Notes
Directions of Environmental Design Research in the Anthropocene
Daniel Stokols
School of Social Ecology, University of California, Irvine
Abstract
During the 50 years separating the inaugural conference of the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA1) held in 1969 at Chapel Hill NC and the 2019 EDRA50 conference in Brooklyn NY, enormous societal shifts have occurred. The world has now entered a new phase of geological history, the Anthropocene Epoch marked by human-caused modifications of the earth system. These pervasive planetary shifts include global climate change and the proliferation of digital technologies that together comprise today’s cybersphere. This paper considers the dramatic environmental, technological, and sociocultural changes that have transpired during EDRA’s first five decades and their implications for environmental design research over the next several years.
Directions of Environmental Design Research in the Anthropocene
The second half of the 20th Century coincided with theGreat Acceleration in human history– a period of explosive economic growth, biomedical and technological advances that lifted millions of people out of poverty, enabled human exploration of outer space, and ushered in the Digital Age(Negroponte, 1995; Steffen, Broadgate, Deutsch, Gaffney, & Ludwig, 2015). Yet, these advancements in human knowledge, productivity, and well-being during the late 20th Century unleashed an onslaught of global challenges that have become glaringly evident in the 21st Century. Massive consumption of fossil fuels, production of synthetic chemicals, and agricultural use of pesticides and nitrogen-based fertilizers powered the Great Acceleration, but also led to precipitous rises in atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs), planetary warming, and degradation of the earth’s ozone layer. These global environmental changes have triggered a cascade of other adverse events including glacial melting, sea rise, coastal flooding, ocean acidification, environmental pollution, biodiversity loss, food insecurity, health crises, and violent conflicts over scarce resources (Carson, 1962; Matthew, 2014; Prather, Midgley, Rowland, & Stolarski, June, 1996; Stokols, 2018b).
The broad scope and rapidity of human-caused changes in the earth system have led geologists to conclude that the world has now entered a new historical phase, the Anthropocene Epoch of human impact on the planet (Crutzen & Stoermer, May, 2000). The Anthropocene follows the Holocene Epoch of geological history – a post-glacial phase of relatively stable environmental conditions that persisted over the past 11,700 years. Although various dates ranging from the 17th to 20th Centuries have been proposed as possible starting points for the Anthropocene, earth scientists are converging in their assessment (based on extensive geological evidence) that this most recent epoch began sometime between 1945 and 1964 during the Great Acceleration of human productivity and economic growth (Lewis & Maslin, 2015; Steffen, Broadgate, et al., 2015; Waters et al., January 8, 2016; Zalasiewicz et al., March, 2016).
TheEDRA1 conferenceconvened in 1969 asthe Great Acceleration gained momentum during the third quarter of the 20th Century. At that time, there was little public awareness of global climate change and the Internet as we know it today did not yet exist. By contrast, the 2019 EDRA50 Conference occurred duringthe “great regression” of the early 21st Century(Stokols, 2018b), marked by widespread worries about climate change, biodiversity loss, cybercrime, unmitigated international conflict, and the erosion of democratic institutions in many parts of the world. During the years separating the EDRA1 and EDRA 50 conferences, numerous research reports documented compellingevidence of climate change and its ravaging impacts on the biosphere, heightening public concern about the fragility of our global ecosystem(Ceballos et al., June 19, 2015; Steffen, Richardson, et al., 2015; TheCoreWritingTeam, Pachauri, & Meyer, 2015). The theme of EDRA50, Sustainable Urban Environments, highlighted these environmental dilemmasandthe potential contributions of environmental design research in helping to ameliorate contemporary global crises.
