Results tagged “transportation” from Green Flow

Dehli Metro, Phase One

Is India trying to turn a corner toward more sustainable economic development with its recent reduction in fossil fuel subsidies?

India's decision to completely cut gasoline subsidies last month has created national protests, as new unsubsidized gas prices rose to about $4.60 a gallon. The country has also reduced subsidies to natural gas, diesel and kerosene, all to balance a budget and reportedly redistribute money for economic development, including the planning of cities with more sustainable energy and transportation.

Gasoline will no longer be sold below cost by producers and retailers in India, as it had been until the late June announcement was made to end the subsidies, which have been cut $5.2 billion. That leaves the remaining government and state owned fuel companies subsidy spending at about $11.5 billion this fiscal year.

India has embarked on a program to develop new and greener cities, and to redesign existing cities for greater sustainability as its urban population swells in the wake of a national population that is forecast by the United Nations to surpass China's population by 2030.

The nation is moving from its agrarian roots to a service-based economy that has been boosted by the rise of the companies in information technology, health care and other professional services.

Clean technology areas being investigated for large-scale implementation with urban development include infrastructure investments in PV solar, geothermal energy, and advanced wastewater treatment. A new metro rail system in Delhi that opened a major line earlier this year is now one of the world's largest.

Indeed, India--like China--may be on a course to reinvent itself for the 21st century.

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.   

Black tarballs and goopy oil are washing up on the summery white sands of Florida's beaches. The Gulf oil gusher has reached a pivotal moment, not unlike Cleveland's Cuyahoga River catching on fire during the summer of 1969.

The burning Cuyahoga River became a symbol for a national ecological and industrial system so out of kilter anyone living at the time could see things were really screwed up. News reports and even songs, including Randy Newman's "Burn On," about the flaming chemical-contaminated water blazed into the public consciousness--I remember as a six year old in Chicago hearing talk about the burning river over in Cleveland.  

Partially because of the talismanic Cuyahoga, the United States was forced to enact clean water and clean air legislation that helped reform poor corporate and government management practices. Earth Day was also launched within a year and a potent social moment was hatched. The Nixon Administration supported the passage of new clean water and clean air legislation in Congress, and President Nixon even proposed in late 1969 a new oversight agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, for independent industry oversight, with stiff penalties for those that violated regulations. One of the first cities the agency "went after" when formed in 1970 was Cleveland, precisely because of its burning river.

We are facing the nation's worst environmental disaster, and it is becoming visceral.  Models from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predict that oil from the Gulf spill will travel from off Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida's panhandle, toward South Florida, the Florida Keys and the Atlantic Seaboard by summer (NOAA model image below). So don't be surprised to see more shots of tarballs, oily birds, turtles and greasy human feet. If you live in the Southeast or vacation there, expect to smell, see and feel them in real life.

"The smell is the worst thing," said NBC correspondent Anne Thompson Friday.  "Until you smell it, you haven't experienced it. It is so vile and it gets in your nose and your throat and your lungs and just stays there. The consistency is like a combination of molasses and chocolate syrup and it just stinks."

As Pensacola's famed white beaches are besieged by toxic fumes, tar balls and oil blobs, the first real audience reviews from average Americans are coming in, and they're not pretty. 

In the world's consciousness, it's one thing to have oil wash up on a coastal Louisiana "swamp"--though scientists and the fishing industry know that marine life, along with many bird species, depend on estuary wetlands for their existence.  It's quite another thing to prohibit Americans from enjoying their summer vacation at the beach, which endangers the Southeast's tourism and fishing industries, along with the service industries that rely on summer visitors for all or much of their livelihood.

What will happen next?  I wrote on early April 29 that the BP oil crisis could become larger in magnitude than the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. How much worse can this get? No one knows, but eventually government policy, consumer habits, technology adoption, media, and even real estate markets will be changed as a result of the BP oil gusher.

Stopping the oil from spouting into the ocean is of course priority number one.  Sunday some 10,000 barrels of oil a day were being captured by BP, with cameras showing more oil still spewing. 

