What are some of the goals for transportation systems? Efficacy of movement, low emissions, energy efficiency, safety, low noise levels.
Think about the city. Tens of thousands of people move in and out of the city every day. Inside the urban boundaries they circulate in large and small arteries, pause, and continue on their journey. Along with the people there is the movement of vehicles that carry them or, in the case of bicycles, which they propel themselves. The city also imports all kinds of materials into itself day and night. All of the imports (and exports) are carried in vehicles of every sort. They are taken to nodes, points of activity, and they are processed there.
Plants import countless molecules of water and nutrients every day. These molecules circulate and are utilized inside the plant body through transportation, change, and excretion. Molecules of various sizes are imported, organized, stored, and built into larger (or smaller) units. All of this happens "passively," that is, there's no noise, no emission, and no use of energy outside of sunlight or the breakdown of molecules like starch that are the products of photosynthesis.
Plant transportation systems have evolved for hundreds of millions of years so that the plant body, the analogue of the urban area, is built elegantly, minimally, and conservatively. Growth for its own sake never occurs on without the concomitant development of an infrastructure.
Plants are well known for their efficiency in retaining resources like water in dry climates. In addition, plants are built to withstand physical, chemical, and mechanical emergencies like flooding, freezing, and breaking. These are the kinds of emergencies we may be seeing more in our urban areas as climate change continues. How can we develop urban transportation infrastructures that utilize these models?
One objective is to recognize diversity. How many types of transportation actually exist in the city? What do they accomplish? What infrastructure is needed to maintain them while ensuring the goals of safety, efficiency, and other desirable "quality of life" features?
Another objective is to encourage smart development, not just growth. Do new areas of growth go along with new developmental moves? For example, is infrastructure for alternative modes of transportation like pedestrians and bicycles in place? Are there limits to scalability? For example, can goals like safety and efficiency be met or exceeded even as capacity for transport expands?
Finally, how can we improve accessibility and efficiency for every part of the city and every population? How can we improve emissions standards? Lower energy use? And how to maintain or improve convenience of movement and transfer of people and materials?
A closer look at plant anatomy, and a study over a range of different kinds of plants, would inform these questions and I think, lead to creative new solutions for transportation problems.
Thanks for the post. Such a amazing pictures of the plants. The pant body, the analog of the city area, is designed beautifully, minimally, and cautiously. Market Research Report
ReplyDeleteCities often lack green space despite the given parks that attract many people and tourist. After completing a year of school at BU at went home( to New York) for the summer and I began and internship which I would commute to the city three time a week. As I would leave from the suburbs to an urban environment the green space was limited. I feel where as New York City lacks green space, Boston on the other and does not. It is a smaller and more manageable city, but there are many parks within it. Outside CGS there is green space, at the BU beach there is green space, but the green space isn't limited to our campus. When traveling to Boston's South End, where it is a very dog friendly neighborhood I saw a dog park, and even an area where people grow vegetables. I believe Boston does a good job to sustain it environment with allowing people to get around. Through sidewalks, the bike lane, and T train or T Bus you can easily get from one side of Boston to another and experience all the amazing this about this city! In the future more solar panels can be put on building to sustain energy more widely.
ReplyDeleteBoston is a busy city that works hard to maintain both urban growth and development as well as keeping a green environment. Sustainability is very important to BU as well as the city. In recent years, the idea of the bike hubs located throughout the city have been an excellent way of transportation for many people. Renting a bike from one hub and riding it to your destination, where you can return the bike to any other hub station in Boston is efficient for pedestrians and extremely green for the environment. The MBTA is also a popular mode of transportation for many commuters because it is quicker rather than wasting gas while sitting in traffic every morning on their way to work. Boston makes an important effort to maintain a green space in the city - the Boston Common serves as a stable, park ecosystem that can balance the act of the urbanization going on around it. Sustainability and green space helps to ease the sense of rapid growth for both the ecosystem and the urban setting. Transportation in the city of Boston is efficient and makes a point of always trying to balance urbanization and development with keeping a clean and green ecosystem for the city environment.
ReplyDeleteTransportation in an urban environment contributes to the life stream of the city, as the stems of plans provide structure and absorb nutrients for life. Furthermore, in order for a city to expand and develop, the transportation must grow and develop as do plants as they become more complex in changing seasons.
ReplyDeleteBoston is a city filled with many different modes of transportation. Plants are also used to transport, importing countless molecules of water and nutrients every day. That is why it is so important that we have green spaces in urban environments. The city of Boston does a great job of this by providing places like the commons and putting up trees wherever they can. Boston also does a good job with cutting down emissions with options such as the bike hubs. By cutting down on emissions we can make the city a safer place for wildlife to thrive.
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ReplyDeleteIsabel Vera
ReplyDeleteThe comparison between the urban transportation environment with the structure and operation of plants is a very intriguing one I had never considered before. Now the similarities between the two involving the permeability, maintenance, and efficiency of both urban & plant environments are quite clear to me. It is interesting that just as plants must adapt to their particular habitat and selective pressures, Boston's urban transportation must adapt to the limitations of space, weather conditions, and many other factors. I believe the MBTA system in Massachusetts and Boston specifically has had great success in allowing the feasible travel of those within and outside of the city while causing little obstruction in the urban community. The T's ability to go above ground and underground is a brilliant approach to the issue of limited space, while the commuter rail reaching far beyond Boston's border allows fluid travel for suburban residents into the city and vice versa.
I've never thought about it, but plants do have vital transportation elements that are as important to the plant's life as subways, cars, trains, and planes are to city life. However, plants are much more efficient, and their transportation methods are both literally and figuratively "greener" than those of our modern transportation systems. Ideally, urban transportation will evolve to a level where it can meet the needs of the society and the environment they reside in.
ReplyDeleteWe have been discussing the history of transportation, how it evolved and how it devolved in certain capacities. This article connected the idea that biological systems are analogous to the urban transportation systems, because all plants are diverse and cities too. We discussed briefly how New York was planned in a grid formation, arguably easier to understand, and bostons system was a reaction to the land, may be the hills or the swamps. Plants sytems are efficient and make nutrients accessible to the parts of the system that need it. I find that bostons mbta system makes sense because the major parts of the cities are accessible. However, there is much to improve to make it organized and sustainable. This article showed me that there are a myriad of ways to do so, because we have a myriad of examples in plants.
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