By Tina Casey

Rubber sidewalks are all grown up. Once perceived mainly as a safe surface for playgrounds, rubber sidewalks have developed into a means of preserving urban trees, reducing stormwater runoff, recycling tires, and curbing greenhouse gas emissions. A company called Rubbersidewalks (what else?) began installing the modular units in 2002, and its rubber sidewalk products now appear in almost 100 cities across the country. Even the U.S. military is getting into the act. Plans are in the works to install rubber sidewalks at Coast Guard Island in Alameda, California, and they’re being promoted by the Pollution Prevention Program at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.

The Benefits of Rubber Sidewalks for Urban Trees
Rubbersidewalks (the company, that is) attributes its core concept to Richard Valeriano, a senior public works inspector for the City of Santa Monica. The original idea behind a rubber sidewalk was to achieve a flexible surface that would reduce cracking around tree roots. In turn, that would reduce the need to cut or drastically trim trees with overgrown roots. Over the course of several years, city workers noticed that the rubber surface seemed to slow the growth of roots while providing the tree with sufficient water and oxygen, helping to mitigate the problem of root overgrowth at the source. The modular installation system also enables workers to remove sections of sidewalk to inspect tree roots, without the need for pavement-breaking equipment that could damage a tree.

The Other Benefits of Rubber Sidewalks
Aside from the potential savings in reduced personal injury lawsuits, the modular rubber surface makes it easier to open and close sections of sidewalk for maintenance or utility work. Seams in the modules enable stormwater to infiltrate into the soil instead of running into gutters. They’re handy to use for temporary sidewalks, and they’re suitable for surfacing urban tree wells. On the sustainability side, Rubbersidewalks’s first-generation product was made from 100% recycled tires. It now offers a second incarnation called Terrewalks, which uses a mix of tires and waste plastic from farm irrigation equipment. As a means of finding a use for the millions of tires disposed every year, rubber sidewalks promise a scale similar to that of recycled tire roof shingles — a big leap over smaller projects like tire shoes and toys.

Rubber Sidewalks and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Walking and biking instead of driving are often cited as effective ways to lower one’s personal greenhouse emissions, but the equation skews when you factor in the greenhouse emissions involved in constructing more sidewalks and bike paths. A good chunk of those emissions have to do with concrete surfaces. Concrete is made from cement, which is a significant source of greenhouse gasses. Worldwide, cement is estimated to account for about 5% of all carbon dioxide emissions from human activity, with concrete accounting for about 8% overall. Though rubber surfaces do involve some greenhouse gas in the manufacturing process, there would seem to be a savings in emissions related to transportation, installation, maintenance, and urban street tree health. If there is any way to have your cake and eat it too, a rubber sidewalk could be it.

H/T: Aberdeen Proving Ground Pollution Prevention Program

Image: Derek Diamond on flickr.com

Reprinted with permission from Cleantechnica

By Christina Larson

If all had gone as planned, “the world’s first eco-city,” as press releases billed it back in 2005, would now be well on its way to completion. The visionary project called for a grassy island near the crowded metropolis of Shanghai to be transformed from a marshy backwater into a gleaming community of energy-efficient buildings housing 50,000 people.

Waste was to have been recycled as fuel and the waterfronts were to be lined with sleek micro-windmills. The original timetable called for the first phase of construction to be completed by the Shanghai Expo in 2010, enabling the city to showcase its commitment to building a green future. Within 30 years, the planned community, Dongtan, would grow to accommodate half a million people.

Today, almost nothing has been built. Some residents have been moved off the island, many of them becoming cab drivers in bustling Shanghai. Although the project was widely publicized internationally, most locals knew little about it. The political leaders who championed the project were ousted in a corruption scandal, and their successors have allowed construction permits to lapse.

Meanwhile local environmentalists and academics have recently spoken out against the project in the Chinese press, noting that the planned construction site happened to be located on the last extant wetlands outside Shanghai, home to rare migratory birds. A farmer with fields near the project site told a reporter in 2007 that he hadn’t been informed, let alone consulted, about intentions to transform the area. What you will see if you visit the site today, according to Paul French, a Shanghai-based partner in research publisher Access Asia, is that “no construction has occurred there — indeed it's gone backwards as a visitor center previously built is now shut.”

