Kaid Benfield's Blog: Curbing Pollution

What will become of Pass Christian? The impact of the oil spill on community

2010-05-03T13:30:53Z

“You’ve probably had your last really good Pass Christian oyster for a while,” Captain Louis Skrmetta of Ship Island Excursions told the (South Mississippi) SunHerald. “We’re looking at financial ruin from this. We’ve pretty much realized that it is over for us for this summer, maybe even next year; who knows.”

Pass Christian, a town of a few thousand on Mississippi’s Gulf coast, east of New Orleans and west of Biloxi, is struggling for survival again. Home to the South’s first yacht club and one of the Gulf Coast’s best historic districts, as well as the hometown of ABC News anchor Robin Roberts, the Pass has seen hard times before, and all too recently. But the waters of the Gulf are its lifeblood, the basis of its seafood industry and its tourism, and all that is now very much in jeopardy because of the giant puddle of sticky ooze that is making its way to the shore, wiping out whatever life is in its path. The town’s official web site describes the community's past challenges in an optimistic light:

“Pass Christian, the birthplace of yachting in the south, has long been known as a resort style village where cool sea breezes mingle with the fragrant scents of Magnolias and Pine trees. Ancient moss-draped Live Oaks cast their shadows along scenic drive and afford rest and relaxation to the passing traveler. Pass Christian was struck by two of the strongest Hurricanes to ever hit the United States, Hurricane Camille in 1969 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. We are much like the Ancient Oaks that have witnessed the history of this wonderful sea side village. We are still here, enjoying the view of the Mississippi Sound, the gentle breezes, enjoying a bowl of gumbo with friends, and sharing our history.

“Come visit our village, taste some of the best oysters ever pulled from the sea or buy shrimp fresh from one of the shrimp boats docked in the harbor, see historic homes that rival Charleston and learn of two ladies, Camille and Katrina who blew through leaving high water marks and memories.”

Pass Christian’s Wikipedia entry reports that, of its approximately 8000 homes at the time, “all but 500 were damaged or destroyed” by Katrina in 2005. The hurricane totally destroyed the public library and the nearby city hall. “In early 2007, although rebuilding was underway in much of the city, a large portion of empty, deserted homes and other structures remain.” You know how, when we discuss the impacts of Katrina on New Orleans, we stress that it was not the direct effect of the hurricane that devastated the city but the failure of the levees and subsequent flooding? That’s because the Mississippi coast took the direct hit.

Perhaps it is telling that the web site of the Pass Christian Historical Society has not been updated since 2005. The images accompanying this post speak more eloquently than words can. But the Pass has been on the rebound, however slowly.

This is in part because Pass Christian was a focus of the post-Katrina Mississippi Renewal Forum to which so many new urbanist architects and planners donated their time and expertise. Working around the clock with local officials and other volunteers, the teams crafted foundations for first-class recovery plans for the built environment, stressing traditional forms that respected and built upon the community’s historic character. There is a terrific and highly recommended 42-page summary of recommendations comprising concepts for a new city hall, walkable streets, a pattern of green spaces, respect for nature, transit routes and more. The Renewal Forum’s plans for Pass Christian could, if implemented, do for that community what the justly lauded Sustainable Comprehensive Plan is doing for post-tornado Greensburg, Kansas.

The plans were embraced by the locals, culminating most notably in the adoption of a new, form-based zoning code in 2008 that would enable exactly the kind of rebuilding that the town needed and still needs.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the plans for Pass Christian was a concept for the rebuilding of the town’s severely damaged Walmart with an innovative, pedestrian-friendly design that maintained all of the store’s square footage, needed parking and functionality while allowing it to serve as an anchor of a mixed-use development. These drawings show the damaged store redesigned as a mixed-use walkable block, wrapped with a combination of smaller boutique stores. Note how the presence of trees changes the parking lot, which would be moved to the rear:

There was considerable optimism around this concept, coming precisely at a time when the retailing giant was stressing sustainability and community in its image advertising and big-picture thinking. The prospect of an urbanist Walmart in Pass Christian was hailed in USA Today, and the company agreed to participate in a local planning charrette, touting examples of other locations where it was building more urban facilities.

Talk about wishful thinking. In the end, the company built its usual sprawling SuperCenter, a one-story "landscraper" with a giant parking lot, as unwelcoming to pedestrians and as alien to local character as ever.

The collapse of the talks with Walmart illustrates how fragile even the best concepts for sustainable planning and rebuilding can be, especially in the face of desperation (the city authorities quickly gave an exemption from its new zoning code to accommodate the retailer). Now, as the massive oil spill approaches the coast, all the hard work of thoughtful restoration planning is in peril. How can businesses find money for sustainability when they can’t find customers? How can the town address gaps in its street grid or construct new green squares when the community’s very reasons for existence are in jeopardy? Right now survival comes first, and who can blame them? One can recover from a 1969 hurricane over time, if the next disaster doesn't occur until Katrina 36 years later. But a major economic disaster on top of a recession just five years after a major natural disaster? That's different.

“I’m not so much worried about when [the spill] will get here but instead more about how long it will be here,” commercial fisherman Captain Tom Becker told Bobby Cleveland of the (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger. “I’ve pretty much blown off this season, and now I’m worried about future seasons. There’s a lot of us in the same boat — charter fishermen, commercial fishermen and essentially everybody on the Gulf Coast since the water is so much a part of our economy.”

