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T. Caine

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Sobering Fact: US Offshore Wind Potential is 4x Our Total Power Capacity

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Feb 6, 2012, 8:26 am
A new report has been issued buy Wind Powering America, a Department of Energy initiative, that attempts to calculate the total potential energy to be captured off our nation’s coastlines via offshore wind farms. While erecting turbines out away from land has gathered significant support in parts ...
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An American in an Average European Town

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Jan 24, 2012, 12:34 pm
As I move through my European vacation, the inclination to look for evidence of sustainability (or its absence) is all but reflexive. Years ago I wrote about European standards in sustainability being naturally higher than ours in America after I spent a week in London. With the opportunity to ventu...
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Philadelphia Wants a High Line

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Jan 9, 2012, 2:33 pm
A growing contingent of Philadelphia locals are trying to raise a cry for transforming a retired, elevated viaduct into a gardened, pedestrian thoroughfare. Being almost universally regarded as a success, New York City’s High Line is the obvious case study for how the re-purposing of old, industri...
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New York Offers Zoning Changes for Greener Buildings

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Dec 30, 2011, 12:36 pm
When asked, “When should sustainability be integrated into the design process?” most green designers would dutifully say at the very beginning of the project. A better answer is: before the project even starts. Each city has a framework of regulation that may not dictate, but certainly guides th...
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How Many Politicians Does it Take to NOT Screw in a Light Bulb?

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Dec 27, 2011, 10:19 am
The signing of the federal budget for 2012 marked the latest effort by Republicans to forestall the coming legislation that will begin the phase out of the traditional incandescent bulb. The time and energy spent on debating a law that was signed into being 4 years ago under a Republican President e...
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Pulling Data Centers Into Cities

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Dec 12, 2011, 1:59 pm
If our telecom network of wire and cable is the veins of the internet then data centers are its organs and they are consistently growing in size and number—a pace that no one thinks is going to slow in the foreseeable future. When it comes to the placement of these digital warehouses, the criteria...
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Challenges of Maintenance to Historic Homes

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Nov 28, 2011, 10:05 am
Despite the devoted attachment that the majority of Americans have to historic, residential archetypes, the evolution of building materials and practices continue to make it more difficult to maintain our older building stock in an authentic way. Though the ideological split amongst designers for wh...
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Green Buildings: Via Verde

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Nov 14, 2011, 9:28 am
Certain aspects of integrating sustainability into large scale building projects can be challenging, but building an affordable housing project can be a constant fight against the budget even without exploring ways to make it a healthier, more efficient space. Recently completed in the Bronx, “Via...
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American Homes and 40 Years of Breaking Even

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Nov 2, 2011, 11:39 am
In 1973 the initiation of the Arab Oil Embargo had rippling affects on energy use in the United States. As oil prices climbed while supply fell, in months America became suddenly conscious about their energy use and how much their dependence on inexpensive energy could cost its economy. The governme...
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Hour of Reckoning Returns for Renewable Subsidies

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Oct 24, 2011, 2:57 pm
To date, the success of renewable energy production in the U.S. has been intrinsically tied to the availability of subsidies that help to make the younger and cleaner forms of power more financially competitive. As we near the end of 2011 the industry players are becoming antsy as the future of subs...
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Household Limits on Dirty Power

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Oct 17, 2011, 10:18 am
Few would dispute the need for due attention given to our antiquated energy infrastructure. Whether it be generation, transmission or coordinating both with end use, our current efforts are decidedly piecemeal and moving at a pace far slower than what is necessary for not only a more efficient, but ...
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Green Building: Solar Decathlon 2011

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Oct 10, 2011, 10:14 am
Each year the U.S. Department of Energy sponsors a competition for the design of a home that can maximize the energy of the sun for affordable, sustainable living. This year, the team from the University of Maryland took home the competition’s top honor for their project entitled: Watershed. Rathe...
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Despite GOP Candidate Rants, Belief in Global Warming Grows

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Sep 30, 2011, 9:43 am
As Republican presidential candidates have amassed to begin the gauntlet of debate leading up to the bid for the next conservative challenger to the White House, the environment, or specifically global warming, has gotten its fair share of frontage. Almost unanimously, the GOP candidates’ attacks ...
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Could Warning Labels on Power Bills Help Stem Coal?

