Results tagged “Sprawl” from Green Flow

The BP oil gusher should remind us that our civilization relies on unseen, not very well understood forces, especially energy and the environment, for our day-to-day economies.

Our institutions and communities have recently failed stress tests that pushed system designs beyond intended limits: whether it's toxic exurban real estate assets, climate-altering pollution or deepwater oil drilling.

The Post Carbon Institute just published my report, "The Death of Sprawl: Redesigning Urban Resilience for the Twenty-first Century Resource Crises." Random exurban sprawl and informed urban systems are the opposite ends of a spectrum. In this continuum, the interplay of economics, energy and natural resources management can be optimized (or wasted or ignored) through planning, design, behaviors and technology to yield astonishingly different outcomes.

The chapter will be in a Fall 2010 book being published by The University of California Press and Watershed Media.

We need to understand what stresses will hit before the levees reach their breaking point. When stresses do hit, we will better know how to respond quickly and systemically. Meanwhile, we're stuck with the impacts of scores of towns like Victorville, California, which were overbuilt during the height of 1990s and early 2000s speculation. I examine in detail just how Victorville became a poster child for foreclosures and why it is a harbinger for our economy, resources and oil use. Chances are if you are in the West, Sunbelt or Midwest, there's one of these towns out on the fringes near you.

Location of hyper-growth US Boomburbs 2000-2009 (click to enlarge)

Quickly developed and poorly planned exurban communities, called "Boomburbs," require cars for virtually every human activity outside the home, going to school, eating out, shopping, dating, seeing a movie, playing and of course, working. But working actually comprises only about 25 percent of the driving we do as a nation: the national reliance on cars goes far beyond our jobs, and is more based on how our communities and streets are designed.

(If that "Green Home" you see in so many magazines doesn't analyze how people get to and from that home, then it's probably far from being sustainable.) 

The foreclosures started in these exurban areas after gas prices started rising in 2006, impacting local communities, lenders and housing or strip mall developers that formed the points of the triangle, or a pyramid, you might say. A bank, rig or smokestack regulator won't limit the flood of bad paper, crude or carbon emissions if rules can be circumvented in order to make more money. That's the point when stresses build up, exposing failures that at first seem an outlier, then become more commonplace as the very fabric of the system gives way. 

Historically cheap gas was enabled by the federal government and foreign producers, combined with no-holds barred real estate development encouraged by the feds, states, and local communities, and of course the banking industry. Zero down homes are still being offered by developers and their agents in these sprawled communities. To be fair, many low-income individuals wanted to own or invest in their first home, but greed greased the transactions.

Sprawl was one of the major factors requiring more driving and more cars, leading to more time spent commuting, poorer health and ever-greater oil consumption. As a nation we needed to Drill, Baby, Drill in ever-more precarious situations, be it Iraq or the deep waters of the Gulf. 

Meanwhile, the ongoing foreclosure crisis in sprawled California, Arizona, Florida and Texas is undermining a national economic recovery, and will eat away at resources for decades to come: energy, water, time, investment, and security.

 
Real estate prices in or near transit-served Washington DC (green arrows indicate prices going up) and in car-dependent outlying areas (red arrows mean prices decreasing): Credit: Kaid Benfield, NRDC, 2010

Even before the oil gusher, smart institutional money started to avoid sprawl like the plague for the first time. Now, there is a new wrinkle: will the BP Deepwater Horizon incident change global access to oil and the public's cognitive understanding of what burning gas and driving really mean?

So far the reaction in this nation has been to talk about developing renewable sources of energy, including wind, solar and nuclear energy. None of those forms of energy have been used to power our cars and trucks on a meaningful scale--though they will in 10-20 years--so such talk is premature.

Other nations, such as China in wind and solar, are leading US development in such technology, so we are falling down in preparing for the distant day when cars will be powered mainly by renewable energy and alternative fuels (Brazil has gained dominance in producing non-food based ethanol).

Euro nations have tempered their oil addiction by taxing gas at a higher rate while also building denser communities requiring much less driving, and allowing many people to walk or cycle to their destinations. Besides being more energy efficient for residents, these cities and suburbs are also more attractive to businesses and tourists, with their density and mixed-uses (cheese and wine markets, parks, schools and office buildings) being a big part of the charm.