The Changing Landscape of Environmental Design Research in the Anthropocene
The rise of collective consciousness about humans’ impact on the global ecosystem offers a useful backdrop for considering emerging directions of environmental design research over the next several years. A perusal of EDRA conference proceedings and articles published in journals such as Environment & Behavior, the Journal of Environmental Psychology, and the Journal of Architectural and Planning Research suggests that much attention was given during EDRA’s early decades to “bridging the gap” between the buildings and neighborhoods created by developers and designers, on the one hand, and the psychological and social needs of the “end users” of those environments (cf., Zeisel, 1981). End users typically were defined as the individuals and groups who inhabited or used specific places created by developers and designers. Hundreds of articles were published in the 1970s-1980s on individuals’ needs for privacy, territoriality, personal space, urban legibility, pedestrian safety, and contact with nature(Altman, 1975; Appleyard, 1981; Downs & Stea, 1973; Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989; Proshansky, Ittelson, & Rivlin, 1976).
Whereas improving the fit between individuals and their immediate surroundings (by better integrating design research and practice) remains an important priority for EDRA’s members(Wandersman & Wandersman, 2019), a broader-gauged research agenda has emerged in recent years: namely, bridging the ever-widening gap between harmful planetary impacts caused by humans, on the one hand, and our capacity to slow or reverse those changes in ways that safeguard the survival of our species and the biosphere more generally. In this more encompassing research agenda, end users include not only individual occupants of localized environments but also larger human aggregates (e.g., whole populations) whose livelihood and well-being are influenced by environmental conditions at regional and global, as well as local levels. Accordingly, the criteria for evaluating the fit between people and their environments extend beyond individualized measures of health and behavior to also include aggregate indices of population health, urban habitability, and global sustainability.
The planetary criseswe’re facing in the 21st Century underscore the close links between our local, regional, and global surroundings--and the urgent need to createsustainable design strategies that enhance ecological stability atmultiple environmental scales. Thesechallenges suggest several research questions and concerns, some of which are described below. It seems reasonable to expect that these research topics willcontinue to attractincreasing attention among environmental design scholars and practitionersin the coming decades.
Environmental Design Research Priorities for the 21st Century
A central feature of the Anthropocene Epoch is human-caused climate change and its adverse ecological and societal impacts. Global warminghas been fueled by society’s excessive reliance on fossil fuels and the consequent increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. GHG emissions rose precipitously during the Industrial Revolution of the 18ththrough 20th Centuries, with sharp increases observedduring the Great Acceleration of economic and urban development following World War II. Elevations of carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations observed in land and marine ecosystems since 1950 are unprecedented in over 800,000 years based on analyses of CO2 bubbles trapped in polar ice core samples (Lüthi et al., 2008; ScrippsInstituionofOceanography, 2016; TheCoreWritingTeam et al., 2015); see Figure 1.The most recent special report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2018) concluded that aggressive and coordinated action is required over the next 11 years to reduce carbon emissions and avoid catastrophic impacts of planetary warming. The urgent need to stem GHG emissions poses immediate and broad implications for environmental design research and practice going forward.
Figure 1. Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 from 1700 to present. Data prior to 1958 are based on ice core samples; data from 1958 onward are based on weekly measures of atmospheric CO2 taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. From Scripps Institute of Oceanography, (https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve).
Designing Carbon-Neutral Buildings
Designing residential, commercial, healthcare, educational, and other kinds of environments can no longer be viewed as a locally-bounded process restricted to the developers, designers, and the occupants of those facilities. In this era of accelerating climate change, it has become more evident than ever before that every built environment constructed impacts the needs and well-being of at least three sets of “end users”: (1) local occupants of particular facilities; (2) community members who do not occupy or directly use a facilitybut are still affected by its environmental and social impacts within their cities and regions; and (3) a much larger number of people residing in geographically remote areas worldwide who are indirectly influenced by the environmental impacts (e.g., CO2 emissions) of faraway places. We know that GHG emissions in one part of the globe affect the health outcomes of remote populations living elsewhere (Liu et al., 2013). Thus, ecologically-minded designers no longer have the luxury of focusingsolely on the needs of their immediate clients and facility users—they also mustconsider the well-being of larger, more remote groups and populations who mayexperience the “tele-coupled” (regionally connected) impacts of remote environments. From that broader ecological perspective, every design decision must be weighed in terms of its regional and global, as well as local sustainability impacts.