Here are urgent needs that should be prioritized:

1. The Obama Administration must conduct a detailed risk assessment of the regional tourism industry, the fishing industry and regional services (haircuts, restaurants, plumbers, etc.)  that could be impacted by this tragedy. The geographic focus should include the Gulf Coast states, south Florida, Atlantic Coast (north Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina) and the open Atlantic. By my rough estimate below,  there could be an economic impact to the Southeast US economy of more than $52-78 billion, based on the following:

·         Gulf Coast commercial fish products $6.5 billion Total--$2-3 billion impact?

·         Gulf Coast and Southeast Coast share of $42 billion Total US recreational fishing equipment expenditures: $2 billion impact?

·         Gulf Coast $100 billion tourism industry Total --$30-50 billion impact?

·         Florida beach-related tourism $42 billion Total--$10 billion impact? 

·         Florida recreational fishing $5.4 billion Total--$1-2 billion impact? 

·         Florida commercial fishing: $5.5 billion Total--$1-2 billion impact?

·         Florida boating industry $18 billion Total:--$3-4 billion impact?

·         Georgia coastal tourism $2 billion Total--$.5 billion impact?

·         South Carolina coastal tourism Total $6.5 billion--$1-2 billion impact?

·         North Carolina coastal tourism Total $4 billion (estimate)--$1 billion impact?

·         Regional services associated with tourism?

·         Impact on Ecosystem services (wetlands that clean water, vegetation including mangroves that provide flood and hurricane buffer zones)--incalculable?

·         Heath Care costs for workers, and residents impact by air and water quality?

Such "full cost" accounting is now more than ever necessary to examine complete economic, climate, environmental and societal impacts.   

2. US subsidies to oil companies--some $15 to $35 billion a year--need to be curtailed, and transferred to Gulf oil clean-up funds and Gulf economic restoration, and also redirected to fund alternative transportation fuel and technology research and deployment.  
3. The Mineral Management Service agency needs to go. MMS's relationship to the oil industry is so incestuous it will be impossible to reform.  "Obviously, we're all part of the oil industry," one MMS official said to investigators who were looking into reports of graft, porn and drugs shared by MMS staff and oil officials. The feds need to create a completely independent oil and gas regulatory agency, similar to the EPA, but with greater power as energy is essential to the daily functioning of the overall economy. The EPA has already said that it might have a hard time penalizing BP because it is such as large supplier of fuel to the US military, including being the top supplier of military jet fuel.
4. Higher-vehicle mileage and alternative technologies need to gain much faster traction. We need more miles per gallon (beyond current goals) for conventional engines, more plug-in hybrids, and the development of more biofuel-burning engines that don't use food as a fuel source.
5. Can this finally be the time in our history when "recreational" cars and other joy-ride vrrooom vrrooms--at least oil and gas burning machines--stop being cool? That goes for jet skiis and race cars. After all, besides demanding all that gasoline, oil and oil-derived products (tires, hoses, asphalt roads), these machines are causing global climate change, not to mention regional and global air pollution, and water pollution from runoff.  Measures should be instituted so individuals using these machines purely for pleasure make the connection between their hobbies and the perilous quest for harder-to-justify oil.
6. The United States needs to consider less-polluting domestically produced transitional fossil fuels for transportation, including compressed natural gas. Recent discoveries have shown a large supply of domestic natural gas can--if used for transportation--can offset some of the need for risky deepwater drilling (though natural gas drilling has been shown to pollute some local water supplies, and such activities need to be monitored closely).
7. Here's the most obvious yet least discussed solution in public or the media.  Urban and community planning needs to be instituted that will reduce automobile dependence.  Cars use close to half of the oil used in the United States, with much of that use resulting from our national migration to poorly planned communities, which has been condoned and abetted by national, state and local policy. Yes, plug-in hybrids and electric cars will one day replace many of the gas-burning cars on the road today, but until then (15-20 years?)  transportation including cars and trucks will account for about 70% of oil used in the country, primarily in suburban/ exurban communities that lack public non-automotive choices for commuting to jobs, schools or for shopping, entertainment and errands.

