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Summary
Editorial Ten years of environmental thinking In 1991, with the conflict of the Conca de Barberà against the installation of landfills acting as a political catalyst, the Government of Catalonia decided to create the Department of the Environment. The protest - which was violent at times - from inland Catalonia set the alarm bells ringing in Plaça Sant Jaume. Decisions regarding which infrastructures, which were necessary for the country, particularly in that case, would be built and where and with what environmental criteria, became a priority. Thus, Albert Vilalta, who was connected with and highly regarded by environmental movements, was appointed minister of a new department: Environment. His main task was to straighten out the country environmentally, that is, build a series of facilities. Water treatment plants, waste treatment plants, landfills, etc... all absolutely necessary to guarantee Catalonia's development within European parameters. In the context of Spain, Catalonia was once again in the lead. At the same time, thanks to the intervention of Jaume Cabaní, the then new minister Vilalta, decided that action should be completed with thinking. The original idea, the genetic code of this publication was very simple: to create a body of theoretical reflection on environmental thinking. It was a question of giving space to and making known the main trends and thinkers, both national and international, working on environmental matters. Since then, the ministers Pere Macias, Joan Ignasi Puigdollers and Felip Puig have taken over and have maintained and built upon the original project. These pages have contained articles on recycling; on a new culture of tourism; the Earth Summit of Rio de Janeiro; city models; the ecological product; the culture of water; Gaia and the networks of life; ecological economy; energy; overpopulation; biodiversity; cleaner production; ecological design; cars; migrations; the concept of sustainability; agriculture; environmental education; the history of ecologism in Catalonia; global change and the Mediterranean; the territorial future of Catalonia; the management of the hinterland; on the risk society; the scarcity of water (again); environmental democracy; natural areas; globalisation, business and critical consumption; urban waste... The most outstanding specialists have been our collaborators, thanks largely to the willingness and effort of all the members of the editorial board. Once again, the work of the members of the board has been key to the commemoration of the thirty issues and ten years of Medi Ambient. Tecnologia i Cultura. This issue contains the personal and intellectual profiles of eleven thinkers and scientists who we consider fundamental in the current field of environmental knowledge. We thought, ever faithful to the genetic code of the magazine, that presenting a small group of men and women who have thought and think about the environment was the best present we could give our readers. Lluís
Reales
Svante Arrhenius
Josep
Enric Llebot
Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927), Swedish physicist who was vice-chancellor of the University of Stockholm and director of the Nobel Institute. He developed the chemical theory of the ionisation of electrolytes, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1903. In 1895, he presented a paper in which he suggested that a forty per cent reduction or increase in the concentration of a minor constituent of the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, could cause retroactions which could bring about the advance or retreat of glaciers. For this reason, he can be considered a pioneer of the possible anthropic origin of the current climatic change. "The earth receives sunlight, which penetrates its mass and turns into non-luminous heat. The earth possesses internal heat that it was created with, which continuously dissipates on its surface and, lastly, the earth receives the rays of light and heat from an endless number of stars, including the solar system. These are the three general causes that determine the temperature of the earth." (1) Joseph Fourier (1824) You may well be under the impression that climatic change is a new concept that has been devised and used to name a series of phenomena that have occurred over the last fifteen years, and you would probably be right. Climatology as a science only received recognition fairly recently when it became evident that there was, on the one hand, a serious lack of knowledge available concerning the underlying mechanisms that characterise climatic systems and, on the other, a need for good ways to predict climate. It was not until well into the second half of the twentieth century that attention began to be paid to climate and the work of climatologists. Climatology was considered to be a minor branch of meteorology that was merely involved in compiling data, and a climatologist was someone who was involved in describing climate, usually at ground level, and who was appraised according to the usefulness of the data he/she provided for agricultural and infrastructure installation purposes. The collection and processing of large quantities of data and extensive statistical analyses on the weather were believed to be sufficient for these tasks, and the behaviour of the climate in the past was considered to be an adequate guide to the weather in the future. Up until the 1950s, climate was subsequently merely an addition to the daily changes in the weather, which in itself had been studied very little. In this context, few people knew about the work of Arrhenius who, at the beginning of the industrial age, was the first scientist to investigate the effect that doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would have on global climate. This article gives a brief summary of the concept of the greenhouse effect and climatic change, which are attributed respectively to the French physicist Joseph Fourier and the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius, from both a strictly scientific and social point of view. Carnot and Fourier: the beginning It could be said that the history of climatic change began symbolically in 1824 when the French engineer Sadi Carnot published Reflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu et sur les machines propes a développer cette puissance. The nineteenth century was to see the development of the fundamental concepts of thermodynamics and Carnot's work was one of the key points that broke with the Newtonian paradigm of classical mechanics. It was Sadi Carnot (2) who in 1824 said, "Heat is the cause of the large movements that are characteristic of the earth; changes in the atmosphere, clouds that ascend, rainfall and other meteorological phenomena, currents of water on the earth's surface of which man uses a small part are all due to it; even the trembling of the earth and volcanic eruptions are due to heat". Although Sadi Carnot was conceptually very important, not just in physics but also for what we know today as the environmental sciences, for his studies leading to the recognition of limits in the use of energy resources, his references to the functioning of the earth, however, did not go much beyond this. In the same year (1824), the physicist Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier, known for developing the Fourier Series, a useful tool for analysing functions, and Fourier's law of heat conduction, provided a pioneering view concerning the role of the atmosphere in terms of energy. Fourier was a man with diverse interests and far-reaching faculties. Apart from being a lifelong member of the French Academy of Sciences, a friend to Napoleon and a baron, he was also professor of mathematics, a secret policeman, governor of Egypt and an Egyptologist. He is known above all for his work entitled Théorie analytique de la chaleur (1822) although it is the article (3) entitled Remarques générales sur les températures du globe terrestre et des espaces planétaires and published as a summary of his presentation before the French Academy of Sciences, which in turn was based on previous work undertaken and published between 1807 and 1809 on the warming of the planet and the periodic movement of the solar system , where he summarises his ideas on what is today known as the greenhouse effect. Like Carnot, Fourier strove to recognise phenomena in general and would thus make abstractions about secondary causes and numerical details to attain a view of the thermal functioning of the earth. This was also due to the fact that there was hardly anything else he could do because, like all of his contemporaries and many that would succeed him, he had very little meteorological data. Fourier thus described the solar system as "...being located in a region of the universe where all points have a common and constant temperature, which is determined by the rays of light and heat sent by all the surrounding heavenly bodies. The earth is thus submerged in the cold temperature of the planetary heavens and is also heated by the rays of the sun that, because they are distributed differently, produce the diversity of climates". Fourier also wrote, "the temperature increases due to the interposition of the atmosphere because heat encounters fewer obstacles in penetrating the air as light than when it has to pass through it already converted into dark heat". Fourier is also attributed as having made the first warning about the influence that human activities can have on climate. Fourier declared that "the establishment and progress of human societies, like the action of natural forces, can notably change the state of the surface of the soil, the distribution of waters and large movements of water over vast regions. These effects can typically cause variations in the degree of average heat over many centuries". Moreover, the idea that human activities can affect the behaviour of the atmosphere had already been documented by the philosopher Teophrast, a student of Aristotle, who suspected that changes of use of areas in a region to increase the cultivated surface, such as the draining of wetlands or the cutting down of woodland, could lead to changes in the warm or cold periods in a particular zone. Two thousand years later, David Hume would also suggest that climatic changes in Europe could be caused by the increase in cultivated land. Tyndall and the radiative properties of gases It was during the second half of the nineteenth century that the first steps were made in the field of research known today as climatic change. Both the Irishman John Tyndall and the Swede Svante Arrhenius had extensive scientific interests and carried out their unique climatic research as merely one of numerous fields of research. The situation today is entirely different with research being highly specialised out of necessity and a large number of scientists, institutes and organisations specialising in research on climate. As has already been mentioned, John Tyndall was born in Ireland and he trained as an engineer. He worked on the magnetic properties of