China and India are embarking on ambitious programs to build new cities and redesign existing cities, which is a necessity, considering their exploding urban populations. While automotive growth is a given in these nations (China just overtook the US in auto sales last year), both nations are weighing innovative metro-area designs. Tianjin, China has an "eco-city" district (one of 40 in the nation) that is planned to have 90 percent of all trips by public transit, bicycle or walking.

 

Denver, meanwhile, passed an innovative update to its zoning codes this week that will make its transit-oriented planning and investments more successful, reducing auto-dependent development and integrating more mixed uses into the city's neighborhoods.

Not everyone wants to or is able to afford living in a city or dense suburbs served by transit. But as "The Death of Sprawl" illustrates, we need to find a way out of the institutional, economic and environmental hangover from the last days of cheap and easy oil.

We can deny there's a problem and continue our delusional ways, or we can put the bottle down, sober up and get to work on seeing what the rest of our lives can really be.    

Warren Karlenzig is president of Common Current, an internationally active consultancy based in San Anselmo, California. He is a Fellow at the Post-Carbon Institute and author of How Green is Your City?: The SustainLane US City Rankings.  

How do we put the pieces together to make our cities and metro areas stronger than they were before climate change, energy volatility and the Great Recession?

(See "*answer" at end of this post...)

That's what I'll be discussing tomorrow (Tuesday) night on a panel, "Urban Resilience in Post-Carbon World," in Vancouver with Bill Rees, of Ecological Footprint fame, and Daniel Lerch, author of Post Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty.

The panel, sponsored by the Post Carbon Institute, will be open to the public and is part of a larger event on urban resilience bringing together local government leaders from Canada and the United States, as well as academics and practitioners in urban sustainability--er, resiliency--management.

Vancouver has been viewed for a decade as a success story in sustainable planning and programs. From the city's emphasis on increased downtown density, bikability and green buildings, including its sponsorship of a "21 places for the 21st century" contest, to a city farmer program for exchanging surplus fruit, Vancouver is on the vanguard of urban resiliency innovation. It also is one of Canada's most diverse cities, home to significant numbers of Asians from many countries, including India, as well as indigenous North Americans.

The rich offerings of the Resilient Cities event demonstrates that Vancouver is thinking ahead once more. Besides its Mayor Gregor Robertson, minions of regional and local government, non-governmental and business leaders will be putting on events, including:

• The Vancouver Design Nerds and Open Space Network will be facilitating an urban agriculture ideas jam while another group of food system experts and producers will examine "Planning Metro Vancouver as if Food Matters."
  
• A local university campus (BCIT Burnaby Campus) will be having a design charette, led by Ecocities founder Richard Register, to reduce its ecological footprint by a factor of four.
• City government and groups including TransFair Canada will examine how to invigorate local economic development through fair trade and sustainable purchasing.
• The city's "Greenest City Action Team" including the manager of the City of Vancouver Sustainability Group will share advice on engaging people in change.
  
• BC hydro will lead an interactive session on sustainable community energy.
• Provincial official will examine convening action throughout British Columbia (Vancouver's province) that achieves settlement in balance with ecology.
• Real estate experts including David Suzuki Foundation author Nicholas Heap will explain how climate change could impact the region's real estate.
• Other cities, from New York City, with former Sustainable South Bronx's Majora Carter, (a Fellow at Post Carbon Institute along with Bill Rees and myself) to Berkeley, California, will have case studies presented. AAt in 

Key to a successful event will be how well presenters and activities engage systems approaches for resilient communities, rather than just repackaging siloed sustainability chestnuts under a new label.

Besides regional government organization Metro Vancouver's hosting of a session on "The Politics of Decision-Making for Sustainability," Vancouver is making attempts at coordinating with Seattle and Portland on how to make the Cascadia region a more interconnected and better managed bioregional market. Cascadia forces helped push Amtrak to connect Portland and Vancouver for the first time without border fees, for instance.

Portland Mayor Sam Adams will be at the event with a contingent from that Oregon city, as will Jim Diers, author of Neighbor Power: Building Community the Seattle Way.