Dongtan and other highly touted eco-cities across China were meant to be models of sustainable design for the future. Instead they’ve become models of bold visions that mostly stayed on the drawing boards — or collapsed from shoddy implementation. More often than not, these vaunted eco-cities have been designed by big-name foreign architectural and engineering firms who plunged into the projects with little understanding of Chinese politics, culture, and economics — and with little feel for the needs of local residents whom the utopian communities were designed to serve.

“What I have always found amazing about these eco-towns is how seemingly easy it is for people to, first, tout these as a sign of China’s commitment to the environment and then, second, be surprised when things fail,” writes Richard Brubaker, founder and managing director of China Strategic Development Partners.

Shannon May, a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley who has studied the troubled eco-city of Huangbaiyu, wrote in comments posted on The Christian Science Monitor’s Web site, “While such highly lauded projects garner fame and money for the foreign firms, and promotions for the local government officials, they leave the population they were supposed to serve behind.”

The Huangbaiyu project sought to transform a small village in northeast China’s Liaoning province into a more energy-efficient community. Part of the vision was to use special hay and pressed-earth bricks for construction. Unfortunately, of the first 42 homes completed in 2006, only a handful were built with the custom bricks. As the magazine Ethical Corporation has reported, cost overruns made the homes unaffordable to many villagers. In other instances, although homes were available, the farmers refused to live in them, complaining that the new yards weren’t large enough to raise animals and sustain a livelihood.

Among the problems besetting the project were “technical inexperience, faulty materials, lack of oversight, and poor communication,” says May, who has studied the site. Oddly, some of the homes were built with garages, although villagers don’t have cars.

While disappointing, these results shouldn’t be surprising. In China, hype comes easy, as foreigners dearly want to believe that anything is possible in this booming country. Initial expectations often aren’t well grounded, and people make easy pronouncements with little familiarity of how things work in China.

In the cases of Dongtan and Huangbaiyu, the stumbling blocks encountered were not inevitable, and lessons for the future can be gleaned in examining the projects’ fate.

Some of the problems are common to high-profile, visionary projects across China. Richard “Tad” Ferris, a Washington, D.C., lawyer for the firm Holland & Knights, explains that there exists in China, especially in Chinese law, an “aspirational culture” rather than a “compliance culture” — meaning that implementation and oversight of regulations and plans frequently fall short of reality. Anyone who has ever walked down the streets of Beijing, where sidewalks slabs with raised bumps for blind pedestrians suddenly veer into open manhole covers, knows that paths paved with progressive intentions can be strewn with peril.

But there’s another side of the story. The most highly publicized eco-cities, including Dongtan and Huangbaiyu, drew upon expertise from some of the most vaunted international architectural and design firms. The vision for an eco-city on the outskirts of Shanghai was first hatched by the international consulting firm McKinsey & Company. The well-regarded UK-based design, engineering, planning, and business consulting firm, Arup, designed what its Web site describes as the “master plan” for Dongtan. In 2005, British Prime Minister Tony Blair even hailed collaboration on Dongtan as a sign of strong U.K.-China relations.

And William McDonough — a U.S. architect, author of Cradle to Cradle, and a celebrated figure in the American green architecture movement — worked on the design of Huangbaiyu, as well as “conceptual plans” for other eco-projects across China.

As Wen Bo, a Beijing-based environmentalist and co-director of Pacific Environment’s China programs, observes: “I know that some very experienced international firms, including a U.K.-based construction company and the American architecture firm of William McDonough, were involved in planning; it seems to me that they should share some of the responsibility for any problems encountered.”

Like it or not, China has become a workshop for the world, a laboratory for new technology and global talent seeking to realize their futuristic visions. Foreign architects have designed many of Beijing’s most famous architectural landmarks, including the Olympic “Bird's Nest,” “Aquacube,” and CCTV towers. This international spotlight helps explain both the high hopes — and, in this case, great disappointment — connected with these eco-cities. As Wen tellingly notes, these particular projects were always much better known outside China than inside.