Writing in the SunHerald, Robin Fitzgerald reports that attorneys representing the owner of a Pass Christian seafood company have filed a class-action lawsuit naming Cameron International Corporation, BP, Transocean, Halliburton Energy Services Inc. and Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. as defendants. The suit represents all Mississippians who live, work in or derive an income from the coastal zone who may sustain loss or damage that would not have occurred "had the defendants exercised the high degree of care imposed on them.”

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Housing market strengthens for smart growth: dramatic new data from the DC area

2010-04-26T13:32:14Z

The housing market is trending ever more dramatically toward smart growth. A look at recent home sales data in the Washington, DC metro area shows how.

In particular, the May 2010 issue of Washingtonian magazine focuses heavily on the region's real estate. It contains a list of the 100 “golden zip codes” in the greater DC area that command the highest prices in home sales, indicating which have gone up or down recently in median sales price and by how much. I separated out a subset comprising two groups: those where median prices declined 25 percent or more during the last three years, and those where prices have gone up by any amount in the same three years.

I then indicated these areas on a Google Earth image of the region, marking the zip codes with 25% or more declines with red arrows, those showing increases with green house symbols. For orientatation, the area shaded in blue in the center of the map is the central city of Washington, DC. The area in dark blue along the right (eastern) edge of the map is the Chesapeake Bay. The blue river running south from DC is the Potomac.

The results display dramatically, as you can see. The images above and just below are identical, except that the one below also shows jurisdictional boundaries. You can see the outline of the city of Baltimore in the northeast corner of the map.

Basically, the only parts of the database that gained in value were in the central city of Washington and the close-in suburbs of Arlington, Alexandria, Bethesda, and Silver Spring, all nonsprawling and served by Metro rail transit. The one semi-outlier to the west of the city that showed a gain is Tysons Corner, Virginia, whose market has likely been influenced by a highly publicized urban makeover oriented around stations on a new Metro line, now under construction. It gained in value by 0.1 percent. The far western reaches of the region, which have experienced the most new sprawl development in the last decade, have suffered the most declines.

That close-in locations are favored by the market is not news, of course. On a per-square-foot basis, central locations are traditionally more prized by homebuyers. What is news is the movement in the market that is making the relative desirability of central locations, and the relative decline of the value of sprawl, much more pronounced.

The biggest gainer in the database was DC's Tenleytown/Palisades zip code 20016 (above left, sample Walk Score: 80), at 29 percent. Tied for the biggest loser at -44 percent were zip codes 20112 (sample Walk Score: 8) near Manassas, Virginia, to the city’s far southwest, and 20769 (above right, sample Walk Score: 11) near Glenn Dale, Maryland, to the northeast. Though Glenn Dale is somewhat closer to DC, both are sprawling, automobile-dependent areas. The two images just above are shown at the same scale.

Because I focused on the extremes of the market, my regional images do not contain markers for in-between places such as Crownsville, Maryland (-20 %); DC’s Shaw (-7%); Mount Vernon, Virginia (-12%); or Fairfax 22031, Virginia (-7%). In addition, the magazine's database eliminated entirely any zip codes with fewer than 50 home sales in the past year.

The new map is consistent with one I built about a year ago (above), showing only county-level data and only one year’s worth of price change data (for 2008).

We’ve seen similar evidence of market changes all across the country, but in this area it really could not be more clear that the market is moving strongly toward the same locations that the environment favors. Those who continue to believe in sprawl (including leapfrog "urbanism” on rural land) are destined to keep losing money.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Instead of building new green places, let’s green the ones we have

2010-01-26T13:32:20Z

Vanessa Keith has written an outstanding post on the greening of urban buildings and neighborhoods, on the blog Urban Omnibus, a project of the Architectural League of New York. She begins by noting that “tabula rasa eco-cities trumpeting their green credentials and high levels of environmental sustainability” are being built or proposed across the globe (see, for example, near the end of this post), and queries: “one might ask, with all the urban fabric which currently exists, why build at all, and most especially on such a massive scale?” Instead, Keith suggests that we add green features to the places we already have.

I couldn’t agree more. Particularly given that so many US cities have underutilized infrastructure left from the days of urban flight, and given that central city neighborhoods have the lowest per capita environmental footprint, paving over farmland, forests or desert to accommodate the latest green technology just doesn’t make sense.

In fact, one can even make the argument (and some do) that one doesn’t need green features in the city, since the city is inherently green. I would certainly agree that, at least in terms of regulation, greater burdens should be placed on new suburban developments. But I also think all development should contribute to environmental health and, besides, many of the techniques we might apply to green city neighborhoods produce multiple benefits for livability, making cities all the more appealing.

And that brings me to Keith’s main point, which is that we can make our urban building stock more environmentally friendly by reforestation and other vegetation, along with green technology:

“How might all this begin to be implemented? [Above] you see a piece of New York City to which we have applied some of the technologies . . . Large scale urban farming which takes place indoors and on large expanses of roof, greenscreens to let plants to climb the vertical surfaces of the city, trees which are now able to grow on the city roofscape. Roof ponds and artificial waterfalls for cooling and electrical generation. Solar and wind devices which form sculptural elements in the city, performing a function as well as having an aesthetic. Ports for plug-in electric vehicles which gather energy from photovoltaics. Solar panels incorporated into street poles, and vertical wind turbines which form a rhythm in the streetscape. Bicycle lanes, room for walking and the incorporation of still more trees.”