* The easy answer to my opening question, by the way, includes providing better regional collaboration, particularly in the area of land use, planning and transportation.

Unfettered growth in car-dependent sprawled communities proved during the past few years to be the biggest economic risk factor in real estate, endangering the whole US economy. Exurban Sun Belt homes and entire neighborhoods went from being hot properties to foreclosed or even largely abandoned, as rising gas price rises changed speculative economics from 2006-2009. 

Sprawl also has which has massive implications for higher average water, building and infrastructure energy use, increasing greenhouse gas production beyond tailpipes.

Which means that because of climate change, the issue of how to control and rethink sprawl on the regulatory and policy level should become a leading order of business in metro areas, states, nations and the world.

The unplanned sprawl that already exists will need to be re-engineered or "undone," which means that the alternatives provided by the Vancouvers and Portlands--transit-oriented development, multi-model mobility (including walking and biking), regional energy and food production--will need to be applied at regional levels throughout North America.

The suburbs and exurbs are ground zero for change, particularly in the United States, where though most people live in urban areas (79% in 2000), they do not live in big cities. Only a quarter of US residents live in cities above 100,000 in population, so no matter how green cities become, we must think in terms of metros and their smaller cities if we really want to prepare for the future.

Warren Karlenzig is president of Common Current, an internationally active urban sustainability consultancy. He is author of How Green is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings and co-author of a forthcoming book from the Post Carbon Institute on urban and societal resiliency     

Yesterday a special all-day confab in San Francisco hashed over the state and local impacts of California SB 375, the first statewide anti-sprawl measure in America, which was signed into law in September.

The law will be historic if it can hold its center.

Sprawl causes greater greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution than more compact urban or suburban development that is served by transit, walking and biking. 

Current research now points to sprawl as helping set the 2007 real estate meltdown into motion. The first foreclosure crisis occured when rapidly rising gas prices began to make long commutes more than people could afford in torid Sun Belt locations such as Phoenix, Las Vegas and California's San Bernardino County.

A study released this week by my firm Common Current provides data that demonstrates how car-dependent mainly post '50s suburbs have been hemmhoraging value, whereas central cities and suburbs served by good transit, walkability, bikeability and high telecommuting rates have held their value.

Senate Bill 375 will use carrots (permit expediting, special funding) and sticks (withholding federal transit funding) to make sure local government and developers build closer to existing or planned transit and take into account how much people will have to drive as a result of  proposed projects.

"Now we can do regional planning with teeth," said Peter Calthorpe, the long-time Smart Growth planner and head of Calthorpe Associates. "We have to determine just how sharp those teeth are."

 

While the sprawled regions of the US host a disproportionate amount of residential foreclosures, these outer rings also demand a disproportate share of service- and oil-dependent infrastructure (asphalt alone went up more than 300% between September 2005 and September 2008), proving mighty costly to government. 

The anti-sprawl bill provides regional land use and transportation guidance for the state's expansive and historic AB 32. Passed in 2006, AB 32 aims to reduce statewide greenhouse gas emissions 70 percent from 1990 levels by the year 2050. The California Air Resources Board is guiding the AB 32 policy body and enforcement with Goverernor Arnold Schwarzenegger's office, the CalTrans highway agency, and regional policy agencies.

SB 375 provides the state a new trowel for shaping the developed footprint of the Golden State's 163,000 square miles so it can limit carbon-hungry car-centric planning and construction. Besides encouraging infill, the intent is to stymie easy development of exurban agricultural land, wildlife habitat and natural resources. 

"SB 375 demonstrates we can get big complicated things done...in transportation, land use and environmental protection," said the bill's chief sponsor, California Senate President Darrell Steinberg in a video. "Together we have provided the template for Congress and other states." 

Senator-elect Mark Leno was present in the flesh, and he laid out how sprawl--non-dense, unconnected, auto-dependent exurban or suburban development--was a form of development that has seen its day. "How we plan and construct the community of tomorrow will literally determine our future.

