idea once and came up with a concept that will blow your minds. Here we go, hope you're sitting down for this... what if people could LIVE in the mall? You could step right out of your home and there would be shops and restaurants and entertainment everywhere around you. And there would be a kids' area with a lawn and great trees for them to play around in, and you could see it from the window of your office on the upper levels of the mall. And since it would be a bit bigger than a regular mall, we could link the areas around the mall with a train system.

I call this revolutionary scheme the "Living Mall". It's going to be the wave of the future!

[UIUCstudent01]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'I') had this idea once and came up with a concept that will blow your minds. Here we go, hope you're sitting down for this... what if people could LIVE in the mall? You could step right out of your home and there would be shops and restaurants and entertainment everywhere around you. And there would be a kids' area with a lawn and great trees for them to play around in, and you could see it from the window of your office on the upper levels of the mall. And since it would be a bit bigger than a regular mall, we could link the areas around the mall with a train system.

I call this revolutionary scheme the "Living Mall". It's going to be the wave of the future!

[gnm]

makes me think of the new release of dawn of the dead. DestiNY - the preferred place to wait out the MZBs!

-G

[alpha480v]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('seldom_seen', 'N')ot everything that glitters is gold. There was a prior thread on this "eco" (cough) mall. I think it is supposed to have over 10,000 parking spaces for all the environmentalist shoppers.

Behind all the fancy "eco" marketing, you have just another monstrous enclosed shopping mall that people drive their cars to.

[Leanan]

Isn't that the way it used to be? And still is, in some older cities. The shops are downstairs, the family who runs the shop lives upstairs.

[o2ny]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('smallpoxgirl', 'T')hey are difficult because we've lived our whole lives in the poison culture that is America. Adopting healthy relationships with the earth and our fellow humans is hard because we have zero experience with it. In the end though, it is both easy and fulfilling. Trying to delude yourself with a "zero-energy retail mecca" is just so much mental masturbation.