It is time to face the sobering truth.

We, or at least all of us that drive or use goods delivered by or that contain oil, are the root of the BP Gulf oil crisis. Until, we change the way our communities are planned, operated and valued, we will unfortunately encounter with numbing frequency disasters related to oil that may be even more horrific than BP's gusher.

Denial and guilt, combined with entrenched financial interests (Big Oil and the Auto industry), have been powerful forces chilling media discussion about the need for less-oil dependent community planning--walkable neighborhoods with mixed uses and good public transit.

It's time to step up the post-oil conversation while implementing full-cost risk and reparation analyses. The Obama Administration and our nation have their work cut out for them:  there is a need to clean up not just beaches, Gulf communities and wetlands, but also the dank bureaucratic swamps of institutional corruption.

The burning Cuyahoga River demonstrated that a crisis truly can present numerous opportunities. Let's link cause and effect to powerful solutions by taking bold national and local actions that will have lasting impact, long beyond the narrowly framed BP Gulf oil disaster news-of-the-day.

Warren Karlenzig is president of Common Current, an internationally active urban sustainability strategy consultancy. He is author of How Green is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings and a Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.

With Mumbai, one of the largest cities of the world, treating only 30-40 percent of its sewage, experiencing five-hour traffic delays and hosting massively expanding unplanned slums, urban sustainability needs to be viewed through a different lens than elsewhere.

India will add an additional 26 cities of one million or more by 2030 to its 42 one million+ cities today. The 2008 population in cities of 340 million in 2008 will soar to 590 million by 2030. The need for much improved urban housing and health services, let alone better planning, governance and carbon management, threatens the nation's and thus the world's economic stability: India's population by 2030 is forecast to overtake China's. 

A report released this month by the McKinsey Global Institute, "India's Urban Awakening," provides a rich and thorough analysis of the challenges faced by Indian cities, while also providing a clear agenda for future improvements. Changes will need to occur at the local, state and national level, and will require the active participation of the international business community through public-private partnerships.

First the bad news.

As a contrast to China, which has staged much of its recent urban growth in nationally planned phases targeted at geographies, economies and infrastructure, Indian cities are experiencing rapid unplanned growth. Major financial investment, to the tune of $1.2 trillion over the next 20 years, will be needed to address how Indian cities are falling short of meeting even a basic standard of living in:

• Water supply: will need to increase 3.5 times current supply to meet basic demand by 2030
  
• Sewage: treatment will need to increase two times current levels to meet demand by 2030
  
• Solid waste: will need to increase six times today's treatment levels by 2030 because of consumption expected by an emerging middle class.
• Public transit access and service: 20 times the capacity of metros and subways will need to be added over what has been provided in the past ten years
  
• Affordable housing: will need to increase 10 times by 2030 to meet expected needs.
• Slum populations that now comprise 24% of India's urban population will need to be addressed with formal affordable housing programs and housing structures.
  

Oddly, no forecasts were made in "India's Urban Awakening" regarding the amount or mix of energy that will be needed to meet the needs of India's cities. With massive growth in electricity use for buildings (at least 40% of India currently is not connected to the power grid), large increases in personal auto ownership, and volatile global energy supplies and pricing, India is faced with urban growth-associated issues that if unaddressed threaten the very core of its existence as a nation.

According to the McKinsey report, however, India has sufficient time and the means (with international financial, business and humanitarian partners) by which to address many of these pressing or devastating issues. The McKinsey Institute report also presented a framework for a plan by which India can meet the financial need to increase spending on cities from its current rate of 0.5% to 2% of GDP.

On a per-capita basis, India now spends 14% of what China spends on its cities and only 4% of what the United Kingdom spends on its cities.

The key elements of the report plan outlined five strategies for meeting its urban financial obligations, most of which India currently ranks "poor" in:

1. Monetize land assets.
2. Maximize property taxes and usage charges.
3. Establish a formula-based grants systems from state and central government.
4. Use appropriate debt and private-sector participation (i.e., public-private partnerships).
5. Create enabling systems and city development funds to facilitate use of revenue sources.