The sentiments voiced by McDonough several years ago typified the grand aspirations of the eco-city planners. In a slideshow presentation now available on YouTube, he said, “I will finish by showing you a new city we’re designing for the Chinese government. We’re doing 12 cities for China right now, based on Cradle to Cradle, as templates. Our assignment is to develop protocols for the housing of 400 million people in 12 years …”

Today, with increasingly critical coverage of eco-cities in the press, McDonough’s architecture and community design firm, William McDonough + Partners, is downplaying its involvement in China. According to Kira Gould, the firm’s director of communications, “While we have in the past done some very limited conceptual planning work in China, we are not doing any community design/planning work there at this time.”

Even after problems came to light, Arup continued to promote its involvement in the Dongtan eco-city, although the language of recent press releases and public statements is carefully worded to leave unclear whether the project has been built. A spokesperson from Arup was not available for comment.

So why did these plans not come to fruition?

In the case of Dongtan, as Paul French explains in a podcast posted on the Ethical Corporation web site, one problem was a feud over who would actually fund the project. “Both sides — Arup, on one side, who call themselves the ‘master builders’ of the project — and Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation (the Chinese government arm that owns the land) —thought the other was going to pay for it. So Arup thought they were brought in on a project that they would then be able to design, the Chinese would build it, and pay them a large amount of money. The Chinese thought that Arup was going to build the project and that they would get themselves a free eco-city.”

A second stumbling block has been the highly politicized nature of the project. When former Shanghai Communist Party chief Chen Liangyu, a well-known backer of the project, was sentenced in 2008 to 18 years in prison for bribery and abuse of power, the process stalled. According to Peggy Liu, chairperson of the Joint U.S.-China Cooperation on Clean Energy, “Dongtan got stuck mainly due to the transition of Shanghai mayors.”

In the case of Huangbaiyu, a lack of understanding of local needs presented problems. So, too, did a lack of sound oversight: no one effectively ensured that plans on paper were consistently translated into projects on the ground. The small plots and mix-up with the eco-bricks are telling examples of the confusion in construction.

In order for a green community to succeed, it not only has to limit carbon emissions but actually be livable — and adapted to local circumstances. Without extensive consultation with local people, it’s a challenge for foreign planners, even with the best of intentions, to understand what is required to transplant a farmer who grew up plowing fields into a city dweller. (One of McDonough’s blueprints, for another planned eco-city in Liuzhou, called for farmers to use rooftop fields, connected by tiny bridges. Whether or not it’s a workable ecological solution, one wonders how well recent transplants from the countryside would tolerate vertiginous crisscrossing between buildings.) This is one reason Brubaker stresses the need for more community consultation and a “locally guided process.”

Other, less-publicized approaches to building eco-cities are now underway in China that so far seem to be making more progress. A partnership between the Singapore government and the local government to build an eco-city near Tianjin looks more promising, in part because money is coming from both sources and the project is expected to earn not only global kudos but money, making a greater level of supervision and follow-through more likely.

On the whole, within China, there has lately been more enthusiasm for expanding green building codes than building new cities from scratch. “Enforceable green building codes, with the designers’ and planners' willingness to follow them, is very important,” says Wen Bo. “Such grand eco-city plans themselves are not eco-friendly.”

Reprinted with permission from Yale Environment 360. Christina Larson is a journalist focusing on international environmental issues, based in Beijing and Washington, D.C.

It sounds a bit like Big Brother, but many leading cities and organizations around the world are looking to “Intelligent Urbanization” as a blueprint for using technology to more efficiently integrate city management, ensure a better quality of life for citizens, and spur economic development.

Considering that the majority of people on this planet live in urban areas, and cities consume 75 percent of the world's energy and are responsible for 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, there is no question that cities must learn how to decrease their effects on the environment.