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Sep 20, 2011, 8:44 am
... be possible for a similar path to help us wipe coal out of our electric grid. Looking at the Consolidated Edison (Con Ed) bill that we get in the mail, there is plenty of open real estate that could make ... annually). While coal companies may be in staunch opposition to such an idea, Con E...
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Pushing the Envelope to Change the Standard

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Sep 12, 2011, 9:40 am
Most of the opportunities that garden variety Americans have to make a sustainable change in their life are small in the grand scheme of the country as a whole, let alone the world and its biosphere. As an architect, designing a LEED Platinum building, or fifty of them for that matter, is still a dr...
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Why Are We Still Talking About Geoengineering?

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Aug 30, 2011, 9:47 am
In our short-term, quick-fix, credit-swiping culture we have no shortage of proposed non-solutions that search for short cuts to stem the possibility of irrevocable damage caused by climate change. Noteworthy participants are the well-known faces of clean coal, carbon sequestration or launching wast...
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Vertical Farms Need a Residential Piggyback

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Aug 17, 2011, 9:53 am
Urban farming continues to ride the wave of sustainability with efforts sprouting up across the country that find very real and fruitful results. The rush of interest has maintained conversations of massive towers buried in the center of urban cores to produce local, sustainable crops for city dwell...
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When Cities and Wetlands Collide

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Aug 8, 2011, 8:22 am
The integration of natural flora and fauna into the cities has been a challenge for architects and planners since the beginning of buildings. The task becomes even more difficult when the urban spaces in question are part of our country’s neglected, post-industrial landscape. The winning entry to ...
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Could Earth Capacity Trump the Severity of Climate Change?

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Aug 1, 2011, 5:41 pm
Just as advocates of sustainability and the environment promote the notion of an evolving society, so too must their message be open to evolution. With the amount of connotations–good or bad depending on where your views are–it may be time to question its usefulness as the weapon of choice used ...
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Renewables Give Us More Power Than Nuclear

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Jul 20, 2011, 8:15 am
For the first time in a while, our portfolio of renewable power sources has surpassed power production from nuclear generation. According to the latest Monthly Energy Review from the Energy Information Administration, the most sustainable forms of energy now produce more for us than the most hazardo...
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Recycling, Demand and Digital Media Slash Paper Waste

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Jul 13, 2011, 11:20 am
Recycling + Digital Media + Demand for Sustainable products = Results These three societal components make fast friends in the goal of reducing paper consumption. After peaking in 2000, disposal of paper products is finally showing the wear of a more conscious effort to curb the amount of paper tha...
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Sobering Fact: Untreated U.S. Wastewater Could Fill Every Residential Swimming Pool 5 Times

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Jul 5, 2011, 9:48 am
Despite the advances that the United States has made in building technology, urban infrastructure systems and sewage treatment, waste water management still comprises one of the larger portions of our antiquated infrastructural network; namely in the form of Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs). While s...
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Most Man Hours for Rooftop Solar Are Desk Hours

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Jun 20, 2011, 10:16 am
Most of the time, when we think of things being built the majority of hours it takes to complete a project revolves around construction. It is rare that an architect will spend more hours drawing a project than a contractor will take to build it. For residential solar installations, the growth in de...
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Sustainable Systems Survive Convention-Sized Value Engineering

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Jun 13, 2011, 11:50 am
The behemoth of black metal and tinted glass known as the Javit’s Center is awaiting its long-needed renovation in an attempt to boost the functionality, size and appearance of New York’s largest convention center. Much like Penn Station and Madison Square Garden, the project needed help from th...
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Unreleased Masterplans Show Sustainable Roots for Low Income Housing