The report also outlined four significant "dimensions" besides funding, on which Indian cities need to concentrate improvements in order to successfully transform urban economies and sustainability opportunities:

1. Shape: Where people live. Unlike China, India has made no real attempt to plan where growth of cities will occur, or to determine where new cities will be most needed, and as a result unplanned urban sprawl is increasingly common.

2. Governance: How cities in particular are governed. Develop executive leadership at city level in mid-sized to large cities. India is currently the only G20 nation lacking such leadership. Cities in India are currently governed by their host states from a considerable distance in many cases. The report does cite the success of Kolkata's (Calcutta) mayor-commission model as a potential national model for executive power combined with administrative-technical support.

3. Sectoral policies: These include economic development, sustainability management, and housing management. India does not plan enough for affordable housing, providing 200,000 units a year versus needed minimum of 2 million units. The number of people living in slums in 2008 was some 82 million, a number that could double by 2030. Recommendations are to establish funding, draw upon external expert advice and hire dedicated managers to focus on these areas.

4. Urban Planning: Change from ad hoc and sporadic planning. Develop longer-term plans (40-50 year) with nested 20-year master plans designating land uses, transportation services, infrastructure and building typologies that are actionable on the ground with transparent public processes. Use modeling and "fly-overs" to educate stakeholders of planning options (Singapore, London and New York are cited for best practices). India's current urban planning processes exist as documents only, and are not executed or followed in reality.

The report in its introduction observes: "The speed of urbanization poses an unprecedented managerial and policy challenge--yet India has barely engaged in a discussion about how to handle this seismic shift in the makeup of the nation."

From my experience, I would dispute the assertion that the country is barely engaged in such discussions. My firm Common Current and our partners have been involved in a lively series of exchanges with high-level officials from national ministries and planning bodies in India regarding the future of its cities, with sustainability focused approaches in renewable energy, water and transportation infrastructure being key points of discussion.

How India's national urban planning plays out on localized levels in actual cities, though, remains to be seen. Whatever may transpire, "India's Urban Awakening" is an invaluable resource for determining just how the path forward can be understood and, hopefully, navigated.

Warren Karlenzig is president of Common Current, an internationally active urban sustainability strategy consultancy. He is author of How Green is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings and a Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.

 

 
 

The top ten sustainability stories of the past decade was my last post. What trends are likely the next ten years? One thing for sure, 2010 through 2019 will be one day be looked at as 1.) the turning point for addressing climate change by using effective urban management strategies, or it will be remembered as 2.) the time when we collectively fumbled the Big Blue Ball.

 

 

 

1.      Bikes Culture 2.0

Time period: 2010-2019

 

Around the world, bicycles are becoming a potent talisman of our urban post-carbon future. The city of Copenhagen is making noise to replace the Little Mermaid of Hans Christian Andersen fame with something two-wheeled. Copenhagen residents use bikes for 37 percent of all their transit. But bikes in Europe represent more than utility; riding a bicycle with the Velib' bikeshare program in Paris now easily competes (42 million registered users) with taking a spring walk along the Seine. Bikesharing abounds in dozens of European cities as well as in Rio de Janeiro and Santiago, Chile. Look for North American burgs to continue their proliferation of bicycles-as-transit use and bike lane expansion (NYC bicycle use is up 61% in two years). Bikesharing on a large scale should follow new programs in Montreal, Washington DC, and Minneapolis. Note to China: time to reclaim your status as the world's "bicycle kingdom." 

Indoor bicycle parking will be common in commercial garages and offices even in businesses like cafes, bars (Gastalt Haus in Fairfax, California, is pictured above), stores and restaurants. On public transportation bicycles will be allowed access at any time. In short, bicycles and their riders will become legit, which will influence fashion, the economies and the design of cities in particular. As musician-turned-bike-rack designer David Byrne observed in his surprise 2009 bestseller Bicycle Diaries, US metro areas in particular might have to be re-engineered completely in some cases to accommodate this massive social transformation: 

I try to explore some of these towns--Dallas, Detroit, Phoenix, Atlanta--by bike and it's frustrating. The various parts of town are often "connected"--if one can call it that--mainly by freeways, massive awe-inspiring concrete ribbons that usually kill the neighborhoods they pass through, and often the ones they are supposed to connect as well.