Traditional approaches to reducing carbon emissions have included using less energy, using alternative forms of energy, and capturing and storing carbon. Building upon the principles behind connected urban development (CUD), intelligent urbanization takes a different approach by using information and communications technology (ICT) to supply a broadband infrastructure that will increase the efficiency of traffic flow and increase efficiency and service offerings of public transportation. It will also create sustainable real estate models that incorporate energy efficiency and new work environment models (such as remote working, collaboration and shared space) and enable residents services so they can self-manage their carbon footprints.

Cisco, MIT and the Clinton Global Initiative have partnered with cities such as San Francisco, Seol, Amsterdam, Hamburg and Madrid to restructure city infrastructures so as to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and waste. By closely examining cities’ ecological footprints, CUD hopes to create a blueprint that can be used globally to create sustainable cities. The blueprint must be ICT-based, replicable for use by other cities, able to deliver tangible and operational projects and able to deliver measurable results.

Right now 50 percent of San Francisco’s carbon dioxide emissions come from transportation, 32 percent from building energy and 18 percent from waste. By using ICT, the city will be able to track emissions data and performance metrics, and create solutions for urban sustainability.

One example of technology used for this purpose is San Francisco’s EcoMap – a geo-mapping based, collaboration, visualization and measurement tool for citizens, businesses and the city authorities to measure their carbon emissions and to see the collective results of their individual climate change behaviors. It is a proof of concept of an application that could be used globally to track cities’ carbon dioxide output and allow residents to interact with each other about how to improve their city’s ecological footprint.

The EcoMap lets people compare information by zip code, such as average number of vehicles per person, number of specialty vehicle types (hybrid, SUV, electric, etc.) per capita, number of people who recycle per capita and average amount of waste generated per capita. Then users will be able to use and share this information via a social networking functionality to foster a community based on working together to reduce carbon dioxide. People can upload a personal EcoPlan, upload videos and share their best practices, and use a personal dashboard to track their individual carbon output.

This initiative is so important because individual actions just aren’t enough – governments, schools and businesses need to work with residents to completely overhaul the way people live and contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. And I can think of no better city than progressive San Francisco – where CO2-tracking iPhone applications and shared workspaces meet public transportation and clean technology – to lead the way and use technology to better the environment.

Big public works projects can lead to big hassles. And one of the largest highway projects in recent memory—Boston's Big Dig, which buried a major interstate below a major city—created more than its fair share. But recent criticisms of the project, saying suburban traffic congestion has essentially made the project a gigantic failure are way off the mark.

The history of the Big Dig began in the post-WWII Interstate Highway boom. Boston, then a decaying industrial and shipping center, was searching for ways from becoming a regional backwater. Aside from bulldozing an entire neighborhood to make way for modern high-rise towers and government offices, the notorious Boston Redevelopment Authority also decided the city needed direct Interstate access to keep downtown commerce vital.

The solution was an elevated, double-decker, three-lane highway called the Central Artery; an ugly, loud, exhaust-spewing eyesore that was congested almost from the day it opened. The highway, and neighborhood-splitting clearances in other parts of Boston proved so unpopular that a second urban highway that might have alleviated some of the congestion by providing a circumferential route around downtown was cancelled due to community protests. This left Boston with only two interstates: East/West Interstate 90 and North/South Interstate 93, with the closest beltway some 10 miles out, along the Route 128 corridor.

While this resulted in some legendary traffic snarls, it also brought—by necessity—some tremendous sustainability improvements to the Boston area. Areas that had been cleared for cancelled freeways were used for a realigned and improved mass transit line and massive park-and-ride lots, allowing low-carbon commutes from Boston's Northern suburbs. In the city itself, the new transit line allowed a dilapidated elevated railway to be demolished, providing faster, more reliable service, and clearing the way for the final leg of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor to be electrified. In Cambridge, Brookline, Jamaica Plain, and other municipalities along the cancelled Inner Belt route, a prominent bicycle-commuting culture arose.