crystals, the transmission of heat through organic structures, the physical properties of ice and the radiative properties of gases, amongst which he particularly studied absorption at the near infra-red region and at temperatures that are very different to those in the earth's atmosphere. He was a very enthusiastic mountaineer and, motivated by his climbing escapades to Alpine glaciers, he became interested in 1854 in studying geological questions, especially matters relating to pressure and slate. In 1859, Tyndall began a remarkable series of experiments on the radiative properties of different gases. He established and published (4) the fact that the absorption of the earth's radiation by water vapour and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is important for explaining meteorological phenomena such as night-time cooling, dew formation and frosts, and possibly variations in climate during the geological past. He also tried to explain the colour of the sky by working on the polarisation and diffusion of light by air and dust molecules. Environmental, scientific and material conditions naturally influenced him, and the dust and pollution-filled air in mid-19th century London undoubtedly helped Tyndall, who was by that time already a member of the Royal Society of London, to pose and formulate in a brilliant yet very careful way the revolutionary idea that changes in the temperature of the planet associated with variations in the active constituents of the atmosphere, with regard to radiation, could have produced some of the variations in climate that geologists were proving had taken place. Likewise, geology and the whole field of natural history were subject to intense debate. At the time when Tyndall was meticulously exploring the radiant properties of water vapour and carbon dioxide, Louis Agassiz's explanations of glacial periods during the earth's climatic history had led to heated scientific debate. Many years would pass before the scientific world and also public opinion would accept the alternation of warm and cold periods in the course of the immense history of the earth and the species that inhabit it. Tyndall's proposals did not attract much attention because no-one at that time imagined that trace constituents in the composition of the atmosphere, like water vapour and carbon dioxide, could tip the energy balance of the atmosphere and lead to the transition from a warm climate to a cold one, even though this was over thousands of years. Other considerations received much more attention, such as the astronomical causes formulated by Milutin Milankovitch many years later. Palaeoclimatology is today an essential interdisciplinary component for understanding climate and it can be said that Tyndall was one of the initiators of this. Svante Arrhenius and climatic change Up until very recently, Svante Arrhenius was only well known for his contributions in the field of electrochemistry for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1903. Arrhenius was born in Uppsala (Sweden) in 1859, just when John Tyndall was carrying out experiments on the absorption of radiation by different atmospheric gases. He was the second child of a family that was connected through his father's work with the University of Uppsala, which was founded in 1477 and since then has been the cultural driving force of both the city and the country as a whole. As was habitual at that time, Arrhenius studied at home with a tutor until he was eight years old and then went to the city's cathedral school until he went to university. At university, he began a broad study of physics, chemistry, Latin, history, geology and botany. He got his first qualification in physics and then began to prepare for what was then known as a degree in philosophy. Despite the history and prestige of the University of Uppsala, at the time when Arrhenius was coming to the end of his studies, the Department of Physics was going through a difficult period with serious problems that had even come into the public domain, and this led Arrhenius to leave for Stockholm to work at the Institute of Physics of the Swedish Academy of Science with Erik Edlund, a professor of physics who was interested in meteorology. Arrhenius also studied chemistry with Otto Petterson in Stockholm and used his knowledge of physics in the analysis of problems involving electrochemistry that culminated in a doctoral thesis on the chemical theory of electrolytes that was published in 1884. Arrhenius' theoretical work was regarded as mediocre by his examination committee but this work was later the basis for which Arrhenius was awarded the Nobel Prize, together with two other scientists, Wilhem Ostwald and Jacobus H. van't Hoff, for their work in electrochemistry. As the chemistry
professors at the University of Stockholm were not responsive as referees
to Arrhenius' doctoral work, he left to work with Wilhem Ostwald at the
Riga Polytechnic. His work with Ostwald and an invaluable grant from the
Academy of Science enabled him to visit numerous European laboratories
and collaborate with prestigious scientists of the time, such as Ludwig
Boltzmann in Graz, Friedrich Kohlrausch in Würzburg and Jacobus H.
van't Hoff in Amsterdam. These contacts served the restless and imaginative
Arrhenius to complete his electrolytic theory of dissociation and, after
a long postdoctoral period of six years, led to him obtain his first stable
position as lecturer of physics at the Stockholm College of Higher Education.
The role of the Stockholm Physics Society was important in stimulating Arrhenius's interest in the physics of the earth, sea and atmosphere. Scientific contact with geologists, meteorologists and oceanographers led Arrhenius to become interested in certain problems posed by these sciences. His training in physics and chemistry enabled him to easily comprehend the theoretical analysis of electrical phenomena in the atmosphere, such as the study of lightning, the influences of the sun and moon on the electrical state of the atmosphere, and the development of a theory on the formation of the solar system. Personally, he was not particularly interested in observation or experimentation, and while most of his work was theoretical, the very limited observations and measurements that were available at the time and that he did apply his knowledge to were made by others. In 1895, Arrhenius presented what is today considered to be a pioneer presentation to the Stockholm Physics Society, in which he suggested that a reduction or increase of forty per cent in the concentration of carbon dioxide, which is a trace constituent in the atmosphere, could have a great influence and account for glacial advance or retreat. In his work, Arrhenius developed an energy budget model that considered the radiative effects of carbon dioxide and water vapour on the surface temperature of the Earth and variations in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. His work was published the following year (5) and, in order to proceed with his experiments, Arrhenius relied heavily on the recent experiments and observations of other scientists, including Josef Stefan's results on the law of radiation emission being proportional to the 4th power of its absolute temperature, Léon Teisserenc de Bort's estimates of cloud albedo at different latitudes, the work of Knut Ansgström on the values of the coefficients of carbon dioxide and water vapour absorption and Alexander Buchan's work on average temperatures for the entire planet. The model formulated and developed by Arrhenius was very simple and he used it to estimate the reflection of radiation from the surface of the earth and clouds and the effect produced by snow-cover that, given current knowledge, are today considered to be rudimentary or quite simply erroneous. Arrhenius concluded that variations in the carbon dioxide and water vapour content in the atmosphere could greatly influence the heat balance of the climatic system. He came to this conclusion after having calculated between 10,000 and 100,000 operations by hand (at that time, there was no mechanical aid for making calculations) in what today would be known as different settings of the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere (given a CO2 content at that time of 1, he calculated this for situations in which CO2 was 0.67; 1.5; 2.0; 2.5; and 3.0). The calculations were made for the four seasons of the year, with latitude being taken into account. Arrhenius concluded in a general way from his calculations that "...if the quantity of carbonic acid increased in a geometric progression, temperature would vary according to an arithmetic progression". Arrhenius also came to the conclusion that the higher the quantity of carbon dioxide and latitude, the higher the variation in temperature, and that this would be higher in winter than in summer. In general, Arrhenius predicted an increase of temperature of 5 to 6 degrees Celsius if the carbon dioxide content in the Earth's atmosphere was doubled. It is surprising that the predictions by Arrhenius are so similar, in quantitative terms, to the current results obtained using sophisticated models of general atmospheric circulation. This similarity has probably led to the fact that the Swedish physicist is generally considered to be the initiator of the subject of the possible anthropogenic origin of the current climatic change. It is important to point out, however, that Arrhenius was primarily looking back in time in his work for he was searching for the cause of developments in the glacial climatic cycles in the past with calculations of the probability of large variations in the carbon dioxide content over a relatively short geological time span. This he was able to do as a result of the research of his friend and colleague, the geologist Arvid Gustaf Högbom, who worked on what is today known as the carbon cycle. Högbom mantained, against the more general current of thought at the time, that large variations have occurred in the source and depletion of carbon during the geological history of the Earth, which have led to substantial changes in the atmospheric content of carbon dioxide. In his work on the carbon cycle, Högbom used many components that are fully applicable today, such as the regulatory role of the oceans and volcanic activity, which he considered to be the major source of CO2 in the atmosphere. The Swedish geologist considered nevertheless that neither the burning of fossil fuels nor the elimination of forests would have an influence on the carbon content in the atmosphere because sediment and carbonate formation, together with silicate decomposition, were natural geological processes that he believed to be quantitatively much more important. Högbom estimated the order of magnitude of atmospheric CO2 to be all of the carbon fixed in the organic world and, by comparing this with the carbon released into the atmosphere as a result of the use of carbon, he found that this represented a very small proportion (less than one part per thousand). Arrhenius work in 1896 made an important contribution to quantifying these effects, although