 

2.      Mexico City, Climate Change, and the Future of Cities

Time Period: November-December 2010

 

Because "Nopenhagen" was a semi bust, the Mexico City United Nations Climate Change conference is taking on much bigger proportions than initially envisioned. The UN COP15 Copenhagen conference resulted in no binding treaty status among any of the 128 nations that attended for them to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. This year's late fall gathering in Mexico City is likely to set national binding targets for greenhouse gas emissions. If enacted, these targets will set the stage the coming entire decade's greenhouse gas reduction strategies, including sub-national efforts at the regional and city level. After disappointment in Copenhagen, UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon lost no time in preparing for Mexico City, calling on world leaders to sign a legally binding carbon-emission reduction treaty and to contribute to a multi-national fund for developing nations that will be opened this month. Let's hope such a fund adequately addresses sustainable urban development in Asian cities, whose currently unregulated hyper-growth is expected to contribute more than half the world's greenhouse gas increases between now and 2027.

 

3.      The Rise of Cellulosic Biofuels

Time Period 2014-2019

 

Creating conventional biofuels from corn, soybeans and palm oil as an alternative to petroleum-based gasoline hit numerous roadblocks in the past decade. Carbon-sequestering rainforests in Indonesia continue to be burned down for palm oil plantations; this unforeseen consequence of biofuel demand caused the European Union to back off on large orders of palm oil. Another big unintended consequence emerged when crude oil prices rose to record levels in 2007-2008. Biofuels, including corn-based ethanol created competition for agricultural land, resulting in an increase in the cost of food staples. Global corn prices, which biofuels caused to increase an estimated 15% to 27% in 2007 alone, were especially impacted.

 

Cellulosic biofuels, in contrast, offer the promise by the middle of the decade of creating a viable energy source (one of many that will be needed) from waste products, such as wood waste, grasses, corn stalks, and other non-food products. The trick will be to balance land use with energy production http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0602-ucsc_rogers_biofuels.html so that unintended consequences, particularly burning rainforests and urban food price riots (Mexico City in 2007 pictured above) will be a thing of the past. Backed by research funding from the Obama Administration's US Department of Energy (DOE), companies such as Mascoma Corporation and Amyris Biotechnologies (with former Amyris founder Jay Keasling now at the helm of the DOE Joint Biosciences Energy Institute) are some of the current leaders in the quest for a non-food biofuel.

 

4.      The marriage of ICT and Green Cities

Time Period: 2013-2019

Called "the great digital underbelly" of new and retrofitted sustainable cities by Gordon Feller of Urban Age, green ICT (information and communications technologies) holds promise for increasing the energy and resource efficiency of most aspects of urban development. If these technologies can offset their operating and production resource impacts (estimated to use 2-3 percent of total industry energy used, but forecast to double by 2022), the world could benefit from initial increased efficiencies in the 15-25 percent range (pdf). A crowded field that includes IBM, Cisco, General Electric, Siemens and others is positioning to implement new ICT for sustainability in cities, demonstrating applications at the pilot project level. Cities with pilot or operating projects in green ICT include Amsterdam, San Francisco, Masdar City (United Arab Emirates), Seoul, London, Singapore, Beijing, New Delhi, Mumbai, Stockholm and Oslo. The following are Green Smart City applications and examples of companies involved:

• traffic congestion monitoring and pricing systems: IBM, Capita Group
• water applications (leakage detection, purification): IBM, Siemens
• building applications (sense-and-respond technologies to monitor temperature, light, humidity and occupancy): Johnson Controls, Siemens, IBM
• intelligent public transportation and logistics: PwC, Samsung, Cisco
• public shared offices with telepresence (pictured above): Cisco, Hewlett-Packard
• home and office smart appliances that can tie in with smart grid energy applications: General Electric, AT&T, Whirlpool
• smart grids: General Electric, Schneider Electric, SAP, Oracle, ABB
• data centers for cities: Google, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco
• carbon inventories and carbon accounting: Microsoft, Oracle