After the Big Dig finally uncorked the infuriating downtown bottleneck, the elevated artery was replaced with the Rose Kennedy Greenway, a linear park through Boston's urban core that has furthered its reputation as the country's most walkable city. Much of the city's car related air pollution left with the congestion, while vast stretches of Boston's historic North End and Waterfront were open to the sky once more, enticing more pedestrians to the regions, and resulting in an economic boom.

Though congestion and commute times along I-93 outside the city have increased, it's hardly the fault of the Big Dig. Historically low gas prices and a complete lack of tolls on the highway gave decades of commuters no economic incentive to avoid the crowded commute. By comparison, toll-heavy I-90 suffers far fewer congestion problems at peak hours, despite reaping similar benefits from the Big Dig's improved traffic flow. Underinvestment in mass transit during the 1990s has also fueled the problem, as late trains and unreliable track conditions pushed more commuters onto the highways.

The Big Dig has had a few undesirable environmental consequences, but most of that burden has been borne by communities just outside of Boston, which now carry the bulk of the circumferential traffic from the newly improved Big Dig on parkways and surface streets, resulting in elevated levels of noise, air pollution and lung cancer. But with an upcoming extension of the urban subway line, many of these environmental problems will be substantially mitigated. If anything, America needs more projects like the Big Dig to secure a sustainable future.

Sonoma Mountain Village is one of only five One Planet communities in the world. The village is in process of undergoing a transformation from 200-acre industrial park to eco community right near my own Northern California neighborhood.

Once the site became available for sale, the local, environmentally active Codding family was the only bidder to offer a vision for its future development as a sustainable community. The eco-minded City of Rohnert Park jumped at the chance to give the Coddings the opportunity to turn their vision into reality.

"Transformation" only begins to describe the process. More accurately, the industrial park -- formerly the workplace of 2,500 Agilent workers before their jobs went overseas -- is being completely recycled. For example, every last acre of the current park's old parking lots will be crushed and re-used to build the new town's sidewalks. Making new concrete is a carbon-intensive process, so the recycling effort will spare the environment a lot of CO2. It will take an estimated 10 to 15 years to complete the recycling job of turning the business park into a town.

As planned, the town will be fully integrated. All housing will be mixed-use, with homes ranging from an urban core of lofts above shopfronts and galleries in the downtown area (think SoHo in the '70s), to two-story townhouses with stoops on tree-shaded streets (think Brooklyn). A mix of large and small suburban houses and small duplexes with backyards featuring chicken coops and beehives ensures a steady supply of fresh eggs and honey to the stores at the town center. The town has both a highly urban core and yet within just a five-minute walk, becomes as completely rural as the surrounding farms of Sonoma County.

The job of framing the village's buildings makes use of the steel panel factory the Coddings recently opened on-site. This factory is of environmental interest in and of itself, powered by an acre of solar roofing. Furthermore, the prefabricated steel structures it churns out have been recycled from local SUVs; each 2,000 square foot of housing will recycle six SUVs worth of local junkyard steel. A relatively lightweight, extremely recyclable material, steel is an efficient building product.

Other sustainable aspects of the plans for Sonoma Mountain Village include green roofs, ground-source heat pumps, ultra-efficient lighting and appliances, super-insulated walls, floors and roofs, solar hot water systems and solar photovoltaic power integrated into the roof design. The building process will bring approximately 4,400 construction jobs to local workers, twice the number of Agilent jobs lost.

There are already two acres of solar panels atop the Village's new theater building, and if Kirstie Moore, the project's boundlessly optimistic Sustainability Manager, succeeds in changing the law (PUC rule 13) that currently prevents net metering, there will also be additional acres of solar atop the gigantic market hall that would power the entire community much more economically than on individual houses.

Moore told me that, "The Coddings learned from the first certified One Planet community, in England, where they found that once people left the town they became in effect '3 1/2 planet people' again, like everyone else in England."

Moore went on to say that self-sufficient design was a critical element in the project, "because once we leave this One Planet town, we are right back in the American economy -- and here in America we need even more planets than they do!"

The project includes a vision for a high-tech telecommute center to help reduce lengthy commutes, as well as car- and bike-sharing programs. The village will feature electric car fast-recharging centers as well as a Smart rail connection to the rest of Sonoma County and into Marin.

