|
"THE CREDENTIAL"
January 2024
|
|
|---|
|
|
A Model for a Healthier, Adaptive Approach to Community Development
|
|
|---|
|
The Credential takes you on a "good news" journey celebrating the start of 2024 with this inspiring story about community building far far away near Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Guest author Steven Bingler, AIA, Founder and CEO, Concordia graces us with his compelling words and awesome photography. Read on to be transported to a healthy sustainable life of joy and encouragement.
|
|
|---|
|
The Healthy Cities movement is a strong but sometimes underappreciated planning concept with its roots in the complex structure of the human body. Formed in the 1970s, it transcends the current paradigm of building, roadway, and open space planning to address a more complex and systemic view of community life. The movement was pioneered and co-founded by Dr. Leonard Duhl,who was both an urban planner and medical doctor. I was lucky to have him as a planning mentor.
|
|
|---|
|
Len was on my mind recently, when I visited the Smiling Gecko project, a 370-acre site located about 40 miles northeast of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in the delta region of the Mekong River. The purpose of the project is to provide relief to the many at risk children and families who live in the region. Founded in 2015 by the noted Swiss photographer Hannes Schmid and Cambodian attorney Ngon Sokleap, the project engages some 350 staff members, along with many guests who stay at its on-campus four star hotel. |
|
|---|
|
The site includes a wonderful collection of structures designed by Swiss architect and professor Dirk Hebel and his students at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich (Department of Architecture and Construction). Each building is assembled from a simple kit of parts that facilitate ease of construction, operational proficiency, energy efficiency, and user comfort. Key features include a heavy timber frame and clay tile roof with suspended bamboo mats that trap heat and amplify air flow. The same basic structure was applied to the design of buildings that serve a variety of needs: hospitality, agriculture, animal husbandry, manufacturing, even a K-8 school. |
|
|---|
|
Smiling Gecko operates a variety of programs that cut across multiple domains of community life. For example, the site's four-star luxury hotel, with it's fine dining and health spa, is also an economic engine that supports a wide range of activities that combine to improve and elevate the quality of life for the whole community.
|
|
|---|
|
The project's agricultural assets include expansive open fields, along with hydroponic gardens and fish farms with enough production capacity to serve not only its hotel guests, but an additional 10 tons of food that is delivered to residents in the surrounding community each week. |
|
|---|
|
There is also a woodworking shop where local residents are trained to produce elegant furniture designs. The site also has a music facility that is currently expanding to incorporate a new world-class recording studio where a cadre of international musicians can assemble in its quiet, private, and luxurious spaces to cut their next albums. |
|
|---|
|
The Smiling Gecko's K-8 public school is designed to support not only strong academic outcomes, but also the physical, social and cultural needs of its 460 students. For example, students arrive in the morning in their school-supplied "home" uniforms. Their first task is to shower, de-lice, and change into a more colorful "school" uniform that they wear to classes during the day. In addition to academic instruction, each student is also served three healthy and nutritionally balanced meals. At the end of the day, students change back into their freshly laundered "home" uniforms and return in vans to their families. |
|
|---|
|
This complex set of community assets, which includes not only physical, but social, cultural, economic, and educational policies, programs, and placemaking, operates as a self-organizing system, where the income from the working farm combines with the revenues produced by the luxury hotel, spa, and other resources to support more than 350 local workers who receive above-average wages and benefits, as well as healthy organically grown food -- and, in some cases, housing. |
|
|---|
|
Within the complex adaptive system of elements at Smiling Gecko, there may be a blueprint for a more symbiotic and sustainable model of community planning. Its ecologically centered ideas could also be important to planners who seek to apply more nature based solutions in response to the impacts of changing weather patterns that could reduce the availability of arable land, compromising both local and global agricultural production and food security. |
|
|---|
|
