Super-Green City of the Future?

Can San Francisco's Treasure Island live up to plans to make it the "Super-Green City of the Future"? The island is set to become a model for eco-livinga model of urban sustainability, is an entirely man-made 400-acre property in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. Originally built in 1939 from sea bottom, quarried rock, and loam, it is currently home to an abandoned naval base and a small number of low- and middle income residents.

Among some of the plans include LEED-certified residential towers to increase urban density, a pedestrian-friendly downtown center, bike lanes, open green space to promote biodiversity, city-sponsored composting/recycling, "living machine" wastewater treatment, an urban farm, and solar/wind/tidal renewable energy generation.

The new Treasure Island proposal is a testament to what our world is capable of when the political will exists to make sustainability a reality.

A major geological drawback however is the fact that Treasure Island is only 10 feet above sea level, with a "high risk of liquefaction during an earthquake."

Posted by Casey Kazan.