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Jun 2, 2011, 3:54 pm
In 1972, one of the most ambitious government-funded, low income housing projects in history broke ground in Harlem on the upper East side of Manhattan. Spanning an entire city block, the Taino Towers complex boasted four-story base with various integrated amenities supporting four 35-story towers o...
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Saying We Need More Drilling Doesn't Make it True

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - May 16, 2011, 9:16 am
Once again we have arrived at a familiar place of rising oil prices and once again we can see the momentum building behind the line of oil companies as the discomfort for high gas prices sets in. Only days ago the House of Representatives passed a bill to expand offshore drilling and expedite new pe...
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Will Greener Domain Names Lead to a More Sustainable Internet?

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Apr 28, 2011, 9:36 am
We are on the verge of a new dimension to the virtual land grab of the net as the powers that be clear the way to receive applications for new Top Level Domains (TLDs) that will stake out fresh territory for how people can lay claim to cyberspace. While new websites now have choices such as “.com�...
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Putting a Price on Nature

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Apr 12, 2011, 8:36 am
One of the reasons that sustainability measures can be so easily sidelined in our efforts of prioritization is that value of the contributions of natural systems or the liabilities of their predicted absence never factor into the bottom lines of our society. In a culture of buying and selling produc...
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Perceiving Sustainable Design

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Mar 23, 2011, 9:45 am
Part of ensuring that sustainability is more than just a technological fix to supplement a wasteful lifestyle is using design to reveal processes and concepts to onlookers that result in actually imparting knowledge. This can make the jump from simply catching attention to raising awareness and unde...
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New Green Building Products Are Great, But Make Sure They Work

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Mar 14, 2011, 9:28 am
Given how much room for improvement we have in making our buildings more sustainable, we should certainly welcome the efforts of companies to release more green building components. Recently, business has been good. The slow permeation of sustainability into the culture of design and construction ha...
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The Garden City vs. the Green City

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Mar 7, 2011, 8:28 am
Pop culture’s interpretation of “green” urban landscapes have a tendency to draw a literal representation of a more sustainable city. These “Garden City” visions can include plants growing from virtually every spatial nook and cranny possible. With flowing strands of climbing plants scalin...
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Zero Regulation is Not the Answer

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Feb 15, 2011, 8:47 am
In virtually every industry and profession we can point to occurrences of codes and regulations that create needless amounts of red tape, adding unnecessary time to the schedule and taking away valuable resources from the budget. By most businesses, regulation is seen as a hindrance that opposes fre...
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Indoor Farming May Be Organic's Only Hope

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Feb 10, 2011, 9:11 am
After decades of trying to build an industry based around a diversion from the chemical-laden farming practices of agro-giants, organic farming still makes up an infinitesimal portion of America’s produce. Despite the apparent strength of naturally oriented stores and markets, when it comes to pla...
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Breaking the Barrier of Plausibility

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Feb 7, 2011, 8:37 am
In a way, professional expertise can be a double-edged sword. When a focused group of people dedicate themselves to an industry niche they become able to unlock and extract potential due to their heightened knowledge and experience. We call them “experts,” and defer to their opinion and assessme...
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Digging into Geothermal

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Feb 1, 2011, 8:26 am
When it comes to the question of how to heat and cool our homes, there is a great answer right under our feet. A client recently expressed interest in exploring geothermal for a home renovation in Rhode Island and I wasted no time in jumping on the opportunity to cement it as one of our goals for ...
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The Sustainable State of the Union

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Jan 26, 2011, 12:00 am
There are times when sustainability takes the back seat in political address, earning only brief glimpses amidst purportedly grander plans for our country’s direction. Tonight was no such occasion. President Obama made sustainability a fixture in his State of the Union address to the country, touc...
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For Consumerism and Sustainability There is Always Paris