Cool stuff, in some cases literally. Read the entire, well-illustrated commentary here.

Speaking of green roofs, you are unlikely to encounter any greener than the one I recently had the pleasure of touring, on top of the DC headquarters of the American Society of Landscape Architects and pictured just above. The fact sheet on the roof, intended as a demonstration project, says that the design includes two elevated “waves” that create a pleasant foliage-enclosed space and block the unsightly view of the rooftop HVAC systems. One of the waves is planted primarily with sedums; the other, with slightly deeper soil, is planted with drought-resistant perennials and grasses as well as sedums.

Innovative use of aluminum grating allows visitors to walk over the roof’s plant material without damaging it and also allows access to the roof structure for maintenance. The designers made maximum use of the structural capacity of the building, varying soil depths and plantings to take advantage of differing load capacities. For example, the elevator shaft has the greatest structural capacity and could accommodate 21 inches of soil; plantings on the elevator shaft include sumac trees, which may grow as tall as 30 feet at maturity.

Data collection from the roof indicates that it absorbed more than three-quarters of rainfall during its first year, significantly reducing the amount of nitrogen and other pollutants compared to street runoff. Temperatures on the ASLA roof have been as much as 32 degrees lower than on conventional black roofs on nearby buildings. Read all about it and view neat photos on ASLA’s web site, and here’s a short video:

Video tour of ASLA's Green Roof in Washington, DC from ASLA on Vimeo.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Free downtown transit could be the key to economic investment

2010-01-22T12:45:35Z

Last week Baltimore launched the Charm City Circulator, a free bus route that connects the city’s downtown with neighborhoods east and west and with other transit routes. At a time when many transit providers are having to cut back on service, Baltimore is betting that the new service will entice economic activity.

Even better, the Circulator has a dedicated lane through congested areas and, by putting seven buses on the Orange Route (route above), the first of three planned, free Circulator routes, the city will be able to offer service at 10-minute headways. Neighborhoods served by the Orange Route, in addition to downtown, include the city’s popular Inner Harbor, Little Italy, and the University of Maryland’s Baltimore campus. The fleet consists of environmentally friendly diesel-electric hybrids.

Writing on the web site Autopia, Zach Rosenberg reports that the system is funded by a 16 percent tax on parking, which will raise about $5 million annually, and that its underlying logic is compelling:

“Despite the high costs and massive subsidies implicit in driving, forking over a relatively small fee to ride a bus or subway is a psychological barrier to getting people out of cars. Even the most efficiently run buses can be crowded and slow, but by running at frequent intervals on dedicated lanes between fixed stops — as the Circulator does — delays can be kept to a minimum. The bus might not stop next to, or even near, every rider’s point of origin or destination, but it ensures a measure of proximity for most riders.”

The Charm City Circulator’s own web site stresses the environmental benefits:

“We service residents, downtown employees, students and tourists and anyone else who wishes to ride. The shuttle is intended to reduce congestion and greenhouse gas pollution by offering a convenient, reliable and eco-friendly form of public transportation.

“We’re not only dedicated to offering a stellar form of public transportation that links critical parts of the city—we are interested in doing it in the cleanest way possible. That’s why we’ve chosen 21 DesignLine 2009 EcoSaver IV LF Hybrid Electric vehicles—the first fleet of this type in a major metropolitan area. The Charm City Circulator is one part of Mayor Dixon’s vision of a ‘cleaner, greener Baltimore.’”

The Orange Route serves an east-west corridor, as can be seen above. When introduced, the Purple Route will serve a north-south corridor will run all the way from Penn Station in the north to Federal Hill in the south. The U-shaped Green Route will run from City Hall down through Fells Point and then up to the Johns Hopkins University’s East Baltimore campus (see photo set). The routes intersect each other at several points and also connect to other forms of transit, including trains, light rail, buses and water taxis.

Portland has long had a free downtown zone for its regular light rail service, but has had to cut back recently to address budget shortfalls. Several cities in Europe have free transit zones. Washington has popular circulator bus routes that link downtown with nearby neighborhoods and that link to but are operated separately from the main Metro transit system; the DC Circulator is not free, however, but operates on a reduced fare system. Baltimore's bold venture into free transit service is an exciting initiative well worth following.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

A close-up look at a revitalization district (Indianapolis, part 2: the challenges)

2009-11-19T13:45:37Z

Earlier this month I began a series of posts about Indianapolis's Smart Growth Redevelopment District, which I have had the honor of advising. The area in question is a distressed part of the city, two miles northeast of downtown, divided by an abandoned railroad corridor and beset with brownfields and vacant properties. It has a resilient population, though, along with some nice streets, historic buildings and the potential for a new light rail line that would run through the old corridor. I was part of a team assembled by the American Institute of Architects to examine the district, meet with residents, and offer recommendations.

What we saw in our visit

Although the district has declined significantly, it retains good "bones" for restoration. These include a good urban street grid that can promote walkability, and some relatively stable residential areas (see photo above). It also has a terrific location close to the region's core. There is ample park space, although it is not particularly well-developed for the best use by the neighborhood. And our meetings there left no doubt that the level of community awareness and engagement in the neighborhood appears strong.