Backed by the California Building Industry, The California Alliance for Jobs, many regional governmental and transit organizations, SB 375 contains designations for market-rate and affordable housing near transit, but not jobs near transit. This was a concern for some, as was how to garner basic program funding with decreased federal highway funding and a state budget meltdown.

Joked Steinberg, "I have 28 billion good reasons why I'm not in San Francisco," his video image said, referring to budget deficit meetings with the Governor.

Meanwhile, one member of the California Legislature called 375 not a great leap but instead "baby steps."  

"Baby steps?" I asked.

"Baby steps."

 

One of the most significant green trends makes for lighter impact on the planet while giving people what they find most valuable: more time to spend with their families and in their communities. New "mixed-use" communities such as the award-winning Dos Lagos development in Corona, California, 50 miles southeast of Los Angeles, locate homes close to amenities including shopping, entertainment, recreation and work, reducing travel time and fuel use. Through its preservation of open space and careful restoration of natural resources, Dos Lagos goes one step further, giving residents and visitors access to nature they can easily get out and enjoy.

To date, most mixed-use neighborhoods have been located in dense urban areas with easy access to transportation: think Manhattan, Chicago and San Francisco. But now, thanks to many forces including global warming and booming demand for urban-style living, more sustainable planning is beginning to come to suburban Sun Belt communities.

Dos Lagos, based in the Inland Empire of Southern California east of Los Angeles, the fastest-growing region in California, presents a vital example of a "live, work, play" approach for real estate developers, businesses and residents. State officials charged with reducing greenhouse gas emissions through more sustainable land use and planning by California's 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act, known as AB 32, are carefully following the progress of Dos Lagos.

There is an emerging need to have not only buildings be greener, but for entire developments or neighborhoods planned so that they reduce energy and resource use. The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), the entity behind the incredibly popular Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building certification program, is now working with Dos Lagos and 237 other pilot projects in 39 states and six countries as part of the highly anticipated LEED Neighborhood Development program, or LEED-ND. Other LEED-ND managing organizations include the Congress for New Urbanism and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"Dos Lagos and its combined residential, retail and commercial development is a prime example of cutting energy and resource consumption through smart planning and land use," said Rick Fedrizzi, Chairman of the U.S. Green Building Council. "We're proud to have Dos Lagos as a pilot participant in the LEED Neighborhood Development program." 

Rapid growth in affordable real estate markets near urban employment centers has been typically defined by completely separate strip malls, sprawling single-family housing subdivisions and office campuses. These car-centered configurations put a strain on local traffic, nerves and the environment. Corona, a city of 153,000 in 2006 has grown over 70 percent since 1990. Located in a rapidly developing corridor along US Interstate 15, it is approximately 11 miles from the city of Riverside. The Riverside-San Bernardino metro was ranked in 2002 by the non-profit organization Smart Growth America as the most sprawled region out of the 100 largest metro areas in the United States, in its peer-reviewed study "Measuring Sprawl and its Impact."

The Smart Growth America study compared and ranked overall metro area sprawl levels by measuring four criteria within each metro: street connectedness, the presence of an urban center, amount of mixed-use development and density. Dos Lagos and a handful of other suburban developments nationally including Prairie Crossing in the Chicago suburb of Grayslake and Aventiene in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Gaithersburg, Maryland, are attempting to counter unchecked sprawl. These master-planned developments reduce at least two of the four sprawl factors measured in the study by creating mixed land uses--including residential, retail, office and entertainment--with more density than is typically found in suburbia.

Dos Lagos' mixed-use redevelopment strategy appears has been very successful. In late 2007 the master developer of Dos Lagos, Ali Sahabi, President of SE Corporation (a Common Current client), was awarded California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's only Environmental and Economic Leadership Award in the Sustainable Communities category.
 
Dos Lagos also is the only real estate development endorsed by the Riverside Land Conservancy, a non-profit organization whose mission is to protect nature and natural resources.  

In terms of economic and market measures, Dos Lagos, has also been a sensation. Located on 543 acres of what was abandoned industrial land purchased by SE Corporation for $5 million in 1996, the combined valuation of Dos Lagos including its retail and office center is today approaching $1 billion. Retail occupancy for Phase I of Dos Lagos' Promenade Shops is 96 percent and increasing. Out of  485 available units  76 percent sold. An additional  565 apartment and condominium units are in development or in the planning stages for a total of 1050 living units in the community.