he later questioned the causes of this. In fact, Arrhenius' model enables the increase in temperature in the Arctic or between the 40º and 50º latitude parallels to be calculated, and it shows that variations in the CO2 content of the atmosphere may have accounted for the glacial and interglacial periods. The historical perspective enables the work of Arrhenius to serve as a background to the current situation concerning the understanding of issues involving climatic change. One of his most important contributions was the development of a quantified model based on observational data, in contrast to the more frequent quantitative analyses of the time. The information that was available to Arrhenius, however, was not of very good quality. On the one hand, the idea that volcanic eruptions were the main source of carbon in the atmosphere was simplistic and connected with geological knowledge at that time. The spectroscopic information available then was very primitive; there was no complete information available on the absorption of infra-red radiation, especially in the wavelength band above 9.5 micrometers,(6) which is very important for both carbon dioxide and water vapour, and most data referred to measurements of atmospheric pressure, which occurs at the Earth's surface although this pressure is not the same at medium and high-level layers of the troposphere. The lack of precision of the spectroscopic information was one of the main criticisms that were made about two aspects of Arrhenius' work; on the one hand, the effect of water vapour, which is much more abundant than CO2 and absorbs all of the infrared radiation in a spectral band which, according to the data that were available at that time, coincided with a carbon gas absorption band. By doubling the carbon dioxide content, the radiation-absorption capacity increases but not the real absorption . On the other hand, there was the question of saturation; if a given quantity of CO2 absorbs a certain amount of radiation, doubling the quantity of carbon gas will not necessarily mean that the amount of absorbed radiation doubles as well because a point exists at which all absorbable radiation has already been absorbed. Arrhenius continued to work on his theory of climate at the beginning of the 20th century. Aware of the frailty of his spectroscopic data, he continued to debate the carbon cycle and the absorption of short and long wave radiation and absorption bands that were extremely wide (8) . He also published his work in a non-technical way in order for it to reach a wider audience (9) and revised the work of Fourier, Tyndall and other researchers, where he spoke of the greenhouse theory in reference to the atmosphere. Arrhenius used his model to point out that the observed temperature of the earth is thirty degrees higher than what it would be by merely taking geometric considerations into account (or, in other words, an earth with no atmosphere) and that, because of this difference, the role of the atmosphere is to produce what is today known as the greenhouse effect. He also showed by way of his model that an atmosphere without carbon dioxide would have a temperature twenty-one degrees lower. Arrhenius realised, not just as a scientist but also as an attentive observer of what would happen in the future to the society of his time, that a fast increase was occurring of anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide due to industrial activities, and he claimed that advances in industry and developed society in general would more than likely lead over the course of a few centuries to an increased content of CO2 in the atmosphere, together with a warmer atmospheric temperature. Both the work of Arrhenius and his viewpoint, influenced by the harsh, cold Nordic climate, together with his positivist vision of progress, led him to write, "Through the influence of an increasingly higher percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we can expect there to be periods with a more temperate and better climate, especially with regard to the colder regions of the earth, which means that the earth will produce better and more abundant harvests to the benefit of the human species" (10). Here is the first mention in modern times to the anthropogenic impacts on the change in climate. Epilogue The current view of Arrhenius' work sometimes brings smiles to researchers' faces. He was probably very lucky as a researcher although he was also highly intuitive. Although the concurrence of his predictions and the results of simulations by the most advanced groups at the present time is merely fortuitous, it continues to be surprising. His mention of impacts was also important and, on this point, great advances have been made in recent years. Arrhenius's optimistic vision clashes with contemporary society's overwhelming capacity to affect the carbon cycle and modify the energy balance of the atmosphere, and in this context the shifting of certain crops towards colder latitudes is likewise talked about today. In short, the arrogance that technology has brought in its wake sometimes makes modern man forget and look down on the efforts and work that was done in the past. Just over a hundred years after Arrhenius talked about climatic change, we are today merely trying to improve and refine everything he did. References 1 Joseph Fourier,
from a lecture read at the Académie Royale des Sciences in 1824
and published in "Remarques générales sur les températures
du globe terrestre et des espaces planétaires" Annales de Chimie
et de Physique, 27 136-167, (1824)
Takashi Asano
Rafael
Mujeriego
Takashi Asano (1937), an engineer of Japanese extraction, is a pioneer and renowned expert in the field of reclamation, recycling and reuse of water. From the University of California at Davis, a state with scarce water resources, has carried on several works and studies on the safe use of reclaimed water. Closely linked to a research group from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Asano recently received the Stockholm Water Prize. Quite the wise man of water. On March 22, 2001, World Water Day, it was announced that the Stockholm Water Prize had been awarded to Takashi Asano, professor of the University of California at Davis. Takashi Asano thus became the eleventh person to be honoured with the prestigious prize awarded by the Stockholm Water Foundation every year since 1990. The award committee for this prize wanted to emphasise the fact that the Stockholm Water Prize was awarded to Takashi Asano in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the efficient use of water in the fields of reclamation, recycling and reuse of wastewater, through his technical development and applied research, as well as the adaptation and promotion carried out on an international level. Over the past 20 years, Takashi Asano has become one of the most renowned experts in the field of safe use of reclaimed water. At the end of the '70s and throughout the '80s, Asano contributed to implementing and researching the reuse of water from his position on the California State Water Resources Control Board (CSWRCB). This research was initially recorded in the "Practical Guide to Irrigation with Reclaimed Municipal Wastewater", published by the State of California in 1984 and later translated into Spanish in 1990, with support from the Government of Catalonia and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. This work culminated in the California Water Reclamation Criteria, which serves as the basis for most international projects and standards in the field of water reclamation, recycling and reuse. Asano has acted as the catalyst for technological advances and as mediator among scientists, engineers and politicians in the arid and semi-arid areas of the world, where water is in greatest need and where its price is highest. Takashi Asano has dedicated most of the last decade to travelling all over the world, giving advice to diverse countries on water resource management, efficient use of water, water savings and reuse. Worth highlighting from among his most important contributions is the formation, in 1987, of the Specialised Group, under the International Water Association (IWA), on Water Reclamation, Recycling and Reuse. After 8 years as president of the group, we succeeded him in this task in 1995, following the Second International Water Reclamation, Recycling and Reuse Symposium held in Crete. By the end of our presidency of the Specialised Group, during the First World Water Congress held in Paris in July of 2000, the group had been consolidated among the two most numerous of the IWA. The 10th anniversary celebration of the magazine Medi Ambient offers us an excellent opportunity to profile Professor Asano, a collaborator of ours and personal friend for 16 years, who has played an exceptional part in the evolution of environmental engineering during the second half of the 20th century. The text below includes a biographical sketch and the thoughts gathered during a recent meeting with Takashi Asano, during which this evolution is analysed, as are those of water resource management and environmental awareness since he began his studies in California in 1963. The worldwide trends of continued population growth, contamination of both surface water and groundwater, uneven distributions of water resources and periodic droughts caught the imagination of Professor Takashi Asano as an environmental and water resources engineer. In the United States, the Clean Water Act of 1972 set forth the "fishable and swimmable" water for the nation's rivers, estuaries, and waterways. Thus, under this pollution control law, all publicly owned municipal wastewater treatment plants must comply with the minimum of secondary level treatment, requiring BOD and suspended solids of less than 30 mg/L each. Many treatment plants also needed to upgrade to much higher treatment (tertiary filtration) and nutrient (nitrogen and phosphorus) removal because of discharge to the ecologically-sensitive aquatic environment of US waters. As a consequence, the use of highly treated wastewater effluent, now discharged to the environment from municipal wastewater treatment plants, is receiving more attention as a reliable source of water for our thirsty cities and the neglected environment. In many parts of the world, including Spain and other Mediterranean countries, water reuse is already an important element in water resource planning and solving water shortages in agriculture and landscape irrigation. Professor Asano has done pioneering work in water reclamation, recycling and reuse in the United States and many other parts of the world. His career in this field was launched when, in 1978, he joined the Office of Water Recycling of the California State Water Resources Control Board (CSWRCB) in Sacramento, recruited from his professorship at Washington State University. In 1980, he was also appointed adjunct professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of California at Davis, where his major research has been conducted. His research on water reuse has included (1) planning and analysis