Recent studies suggest that built environments generate a substantial portion of carbon emissions worldwide, accounting for nearly 40% of GHGs produced and 70% of electricity consumed in the U.S. alone (USGreenBuildingCouncil, 2017). Environmental designers are facing increasing pressures to reduce the carbon footprints of the buildings they create through ecological design strategies (Van der Ryn & Cowan, 1996/2007). One example of an ecological accounting system that encourages “green design” (e.g., through the use of local, non-toxic construction materials, recycling and waste reduction, improved indoor environmental quality and management) is the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Program (USGreenBuildingCouncil, 2011). LEED evaluations of buildings have proven to be effective in curtailing adverse environmental impacts of public and corporate facilities. LEED-certified buildings have 34% lower CO2 emissions and consume 25% less energy and 11% less water than comparable non-LEED facilities (USGreenBuildingCouncil, 2017).
Also, lifecycle analyses of the environmental costs associated with facilities construction reveal the GHG emissions produced over the lifecycle of a building and highlight the ecological benefits of using local construction materials to reduce carbon impacts of non-local materials transported from distant places (Van der Ryn & Cowan, 1996/2007). Similarly, using energy-efficient technologies (such as motion-sensitive lighting and ventilation systems) and renewable energy sources in new and retrofitted buildings is becoming a prominent feature of contemporary facilities design. Yet, not all designers and developers choose to invest in LEED-certified building systems or in lifecycle audits of a facility’s long-term ecological impacts. An important direction for future environment-behavior research is to identify effective ways of enhancing developers’, designers’ and occupants’ adoption of ecological accounting systems and energy conservation measures over the life-course of a building.Examples of these approaches include educational programs to strengthen individuals’ ecological intelligence, or their understanding of the environmental impacts associated with building construction processes, consumer goods, and our everyday transportation and dietary choices(Goleman, 2009); as well as persuasive communications and cultural change strategies that encourage individuals and groups to adopt sustainable lifestyles (Mazumdar, 2019; Schultz & Kaiser, 2012)
Reducing the Carbon Footprint of Neighborhoods and Cities
Increasingly the ecological impacts of built environments are being evaluated not only at the facility level, but also at neighborhood and regional scales (Cohen & Ummel, June, 2019). Local and state governments have begun to recognize the importance of reducing the carbon footprints of neighborhoods and cities as well as the GHG emissions generated by individual buildings situated in larger districts. For example, the state of California enacted a law in 2018 that requires all future residential buildings to be equipped with solar energy technology (Penn, May 9, 2018) and several other states have enacted taxes on carbon emissions produced by power plants as well as large residential and commercial buildings (EditorialBoardNewYorkTimes, December 26, 2016; Neuman, April 17, 2019). These regulatory initiatives are placing greater pressure on facilities and urban designers to reduce the carbon emissions of the buildings they create.To achieve that goal, designers and community planners are turning to numerous strategies to reduce the ecological footprints (Wackernagel & Rees, 1996) of neighborhoods and urban districts. Some examplesare siting buildings near public transportation, and using mixed-use zoning to create walkable areas with non-motorized access to nearby residences, workplaces, retail services, recreational spaces, and public transit(Jacobs, 1961; Owen, October 18, 2004; USGreenBuildingCouncil, 2011). Additional strategies include installing rooftop gardens and vertical greenery along the sides of tall buildings to lower exterior and interior temperatures, thereby reducing air conditioning costs and the “urban heat island effect” (Chen, July 12, 2019; Peters, July 22, 2019; Ruefenancht & Acero, 2017). Vertical farming also enables building residents to grow their own food locally and lowers GHG emissions caused by transporting food over large distances from remote locations (Despommier, 2010).
