SASBE and São Paulo

First day of the 4th cib conference Smart and Sustainable Built Environments and I opened my window to see a construction site below! Few things I noticed-
* there was a back hoe! But it was only being used to bust up the concrete pad on the property. They didn't, as far as I could tell, use the back hoe to load the dumpster (mechanical equipment on construction sites has been a little rare for me- even in road work in Rio and construction sites in Vitoria, I don't remember seeing anything like a backhoe- not even a bobcat!)
* the dumpster was being filled with rebar and scrap metal pulled from the concrete and site waste by hand by individual workers
* the workers were not wearing hardhats
But how appropriate to see this on the first day of the conference!

I ended up spending half the day taking one of the speakers Chrisna du Plessis (from South Africa) to the local mall to shop for clothes and toiletries since her bags did not arrive. It was an enjoyable day of translating, though I felt awkward knowing the exact size of a keynote I've never met before... :)

The evening was spent listening to Serge Salat of the Urban Morphology Project and his graduate student Loeiz talk about their research mapping out urban areas according to access to green space, road links, etc. (using great mathematical models to describe it all too!) They hope to use the math to help cities define what type of growth or development they want to accomplish and to track their changes. Serge loves to talk, which was actually quite fun over dinner with the keynotes and other student volunteers. He (and many of the other attendees) have excellent ideas for creating a more sustainable urban fabric.

This conference is a good one!