of water reuse projects, (2) technological assessment of industrial water reuse and recycling applications, (3) agricultural irrigation and groundwater recharge using reclaimed water, (4) economics of water reuse, (5) treatment technology and treatment process reliability and (6) quantitative microbial risk assessment using enteric virus data. Takashi Asano was born in Sapporo, Japan in 1937, and graduated from Hokkaido University in Sapporo in 1959. Following his graduation, he worked for a petroleum company in Tokyo and Osaka for four years. In 1963, the company sent him to the United States to study industrial water pollution control at the University of California at Berkeley, where he finished his master's degree in civil and sanitary engineering in 1965. He then worked for two years at the San Francisco Bay District offices of the State of California Department of Water Resources. A full pre-doctoral fellowship from the National Science Foundation, in 1970, enabled Asano to finish his Ph.D. in environmental and water resource engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Since then, he has had a continuously brilliant career, by means of which he has become a foremost authority in the field of water reclamation, recycling and reuse. Our professional relationship with Professor Asano began in October 1985, when we were invited by the Consortium of the Costa Brava (CCB) to take part in the First International Symposium on Water Reclamation and Use held in Castell-Platja d'Aro. From our position in the Department of Civil Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, we have been able to collaborate closely with Professor Asano on national and international projects over all these years. The interview we conducted proved to be a wonderful opportunity to remember and reflect on the development of our personal and professional relationship in regard to protecting the environment and managing water resources. Regarding the reasons he was led to study water reclamation, recycling and reuse more than 20 years ago, Professor Asano explains that "beyond the sanitary and environmental engineering that I studied at Berkeley, I had an added interest in water resource engineering at Michigan. But, I taught and practised traditional environmental engineering at Montana State University and Washington State University back in the 1970s and early 80s. The environmental engineering we know now started in the late 1950s and Berkeley was one of the best universities to study sanitary/environmental engineering. The programme of studies was very competitive but highly satisfactory at the same time. To me, Michigan was excellent opportunity to learn water resource engineering, and the chemical and biochemical basis of environmental engineering." And he adds: "in California and other western states, the years 1987-88 were very dry, severe drought years, and the Governor of California, the Honourable Jerry Brown, created by executive order the Office of Water Recycling within the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB). In September 1978, I returned to California to occupy the specially-created position of water reclamation specialist at SWRCB in Sacramento. Because of the ensuing drought and the great emphasis placed on additional water resources, water reuse was the high priority of the State of California, and I benefited greatly from doing much research and field development work during those years." During those
years, an important study was conducted in Monterrey, California, on the
feasibility and safety of agricultural irrigation using reclaimed municipal
wastewater for salad crops eaten raw. In this regard, Professor Asano recalls
that "the Monterrey Wastewater Reclamation Study for Agriculture (MWRSA)
was a seven-year field study on the effects of reclaimed water irrigation
on crops, soil and groundwater. Through this demonstration project, carried
out between 1978 and 1987, we were able to show the absolute safety of
reclaimed water and food crops grown using reclaimed water. This study
was significant because we were able to prove that the tertiary treatment
process and irrigation techniques in combination worked reliably. Growers
were happy, and 7 years of field study consistently proved its safety and
public acceptance."
The book "Irrigation with Reclaimed Municipal Wastewater", which he co-edited with Dr. Pettygrove, was very successful in the United States and was translated into Spanish in 1990. Professor Asano comments: "When I joined the Office of Water Recycling back in 1978, one of the pressing needs was to create and publish the State of California guidance manual on agricultural and landscape irrigation using reclaimed water. For this project, I collaborated with Dr. Stuart Pettygrove of the University of California at Davis. The resulting report was first published by the State of California in 1984 and later commercially published by Lewis Publishers in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We very much appreciated the authoritative translation into Spanish by Rafael Mujeriego and publication in 1990 with backing from the Autonomous Government of Catalonia and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. I understand that this publication is widely used in Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries. I saw the Spanish version in Chile, Costa Rica and Mexico and I was very proud." In recent years, Professor Asano has concentrated on two broad areas of research: treatment process reliability and quantitative microbial risk assessment. Regarding his research efforts, he states: "Because water reuse is a water supply project, reliability in performance and operation of wastewater reclamation plants is of the utmost importance. Because water quality issues in rivers, lakes, and waterways will be critical in Spain in the coming years, let me discuss water reuse "reliability" and "public health risk" in some detail. I am sure that these areas of research will be of interest in Spain, along with the now routine monitoring of water quality for future analysis and enforcement of water quality requirements. "If we look
back at the California situation in the 1960s, our ephemeral rivers in
southern California were mostly sewage effluents from upstream towns and
cities, although most of them were secondary-treated effluents. Body contact
sports in these rivers by kids were a main concern, particularly with respect
to enteric virus infection. The Pomona Virus Study was conducted in the
late 1970s, and became the foundation for "safety" discussions in water
reuse. Then, the aforementioned Monterrey irrigation study was conducted
to duplicate the findings and assess the effects of irrigation on crops,
soil and groundwater. These studies are the basis of the latest draft (2000)
of the California Department of Health Services' 'Water Recycling Criteria'."
In fact, these findings were published in the journal Water Environment Research in 1998, and the paper was awarded the Jack McKee Medal in 1999 by the Water Environment Federation. Asano remembers that "the paper was written with a graduate student and some of my colleagues. We were gratified by this honour. I must add that the goal of essentially virus-free reclaimed water contained in the California Water Recycling Criteria should not be interpreted to mean that the practice of using such water is risk-free. Because of the difficulties in correlating causative agents (e.g. pathogens) and the disease outcome and its epidemiological significance, there is always some risk of infection due to exposure to reclaimed water. However, this does not mean that the practice of water reclamation and reuse is unsafe compared to other sources of available water. The safety of water reclamation and reuse practice is defined by the acceptable level of risks developed by the regulatory agencies responsible for risk management and endorsed by the public for the necessity of such undertaking in the integrated water resource management." In regard to
future plans, Professor Asano indicates that "once I finished editing the
book Wastewater Reclamation and Reuse, published by Technomic Publishing
Co., Inc., Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1998, I began thinking about writing
a water reuse "textbook". I think that the time has come to work on this
subject, and I hope to concentrate on writing this textbook soon. To do
a good job and reflect upon real practice of water reuse, I would like
to visit several countries. Spain was my first visit, in May 2001, to see
the progress made since my first visit in 1985. I have learned a great
deal from the Spanish experience in water reuse. I was able to discuss
"water quality" issues with the Spanish authorities on integrated water
resource management, as well as how to set reclaimed water quality guidelines
and how to enforce regulations.
From a perspective that looks toward the future, Professor Asano is convinced that this alternative source for water presents a new opportunity for our society: "I reiterate the thesis that has been repeated over the last quarter century, holding that advanced treatment of municipal and industrial wastewater provides a treated effluent of such high quality that it should not be wasted but put to beneficial use. This conviction, coupled with increasing water shortage and environmental protection problems, provides a realistic framework for considering wastewater reclamation and reuse in many parts of the world. Non-potable water reuse applications, such as agricultural and landscape irrigation, toilet flushing in large office buildings, and water for aesthetic and environmental purposes, have become major, realistic options for planned wastewater reuse." For Professor Asano "Wastewater reuse is one element of water resource development and management which provides innovative and alternative options for agriculture, municipalities and industries. Water pollution control efforts in many countries have made treated effluent available that may be an economical augmentation to the existing water supply when compared to the increasingly expensive and environmentally destructive new water resource development. However, wastewater reuse is only one alternative in planning to meet future water resource needs. Water conservation, water recycling, efficient management and use of existing water supplies and new water resource development based on watershed management are examples of other alternatives. Wastewater reuse involves considerations of public health and also requires close examination of infrastructure and facilities planning, wastewater treatment plant siting, treatment reliability, economic and financial analyses and water utility management involving effective integration of water and reclaimed water. "Whether wastewater
reuse will be appropriate depends upon careful economic considerations,
potential uses for the reclaimed water, stringency of waste discharge requirements
and public policy, wherein the desire to conserve rather than develop available
water resources may override economic and public health considerations.