Tenants include Comcast and locally loved caterer Sally Tomatoes. Like the extremely fast-growing small business incubator housed in the original buildings, all current tenants got a complete sustainable revamp to zero carbon.

A preference for local workers will be codified into the town's charter; restaurants, stores, offices, the theater will be required to hire local first. A certain percentage of the space within stores will be set aside for local produce and preserves, not only recycling income within the local economy, but also greatly reducing food miles traveled. A daily farmers market will be held every day in the public square at the center of town, or housed inside the giant community center on rainy days.

Town-wide composting will create new, fresh soil to nurture community gardens, small parks and even fruit trees for snacks along nature walks into the preserved habitat at the Village's outskirts. There will be habitat-protected bioswales that act as wetlands, conserving water in a four-million-gallon reservoir underground that will recycle water for irrigation purposes.

The radical concept behind Sonoma Mountain Village is that we really can develop our towns in a kind and equitable way that honors the contributions of all us, taking sustainability further than simple "green design." The project promotes an entirely new green lifestyle in a respectful way.

To realize their dream, the Coddings reached out to a panel of sustainability experts ranging from the international Bioregional One Planet team that certified Abu Dhabi's MasDar City, to wetlands protection scientists and leading architects and town planners. Laura Hall of Hall Alminana was among them. Hall Alminana is one of the leading U.S. New Urbanist town planning firms, and a strong proponent of the Smart Code, which turns the suburban zoning model of compartmentalized bedroom communities versus separate industrial parks on its head.

Hall is "thrilled that the green movement is moving into the human habitat and away from green gadgets only," and clearly happy that the Codding's family vision for this project intersects so well with her own.

Hall said that she has been living in a remodeling project, herself, for 12 years, and I think she appreciates one other aspect of the gentle pace of Sonoma Mountain Village: Even its funding mechanism is self-sustaining, rather than shackled to an unstable credit market. "Some buildings can be used while the planning is going on," she explains. This will keep the project funded with rents from current tenants even as the new town acquires its permits and the recycling of effort takes shape around them.

The development model being employed by Sonoma Mountain Village is a new prototype for the U.S., and as such, will be very expensive, according to Kirstie Moore. "So much of what we are doing has never been done in this country," she says. So taking it slow -- building as income rolls in -- literally recycling rents into buildings -- is a sustainable funding mechanism.

In many ways, the Coddings' profoundly lovely vision of radical Utopian development could have an impact on future city plans in the U.S.

What a beautiful way to end the Age of Oil.

While the nations of the world are nearly in agreement that carbon emissions must be reduced, there is tremendous debate over just who ought to be doing the reducing. Consensus (except for a few Kyoto holdouts like the U.S.) once was that richer countries should should lead the way, but with many poorer economies growing rapidly, a new question has entered the carbon control debate: what countries, exactly, count as rich?

Previous UN statements had placed the burden onto the wealthy countries of the G8, and many officials had suggested richer countries could instead remunerate poorer nations for carbon reductions. But since the signing of the Kyoto protocol, the world's first major greenhouse emissions reduction act, the geopolitical situation has changed dramatically.

China and India have become massive economic players on the world stage, and their contribution to global carbon emissions has increased dramatically. China is now widely estimated to have surpassed the United States as the world's largest carbon producer, and India, with its rapidly growing population, and with the introduction of the ultra-cheap Tata Nano, could easily be a new contender for the crown within the next few years.

Poorer countries, for their part, though, want nothing to do with a redefinition of previously drawn rules of wealth. Byron Blake, representing Antigua and Barbuda and currently serving as chair of the G77, a developing nations coalition, states that "The (1992 U.N. Climate) Convention did not provide for differentiation between developing countries, and told Reuters that he regards any attempts to make such divisions as a diversion of effort.

But with the Chinese and Indian powerhouses still G77 members, the claims for rich nations to carry the entire load ring more hollow with each passing year. Several OPEC nations, too, seem starkly out of place. Qatar and Bahrain, which have two of the world's highest GDPs per capita, and the UAE, with its massive cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, are also members of the G77 voting block.