Another increasingly popular movement in21st Century urban design is landscape ecological urbanism, which integrates woodlands, public parks, and community gardens into urban areas(Steiner, 2011). In addition to promoting the mental and physical health benefits of contact with nature, the maximization of urban greenery also supports ecosystem services such as carbon capture, localized food production,urban cooling, and improved air quality(Beatley, 2011; Hartig & Kahn, May 20, 2016; Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989; Kellert, 2008; MillenniumEcosystemAssessment, 2005). Recent studies indicate that reforestation is potentially one of the most powerful strategies for mitigating CO2 emissions and planetary warming. For instance, if 500 million or more trees were planted worldwide, they could lower atmospheric CO2 concentrations from current levels (415 parts per million) to those that existed at the beginning of the 20th Century (around 280 parts per million CO2) (Bastin et al., 2019; ScrippsInstituionofOceanography, 2016); see also Figure 1. It is not surprising then that New York City, Singapore, and many other urban regions have embraced the goal of planting substantially more trees in open spaces, along roadways, and nearbuildings than currently exist (NYCMayor’sOffice, 2019; Ruefenancht & Acero, 2017).Principles of landscape ecological urbanism provideenvironmental designers with valuable tools and criteria for curbing GHG emissions by incorporating greenery both within built facilities and adjacent to them as a prominent feature of urban regions.
Toward Climate-Adaptive Facilities and Urban Design
The previous sections have focused on strategies for lowering the carbon footprints of buildings, neighborhoods, and urban regions. These mitigation strategies directly reduce GHG emissions and help slow the pace of future climate change (Abatzoglou, Golden, DiMento, Doughman, & Nespor, 2014). The present section focuses on adaptation strategies of environmental and urban design, namely, actions taken to create environments that reduce personal and community risks when confronting climate change hazards. Major climate related threats to cities include increased flooding, especially in coastal areas, exacerbated by accelerated glacial melting, sea rise, and storm surges during extreme weather events(Howard, July 25, 2019; Tollefson, February 20, 2017). Design strategies intended to reduce the adverse impacts of these environmental hazards include elevating residential structures on concrete posts to make interior spaces less susceptible to flooding; raising roadways so that they are flooded less frequently; reinforcing levees in flood-prone regions; and planting sea grass meadows and mangrove stands to offset coastal erosion and flooding during extreme weather events. In Miami Beach, New Orleans, and may other cities around the world, climate-resistant building and urban design strategies are already being enacted to alleviate the immediate and longer-term flood risks posed by sea rise and extreme weather (Abatzoglou et al., 2014; UrbanLandInstitrute, 2018; Xia, July 7, 2019). A priority for future environmental design research is to expedite interdisciplinary partnerships among facilities designers and regional planners who, increasingly, must collaborate closely as they devise climate adaptive strategies to make buildings, neighborhoods, and urban regions more resilient.
Despite planners’ best efforts to make coastal settlements more resistant to the ravages of climate change, the harsh reality is that built environments situated in areas most vulnerable to the near-term impacts of climate change (e.g., residences located along shorelines, on low lying islands, in estuaries and arid regions) will disappear by the end of this century due to sea rise, flooding, and desertification. Today nearly half of the world’s population lives within 150 km of a coast and upwards of 200 million people reside near shorelines. Most will be forced to endure involuntary migration caused by extreme weather events and rising tides (WoodsHoleOceanographicInstitution, 2017). Impoverished individuals and other vulnerable groups such as women, children, elderly, and the infirm residing in climate-sensitive regions will be impacted most severely by these calamitous events. They will have no choice but to flee their homes, joining the growing ranks of climate refugees worldwide (Biermann & Boas, 2010).To meet the survivalneeds of a burgeoning number ofclimate refugees over the next few decades, modular semi-permanent housing (i.e., portable, compact, hygienic, secure, and affordable dwellings) will have to be designed and deployeden masse to individuals and families fleeing climate-impacted regions.