Today, technically proven wastewater treatment or purification processes
exist to provide water of almost any quality desired. Thus, wastewater
reuse has a rightful place and an important role in optimal planning and
more efficient management and use of water resources in many countries.
Asano adds:
"Because wastewater reclamation and the planned reuse of treated effluents
are so closely linked to the freshwater supply of the region, significant
water reuse projects are implemented in water-short areas as well as high
water demand areas in large metropolitan areas. Through integrated water
resource planning, the use of reclaimed water may provide sufficient flexibility
to allow a water agency to respond to short-term needs as well as increase
long-term water supply reliability without constructing additional storage
or conveyance facilities, at substantial economic and environmental expenditures.
In addition, wastewater reuse simultaneously reduces water pollution by
providing the option of putting constraints on discharge to inland surface
waters and the marine environment. Recognition of public health protection
on beaches and in environmentally sensitive conditions in coastal waters,
such as those of Spain's Mediterranean coast or in western Florida and
southern California, may need to enforce strict discharge limits or near
prohibition of treated wastewater discharge. Increasing stricter discharge
limits has made many coastal communities -such as Limassol (Cyprus) and
San Diego (California)- implement wastewater reclamation and reuse in recent
years.
Ildefons
Cerdà
Salvador
Rueda
Ildefons Cerdà (1815-1876), a civil engineer by profession, was actually a man of many talents, a sort of Renaissance spirit in the nineteenth century. An engineer, town planner, architect, jurist, economist, politician, militiaman, Cerdà is a point of reference of modern town planning and a systemic approach to the city. We knew a lot less in his day than we do now -the theory of systems had not been developed, nor the basics of thermodynamics, nor autoecology-, but this son of Centelles was an innovator who created a model of sustainable town planning in accordance with the social reality of the time Ildefons Cerdà i Sunyer 1 was born on 23 December 1815 at the El Serdà farm, a property in Centelles on the Vic Plain that had been in the hands of his family since the sixteenth century. Despite their rural origins, the Cerdà family had travelled considerably and both his grandfather and father had belonged to the generations that, with the Catalan economy in full recovery, had important economic interests in commerce with America. This undoubtedly opened the young Ildefons' mind and stimulated him, as well as bolstering his faith in the march of progress. Given that he was not the heir to the family's wealth, he devoted his life to studying. He first moved to Barcelona, where he began studying architecture, mathematics, navigation and drawing at the Junta de Comerç (Chamber of Commerce), and then he went to Madrid to study at the College of Civil Engineers, where he graduated in 1841. He began his professional career that same year and worked as a civil engineer in the provinces of Murcia, Teruel, Tarragona, Valencia, Girona and Barcelona. 1848 marked
a true turning point in Cerdà's life and work with his marriage
to Clotilde Bosch, together with the premature deaths of his elder brothers
Ramon (1808-1837) and Josep (1806-1848), and his father (1787-1844), meant
that Ildefons became the heir to a considerable fortune. These factors
led Cerdà to give up his job as a civil engineer in 1849 and to
devote himself exclusively to the study of the process of urbanisation.
It was during the decade of the 1850s that Cerdà did the groundwork for what would become the Eixample of Barcelona, as a result of the fact that the city could not grow any more because it was constricted and stifled by the surrounding city walls that impeded its physical growth and improvements to hygienic conditions. It was a cholera epidemic that finally led to the city walls being demolished by the governor Pascual Madoz. Ildefons Cerdà carried out an important study on the working class in 1856, in which the author analysed the social and economic conditions and basic needs in the old walled city area of Barcelona, which was included as an appendix in Teoria General de la Urbanizacion (General theory of urban planning). Despite the
contributions that he had made, Cerdà aroused distrust and, dismissed
from Barcelona City Council by Field Marshall Zapatero in 1856, he was
imprisoned on two occasions. Nevertheless, the Catalan Government proclaimed
a royal decree in May 1860 that irrevocably adopted the Cerdà Plan,
which was finally inaugurated by Queen Isabel II on 4 October 1860 in the
face of opposition due to the controversy caused by the call for tenders
for the Plan right from the start, and issues such as road width and the
distribution of urban planning responsibilities, all of which resulted
in delays in the actual construction of the new Barcelona.
Whilst having a Turkish bath in Caldes de Besaya (Santander) on 21 August 1876, and unaware that he was suffering from a cardiac condition, Cerdà had a fatal blackout. The obituary that appeared in the La Imprenta newspaper on 23 August was as follows; "Señor Cerdà was a liberal and he also was very talented, two circumstances which in Spain are unbecoming and often create many enemies..." Cerdà, a man of many talents This brief biography requires a complementary description of the highly versatile figure that was Cerdà in order to understand the magnitude and importance of his work. Cerdà, the civil engineer Cerdà moved to Madrid in September 1835 where he began studying civil engineering. He finished his basic training in 1841. During these years, Cerdà's character was influenced by his life at college, especially the esprit de la géometrie. As M. Angelon stated, "He believed upright behaviour to be the product of reckoning and the source of expression. Cerdà was, so to speak, an algebraic man", and described his personality with the following sentence, "Cerdà's mind was that of a learned man, he would demonstrate like a mathematician while he had the feelings of a child". Cerdà, the urban planner Of all of Cerdà's facets, this one is the most fitting. In the first place, he founded the discipline with his General theory of urban planning. Secondly, his most important work was drawing up the Blueprint for the Eixample of Barcelona in 1855, the Barcelona Improvement and Eixample Project in 1859, and the Revision of this project in 1863. Thirdly, he directed the actual construction of the Eixample over a period of 15 years through numerous forms of direct and indirect management, co-ordination, and development, as a director, as an advisor to local authorities and private individuals, etc. Cerdà, the architect With his characteristic meticulousness, Cerdà put an enormous amount of analytical effort into his writings, figures and graphic work for proposals on housing for different social categories and degrees of complexity, from individual houses to communities. Cerdà, the jurist Cerdà's proposals for the cities of Madrid and Barcelona led to new legislation that were without precedent in legislation in both Spain and abroad. In Cuatro palabras sobre el Ensanche (Comments on the Eixample) (1861), Cerdà gives an extensive explanation of the compensation system and the technique to equitably re-divide lots in order to distribute the profits and responsibilities between the property owners and to obtain regular plots of land for building from the lots made available, a system that would later be included in the Posada Herrera Bill and incorporated one hundred years later into the Land Law of 1956. Cerdà, the economist Cerdà established the standards for infrastructure, property division and lot assignment in the new Barcelona. Cerdà, the politician Cerdà considered politics to be "like a practical science, and when this was not the case, it wasn't politics for him". True to this idea, from the moment that he decided to devote himself to the science of urban planning, he became involved in public activities. In his first political appearance, Cerdà stood for the Spanish parliament in Madrid in 1851 and was elected to represent the Second District of Barcelona in a progressive list of candidates, together with Estanislau Figueres, Pascual Madoz and Jacint F. Domenech. From this point on, he would always continue to undertake some kind of political activity through one institution or another. He was a member of Congress in Madrid, a town councillor for Barcelona City Council (1854-56 and 1863-66) and, as provincial councillor, he became vice-president of Barcelona Provincial Council in the period from1873 to 1874. In political terms, Cerdà became progressively more radical, as was observed by Estapé, who wrote, "the rectilinear and inflexible disposition of the former liberal in 1841, of the democrat in 1850 and of the republican in his final stage." Cerdà, the militiaman The fact that Cerdà was a member of the National Militia was an essential facet in his development. The origins of the Militia date from 1812 and the Parliament of Cadiz. A general strike was held on July 4th 1855, which caused an upheaval in Barcelona and the outskirts. Faced with a difficult situation, the commanding military forces withdrew and were confined to barracks, which meant that the Militia became responsible for public order. In this very particular setting, the role of Cerdà as head of the Militia enabled him to call off the strike, which was an event that would mark him in the future. As a result, he became unpopular with the military and more reactionary elements to such a degree that he was imprisoned when the regime came to an end. From this point on, Cerdà would remain in