A potential solution to the deadlock comes from some of the medium-rich countries who have already left the G77, but not yet joined the G8. Although not currently bound to higher levels of greenhouse reduction, South Korea has plans to announce its own, self-determined carbon caps, in an effort to bridge the contentious divide. South Africa, while remaining in the G77, also has long-term independent plans to stop emissions increases by 2025.

With some countries planning controls of their own volition, it might be in the best interests of the G8 to limit their focus on redefining rich, especially in light of the failure of many developed nations to meet their existing carbon reduction commitments. Though it may come at some economic expense, the lead-by-example approach may continue to be the best chance we have at trimming global carbon emissions to sustainable levels within a generation. 

The Beijing Olympics were conceived under massive clouds, both literal and political. But as the world gathered to watch the 2008 games, the skies—physically, anyway—cleared due to a number of unprecedented pollution restrictions in China. Now the country aims to maintain some of those restrictions, hoping to carry its newly-cleaned air into the future. The only question is, will China’s economy be able to keep up?

 

A green revolution was evident in the games from the earliest stages of planning. Olympic venues were designed to make full use of available wind and solar resources, while large parks were erected in the center of Beijing. But as this photo shows, simply improving energy efficiency and planting a few trees wasn’t going to get the job done.

Acting with a speed and decisiveness astounding for its large size, the Chinese government began implementing a number of policies to try and stem the smoggy haze that had come to envelope much of the city on a regular basis. Gas subsidies that had been created to fuel China’s massive economic growth were slashed, raising the price of automotive travel and quieting demand.

A few days later, state-owned vehicle use was cut to 30% of its previous levels, while an even/odd driving system was established for private cars, keeping half of the personal automobiles in the city off Beijing’s crowded streets at any given moment. To compensate for the influx of non-driving commuters, operational hours of Beijing’s recently expanded mass transit system were extended.

As the games drew closer, China even went so far as to ratchet down industrial production around the capital, closing some 26 different construction sites, and ordering 267 different firms to shut down over a month before the opening ceremonies. While unthinkable in Western countries, these restrictions did make a significant impact in the pollution levels in the capital, with only a few days of less-than-excellent air quality recorded during the 2008 Olympics.

But with the Olympic torch now extinguished, China must face the economic consequences of such a sudden, if effective, environmental program. Many estimates put the cost of the games at 50 billion dollars, but the economic impacts may dwarf that in the end; even the influx of Olympic tourists barely registers in a country that sees more than 130 million visitors a year.

The trick now for China is to continue building on -- and with -- the slew of green technologies showcased at the Olympics. Cleaner air will encourage physically activity and good health, which could in turn reduce the costs of the nation’s state-run health care system, while continued improvements and expansions for mass transit could cut congestion, construction costs, gas prices, and pollution. With a little luck, China can turn its massive production engine to greener industries, and avoid the post-Olympic declines that have haunted past games.

Photo by Flickr user angus_mac_123

 

 

Suburban living was once considered the epitome of the American dream, but many now view it as a key contributor to the global warming nightmare. Since the end of the Second World War, city administrators have largely made their zoning and building decisions to facilitate the ideal of a single-family home with two-car garage that is secluded from urban centers by miles of highway.

The Aspen Effect -- in which communities outprice their own workforce by building economies around high-priced tourism -- can be prevented through purposeful efforts to diversify the economy, provide housing with a price ceiling and through taxes.

I came across an article on the topic, which discusses Napa, near where I grew up, reminds me of Santa Cruz, where I went to school, and echoes of Nantucket, where I vacation. There are many similarities to these beautiful places -- once they are “discovered” as vacation destinations, the influx of visitors influences their character and affordability. From my observation, preventing the Aspen Effect takes community purpose and planning. If communities aren’t equitably controlled, there may not be anyone to fight for the policies that can help to preserve community character while also nurturing a vibrant tourism industry.