The old rail corridor - now known as the Monon Trail - is the district's most striking land use feature (it is the green line running north-south on the satellite photo, above), and it is both a problem and an opportunity. Historically, it has divided the neighborhood, with King Park and other areas to the west, Martindale-Brightwood to the east. Industrial sites lining the corridor from the days when it was a functioning railroad are now (mostly) very badly deteriorated, further isolating residential areas on either side, creating major eyesores, and presenting risks from toxic contamination.

For example, below is a map of brownfields and suspected brownfields in the neighborhood, depicted in yellow and amber; notice how they congregate along the Monon corridor:

The trail through the corridor, which runs for many miles through the metropolitan region, is now a popular recreational facility for bicyclists and strollers, but from my observation it appears to be used primarily by people passing through the district, not so much by local residents. If the portion of the corridor in the redevelopment district is cleaned up and its old industrial sites used for new moderate-density, mixed-use development, however, it could become a strong asset, especially if the light rail line is built alongside the trail.

But the dominant impression to an outside observer is that the neighborhood has far too many vacant and abandoned properties, both commercial and residential. In the map below, parcels shown in light green are vacant. Parcels marked with a dot have standing but abandoned houses:

The district was never high-density and shouldn't be considered a candidate for downtown-type development, but it once had a decent critical mass of people and functioning buildings sufficient to support good transit service, an array of places of worship, and neighborhood-serving retail. That is no longer the case; many sprawling suburban neighborhoods probably have higher population densities than does the redevelopment district, and its lack of density is hurting its chances for recovery. Currently the district has only one bank branch, and no adequate supermarket or pharmacy. It certainly lacks a walkable center.

The area also has deteriorating infrastructure, especially visible in broken and interrupted sidewalks. And there is visible evidence of sewer infrastructure that has been overloaded with runoff, leading to combined sewer overflows.

On the positive side, there is an emerging mixed-use redevelopment at 22nd Street and the Monon, featuring the Project School (see photo below) and a nascent arts/design center, both in an old automobile factory. Martindale on the Monon, a redevelopment project, has added new and rehabbed homes in a portion of the district. A number of local community development corporations are adding value with scattered building throughout the area. The district also has some brick streets, which could definitely add value to thoughtful redevelopment.

I'm not quite sure what to say about the Keystone Industrial Park, a mid-1990s effort to bring new jobs to the city that is still being filled out. It is an asset of sorts, potentially a major source of jobs for residents of the district. But it is a suburban-style property (satellite image below), oriented to automobiles and a freeway in a zone that is disconnected and completely isolated from the community. It is a part of the neighborhood in name only, really something that just happens to be there rather than part of or enhancing the district in any visible way.

What we heard

One of the great hopes for the district is that, as noted, its residents are aware and engaged. They care about their community and they are sophisticated about its history and potential; many are lifelong residents. They are also justifiably skeptical, given that the district has been the subject of previous planning efforts, none of which have lived up to their expectations. (One participant in the first community meeting during our visit put it eloquently: "Don't tell us [again] what we need to do: help us do it.") They have seen investment and attention drained from their community and reallocated to the suburbs.

The statement that resonated the strongest in the breakout section on land use and neighborhood design was "I want the neighborhood to be more like it was" before it was disinvested. I believe that new activity that focuses first on restoration (rather than "change") will be the most warmly received and have the greatest opportunity for rebuilding trust.

Another strong theme from the larger community meeting was that infrastructure spending and management in Indianapolis in recent years had primarily benefited suburban residents, facilitating the flow of commuters back and forth through the district rather than adding value to the district itself. One small but perhaps telling example was that the ability to make left turns from some streets was reportedly "taken away" in order to facilitate through traffic.

If Indianapolis is like many other cities, the concern that the district has been considered conduit as much as or rather than community may be well founded. Unfortunately, this does not help the community's perception of what a light rail line might bring to the district ("it will benefit 'them,' not 'us'"), but ultimately most residents do seem to understand that their potential for recovery will be enhanced considerably if the line is built, with one or more stops within the district.

The residents expressed very real concern about public safety, with "people from Gary and South Chicago selling drugs here." We "need to feel safe where we live." There is also concern that transit service is poor, and that the community is beset with public health hazards that may be contributing to disease such as asthma and breast cancer.

These are formidable inner-city challenges that will require investment, time and trust to overcome. But, by the time our team left (after three-plus very full and grueling days), the community was feeling encouraged and appreciative. In the next installment I will tell you why.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Florida county links density & conservation to restrict mining, protect water supply

2009-11-03T13:23:16Z

Lee County, Florida (Fort Myers) is moving forward with an innovative plan to use clustered, dense development instead of large-lot zoning to protect its water supply. Under current zoning the southeastern portion of the Gulf coast county has been threatened by the spread of both limerock mining and large-lot "ranchettes" in an 83,000-acre "groundwater resource area" that supplies 80 percent of the county's potable water. Over time the new plan will allow the restoration of a substantial portion of the area's wetlands, while still allowing mining in a restricted zone for 20 years and allowing the same amount of housing development in a more clustered form.

Currently the area features isolated wetlands surrounded by citrus groves, with mining in the northwest corner just beyond this image:

In 1990, the county designated the region a "density reduction/groundwater resource area." Seemed like a good idea at the time, no doubt, when prevailing environmental thinking was that restricting density was good for watersheds. That theory has been debunked, of course, since we now know that for a given number of households more concentrated development actually does a much better job of protecting water. Moreover, under the 5- and 10-acre lots permitted by the old plan, development could occupy all of the currently agricultural land in the area, precluding recovery of the wetlands:

The area was once 86% covered by wetlands, about half of which have since been lost. The new plan, which still must pass state review, will allow the same number of homes to be built but restrict them to a concentrated area, preserving the rest for agriculture and wetland restoration:

Mining interests and other landowners in the conservation area will be compensated by selling their development rights to builders who want to pursue compact development in the development zone. The new plan was given the go-ahead by county commissioners last week.