close contact with the working classes. The origins and instruments of urban planning It was Ildefons Cerdà who in the mid 19th century invented the term "urbanism" to deal with a seriously dysfunctional situation that, in order to be resolved, required an interdisciplinary approach and sufficient imagination to use and create the technical, economic, legal and social instruments necessary to support such a new concept. Cerdà himself wrote (1867) "given the alternative to inventing a word or to stop writing about something that, as I study it more and more, I see as being more and more useful to humanity, I prefer to invent and write than to remain silent. The use of a new word cannot be censored provided that the need is justified and that it is vouched for by a praiseworthy purpose". The new word, however, went beyond considerations of the housing neighbourhood in relation to other buildings and their advantages and disadvantages, the relationship between roads and houses, etc., and includes analytical considerations from other applied disciplines. "...And I observed many complicated interests that gamble, struggle and fight in these great arenas where they concentrate and swarm, from the region, sometimes from the province or district, and even the entire nation; and I became convinced that the struggles between the material, moral, administrative, political and social interests that develop and the interests of public health and welfare lead for the most part to these being sacrificed not voluntarily but by force because they are overwhelmed.". In the new idea that he was endeavouring to define, the system comes through as a fairly clear concept; "... the first thing that occurred to me was the need to give a name to this confusion of people, things, interests of all types and a thousand different elements that, despite the fact that they all apparently operate independently, can be seen on closer inspection and from a philosophical point of view to all be in constant relationship with each other, acting sometimes in a direct way on each other. As such, they all form a unit. All of these things together, especially the material part, is called the city; however, my aim was not to express this literally but more the way and system according to which these groups form, and how they are organised and work, and then the elements that they are made up of, that is to say, a way of expressing the organism aside from the material substance, the life (if it is fitting to say this) that animates the material part; it is obviously clear that this word would not be suitable". The origin of the expression comes from the Roman word "urbs", which describes everything within the confines of the area of the perimeter furrow that the Romans ploughed with sacred oxen. "By digging the furrow, they urbanised the area and everything else enclosed within it; that is, the digging of this furrow was a true act of urbanisation, of converting an open field into urbs. These are the philological reasons that induced and persuaded me to use the word 'urbanisation', not just to indicate any act that tends towards the grouping of buildings and regulates the functioning of an existing group, but also the whole set of principles, doctrines and rules that must be applied so that building construction and groups of buildings, far from restraining, adversely affecting and corrupting the physical, moral and intellectual faculties of social man, serve to stimulate his development and vigour, and to increase the individual's wellbeing, the sum of which forms public happiness". This was the origin of urban planning, a new interdisciplinary concept that relates the physical components with human activities carried out in a theoretically closed space. Nevertheless, this was not the overall view used by the majority of those who undertook urban developments prior to modern times. Solutions that were provided had been influenced by theological and fragmented visions that attempted to resolve specific, one-sided problems without attempting to resolve the conflicts that disguised and at times led to secondary forms of dysfunction of such magnitude that it was difficult to truly justify any solution that was provided. One of the characteristics
that make Cerdà's theory of urbanisation very contemporary is precisely
the contribution he made to the overall view of the urbs in order to resolve
the most important conflicts during his time (hygiene, mobility, the crushing
of what was built, greater social justice, etc.), and providing at the
same time more overall and detailed solutions to problems that had dragged
on throughout the history of urbanisation, like the dialectic on private
and public property, privacy and sociability, town and country, etc.
Legal and administrative instruments Cerdà grasped in all of its intensity the fact that urban development entailed wide-reaching social changes and that new legislation was needed to give order to these changes. Given the existing void, he provided a series of important reflections that provided legal ideas, concepts and techniques that were truly innovative and which clashed with the mentality of the time and continue to surprise even today as a result of their vitality, imagination and effective strategy. Using analogy as a hermeneutic criterion, he constructed the theory of urban planning by structuring procedural sequences so that the fundamental features of his work have not been subsequently surpassed (M. Bassols 1995). The graphic synthesis was the building plan, while the economic, legal and administrative means used to develop it (economic Plan or statute), together with the building codes and urban police orders, formed the synthesis of the overall urban planning. In reference to the Eixample building codes, which is where he focussed his attention, given that the police orders were sufficiently well regulated and that they merely needed to be applied more vigorously, Cerdà believed that "urban construction has remained stationary on account of it having adapted to the contingencies of industry and art, with contempt for political economy, hygiene and administration, which should be considered as its natural and inseparable assistants". In this way, he established that technical specifications be added to the plans and other technical documents for carrying out works in the public interest, and by-laws for conservation and administration following the completion of construction work. According to Bassols, the axiological basis of urban development by Cerdà can be summarised in the following points: a) The urban agglomeration of buildings generates within itself a community of reciprocal interests between urban properties that justifies public intervention and makes it possible to talk of rights and active or passive situations in themselves, and public interest. b) The criterion for determining the limits of public urban interventionism is expressed, with regard to this same community, according to the following axiom: «the head of the family rules within the household, whereas authority intervenes when families come into contact and directs and regulates their relationships and harmonises their interests and respective rights.» Building codes were a compendium of operational formulae and the creation of new conceptual figures constituted the initial example of supramunicipal urban law in Catalonia. They were an early example of the concept of zoning according to use, with categories of building use that included private dwellings, industrial and administrative use; and the use of unoccupied public land (avenues, parks, gardens, squares, etc.). As far as zoning for industrial use was concerned, certain areas in Barcelona were set aside while this was prohibited in others. The basic units
were the road network, the building block and, as in traditional ordinances,
the lot or building.
Cerdà had specific measures to calculate, lay out, separate and to surface the blocks, as well as the formation of building lots and the height of the buildings to be constructed. All of this was done in accordance with the obligations of hygiene, health and amenities that justified such detailed interventionism and which had its highest form of expression in the demand for the same style of garden fountains as that used in the construction of the blocks and buildings. The term Cerdà used for what is today known as the discipline of urban planning was "policia de obras" (construction works administration). Under this title, he controlled the solutions and plans from the initial start of building work to their completion. Modern day issues were controlled in a rational way, for example the expiry of planning permission and liability for construction; regulations covering demolition and construction work acceptance; certification of the end of construction work; demolition in the case of irregularities, etc. As a completion to the actual building construction work, Cerdà, who was profoundly concerned about hygienic conditions of habitability, also established the control of building habitability so that any dwelling built in a defective way, with defects in ventilation, a lack of cleanliness, insufficient air space (stairways, the lack of hygienic services, etc.) would be considered uninhabitable and cleared, and a sign hung on the façade with "No entry due to insalubrity" (art. 321) (Bassols op cit). Economic measures Ildefons Cerdà's aspirations in economic matters involved research into a formula or means of financing urban development activities. He considered
improvements to an area of a city like the Eixample to be public works
and in this particular project, he included an inventory that took account
of building work both above and below ground. He established the mechanisms
for financing urban networks and the distribution of responsibilities and
benefits.