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Jan 20, 2011, 8:27 am
[Editor's Note: Below is a guest post from colleague, blogger and fellow architect Brandon Specketer. With years of experience in sustainable architecture and graphic design, Brandon is currently a resident of New York City's Upper West Side and works as an Associate at Cook+Fox Architects.] A ques...
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An EPA That is Finally Doing Its Job

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Jan 17, 2011, 8:21 am
Last week the Environmental Protection Agency got an ear full of backlash from politicians and jobs proponents after it revoked a water permit for a mountain top mining site for Arch Coal Inc. Such criticism has become more commonplace as the agency takes on a seemingly new role that more directly c...
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Suburban Targets: Living Rooms and Dining Rooms

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Jan 4, 2011, 8:44 am
Though the era of McMansions and its resulting explosion of constructed square footage may have been abated in the aftermath of the recession, suburban American homes still suffer from bloated, inefficient floor plans. Even without architectural training, most of us can look at the high volume/low q...
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A New Year Ahead

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Jan 3, 2011, 8:31 am
Allow me to wish Happy New Year to all new arrivals and faithful patrons alike. I think most of us would agree that 2010 was better than 2009. It certainly was for Intercon. The discourse on the site exceeded my expectations in both volume and quality, making it a pleasure to post new material as we...
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A New Wave of Agriculture: Vertical Farms 101

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Dec 23, 2010, 8:47 am
Agriculture joins economic pillars like infrastructure, waste management and energy production as one of the most important issues we need to address in order to take meaningful steps towards a sustainable culture. America is a series of broken systems. Though technically still a theoretical constru...
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Transitioning to an Economy of Reuse

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Dec 7, 2010, 8:46 am
We have wound up with a culture that has fashioned itself in the image of disposal instead of retention. Almost everything that we own has a useful life that ends when something breaks because the cost to repair it is a vast percentage of the cost of simply buying a newer, cutting-edge replacement. ...
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Sustainable Luxury: Progress or Greenwashing?

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Nov 30, 2010, 8:45 am
As environmental claims get attached to more luxury products it begs the question: is greening products that cater to the upper class a good way to help fund innovation and promote an evolution of consumer products? On the other hand, putting a sustainable label on a luxury product that likely repre...
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As Green Tech Slows An Evolving Message is Imperative

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Nov 17, 2010, 8:47 am
At the beginning of the recession there were many forecasters that foretold a dark future for sustainability after years of increased spending on numerous fronts. The result was quite the opposite, largely due to the amount of stimulus spending that guided money back into sustainable endeavors like ...
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Is the Right Thing for the Wrong Reasons Close Enough?

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Nov 9, 2010, 8:45 am
Sustainability has unquestionably achieved a stronger place in cultural exchange over the course of the past decade. What began as a conversation mostly lead by environmentalists has branched out to include proponents from all walks of life. As the topic dances in between the realms of a cultural mo...
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Suburban (In)Efficiency on Multiple Fronts

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Oct 29, 2010, 8:47 am
Suburban America often gets the cold shoulder from designers and planners that harp on its inherently inefficient development. The archetype of cul-de-sacs lined with single family homes can often trump and surmount any legitimate goals of its residents to live more efficient lives. As we know, effi...
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Pricing Trash Out of Existence

T. Caine posted an article on Intercon - Oct 25, 2010, 8:47 am
Our collective waste stream is one of the prime issues in need of attention in our country. Americans produce more waste per capita than any other country in the world. For as good as we are at creating ideas of value, we are apparently even better at deeming volumes of things worthless. But if more...
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About Me

I am an architect in New York City continually exploring how sustainability can be woven into our lives. My love for writing spawned Intercon, and I write not only about the acts and occurrences of sustainability, but also their inevitable interconnected nature to our daily lives. There are no isolated actions, no random repercussions. The better we realize how each of our decisions can affect others, the sooner we will start making meaningful changes.

The address of my blog is:

http://progressivetimes.wordpress.com

Feedback is welcomed.

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