The plan has been opposed by the mining interests, but they are not shut out of the new scheme. While their rights will be restricted to a designated zone, there is room for limited expansion and enough rock in the zone to supply the companies for 20 years. The accommodation "strikes the right balance," as noted by the Fort Myers News-Press in an editorial.

On the left below is a rendering of the area as it exists now, with mines shown in blue. On the right is a rendering of how the area might recover under the new plan's conservation features:

Density without conservation fails to live up to its smart growth promise. Conservation without density is an illusion doomed to fail. Lee County shows how to link the two.

The plan was developed by Dover Kohl & Partners. Read all about it here.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

To promote recycling on the street, make it fun

2009-10-30T13:26:44Z

Via Volkswagen's thefuntheory.com ("This site is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people's behaviour for the better"), the Bottle Bank Arcade Machine:

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Green Metropolis: David Owen’s urban manifesto

2009-09-29T13:31:19Z

I've written before about how rural utopias usually aren't as environmentally benign as they seem, while urban places - compact, walkable cities, suburbs, and towns - encourage lifestyles that are very low-impact on a per-capita basis. It's one of the basic premises of smart growth. David Owen, author of the new book Green Metropolis, understands this and believes the message must be spread.

I was asked to write a review of Green Metropolis for Solutions, a new academic journal dedicated to "solving the mounting environmental, social and economic problems of our time." (Note: the website is only partially constructed.) Excerpted from my full review, here's some of what I have to say:

"Owen's 2004 article, 'Green Manhattan,' published in the New Yorker, was a breath of fresh air for those of us working on urban issues and sustainable alternatives to suburban sprawl. In 'Green Manhattan,' Owen made the point that when we measure environmental impacts, whether emissions, waste, or land consumption, on a per capita basis, dense cities are, in fact, the greenest places and, in the US, Manhattan is the greenest of them all. In his article, Owen clearly articulated what some of our new work at the NRDC was all about: reducing our per capita environmental footprint by finding more efficient ways to grow.

"But Owen was also right in that article to assert, as he does again in his new book, that a lot of environmentalists and a lot of the public still do not understand this sort of environmental calculation. When 'Green Manhattan' was published, I sent a copy to all of my organization's trustees, and, to my dismay, within an hour of my message, one of my colleagues had fired off a rebuttal. My colleague, who was invested in addressing problems of urban waste and pollution in New York, was not entirely wrong in fearing that Owen - and, by extension, I - were undermining his work by suggesting that Manhattan was environmentally OK the way it was. But he was wrong in failing to acknowledge that, in many ways, Manhattan was and remains a very good environmental model, with its highly efficient use of land and walkable neighborhoods. And that, if we could bring the per capita environmental footprint of America closer to that of Manhattan, we would be achieving a great green success . . .

"Green Metropolis, which expands on the themes Owen introduced in 'Green Manhattan,' could not be timelier. The book is subtitled 'What the city can teach the country about sustainability,' and there is indeed a critical story to be told on the subject. Increasingly, planners and policy wonks get it, but the public, who elect our decision-makers and testify at development hearings, do not, and we need someone like Owen to help spread the word, in non-wonky English.

"To a great extent, Owen accomplishes this. Especially in his well-researched opening chapter, Owen shows how environmentally efficient a large city like New York really is, and how failing to seize upon this fundamental truth can lead us in wrong directions. He is absolutely right, for example, in pointing out that the biggest environmental challenge facing a place like New York is not, as many believe, how to reduce carbon emissions from lighting, heating and cooling buildings, a category in which New Yorkers already lead the nation on a per capita basis (like 'putting skinny people on diets,' Owen writes). It is, instead, how to address perceptions of inferior public school quality and a lack of public safety, which diminish the city's ability to attract and retain residents to its efficient lifestyle . . ."

The book contains useful chapters on transportation, parks, the inherent energy efficiency of buildings in urban locations, whether or not they employ the latest green technology, and so on. Each is filled with information and interesting anecdotes, and Green Metropolis makes a good introduction to and overview of these subjects from the point of view of an urbanist. I would recommend it especially to someone newly interested in these subjects as a good place to start.

I do think the book has some flaws, unfortunately, including one very important one. But you'll have to read my full review to know what it is.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

The Smarter Cities project would like your help in improving its criteria for ranking US cities

2009-08-10T13:36:10Z

As some of you probably know, Smarter Cities is an initiative that ranks US cities on a number of key sustainability criteria as well as on overall sustainability. The system has been developed, managed and staffed independently of NRDC, but several months ago our organization agreed to host it on our website. Now that the system has been re-launched as a project of NRDC, we would very much like your input on how to improve the rankings criteria.

The criteria that were used in the recently published rankings are here, and the evolving criteria that are being proposed for the next round of rankings are here. You may email your thoughts directly to the Smarter Cities team at smartercities@nrdc.org, or you may participate in the CityWiki, which was established online just last week as an exercise in participatory environmentalism. The CityWiki lists the proposed criteria for the next round and is structured to receive input on each criterion (note that the proposed list differs in some respects from the one used last year), alternative methods of city comparison, and weighting and scoring. You will need to go through an easy login process to participate, but it will be a very effective way of registering your thoughts.