The basis of
his system of financing was that expenditure should be charged to those
who would benefit from the advantages of building developments. He believed
that no one should get rich at the expense of others.
a) In order to open up new roads on the outskirts of a town to convert them into a lot, or to open up a road right in the middle of a closed block to build houses, that it must be the property owners concerned with the development project that pay the value of the land and of the entire sewage system, all types of piping and tubing and, once it has been constructed, they must assign it all to the municipality and the public domain in perpetuam. b) For improvements within towns and villages, Cerdà proposed the French technique adopted in Paris whereby two zones on either side of the public highway are expropriated and developed with a unity of criteria and management. As he underlined, «it is true that the proprietary administration of this triple zone is under the obligation to pay for the road with all of its accessories but, at the same time, it has the exclusive right to make use of all of the advantages provided by the opening up of the same road...» He considered, however, that it was unjust for the government to pay the cost of this type of urban development for this would be to the benefit of adjacent property owners. c) To avoid these difficulties, he proposed the granting of a series of provisional orders for a period of thirty years and to build in the expropriated areas. He also introduced the technique of redivision of plots and specifications for the compensation system, forty years before anything similar to this was first formulated in Germany with the passing in 1902 of what is known in urban law as the Adickes Law. In fact, Cerdà put forward an equitable system for distributing the benefits and prejudices amongst property owners. The benefits of the Eixample, he said, "should not be distributed amongst the property owners just to please them because of their relentlessness or in a way that resembles winning the lottery. It is essential for property owners themselves, each one for their part, to ensure that the distribution is equal and equitative. This means that those who find themselves by chance more favoured should be the first to grant part of their greater advantages, undeserved and unjust, to those who, by dint of the same luck, find themselves benefiting from less". As Bassols says, one can appreciate in these words the formulation of two principles that have given shape to modern urban planning and that are included in legislation governing contemporary urban development; "the prohibition of the lottery system in urban planning and the distribution amongst those concerned of the benefits and responsibilities arising from this approach". Organisational measures Cerdà proposed new organisational formulae for the development of technical, economic and legal objectives. In order to develop the idea of the redivision of plots, he developed the idea of creating a community of interests or temporary association consisting of all of the property owners with portions of land within a block, which was made up of the gross total surface area (delimited by the axes of the surrounding roads) and the surface area, with however many participating property owners forming just one entity, each one having the same rights and obligations (pro indiviso). (M. Bassols 1995) He also proposed the setting up of the " Salubrity and Construction Council to aid all of the Municipal Councils in the Eixample in the application of the regulations" in the by-laws. All of the interested parties would be represented, including the Spanish and Catalan Governments, and the law, economy, hygiene, statistics, roads and highways, construction and industry. Cerdà believed that the managing of urban development should not be carried out by the Government and proposed that a private company or concessionaire be awarded the contract in a public tender, in a similar way to legislation governing the railways. Technical or facultative instruments The city that the founder of urbanism projected is still today a highly contemporary one, as is evident throughout this article. Cerdà made numerous and very varied proposals of a technical nature from the mid-19th century onwards. Without wanting to make a thorough description of his facultative work, it is interesting to mention various of his conceptual proposals, some of which were actually carried out. Cerdà, who was termed a scientific socialist by F. Estapé (1994) but in no way was he a utopian socialist, and as a liberal planner by A. Soria (1995), sought to resolve different conflicts that existed in the city in the early 19th century. On the one hand, he sought to make society as egalitarian as possible (F. Estapé at the 1st International seminar on Cerdà, Urbs and territory) and, as Estapé has said, if it had not been for materialistic interests, Barcelona as projected by Cerdà would have been the first garden city in the world (although this expression would need to be clarified). A result of this research into equality was his study of the cost of housing in order to provide decent housing for the working class by fighting the land speculators, and also his work on food, family budgets, the working conditions of working class families, density and the mortality rate, which all appear in "Monografia estadistica de la classe obrera" (Statistics on the working classes). The final solution was a composite of income in the same building, with the floors nearer to the road being occupied by higher incomes, that decreased as one went higher up. This, as I see it, is one of the explanations for the vitality and stability during the time of the Eixample in Barcelona. On the other hand, Cerdà endeavoured to resolve problems like the lack of healthy living conditions, which were the result of congestion, and the lack of basic hygiene infrastructure and standards in both construction and public infrastructure. Below are some quotes from the recent symposia on the "Teoria de la construction de ciudades" (The theory of city construction), as selected by A. Cabré and F. Muñoz (1995) (Cerdà's wish to resolve the problems of public health are clear and explicit): "One can observe how light does not penetrate and give life to these houses, there is insufficient room to move and, what is more important, there is not enough room to breathe. This is not living in houses subject to the regulations, especially not in terms of public health laid down by civilisation. This is nothing more than stacking rational beings on shelves, one on top of the other." "Air, light, space and water that nature has created around us in so much profusion (.....) are plentiful and will always be so for everybody and forever; yet in the rich man's room, as in that of the poor man, they are dispersed in a miserly and truly criminal way". When all is
said and done, and in order to define certain characteristics of housing,
Cerdà insisted on floors with a large surface area, approximately
200 m2, in order to resolve, on the one hand, the intimacy of the home
and, on the other, adequate conditions of health and hygiene (air, light,
ventilation, etc.).
The importance of the network to Cerdà meant that he had to carefully study the junctions and connections, given that the continuity of movement was endangered at these points. Cerdà's proposal for urban development thus began by defining the structure or network as a whole, and then descended through the other elements. The sequence that he proposed, according to A. Soria (1995), is as follows: 1. The networks
as such, for each road network has advantages and disadvantages that need
to be made clear for them to have a decisive influence on the design of
the city and how it functions.
It is interesting to note how much Cerdà took the radial-concentric plan to the absurd. If the network was radial, it would be logical for the roads to get wider the nearer to the centres where traffic is generated, in the way that "a river course gets wider, like that of every stream flowing into it " (I. Cerdà, 1861) and moreover it would be "essential that there be sufficient space in the centre for movement that would be widespread there, and for it not to be full of buildings" (Cerdà, I. 1861). In short, the
radial or radial-concentric system requires an empty centre to function
and section roads that increase as they get nearer to it. If the centre
is empty, however, what is this centre? (A. Soria 1995).
As is mentioned above, Cerdà proposed the block as an elemental cell unit for urban design in the strict sense, in contrast to the building, which became the elemental unit of architectural design. The basis of city design, according to the inventor of the concept of urbanism, is the entire road network, on the one hand, and the blocks on the other. Blocks provide an integrated solution to the needs of habitability and road serviceability, and should be the growth module of the city. Cerdà was aware that "the shape and size of the blocks determine the shape and size of the 'lot', which in turn determine the shape and size of the buildings" (I. Cerdà, tww 1861). In other words, it is not easy to build adequate housing without blocks or lots that have certain characteristics and he thus considered housing legislation that omitted certain variables relating to blocks to be incomplete and ineffective (A. Soria, 1995). The well-known open block with bevelled chamfers and broad surrounding roads was Cerdà's attempt to find a new form of balance between road serviceability and habitability. He opened up the block and improved housing habitability by giving it two facades, one facing the road and the other facing extensive interior gardens (an attempt to ruralise the city); the grid pattern of wide avenues improved traffic by distributing it uniformly, and the bevelling of the block corners increased the surface area of the intersections in order to avoid traffic jams (A. Adrià1995). As has been explained, Cerdà's vision of the concept of urban development was extensive, integrated, and one could even say systemic, and he was eager to achieve a balance between various opposite yet complementary notions; town and country, solitude and sociability, stillness and movement, regularity and variety. (A. Soria 1995). One pair of these complementary opposites stands out because it has spread extensively: «Ruralise
the urban, urbanise the rural». As the aforementioned author says,
however, this phase should not be understood exclusively in spatial or
physical terms. For Cerdà, ruralising the urban, for example, did
not consist of merely introducing bits of nature into each house, block
or neighbourhood, but of making the stillness and solitude of the country
compatible with the movement and sociability that are typical of the city.
This statement,
which theoreticians of dissipated systems involved in resolving the complexity
of systems would endorse, could also be used to design urban fabrics that
are flexible enough to be filled to capacity with the maximum amount of
organised information. Without knowing it, Cerdà projected an urban
fabric that today assembles the greatest urban complexity within a radius
of over a thousand kilometres around Barcelona. This is perhaps what gives
the Eixample its strength and also what projects it into the future, for
it has been capable of incorporating new activities of both an economic
and social nature throughout its history. The diversity of legal entities
that are located within it makes it the centre of a very extensive geographical
area.