Higher-density suburban communities such as Dos Lagos are designed to get people to run into their neighbors. Whether it's through shopping, jogging or biking along paths and sidewalks for recreation, walking to nearby offices, or through community events and celebrations, mixed-use living reduces the need to drive while replicating the spontaneous pedestrian interactions taken for granted as part of city living. Access to outdoor recreational opportunities at Dos Lagos includes a walkable 18-hole public championship golf course, mile-long trails along the restored Temescal Creek, generous open space access and wildlife viewing. 

"We think of the community as the focus of all we do," said Sahabi. "Our community allows people to spend more time with friends and families, have a rewarding career, stay fit and healthy, while being able to conveniently buy groceries, shop, go to restaurants or entertainment, and enjoy nature. Dos Lagos provides a balanced lifestyle that is harmonious with the community, and that includes the natural environment.".

The Promenade Shops include 60+ high-end retailers, everything from a Trader Joe's supermarket to Coach and Anthropologie stores, along with a 15-screen multiplex and several upscale restaurants. A LEED-registered six-story green office complex of 160,000 square feet is nearing completion.

Dos Lagos' redevelopment approach is more common to core urban areas. Rather than developing on so-called "greenfield" land that could be used for open space or agriculture--grapefruit and lemons are still commercially grown in this semi-desert environment--the community is located on the restored grounds of an abandoned silica mining operation. 

SE Corporation has been working closely during the past decade with habitat, wildlife and open space conservation agencies and groups, including the US Department of Fish and Wildlife Services, the California Department of Fish and Game and the Riverside Land Conservancy. After clearing derelict buildings as well as heavy machinery and autos dumped on the site, the first challenge was restoring a natural aquifer that recharges the namesake "two lakes." and reengineering approximately 10 million cubic yards of on-site soils primarily remnant mining tailing, bringing the site nearer to its pre-mined elevations.

Today the two four-acre lakes, joined by a 120-foot bamboo pedestrian bridge located within the 8.5 acre garden-lake district, serve as the heart of Dos Lagos, offering a spectacular backdrop for performances with a 400-seat outdoor amphitheater, as well as offering naturally cool refuge for waterfowl and visitors alike during hot weather. The golf course and lakes use non-potable water primarily from the restored aquifer, instead of being dependent upon imported water from faraway sources.

Native and drought-tolerant plants and wildflowers, as well as shade trees are found throughout Dos Lagos. Lushly planted "bioswales" capture and naturally filter stormwater run-off from nearby paved surfaces, reducing water pollution and irrigation needs. During the land's redevelopment a dozen young and six massive 170-year old coastal live oak trees were meticulously preserved and strategically replanted along major boulevards.  

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, California hosts the most threatened species of any state in the nation; Dos Lagos contributes a key corridor connecting the coastal sage scrub, upland and coastal habitat zones for diverse wildlife. Despite heavy development in areas, Southern California still offers habitat is for 146 rare animal and plant species found nowhere else. Dos Lagos preserved and restored 165 acres of protected open space adjacent to the Cleveland National Forest, including Temescal Creek's rich riparian habitat.

Economically, Sahabi's one overriding goal for the commercial and retail elements of the mixed-use development was to address the historic deficit of jobs available in the region. Demographics for Riverside and San Bernardino counties from 2006 show that there was just over one job in the region for every four inhabitants. In the same year, nearby Los Angeles and Orange counties, by contrast, had about one job for every two inhabitants--indicating many Inland Empire residents have been commuting long hours by car for work in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

But that portrait is changing quickly. Because of this job-residential imbalance, Riverside and San Bernardino county job growth from 2000 to 2005 outpaced the rest of the state by a rate of more than seven times as much, according to the US Census Bureau (California's job growth rate was 3.9 percent and Riverside County's rate was 28.7 percent during the same period). Dos Lagos projects it will create 4,500 retail and corporate office jobs, which will contribute to improving the job-housing ratio while offering an alternative to the teeth-gnashing commutes between the Inland Empire and coastal counties.