Written on November 22, 2011 by Jacob Van Etten in News
Two professors of the Master in Global Environmental Change have contributed to a book on energy policies published this week.
Lara Lázaro Touza and Elena López-Gunn wrote on “Climate Change Policies—Mitigation and Adaptation at the Local Level: The Case of the City of Madrid (Spain)”.
In a nutshell, the authors show that there are plenty of mitigation efforts, but that adaptation to climate change has not received sufficient attention in Madrid.
You can read the abstract here.
Written on November 4, 2011 by Jacob Van Etten in News
Madrid Rio is part of one of the biggest urban projects of Madrid of the last decade. This huge project consisted in creating a tunnel for the highly congested M-30 beltway. The space that was freed on the surface was redesigned as a green area, contributing to the quality of life in the city. It makes the river Manzanares, which was previously surrounded by the highway lanes, visible again.
Madrid Rio has been opened in the first half of 2011. In the Introduction Week of the Master, we studied this brand-new area as the “urban” part of our exploration of Madrid.
Ginés Garrido, the lead architect who designed the park, was our expert guide this time. He explained the main ideas behind the project to the students of the Master in Global Environmental Change. Madrid Rio connects the space previously occupied by the M-30 in two directions. First of all, it connects with the green spaces on both sides of the city, the mountains to the north, and the meseta to the south. Also, it connects the two sides of the river, which were previously fairly badly connected. Several bridges were added.
To explore this new urban space, we cycled from the far North, where the highway goes under the ground, to the southern tip of Madrid Rio, where we crossed the river and cycled back, using the lanes on the other side. We were lucky as this was one of the last sunny days of October…
This promotional video of the project gives you a taste of the massive transformation of this urban space.
Written on October 16, 2011 by Jacob Van Etten in News
The Prix Pictet is one of the world’s most important prizes for environmental photography. The Prix Pictet Growth exhibition is now at the Royal Botanical Garden in Madrid. The photographs are really impressive.
The following is by the winner of the Prix Pictet Growth prize, Mitch Epstein.
"BP Carson Refinery, California 2007" by Mitch Epstein
“The Hell of Copper” is a series of photos with which Nyaba Ouedraogo shows very close-up the reality of something I wrote about some days ago, the stream of waste from Europe to low-wage countries. It shows how workers in Ghana burn computers in order to get the copper out, which is then sold.
"The Hell of Copper (L'Enfer du Cuivre)" by Nyaba Ouedraogo
My personal favourite is Stéphane Couturier’s photo below of a French Toyota factory. With a long exposure, the moving elements (persons and cars) get transparent, while the colorful assembly line machines fill the space in a colourful, surreal way. The photographer wanted to capture the constant flux of today’s technological world.
"Usine Toyota n°2" by Stéphane Couturier