     

 

5.      Implementation of Carbon Taxes

2010-2019

 

Exxon Mobil surprised many in early 2009 when it called for a carbon tax as a way to address global climate change. Whether the former denier of global climate change got religion remains to be seen. Carbon taxes have been proposed for oil, natural gas and coal by many as a way to adjust former so-called market "externalities," or impacts beyond classically defined air pollution, which now includes greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. A handful of nations have some form of carbon tax, mostly in Scandinavia. On the sub-national level, British Columbia and the San Francisco Bay Area recently proposed some form of the tax. Costs for carbon taxes can be passed on to consumers directly, or they could be levied on industry, which would likely cause manufacturing and operating costs to be wholly or partially passed onto consumers.

 

Currently, the costs of producing and using fossil fuels do not take into account the vast damage these activities do to the earth's climate, which is gaining atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at a rapid rate, endangering the stability of natural ecosystems, people's health, and the economy.

 

6.      The First Big Urban Climate Change Adaptation: Drought

2010-1019

 

A major effort at climate change adaptation is underway in California as well as other urban areas that are experiencing or are likely to feel the early effects from climate change. Prolonged droughts consistent with the impacts of climate change are being seen in Beijing, Southwestern North America (Mexico City/ LA, etc.) and urban areas in Southeast Australia.

 

As Maude Barlow (above) writes in her 2008 book Blue Covenant, cities are becoming hotspots not only for suffering from the effects of water shortages, but in many cases urbanization may be actually creating or exacerbating the severity of drought:

 

Massive urbanization causes the hydrologic cycle to not function correctly because rain needs to fall back on green stuff -- vegetation and grass -- so that the process can repeat itself. Or we are sending huge amounts of water from large watersheds to megacities and some of them are 10 to 20 million people, and if those cities are on the ocean, some of that water gets dumped into the ocean. It is not returned to the cycle.

 

Adaptation strategies will focus on preparing government, business and citizens for extreme heat events, wildfires (including urban/suburban wildfires), disease, and large-scale migration of populations from impacted areas. Some of the efforts will involve education and community outreach, such as Chicago's efforts to alert the elderly and handicapped to imminent heat waves, or having people check on others that may be vulnerable when conditions warrant. Other measures will require huge chunks of investments in urban  public and private infrastructure to prevent coastal flooding and to store dwindling seasonal water supplies, while health care professionals are likely to be first responders to new climate change-boosted disease outbreaks, such as dengue fever. The military is also likely to be added to the mix of climate change adaptation actors.

 

 

7.      End of Cheap Oil/ Onset of Fossil Fuel Shortages

2012-2019

 

Besides fresh water, oil is the most threatened increasingly imported resource in developed economies. Energy shortages or supply disruptions are expected to continue to develop because of political acts, terrorism, warfare and natural disasters. The issue is not that the reserves are "running out," but that getting at the remaining oil in a cost-effective manner is becoming increasingly more difficult, as has been outlined in multiple books by author Richard Heinberg (The Party's Over, Peak Everything) and others. As former Shell Oil CEO Jeroen van der Veer said in a 2008 email to employees, "Shell estimates that after 2015, supplies of easy-to-access oil and gas will no longer keep up with demand." Add the coming impacts of global climate change regulations to the scarce oil equation (see Trends numbers 2 and 5 in this post), and oil will continue to be an unpredictable flashpoint for the world economy. In 2007-2008, rapidly rising oil prices helped trigger a deep world recession; during the next decade oil may set off a chain of economic and civil events that could be far more severe.

 

With market uncertainty for oil prices and oil supplies, this new decade will witness the sunset of exurban-style automotive dependant sprawl in the United States and in many overseas copycat developments, particularly Asia. The overbuilt market for large, totally car-dependent single family homes in outer suburbia is expected by even some developers to not be viable for almost a decade, even if oil prices and supply stay relatively stable. A prolonged recurrence of oil prices above $100-150 a barrel will drive a stake through the heart of the exurban car-only model of real estate speculation, and will hit many other elements (food, imported goods, oil-based products) of the Western economy.