Here are policy ideas that communities can use to make tourism work for them:

1. Tax the tourism industry at higher rates than other industries. If a community has a high-value tourism industry, people visiting it from outside the community expect to pay high prices already. Higher taxes, which can ease the tax burden on residents, won’t deter tourism spending. Additionally, the way a growing tourism industry affects the host community can be disproportionately negative to the preexisting residents, and tourism services should pay accurately for the detriment, such as increased use of public services (hospitals, police, etc). Having the extra tax base allows cities to flourish due to the tourism industries they are hosting, not struggle to afford living there.

2. Purposely maintain affordable housing stock and limit access to year-round residents. As areas increase in popularity for tourism, part-time newcomers purchase second homes, absorbing housing stock and driving up housing prices. Cities must intentionally create housing stock, control pricing and be sure residents can afford to remain in the community.

3. Maintain a diverse economy of which tourism is only a part. City officials must do this because they may be forced to preserve economic staples to the detriment of the tourism community, for example, declining an additional hotel project in favor of a school or a much needed housing division, etc. Maintaining a diverse economic portfolio is a form of security in many industries in case one asset declines in value. The things that make tourism boom at one point can decline. For instance, Napa’s appeal will lose value if grapes catch a blight or if a new area becomes the ‘It’ spot. Communities should be sure they have developed other aspects of their economy.

4. Ensure turnover in municipal elected positions. This is important so that no one party can direct economic priorities. It’s as harmful to have a decade of tourism-dictated economic policy as it is to have staunchly anti-tourism people in office for that long. Balance is key.

5. Incentivize small businesses. As tourism grows, it can attract outside venture capital. Cities should continue to develop and nurture local business interests so that during the off season, communities still have economies they can rely on. Tourism can happen to municipalities, where the city is basically passive, or cities can work to manage it. There are good examples of successful tourist destinations -- LA, San Francisco, Seattle, and New York among them. Tourism is likely to change communities, but as long as the whole economy grows with the tourism industry, it can drive economic expansion in a positive way.  

Abandoned malls, the symbol of a lifestyle that some might argue rapidly is becoming outdated, are being used in interesting ways by some cities and towns left with large, often empty structures. Some cities are getting creative with billing removal or demolition costs, but others see the leftover buildings as the framework for opportunity. From the United Kingdom to Colorado, cities are turning the acreage once usurped by malls into vibrant mixed-use centers.

In some ways, enclosed malls will still be serving their original purpose even in their retrofitted state, given their remaining capacity to accommodate lots of stuff under one roof. By turning malls into downtown centers, cities create a single space in which people can access government, social outlets, courts, shopping, housing, sports and culture. The fundamental differences between malls and mixed-use developments are housing proximity and public transit. Malls themselves are often in the proverbial middle of nowhere -- close to nothing but a freeway. Malls are turning into dense housing with incorporated retail and business areas, greenspace, and accessible public transit.

The change has been stunning.  According to Ellen Dunham-Jones, Georgia Institute of Technology’s architecture program director, “In 2006 there was only one new, enclosed mall built in this country.” Compare that to the 1990s, when approximately 140 new malls were built each year, Dunham-Jones says. Clearly, malls haven't dodged the pain inflicted by the rise in fuel costs; essentially every industry that depends heavily on fuel is posting flat or negative growth.

In cities where physical boundaries limit the housing expansion possibilities, axing a floundering mall and redeveloping as a mixed-use project can be one way of addressing a housing crunch while maintaining retail space that is more conducive to small, local businesses. Strip malls are subject to the same treatment. California is replete with single-story malls that could be redeveloped or built upon vertically to  supplement the housing stock.

In most places, our mixed-use zoning laws trail our aspirations. Before environmental laws existed protecting consumers from toxics by regulating companies, zoning ordinances just put businesses close to each other so their pollution wouldn't impact housing. This is how brownfields, or former industrial spaces, came to be -- they were zoned for industrial, but redeveloped for domestic purposes. These days, zoning should be used to promote community and minimize driving. The retrofitting of malls is a great example of the potential benefits of a new development and tax paradigm.  

Photo by Clean Wal-Mart