I would also be interested in reading your thoughts here in this blog if you're willing to share them. (Beyond the rankings, criteria, and wiki, the Smarter Cities site also hosts a blog, a "citizen reporters" section that invites outside participation, a "city stories" section of profiles and issue commentary, and more.)

In the past round, each city was scored on 10 issues, which were equally weighted in the overall rankings. These were air quality, energy production and conservation, "environmental standards and participation," green building, green space, recycling, transportation, "standard of living," and water quality and conservation A threshold question to consider is whether these are the right categories and, if so, should they remain equally weighted?

The scores were then compared to each other in three groupings according to population (large cities of 250,000 or more, medium from 100,000 to 250,000, and small for under 100,000). It has been the project's ambition to score every US city of 50,000 or greater population, over 600 in all. Of the large cities, Seattle, San Francisco, and Portland made it a clean sweep for the Pacific coast in the top three overall spots. Coming in last among the 67 large cities were Anchorage, Alaska; Islip, New York; and Lexington, Kentucky.

For the various issue categories, the rankings were based on a combination of reported performance data and responses to a broad questionnaire sent to an environmental official in each city. For illustration, here is a closer look at a few of the issue categories and a bit about how they were scored, along with some of the results:

Air Quality: 7/10 of the score was based on where the cities ranked using EPA's Air Quality Index, and 3/10 was based on whether the city had smoke-free workplaces and restaurants. The top big city under these measures was Seattle; the worst was Charlotte. The best medium-sized city was Madison; the worst, Paterson, New Jersey. Interestingly, notoriously polluted Houston scored relatively well, bettering Tucson, St. Paul, and Raleigh; Los Angeles scored higher than Virginia Beach.

Energy Production and Conservation: For this category, the largest portion of the score was based on the main sources of energy in each city, with points given for the presence of renewables and deducted for nonrenewables. 4/10 of the score was based on the questionnaire answers, with credit given for the presence of conservation programs and whether or not green power options are available to consumers through their local utilities. This put Seattle, Anaheim, and Dallas in the top 10 big cities, and Wichita last; Santa Rosa was the highest-ranking medium city; Elizabeth, New Jersey, the lowest. New York, which has the lowest per capita energy consumption in the country, ranked 27th among the 67 big cities, below Oklahoma City, Las Vegas, and #9 Dallas.

Transportation: 8/10 of the transportation scoring was based on the responses to the questionnaire sent to a city official. Cities were ranked by the number of "transportation options available to residents," such as "bicycle paths, bicycle sharing programs, bus systems, carpool lanes, car sharing, dedicated bicycle lanes, light rail, sidewalks/trails, subways and trolleys." 2/10 of the score was based on transit ridership. Among big cities, San Francisco ranked first and Lexington, Kentucky last; among the mediums, Santa Clarita, California was first and, again, Paterson last. Los Angeles, despite soaring rates of driving and the country's worst traffic congestion, ranked #3 under this methodology, outperforming Portland, New York, and Chicago.

Standard of Living: These scores were based on a combination of median household income, the percentage of families living below the poverty line, the percentage of owner-occupied housing, and the National Association of Home Builders Housing Opportunity Index (HOI). San Jose ranked as the large American city with the best standard of living, New Orleans the worst. Among the mediums, Thousand Oaks, California ranked first and, sadly, Paterson was again last.

Environmental Standards and Participation: I believe this category was based entirely on the questionnaire responses, and cities were ranked according to how many municipal departments had environmental standards and/or public participation opportunities. Sacramento ranked first among the bigs, Lexington (again) last. (Why am I starting to think that Lexington's environmental officer simply failed to spend enough time on the questionnaire?) Among the mediums, Santa Rosa ranked first, Paterson (see comment above re Lexington) last.

NRDC sees this project as a beginning and a work in progress, and we really want to get it right. Among the things our team has learned so far is that, by and large, the media love rankings stories and, unsurprisingly, the cities that scored well are happy. Those that believe they should have scored higher are not so happy with the criteria. Among the online commentary, The City Fix DC was laudatory, while World Changing and Greater Greater Washington were among the critics.

Take a look, read the commentary if you like, make up your own mind, and let our Smarter Cities team know what you think. Personally, I am hoping that we can move away from the subjectivity of questionnaire responses as much as possible and toward reported performance data; and I am hoping we can use per capita performance measures rather than raw numbers. I also hope we can develop new categories on smart growth (such as density trends) and public health (such as obesity and major disease rates). I have been impressed with the openness of the team to suggestions, and your input will be vital to improvement.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Boycotting Dolly’s Tennessee mountains to keep pollution alive

2009-08-07T13:32:10Z

This isn't usually my beat, but as someone who grew up in western North Carolina, the southern Appalachians (pronounced with a flat "a" in the third syllable, thanks) mean a great deal to me. And, like a lot of normal people, I am increasingly distressed that coal companies are literally blowing the tops off mountains now because it's apparently the cheapest way to get at coal, a dwindling resource that is itself fraught with environmental issues.

