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Cities order everything around them.
They order the way in which people move, the order the way in which people live
and the order everything that we are doing with regards to our lifestyles.
But cities also have a profound impact on the environment around it.
We've all heard of things like urban heat island, meaning areas which are warmer,
or the cities because of the structure, construction material that we use
the roads that are black and the areas around the city are literally cooler.
But what we are seeing, even more interestingly,
is that cities are also changing their rainfall.
Cities change the manner in which storms come to a region and how they start spreading
around it and how some regions might start getting more rain
while parts over cities might continue being dry.
And so when you start looking at it from all angles,
some short demand aspects like severe weather and tornadoes to more of the medium range
aspects where we are affecting humidity and our daily cloudiness and such to
more of our longer range where it is affecting our temperature, humidity
and the whole comfort of living.
One way we can make these cities more resilient for future climate change is to get
a better understanding about the environmental impacts,
get an understanding about the water losses that we might have,
the environmental changes that are going on and
really start looking at it in the most systems perspective.
That if we change one thing what could be the cascade of changes that can occur.
It could be managed in the way we are designing our roadways,
it could be the manner in which we are designing our construction activites,
it could be the manner in which we are designing our long term green parks,
where are we going to have more agriculture,
where are we going to have more changes in the lifestyle that we would want to have a city to have.
So we at Purdue believe in tackling problems in a holistic manner
so that we look at it in a very comprehensive way.
So this issue about cities and highways affecting its climate around it, our house.
Climates that affecting cities, is a problem that is not just about structures,
it is not just about layout, it is about humans, it is about water, it is about energy,
it's about economics, it's about computation tools being dealt with.
We are developing state-of-the-art computational models right now that
can simulate the manner in which storms are approaching cities and
what happens to it when we have more regular traffic,
what happens to it if we change a layout of a city,
what happens to it if we can make a city much more greener.
What changes to anticipate.
So we are looking at cascade of events such that
we can understand what are the unintended consequences and
then start developing techniques and tools that city planners and businesses can adapt to.
There is a tremendous opportunity in a manner in which we can start designing cities better.
We can start looking at some of the local skill efforts like what is happening with
our layout with agriculture, layout in the manner in which our cities are designed,
transportation systems are designed and affect changes
which make living much more better in the changes that are going on at a local scale.
One of the things that was done by the US congress of mayors,
which was an organization of all mayors of cities over 30,000 in the United States.
Up to 1,200 are eligible for membership.
They got together and said let's establish voluntary climate goals for each of our cities.
And those mayors are all doing things in a different way.
We get together, we learn from each other about best practices.
We have hundreds of laboratories in essence across the United States trying different things.
One of the things we try to do here in Carmel is design our cities not for cars but for people.
Because the average American spends hours every day in their automobile,
many times because the way their communities have been zoned and built.
They have to drive 8-10 miles to the grocery store another 5 miles to the dry cleaners and so on.
We're trying to build our cities with neighborhood nodes so that
most things are walkable.
We have mixed use zoning, everywhere we can so that people
in some cases walk to the end of the block, or walk downstairs in their
apartment or condo building and go to the stores they need to go to
and not have to get into their car.
When we also build a road we always put a bike path in alongside of it now.
When we renovate roads we do the same thing.
We're still accommodating cars, we understand that people are still going to drive,
or are gong to want to drive.
We have a close to 90 round-abouts in Carmel now,
more than any other city in the United States.
Not only do we reduce injury accidents by up to 80% compared to traffic light
with the same traffic volume, we save millions of gallons of fuel
by not having people idle and not starting that car from a dead stop at our round-abouts.
Well, what we're finding, like many businesses are finding across the country,
that almost always when you do things that are good for the environment we save money.
Indiana is a beautiful state to be in, not just in terms of
what we have as a lifestyle, but also in terms of studying this problem of urbanization.
Now as the first go you might not think of Indiana as the most urbanized place.
But that is what makes it fantastic,
in terms we have pockets and concentrations of urbanized locations
like Indinapolis, the places that are around it.
And you have a large swath of agriculture and green areas around it.
And that provides a near perfect environment for studying this kind of aspects
about how we should be designing our cities, how we should be making changes in the cities
so that we have a positive impact coming out about the strategies we come up with.
So all these factors makes Indiana cities quite different in the manner in which
they are developed but also different in the manner in which they
are affecting the storms and the environment around it.