At Design Observer there is nice essay urging us to reconsider how we approach urban planning.
As planners and designers, we need to take up the mantle of blue urbanism. Just as green urbanism challenges us to rethink sustainability at the city scale, blue urbanism asks us to re-imagine ourselves as citizens of a blue planet. How can we become better stewards of the worlds oceans?
When planning cities, we often do not consider coastal habitats within the scope of urban growth and design. Yet our influence is considerable.
Blue urbanism — an emerging set of ideas and perspectives — would mean that cities would seriously evaluate and carefully regulate their effects on marine environments; and city planners are potentially on the front lines of this new movement. Cities have jurisdiction over near-shore habitats and can extend zones of planning and management to offshore areas
via Blue Urbanism: City Planning and the Ocean Environment: Places: Design Observer.
while I support the idea of Blue Urbanism, I find it hard to support this article due to the silly pseudo-science/engineering ideas based on recycling plastic from the so-called “Pacific Garbage Patch”. Don’t get me wrong – plastic pollution in the oceans is a big deal, but there is no island of plastic floating around in the ocean that can be scooped up and used for some idyllic new urbanism purpose.