My colleague Rob Perks blogs on the issue with regularity, and last week one of his posts particularly caught my eye: a bunch of coal companies are pressing a boycott of Dolly Parton's famous Dollywood resort and other Tennessee tourist attractions because of a Congressional bill co-sponsored by the state's Senator Lamar Alexander, a Republican. As Rob points out, Alexander's bill would do nothing to stop coal mining, even by mountaintop removal: it's "meant to protect water quality by stopping coal companies from dumping toxic mining waste into valley streams, which is poisoning drinking water and killing fish throughout Appalachia."

For a wonderful vision of what's at stake, check out this short video of the Tennessee mountains, with Dolly's classic "My Tennessee Mountain Home" in the background:

As the Senator himself puts it, it "sounds like they are saying we are not going to see you unless you let us blow off the top of your mountains and dump them in streams and that's a pretty unusual message." Really.

Now, there's not a lot of coal in Tennessee (North Carolina was mined out a century ago), but there's a lot in some nearby states, and the flow of contaminated water doesn't respect state boundaries. And there is still some mining in northeastern Tennessee. Bravo to Alexander for taking a stand.

The fact that the coal guys want to hurt the Senator by hurting his constituents speaks volumes about their ethics. I won't write more about the issue, which really isn't my expertise. But you don't have to be an expert to love the mountains the way they are, thank you. Check out Rob's blog for lots of information about what's going on.

And, if you like Dolly as much as I do, stay for a minute and a half to see this video, too, featuring Dolly on lap dulcimer. It's even better musically than the one above:

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Green infrastructure in smart growth, beautifully illustrated

2009-07-13T13:37:07Z

My NRDC colleague Rachel Sohmer has produced a wonderful slide show illustrating how low-impact-development techniques for reducing stormwater runoff (sometimes called "green infrastructure") can successfully be integrated into the kinds of smart, urban environments that we need to revive cities and enable walkable, transit-oriented transportation patterns. (Rachel last appeared on this site writing about a related topic, the importance of neighborhood streets that connect with each other.) The slide show is below, but first let me set the context.

Sometimes well-intentioned bureaucrats do all the wrong things while trying to protect watersheds. As I've written before, the biggest mistake is to look at the problem on a site-by-site basis, on the assumption that reducing runoff on each site, generally by reducing on-site impervious surface, will collectively add up to reduced runoff in the watershed as a whole. (This may be what the Commonwealth of Virginia, for example, is now attempting to do with new regulatory guidance.)

Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way: if builders respond to regulatory initiatives by reducing the development footprint on each site, the effect is to reduce average per-acre density, which has the unintended effect of spreading more, not less, impervious surface (generally in the form of pavement for public roads, for driveways, and for parking lots) around the watershed. EPA research demonstrates that density - even though it may increase imperviousness on local sites - actually reduces runoff in the watershed as a whole.

So we absolutely need compact development, not large lots, to protect our waterways. But how do we do our best to soften the localized impacts of density and deal with the stormwater that runs off of dense urban sites? Pictures are worth thousands of words, and that's where the slideshow comes in. Enjoy:

For more on low-impact development, see this introduction prepared by NRDC's water program.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Nice video on Curitiba's car-free main street

2009-07-09T13:37:21Z

Earlier this week I highlighted Copenhagen's experience with creating car-free streets and a welcoming environment for walkers. This latest short video from Streetfilms focuses on another international leader, Curitiba, Brazil. Mostly known for its pioneering bus rapid transit system, Curitiba was also one of the first cities to sense the potential of car-free streets. Both initiatives were championed by the city's charismatic former mayor, Jaime Lerner. In this cool little film you can hear Lerner tell a bit of the story while observing the results:

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Awesome presentation by Howard Frumkin on healthy communities

2009-04-14T13:42:26Z

I've had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Howard Frumkin, MD, director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, (at least) a couple of times and enjoyed the encounters. I definitely enjoy Howie's work, which is all about the connections between sprawl, smart and sustainable growth, and public health, a subject I have touched on here occasionally.

Howie gave a talk a couple of weeks ago at the National Building Museum, where he and I both have served as advisers to the Green Community exhibit. I wasn't there, unfortunately, but I happened across a video of it that I will now introduce to you.

I give a lot of presentations (as I just realized I have been mentioning too often in here!). It's something I enjoy a lot, especially coordinating my talks with images that I tailor to the particular audiences I meet with. In addition to the one I mentioned yesterday, coming up in North Carolina later this week, I have two more coming up soon in San Francisco and Cincinnati. I'm really good at it, if I do say so.

But, having watched Howie's video, I'm not sure I'm nearly as good at it as he is. His presentation at the NBM was content-rich, entertaining, and seemingly effortless. Wow. It's not short - over an hour - but I couldn't turn it off once I started. And when I finished I had about four new ideas for my North Carolina presentation, which I shamelessly stole (we all do it). I loved all of his points, but one that stuck was his wry observation that, even in planning, it shouldn't be an anomaly to base our decisions on actual research.

Take or make the time, enjoy, and learn:

If you have a question about Howie's talk, or about health and the built environment, you can submit it online. After April 20, when the question period closes, he'll post the answers.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Giving new meaning to “green” transit

2009-04-13T13:56:59Z

One of the slides I've prepared for an upcoming presentation to the North Carolina chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects juxtaposes these two images to show how a trolley or light rail line might be made greener, literally:

On the left are trolley tracks in San Francisco; on the right is a design for the proposed Atlanta Beltline project.

In the US, we tend to think of public transportation as inherently green, which of course it is compared to our addiction to driving. It becomes even more so when old diesel buses are replaced with models running on natural gas, or even on the cleaner diesel engines of current technology.