Built environments less immediately threatened by climate change will be challenged to become more sustainable and self-sufficient by adopting renewable (e.g., solar and wind) energy technologies and resource conservation strategies (such as participation in community recycling programs). Homes and workplaces will continue to rely more heavily on local decentralized technologies such as urban farming, water capture, and solar energy units that can operate “off-grid”, independent of larger-scale agricultural, water distribution, and electrical power systems (Despommier, 2010; IntrernationalRenewableEnergyAgency, 2016; Tomlinson et al., December, 2015). Greater independence of indoor ecosystems from centralized civil infrastructures can help fortify community resilience and adaptive capacity, especially during times of regional resource shortages and intermittencies. Persuading the occupants and managers of residential and commercial settings to make the shift from centralized to decentralized, off-grid technologies will require a deeper understanding of behavioral and cultural change processes that facilitate those environmental and lifestyle transitions (Mazumdar, 2019; Schultz & Kaiser, 2012).
Transitioning from the Predigital to the Digital Age – Implications for Environmental Design Research
In addition to global environmental changes such as planetary warming and depletion of the earth’s ozone later, another central feature of the Anthropocene Epoch is the proliferation of digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) that comprise today’s multifaceted cybersphere.
From its humble beginnings in the late 1960s, the Internet soon mushroomed into a global “network of computer networks”. Mobile communication technologies followed with the first commercially available handheld cell phones introduced in 1983. By early 2019, there were more than 4.5 billion Internet users and 5 billion mobile phone users worldwide (Statista, 2019).
Today’s cybersphere is vast in scope and complexity, encompassing numerous digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as computing hardware and software, and the Ethernet and WiFi communication infrastructures that run the Internet and World Wide Web. Mobile devices that send and receive email, voicemail, text messages, video, and graphical data are also part of the cybersphere, as are the web browsers, search engines, social media, and cell phone “apps” people use to access commercial, recreational (e.g., online gaming, cinema), educational, news, health support, and other “virtual communities”. The cybersphere further includes the app-driven sharing economy, the Internet of Things (in which billions of devices with sensors and IP addresses stream data to each other continuously), GPS navigation, autonomous vehicles and weapons systems, augmented and virtual reality (AR, VR), robotic manufacturing and health care devices, 3-D printing, “smart city” infrastructures, blockchain, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, the Deep Web (not accessible through standard search engines), and the Dark Net, or digital underworld. These technologies now permeate every facet of people’s interactions with their natural, built, and sociocultural surroundings. Connections between the cybersphere and these other environmental domains are described inStokols (2018b)and depicted in Figure 2.
The rise of the Internet and the cybersphere writ large has substantially changed how people interact with their everyday environments. The implications of cyber technologies for environmental design research and future patters of human-environment transaction remain largely unexplored to date.
Although it is not feasible in the space of this paper to comprehensively examine themanyenvironmental design research questions posed by the digitalization of society,it is feasible to consider at least some of these intriguing directions for future study.
For instance, people’s reliance on the Internet and mobile communications has transfigured the physical structure of residential, work, educational, and many other categories of human environments. A standard feature of today’s homes is cyber infrastructure (e.g., Ethernet cables, WiFi, routers, and computers) that residents use to pursue online commercial, recreational, educational, and work activities along with their domestic routines. In the educational arena, high school and college classrooms are now equipped with “smart” technologies enabling instructors and students to access resources from Web servers located far beyond the immediate learning environment as part of their in-class experiences.
Figure 2. Interconnections between the natural, built, sociocultural, and cyber dimensions of human environments (Stokols, 2018).
