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

Municipalities, many already running unhealthy deficits, are facing a new world of cost issues in the face of increasing fuel prices. Most municipalities use fuel on the large scale, with various administrators, surveyors, building code inspectors and other city officials zipping around the city to conduct their business. As cities are looking for solutions to fuel prices, they could be thinking too small. 

 

Mayors that met at the United States Conference of Mayors discussed the results of a survey of over a hundred municipalities, 90% of which said that they had changed operating procedures to minimize fuel expenditures. The result have been soft measures so far. Mayors have been encouraging their staff to carpool, visit sites that are near each other at the same time, encouraging staff to take public transit and turn off the lights when a room is empty. Budgets for 2008 seem to have been built on $2/gallon gas and soft measures are inadequate unless cities want to go the way of Vallejo (municipal bankruptcy).

As challenging as these problems may be, they also offer an interesting opportunity for municipalities to lead the charge in energy savings and fuel efficiency. Municipalities have access to tax-free bonds that should make it ‘easy’ to invest in sustainable technology that will help them hold their costs down. Cities can usually bond design-build wind or solar projects without much trouble, or can use their collective buying power to force utilities into providing clean power for their residents (more problematic where coal companies provide the tax base). Or, they can educate their residents about opportunities for power purchase agreements in neighborhoods.

Cities could be fuel independent. Cities have the capability to incentivize a biofuels test plant in their city that could supply gas to their fleet at a reduced, or at least, controlled cost (some types of ethanol can use waste to produce fuel for less than $1 per gallon). There seems to be no reason that a city over the size of 50,000 people or so shouldn’t have its own biofuels facility. Municipalities should/could all be driving hybrid, flex fuel or diesel fleets, though many cities still have the policy of buying American cars.

Cities also have the most control over infrastructure; they can do the most of anyone to make cars unnecessary. Cities can zone to create dense downtown corridors, create or block bike lanes, and either stifle or push for public transit expansion. Cities can discourage car use by creating walk-only streets and driving up the cost of parking. Confirming some of Amory Lovin’s famous predictions, Mayor John Robert Smith of Meridian Mississippi noted “We have waited until we are at a crisis point to address transportation.”

Cities have control over their building codes. LA and other large cities have integrated LEED standards into law. All cities could do that, as well as plan and zone in a manner that encourages mixed use ecodensity and fosters the ridership for public transit. Cities can also offer microloan or lease-back programs to help citizens front the cash for wind or solar energy for their buildings. There are a range of good ways cities can help their citizens finance energy projects for their buildings.

My ultimate message is this: municipalities have enormous power to change the lives of their residents for the better, climate and energy-wise. I can't think of any reason municipalities should suffer from high energy costs when they have expansive power to control and regulate local price and markets. Municipalities have so much micro-scale control over their cities’ procedures that it is highly effective for peak oil issues to be addressed at this level.  

Photo by Payton Chung

News about the advantages of switching to clean, renewable energy sources is everywhere these days. Reduced pollution, higher quality of life, lowered dependence on foreign sources and less disruption caused by fluctuating prices often top the list. But frequently, the transition from older fossil fuels is seen as a premium paid for the luxuries of cleaner air, and knowing that local energy supply treads as lightly on the Earth as possible. Certainly, given current economic conditions, that makes the changeover far less appealing to many cash-strapped communities.

But the town of Lackawanna, New York, is looking to change all that. Lackawanna was a boom town in the early part of the 20th century, driven by a massive steel industry and fueled by several important railway connections. But as in much of the rest of the Rust Belt, the past few decades have not been kind, with plant closures, recession, and other problems hitting hard. Indeed, until very recently, the Lackawanna was best known as an environmental hazard, rather than an environmental leader.

But the Steel Winds energy project, built on a brownfield once home to the massive Bethlehem Steel plant, may have marked a turning point for the beleaguered city. As Lackawanna mayor Norman Polanski told The New York Times, “It’s changing the image of the city of Lackawanna. We were the old Rust Belt, with all the negatives. Right now, we are progressive and we are leading the way on the waterfront.” The wind farm, the largest ever built in a city, transforms the city’s image from one of decay to one of modernity and efficiency. And as the city tries to redevelop its massive waterfront complex, that’s no small step.

Though Steel Winds will never replace the tax revenue or employment provided by the old steel plant, the project has still been received positively. The turbines deliver 56,000 megawatts of clean, renewable energy to local consumers and utilities, and the existing eight turbines generate at total of $100,000 in yearly revenue for the city. The project has been so successful that at a recent city council meeting, Steel Winds II, with an additional 13 wind turbines, was granted approval.

With so many middle-American cities, from Detroit to Buffalo, suffering from the economic and environmental consequences of a past too deeply rooted in heavy industry, the success or failure of the Steel Winds project is being monitored very closely. Though it’s clear the shores of Lake Erie will still require a significant economic presence outside the green energy industry, wind turbines like those erected in Lackawanna could provide both the power—and the modern edge—to help the Rust Belt shine again.

Related articles:
Texas Builds a Pipeline for Wind Energy
Big Offshore Wind Farm to Power 415,000 Homes
Can Green Collar Jobs Rebuild Middle Class America?
GE's Ecomagination Runs Wild for Wind

Photo by Justin Howard

Box stores have spread across the country with the advance of the mall, offering cities opportunities for income tax and giving consumers more options for ‘one stop shopping’. However as the economy worsens, chains are closing branches, leaving big boxy ghost-buildings behind. Cities are now levying conservation taxes that can be used for demolition as one way to undo big box sprawl.

The trend has started near Milwaukee, where Lowes, Linens 'n’ Things and Walmart have closed branches. Cities there now require retail projects of over 50,000 square feet to pay 20 cents per a foot to a conservation account that can be later spent on demolition. This can add tens of thousands of dollars to project costs, but cities say it is worth it. Many times, Big Box stores are built to the specifications of the business that occupies it. The tax encourages both more careful planning as well as better building design so that the building may be suitable for other businesses should the developing business leave. Cities have also altered contracts to make renting to other businesses easier and requiring developers to finance demolition bonds.

Like a prenuptial agreement, dissenters say the measures deter business. Cities desperate for a tax base are often willing to tforgo the tax, taking more risks to attract biusiness. However the American Planning Association, who encourage the taxes, think that citizens should protect themselves and their economy from planning decisions that only pay off in the short term.

Read more at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Photo by Brave New Films