Meanwhile, it's also important to remember that our own bodies are also a part of this complex natural ecosystem. As Len Duhl described it, healthy cities are a lot like healthy bodies. In our bodies we have veins and arteries that carry life-sustaining nutrients from one place to another. In our communities, roads and highways serve some similar functions. The illustration below juxtaposes a human body with a map of New Orleans, where arteries and veins, streets and roadways are all delineated with the same red and blue colors, and where the curves of the Mississippi River mimic the sinuous lines of the body's lower intestine. |
|
|---|
|
Similarly, our body's central nervous system transmits electrical impulses in ways that are similar to a city's power and telecommunications infrastructure. All of our organs are tied to these life-support systems, and when any one fails, the whole system falls ill, or ceases to operate. No matter how good your heart or lungs are, for example, if your liver malfunctions, your life ends. Cities function in similar ways: if you have a lousy educational system, then don't count on your economic system to be productive (and vice versa). The health of our cities and communities depend not only on the success of each independent component, but also on the success of the components working together as a whole. |
|
|---|
|
In addition to the physical side of healthy bodies and cities, there is another dimension of community life that is more aligned with emotional and spiritual assets. I remember walking with Len through the French Quarter in New Orleans when he stopped to remind me that cities have emotions and feelings too, so when things like filth, noise, crime or other negative influences pull things out of alignment, it's the whole community system that suffers. Likewise, as in the other parts of life, when the city is projecting a healthy vibe, everyone wins.
At the Smiling Gecko, a self-organizing learning community, the vibes are generous, caring, creative, natural, and hopeful. It felt really good to be there. |
|
|---|
|
Steven Bingler
is the co-founder and chairperson of the Common Edge Collaborative, wherein this photo essay first appeared on 1/17/24.
|
|
|---|
|
|
|
NOW DELIVERING:
Professional legal services for business credentials compliance including:
1.
Existing corporate credentials registration compliance review
2.
Corporate credentials quarterly maintenance
3.
Corporate credentials documents filing
4.
Potential new corporate
registration legal research with recommendations
Your questions and critical issues will be addressed with quality professional service when you call 913-608-7880.
|
|
|---|
|
2024 Business Registration
ALERT
Beginning January 2024, business entities registered in Pennsylvania must file an annual report with the Pennsylvania Department of State Bureau of Corporations.
|
|
|---|
|
Architects:
Jurisdiction License Renewal Due Date
01/2024
Delaware
02/2024
None
03/2024
Arizona
_______________
|
|
|---|
|
Did You Know?
January is National Clean Up Your Computer Month. |
|
Engineers:
Jurisdiction License Renewal Due Date
01/2024
Connecticut,
Nevada -
first initial last name L-R
02/2024
None
03/2024
Arizona, Louisiana, Texas
________________
|
|
|---|
|
Landscape Architects: Jurisdiction License Renewal Due Date
01/2024
Louisiana,
Massachusetts
02/2024
None
03/2024
Arizona
|
|
|---|
|
If your license renews on your date of birth this month, or by state requirement when your license origination occurred, or any other jurisdiction imposed requirement, it's time to renew.
|
|
|---|
|
Contact us to receive a sample custom monthly
credentials report containing:
|
|
|---|
|
1.
All A/E/LA national and international licensure status with renewal dates
2.
Professional affiliation membership types with renewal dates
3.
Current multi-discipline continuing education requirements needed
4.
Comprehensive recorded history of categorized education credits
Learn more about our innovative and easy-to-use service at: AECredentialing.com.
|
|
|---|
|
Credentials Compliance Management issues?
Let us help.
Our credentials management services (individual and business) are exclusively designed for A/E/LA professionals. We
provide consistent value - expected positive results. Our client credentials reporting solution is efficient and effective, providing you with time and cost savings. These benefits will quickly convert to increased billable project hours. Please contact us at 913-608-7880 for a free consultation session, send us a message, or visit
|
|
|---|
|
Contact Details:
LS Credentialing Services LLC
WBE Certified
P.O. Box 91
Olathe, KS 66051
Lexi@AECredentialing.com
913-608-7880 |
|
|---|
|
Join us in our efforts to go "green".
Think before you print. |
|
|---|
|
|
|
|---|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
