Poll: New Name for the Competition

NickAzer

The Prize Design team is working on giving the Charter Communities XPRIZE a new name that it will carry through until the end of the competition, and we’d love your input!

The name of an XPRIZE should convey a sense of hope and audacity while clearly articulating the goal of the prize. After discussions with our colleagues internally, we narrowed down our search to the three names you see below.

Please vote for your favorite of the three names, or you can suggest a different name by commenting below!

NickAzer

Feel free to let us know if you have any questions, ideas, or thoughts!

ashokjain

ONE community XPRIZE
(O - one, N- Neighborhood, E - empowered)

monicagroves

@ashokjain I love the prize title you created. I think it should definitely be taken into consideration.

cfgrassi

I like @ashokjain suggestion as well

jrmtchll

I like stressing resilience, especially now. Overall goals for a community should be safety, health, high quality of life with the ability to withstand all hazards.

bngejane

@ashokjain

NickAzer

Thanks you everyone for the name votes so far - close race! And awesome suggestions. We'll have voting open until early next week.

@FreeWilliam @samanthasuppiah @HousingMichigan @RBarragan @mkooistra @csmith102462 @JimKing @Rwyse @Nirmita @alexadlp @LisaHomesFund @fferguson @RachitaMisra @dpelleti @Greenduck @sunshinem @SRashkin @annedodge @FanyuLin @sglaude1 @prernakuhad - if you haven't seen this poll yet, wanted to give you all a chance to chime in! And perhaps suggest any name ideas you might have

ashokjain

IS IT POSSIBLE TO CHANGE MY SUGGESTED NAME A WEE BIT::
IT REMAINS "ONE" BUT O SIGNIFIES NOT ONE BUT "OMNI" .

SRashkin

I'm struggling with all of the name options. 'Resilient' is way too narrow (e.g., attainability, health, comfort, durability, smart, efficient, and good design are equally critical). 'Empowering' is too common (e.g., affordable housing programs such as Habitat for Humanity, Enterprise Green Communities, and others are already empowering). And 'Neighborhood' is too ambiguous (e.g., a neighborhood can be good or bad and does not speak to an aspiration). As I understand it, the big, audacious goal for this XPrize is to inspire transformative housing innovation that delivers attainability, high-performance, and social connection. But how to capture that in a name?. Maybe a name like '10X Communities XPrize' might be a reasonable umbrella concept implying disruptive vs. incremental housing innovation per the aggressive metrics we've been developing. Alternately, 'Communities that WORK XPrize' is also a good umbrella concept where the details would explain communities that work deliver attainability, performance, and social connection along with great design. NAMES ARE TOUGH.

NickAzer

Thank you for all the inout so far @SRashkin @ashokjain @bngejane @jrmtchll @monicagroves and @cfgrassi!

@SRashkin - are there any project or prize names you've seen elsewhere that resonated with you (or just stuck with you in terms in catchiness, etc?)

@ashokjain - The ONE idea is awesome! For OMNI, is that also an acronym?

@jrmtchll - of those goals, are there any that stand out to you as the highest priority for communities?

@monicagroves - in your experience at XPRIZE, are there any prize names that have stood out to you as the best over time? Or any general considerations around prize names?

SRashkin

I love the name for DOE's solar program called SUNSHOT. It was put in place in 2011 with the mission to reduce the cost of solar electric systems 75% down to $1/watt. Staggering goal at the time. I believe this name was inspired by NASA's MOON SHOT program where Kennedy pledged in 1962 to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

ashokjain

no. In the acronym ONE, i wanted to replace O for One by O for OMNI.

jrmtchll

Coming at the question from a fire protection perspective, there is always a push-pull between affordability (a quality of life issue) and fire safety. Long term trends in US fire departments are toward fewer emergency response resources and less emphasis on code enforcement—building and fire codes are still there, just not the knowledgeable and experienced personnel to enforce them. The most recent data indicates fewer overall fires in US cities, but a greater number of more serious fires resulting in injury or fatality. These fires are overwhelmingly occurring in private dwellings, so to me resilience means 1) teaching safe behaviors in the home, 2) providing active fire protection systems in one and two family dwellings, 3) maintaining fire and building code enforcement even in the face of a recession, and 4) finding ways to accomplish these goals while seeking balance with the very well funded and organized builders lobby who are successful in suppressing more modern and cost effective fire prevention measures in new construction due to misconceptions about cost and maintenance.

ddd1

Dickson Despommier
I just finished my 6th year of teaching a course at Fordham University in NYC called Ecology for Designers. The theme of this year's course was to design a new city. We decided that every building in the urban environment should:
Sequester carbon employing CLT (engineered wood) as building material
Harvest rainwater
Produce food via vertical farming technologies
Generate energy using clear photovoltaics.

NYC has replaced over 80% of its building over the last 100 years. If this trend continues, and if every new building has the above listed characteristics, then in a city could become independent of the natural landscape for many of its essential needs. It took us 10,000 years of agriculture to cut by 50% earth's ability to sequester carbon. Lets create a new way to live that allows the trees to grow back and re-set the carbon cycle to where it should be. All we need is another 3 trillion trees to make it happen!

jrmtchll

My takeaway from this is that the objectives are all commendable, but there might be a perception of mutual exclusivity among some of them. Firstly, housing affordability is a salient and unarguable issue worldwide. But when we also say that we want houses to be more resilient and durable, issues of cost cannot help but come back into play. I can tell the group both as a fire inspector and fire investigator that using substandard materials, incorrect assembly of materials, and improper use of materials are all factors in the home fire issue in the US. Safe materials cost more, and correct assembly by trained builders also costs more. Also, Item #2, faster than usual construction times also impacts resilience and durability. Often lags in construction are built in so that safety and code compliance can be verified. For example, utilities cannot be installed until framing passes an inspection, wall coverings and finish cannot be installed until plumbing and electrical pass inspection, etc. So while we’re considering that new building materials and methods will have to be created, from that safety perspective—and from a government perspective—the permitting, plans review and code compliance processes will have to change and become more agile in order to keep pace with new construction. If those changes do not occur, expanding cities run the risk of shoddy, improper, unsafe construction for the sake of meeting arbitrary deadlines, and we won’t have solved the core problem at all. In the latest issue of NFPA Journal, the National Fire Protection Association has an excellent introductory article about 3D printed buildings and some problems we’re running into from a regulatory and safety perspective.