But in Europe they are way ahead of us. Check out these light rail lines in Strasbourg (left) and The Hague (right):

A couple of years ago, the British urban design magazine Monocle published an article (expensive subscription required!) highlighting 25 design examples of what, in their opinion, makes a city great. I wasn't quite willing to shell out the $100 or so apparently required to access the article, but it was the subject of a story in the now-defunct International Herald Tribune. Here's part of what the article had to say:

"It's not necessarily the billion-euro development, star-architect-designed gallery or shiny new ferris wheel that makes locals feel good about their town. Monocle believes that the measure of a city is more about everyday wonders - pavements, well-designed schools, punctual transport - rather than one-off, grand projects. Here's our list of the top 25 urban elements that make the city . . .

"There's something quite magical about watching trams in Barcelona, Strasbourg or Frankfurt glide silently along beds of grass as they do their city circuit. Where possible, this attractive combination of efficient public transport and inspired landscaping should be standard as part of the urban fabric . . ."

I wasn't able to track down the full text (all the old links to it are broken, no surprise), but here's part of it, and here is a bare-bones list of the 25 examples.

Some more images, from (I think) St. Etienne, left, and (definitely) Bilbao, right:

Green rail beds don't just soften the sometimes-harsh edges of the urban fabric; they also absorb stormwater and reduce the heat island effect that can come with asphalt and concrete (green roofs do the same). Here are images from near Paris (left) and in Lyon (right):

I think this would be perfect for the new Purple Line in Montgomery and Prince George's Counties in Maryland, especially since there will be an adjacent bike/recreational trail in the corridor. C'mon, planners, what do you think?

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Transit-oriented development in Arlington: stunning success and some lessons (part 2)

2008-06-24T13:23:04Z

Yesterday I wrote about how Arlington, Virginia’s redevelopment along one of the Washington, DC region’s Metro subway lines has created an amazing amount of new mixed-use development - all without expanding the region’s development footprint, while preserving the community’s single-family residential neighborhoods, and while strengthening the county’s tax base.

If all Arlington had done was to provide new housing and office space in an existing community at smart densities, thus saving thousands of acres that might otherwise have been developed as sprawl on the region’s fringe, the planners would have earned our praise. But here’s the really good news: Arlington also greatly reduced automobile dependence, providing residents and workers with convenient transportation choices, putting shops and many other daily destinations within walking distance of homes and offices, and shortening distances for those who need or prefer to drive.

It worked. Today, fewer than half of the residents in the Rosslyn-to-Ballston corridor drive to work. 39 percent use public transportation, and over 10 percent walk or bicycle (2.3 percent work at home). Perhaps most significant, the additional 17 million square feet of office space and 24,000 homes have added only minimal automobile traffic. Mariia Zimmerman of Reconnecting America reports that the daily traffic count on the corridor’s main street, Wilson Boulevard, was around 15,000 vehicles in 1980; in 2004, it was 15,795. (In 1980, before the redevelopment began, the county had been predicting that the count would soar to 36,900 vehicles per day!) The count on nearby Washington Boulevard actually decreased from 1980 to 2004, from 20,000 to 17,230.

Arlington’s lovely single-family neighborhoods remain lovely, and now residents can walk to more neighborhood conveniences and Metro, without suffering the traffic increases people sometimes fear from intensive development.

As Roger Lewis points out in The Washington Post,

"The corridor functions well. It offers pedestrian-friendly sidewalks, on- and off-street bicycle lanes, plazas and mini-parks. It takes less than 10 minutes to walk between any two adjacent Metro nodes on the corridor -- Rosslyn, Court House, Clarendon, Virginia Square and Ballston. People there can get along without cars.
"Appropriately high densities and multiple uses -- commercial, residential, civic, cultural and educational -- are concentrated at each node. Intense redevelopment and convenient transportation have made the corridor successful as a place to live, shop and play, as well as to work or commute to work."

Well said. Although the corridor's redevelopment is outstanding, I can’t say that it’s perfect. Roger also notes that the “urban design is not flawless, and much of its architecture is less than exemplary.” I have to agree. Although I love Clarendon and find much to like near the Court House and Virginia Square stations, some of the new concrete-canyon development around the Ballston station feels uninspiring at best and oppressive at worst. Surely it confirms NIMBY fears of what transit-oriented development might bring elsewhere, which is too bad. I say to take Ballston as a valuable lesson to provide more architectural and building-height variety, along with more green space, in future development near transit, and look to Clarendon instead for the better model.

High-rise glitches aside, this is an amazing success story. The amount of development in Arlington went way, way up compared to what was forecast in the 1970s, while automobile traffic on the arterial and residential roadways basically stayed the same. New homes, shops, and offices were provided close to public transportation and close to the region’s center.

Arlington could rest on its laurels but, instead, the planners are now looking to innovative, citizen-endorsed redevelopment of another section of the county that has suffered decline, the Columbia Pike corridor, and this time the development will be supported by streetcar service. (Watch this space for a future post on Columbia Pike.)

I believe the country has turned a corner and this, not sprawl, is our future. Arlington is setting a terrific example, and I'm lucky to be able to visit anytime I want, right across the river from DC.

Did you see the Washington Monument and US Capitol in the photograph that opened yesterday’s post? If not, look again. You can see the Jefferson Memorial, too.