Many office environments now incorporate digital technologies for online collaboration with colleagues in distant places, whereas factories have been reengineered to accommodate computerized robots that minimize the space required for production and the number of employees needed to work on assembly lines. And in the retail sector, the success of large online corporations such as Amazon, EBay, Netflix, iTunes and Spotify have forced many smaller “brick and mortar” bookstores, movie rental and music companies out of business(cf., Stokols, 2018a; Stokols, 2018b). Little is currently known, however, about the long-term psychological, social, and health impacts of these cyber transformations of our everyday environments (e.g., the cumulative effects of digital information overload and distraction on people’s mental and physical well-being; and the impacts of factory automation on employees’ well-being and societal cohesion as growing segments of the workforce are displaced by robots. These are important questions for future behavioral and environmental design research.
Another avenue for future research is the use of highly sophisticated virtual and augmented reality (VR, AR) technologies to provide design professionals and their clients with highly realistic, immersive simulations of future environments. The availability of VR and AR simulation techniques could render earlier-generation photographic, scale model, and computerized visualizations of future environments outmoded and obsolete (cf., Marans & Stokols, 1993; Stokols, 2018b). VR and AR simulations also can be used as powerful tools for training facilities and urban designer environmental designers. However, the comparative value of these digital technologies, relative to earlier simulation techniques, remain to be investigated in future studies.
Just as the cybersphere has modified the simulation and design of homes, workplaces, classrooms and other kinds of facilities, it also has transfigured neighborhoods and cities. The sharing economy powered by the Web is reshaping urban transportation and housing sectors. Ridesharing apps like Uber and Lyft have reduced public transit and taxi use while also exacerbating road congestion and air pollution in cities (Alexander & González, August 10, 2015; Lomas, August 26, 2015). Also, the availability of affordable long-term housing is declining in some urban areas as landlords list their properties on Airbnb or other online rental sites for shorter periods and higher fees (Nguyen, March 26, 2015; Reyes, June 23, 2016). If studies of the sharing economy focus narrowly on its immediate benefits for service providers and customers, the broader economic and environmental impacts of collaborative consumption can be easily overlooked. A major challenge for future environmental and urban design research is to refine sharing economy services in ways that maximize their benefits for participants while minimizing unfavorable impacts on local communities (Pargman, Eriksson, & Friday, 2016).
The rapid development of the cybersphere also has fueled the “smart cities” movement in urban planning and design. Smart cities enable residents to connect with each other and community organizations online, while also providing automated coordination of urban infrastructures like monitoring patterns of water use, electricity consumption, and traffic congestion in cities(NationalAcademiesofSciencesEngineeringandMedicine, 2016). Smart city infrastructures rely heavily on the Internet of Things (IoT), the global network of more than 50 billion objects equipped with data-streaming sensors that communicate with each other online or through radio signals (Evans, 2011; Zanella, Bui, Castellani, Vangelista, & Zorzi, 2014). Examples of cyber-enabled devices are temperature and lighting sensors in buildings, WiFi and GPS microchips in cell phones and vehicles, and wearable fitness monitors. Proponents of smart city approaches are optimistic about their capacity to promote energy conservation, reduce GHG emissions, and lower levels of roadway congestion through the deployment of technologies like autonomous vehicles and smart highways (Shaver, July 20, 2019). Critics of these technologies, however, point out that smart city technologies may bring more unanticipated costs (e.g., increased energy consumption and carbon emissions associated with our increasing reliance on digital devices) than benefits (Andrae & Edler, 2015; Marvin, Luque-A., & McFarlane, 2016). The tradeoffs among these societal costs and benefits of smart city design technologiesremain to be carefully elucidated in future studies.
Conclusion
The Great Acceleration of urban development, human productivity and well-being during the last half of the 20th Century, and the emergence of the Anthropocene Epoch in the early 21st Century, have brought sweeping changes to the design of buildings, neighborhoods, and cities. Two central features of the Anthropocene are increasing GHG emissions and climate change, and the rise of the Internet and expansion of the cybersphere,more broadly. This discussion has barely scratched the surface of environmental design research questions relevant to these four broad topics, but it does provide a preview of some emerging directions of for future study that are likely to occupy environment-behavior scholars and design professionals over the next several years.
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