Posts by Nick Booth
What will be quantitively different in our lives in Birmingham in 2050 – table 1
Catherine Burke
Corrado di Maria
Lynsey Melville
Ian Forsyth
New Optimist Forum - discussing numbers
Thoughts from this table
- More people in the city
- More immigrants?
- More things will rely on energy – we expect a higher quality iof life, so needs and wants are larger, although energy use is lower.
- Efficiency could though lead to more energy use because we have more electrical devices
- Local community generation might create more of a moral emphasis on saving energy.
- When you know your energy is green you consume more!
- Bigger split between the haves and the haves not -
- People wont have their own boilers – will that also encourage them to use more energy, because they don’t know what’s on when.
- Per capita demand will decrease – even though we will have more things to power
- Fossil fuels will have to be priced out of the market – but then low carbon fuel prices will rise.
- Possibly more public transport
- Fewer cars
- More highrise blocks? Communities developing around energy systems.
- Pricing for the grid will be very complicated – but energy supplies will be interconnected
- At the moment limit of the size of community is also shaped by technology – a small generator can’t economically supply energy more than 500M from the energy source.
Local energy – will it make our Birmingham in 2050 bigger and denser – or smaller and a network of villages
Two very different views tonight… if 50% of Birmingham’s energy is produced locally – in neighbourhoods, homes, inside the city… how will that change the size and nature of Birmingham?
Dr Corrado Di Maria, an economist at Birmingham University, thinks local energy generation might lead to much smaller cities – after all we won’t need them for that economy of scale….
Meanwhile Professor Andreas Hornung was thinking it might make it easier to grow mega cities…
Or for example one New Optimist argued that Northfield or Nechells might be redesigned because of energy – as a driver to regenerate outskirts of the city rather than just the city centre. A local power plant might be a thing to cluster around.
#tnofood Caroline Hutton: allotments are great fun but no the answer to feeding #Brum
There’s pleasure in working with scientists.
Caroline Hutton runs Martineau Gardens in Edgbaston:
Our mission is to inspire people about the natural environment. We also provide volunteering opportunities in the garden and are a venue for educational activities.
Martineau Gardens is the registered charity that manages the gardens and wildlife area. We are a Community Garden, a Social Enterprise and a Visitor Attraction.
In the video above she talks about how far we can expect self grown food to feed Birmingham.
#tnofood Ed Dowding on Sustaination and changing from a food chain to a food web
Ed Dowding founded sustaination to change the supply chain which brings food to cities like Birmingham. above he talks about how it will network small suppliers and help them spot new ways of working together – including new ways to introduce local produce into our food chain.
He says it’s part of shifting from a food chain to a food web.
More on sustaination below
SUSTAINATION – Find us on www.PeopleFund.it from Ed Dowding on Vimeo.
#tnofood Dr Monika Solanki @nimonika on #opendata #semanticweb food supplies and tesco.
One of the questions chewed over at the New Optimists forum tonight is data and who can use it. Dr Rick Robinson thinks that quality data will continue to be produced at a commercial level (and by implication likely need to be controlled at such a level) . Here Monika Solanki (A computer scientist and research fellow at BCU, Monika’s interests are in data structures and algorithms, linked data, the semantic web and human-computer interaction.) thinks that we may need to turn comerical data into open data – certainly if we’re going to make the most fo the possibilities of the semantic web. This topic came up at the first New Optimists forum and has led to some approaches to Sainsbury’s.
#tnofood Rick Robinson of IBM on the cost of compiling data and guerilla activity aroudn freeing up food data
One of the subject discussed at the New Optmisits food forum is how long and how easily will large organisations be able to control data? One participants suggested that might be getting harder. I asked Rick Robinson about this and he thinks the cost of compiling reliable data will still mean that data will remain a viable and protect-able business.
Group exercise: Semantic web and food in Birmingham – understanding the conversation
Sitting in a group of 4 is:
- Liz York – specialist in social media and the food chain and work at Aston Business School.
- Dr John Blewitt also from Aston Business School,
- Paolo Castagna from Talis,
- Director of Martineau Community Gardens Caroline Hutton,
Continue reading “Group exercise: Semantic web and food in Birmingham – understanding the conversation”
#tnofood What is the semantic web and how might it affect the future of how Birmingham gets food
We’re just about to kick off for a New Optimists Forum session on the semantic web and food. Kate has outlined who’s here and why in this post. You can follow/join the conversation on twitter using #tnofood. This though is a very simple primer and I for one and looking forward to learning loads tonight:
Continue reading “#tnofood What is the semantic web and how might it affect the future of how Birmingham gets food”
Lynsey Melville on food waste and creating a cycle of calories from food – to waste to energy, back into food.
Dr Lynsey Melville is a a reader in Bio-energy & Bio-refining at Birmingham City University.