All through the hundred and fifty years since Cerdà drew up his plan, a succession of speculative by-laws gradually nibbled away at part of the initial design and, with it, part of the theory that supported it. First, the interior areas of the blocks, which were meant to "green" half of the surface area of the Eixample, were occupied. These had originally been designed to be used during half of the people's time, the part of their lives related to stillness, solitude, relaxation, being able to read a book or sunbathe next to the murmur of the water flowing from a hypothetical fountain. The "theft" of these green areas partially explains the subsequent disaster that occurred in Catalonia, i.e. such a proliferation of second homes that there were more here than anywhere else in the world, with the resulting environmental consequences. The pressure caused by the development of just the part of daily city life dedicated to inter-relationships, exchange and contact forced people to compensate, beyond the city limits, for what was lacking inside it. It must be said, however, that the use to which the buildings in the inner block area were put, most of which are just one storey high, has meant that the Eixample has been more flexible and capable of adapting than other types of urban fabric. A proliferation of small workshops, warehouses and more recently car parks is a response to the challenges of changes over time. Subsequent by-laws up to the Porcioles period mostly increased building height, which meant that shadows were cast on other buildings as they grew higher. One design criterion, which is highly topical today, related to building energy performance. Orientation towards the sun and the existence of sun-filled and shaded zones in a building create the best conditions for producing cross currents, which are the best solution and first choice for regulating the interior temperature. Recent proposals aimed at dividing up floors with a zeal that has sometimes been speculative and, in others, a way of adapting housing to current family structures are ill fated in relation to energy efficiency. Few urban planners with an integrated vision have appeared since Cerdà, possibly because commissions have not involved the possibility of constructing a new city. On the other hand, planners have had the opportunity during this time to create not one but many cities (in terms of surface area constructed), above all since the appearance of the new form of locomotion, the automobile, which has led to a new form of urbanisation, the results of which are highly disenchanting and limited. Urbanism: resolving conflict-producing Typhus, tuberculosis, cholera, and other epidemics are intimately related with the walled city, a densely populated area with buildings lacking the minimum sanitation infrastructure, all of which forms a scenario that highly justified the appearance of the new discipline that was urbanism. City walls and unhealthy neighbourhoods were demolished, fast moving roads with trees and sanitation infrastructure were created, and lower class housing, public parks and public squares were built. Improvements
provided by the new city, along with the discovery of the pathogenic agents
causing tuberculosis, cholera, typhus and the plague, together with other
sanitary and public health improvements, meant that there was an increase
in life expectancy and a reduction in infant mortality.
It is important in the meantime to mention the figure of E. Howard and the garden city movement that sought to resolve the country-town conflict resulting from the different impacts of air, noise, and visual pollution and problems of salubrity in the industrial city. The idea was to give the impression of living in the country while living in the city. The regional Plan by Geddes subsequently extended territorial and regional planning and laid out garden cities over large areas on the outskirts. Attempts would be made (unsuccessfully) to preserve areas of fertile soil for agricultural use. The equity and
greater social justice that the first utopian urban planners and socialists
contemplated in their designs for new settlements - take Cerdà's
efforts to find out about and quantify the living conditions and the economic
means of the under-privileged, which he gathered together in his "Monografia
estadistica de la classe obrera", led them to different formal and functional
solutions, some of them, as in the case of the Eixample, with obvious and
permanent results. The separation of social groups in space due to economic,
ethnic, religious or other differences is today the cause of social conflict,
the decline in law and order, and uncertainty in terms of the future. Delinquency,
drugs, the submerged economy, the undemocratic control of areas by groups
that use rules of the game beyond constitutional laws, are just some of
the emerging conflicts of a dualistic society that the segregative city
has stimulated and continues to stimulate today.
In cities in the West, a certain number of the conflicts have been resolved through a series of building and planning standards for plans and projects although the characteristics and dimension of certain current conflicts mean that, while the work of Cerdà and others should not be forgotten, emphasis needs to be placed on new basic theories of planning that deal in an integrated, systemic way with how the city works. At the time when Cerdà developed his systemic approach to the city, systems theory, the basic aspects of thermodynamics, and autoecology, which today enable us to understand the essential relationships in open systems, were all as yet to be developed. It was thus unrealistic for him to understand the nature of the new types of conflict that would appear and for him to shape them into the design for his proposal. I am convinced, however, on seeing the profoundness of his theories and the level of intuition with which they are imbued, that Cerdà would today incorporate current knowledge in resolving the new conflicts and he would undoubtedly formulate a new theoretical framework to do this. Bibliography Bassols, M.
1995. Ildefons Cerdà davant l'ordenació jurídica de
l'urbanisme: aportacions i anticipacions. 1st International symposium.
Cerdà, urbs and territory.
Gro Harlem
Brundtland
Ignasi
Doñate
Gro Harlem Brundtland (1939) is a Norwegian doctor specialising in public health. Prime Minister of Sweden for ten years, in 1983, she established and chaired the World Commission on Environment and Development. The best-known work of this commission is that entitled "Our Common Future" or the "Brundtland Report" which develops the concept of sustainable development. A woman of great political and internationalist vocation, she is currently Director General of the World Health Organisation (WHO). "We are living in a world in which the divide between the haves and the have-nots continues to widen; a world in which only a privileged few have access to the fruits of the technological revolution. Our challenge is to bridge that divide. We can do it through improving access: Access to resources. Access to commodities. Access to information and technology. Access to health systems, together with the infrastructure and institutions that make this possible". The words of this address given recently by Gro Harlem Brundtland to the 54th World Health Assembly (14 May 2001) could serve as a presentation for the current Director General of the World Health Organisation (WHO) (a post she will hold until 2003), who is known the world over for popularising the principle of sustainability or sustainable development. In 1983, the then United Nations Secretary-General invited Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland to establish and chair the World Commission on Environment and Development. The Commission, which is best known for developing the broad political concept of sustainable development, published its report Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland Report, in April 1987. Sustainability: a polysemic concept Sustainability is a polysemic concept that corresponds to a plurality of dimensions:
Gro Harlem Brundtland was born in Oslo, Norway, on 20 April 1939. A medical doctor and Master of Public Health (MPH), she is a specialist on the public health system and spent the first 10 years of her career as a physician and scientist in the Norwegian public health system. She has been in public office for more than 20 years, 10 of them as Prime Minister. Dr Brundtland's first choice of career was neither environmentalist nor politician, but to become a doctor like her father. He was a specialist in rehabilitation medicine, a skill much in demand following the Second World War. When Gro Harlem was 10 years old, the family moved to the United States where her father had been awarded a Rockefeller scholarship. After returning to Norway, her father again served abroad, this time in Egypt where he was a United Nations expert on rehabilitation. The seeds of internationalism were sown in the young Gro. Dr Brundtland inherited another passion from her father - political activism. At the age of seven, she was enrolled as a member of the Norwegian Labour Movement in its children's section and has been a member ever since, leading the Labour Party to election victory three times. The sense of global awareness that began in her childhood developed when, as a young mother and newly qualified doctor, Gro Harlem Brundtland won a scholarship to the Harvard School of Public Health. Here, working alongside distinguished public health experts, Dr Brundtland's vision of health extended beyond the confines of the medical world into environment issues and human development. Returning to Oslo and the Ministry of Health in 1965, she worked on children's health issues and in the children's department of the National Hospital and Oslo City Hospital and became Director of Health Services for Oslo's schoolchildren. All this at the same time as bringing up her own family and representing Norway in international conferences. In 1974, Dr Brundtland was offered the job of Minister of the Environment. At first, believing she did not have enough experience of environmental issues, she was reluctant to accept the post. But her conviction of the link between health and the environment changed her mind. During the 1970s she acquired international recognition in environmental circles and a political reputation at home. She held the post until 1979. Meanwhile, in 1977, she had become a member of the Norwegian Parliament. In 1981, at the age of 41, she was appointed Prime Minister for the first time. In 1981, at the age of 41, she was appointed Prime Minister for the first time. Gro Harlem Brundtland was the youngest person and the first woman ever to hold the office of Prime Minister in Norway. With two other periods as Prime Minister from 1986-1989 and 1990-1996, Dr Brundtland was Head of Government for more than 10 years. Throughout her
political career, Dr Brundtland has developed a growing concern for issues
of global significance. In 1983 the then United Nations Secretary-General
invited her to establish and chair the World Commission on Environment
and Development. The Commission, which is best known for developing the
broad political concept of sustainable development, published its report
Our Common Future in April 1987.
The Commission's recommendations led to the Earth Summit - the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. She finally stepped down as Prime Minister in October 1996. In her successful bid to become Director-General of the World Health Organisation (which she did on 13 May 1998), her many skills as doctor, politician, activist and manager have come together. The birth of the World Commission on Environment and Development In 1983, the then Un |