 

8.      Focus on Urban Agriculture and Foodsheds

Time Period: 2012-2019

As fuel prices rise and unexpected energy shortages occur, food prices will rise rapidly, especially for food that must be transported long distances via airplanes, stored and processed. The alternative is greater local and regional food production in and around cities. Existing cities in Latin America (Havana, Cuba--pictured above--and Quito, Ecuador), Africa (Dar Es Salam, Tanzania; Kampala, Uganda) and Asia (Seoul, South Korea), have produced significant quantities of produce or aquaculture within their city limits. Cities in North America that have maintained or are building or rebuilding strong regional food networks include Seattle, Honolulu, Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Some newly planned cities are being engineered to produce significant amounts of food that can also be used as a potential energy source or rich compost nutrient. Examples include Masdar City in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) and a supposedly scalable community plan called NewVista that is expected to be prototyped in the United States and in Asia: both are innovating the production of food from algae and other low-energy input nutrient sources.

 

9.      Resiliency planning: cities, towns, homes

Time Period: 2010-2019

 

Resiliency is about making a system or one's self stronger and more able to survive adversity. As the previous items portend, there will no shortage of adversity during the coming decade from climate change and energy supply instability. One of the major social phenomena related to resiliency has been the emergence of the Transition Town movement, which has grown from a few villages in the United Kingdom to Barcelona, Spain, Boulder, Colorado, and Sydney, Australia. The founder of the phenomena, Rob Hopkins, also a Post Carbon Institute Fellow, has used his transition model of Totnes, United Kingdom, to devise a global organizational playbook. The purpose of transition thinking is to prepare people for potential shortages in global energy supplies and food caused by peaking oil and climate change. In contrast to earlier "off-the-grid" movements of the 1970s, Transition Towns can be located in urban neighborhoods as well as in the distant boonies, and they focus on community-scaled solutions in transportation, health, economics and people's livelihoods and personal skills. Tactics of local groups vary widely, with events ranging from the familiar--clothing swaps and art festivals to the seemingly more obscure--"unleashings,"--to policy-laden activities, such as launching a long-term (15-20 years) "Energy Descent Action Plan." The emphasis is on understanding and using collective community resources, including knowledge and skills, that people have in their own sphere of influence, versus waiting for top-down government decrees.

 

10.  Sustainability Movie/ Novel /Art/ Song

       Time Period 2010-2019

 

 

There has yet to be a significant work of popular art that I am aware of that captures the modern systemic aspirations of sustainability. In terms of modern life, some works have focused on environmental destruction, (Marvin Gaye's song "Mercy Mercy Me"), the terror of abrupt climate change (the unsuccessful 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow), the international political subterfuge behind oil (2005's Syriana with George Clooney, one of my personal favorite films), and the destruction of natural systems (Dr. Seuss's 1971 book The Lorax) or cultural/species depletion (James Cameron's 2009 film Avatar), but no novel, song, painting or movie has come close to depicting a fictional world of what holistic sustainability solutions might look like, even feel like. Any suggestions of existing or planned works that would fit the bill?

Odds are that breakthrough art successfully depicting sustainability will feature or draw upon urban culture in some fashion. After all, cities have gone from being perceived as the opposite of what the "environmental movement" has been trying to save, to the epicenter of this new revolution that is launching in a city or neighborhood near you.

 

Warren Karlenzig is president of Common Current, an internationally active urban sustainability strategy consultancy. He is author of How Green is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings and a Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.

 

 

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."

 

There has been a populist uprising today among truckers about gas prices. They've banded together at 20 mph three-abreast on Interstates to slow traffic to a halt, in protest of record prices.

They want the government to intervene, as they pay $1,000 per fill up and can't make a living anymore. 

Locations for this sort of modern day Shays' Rebellion (crica 1780s), included the New Jersey Turnpike and Peoria, Illinois. (Though Shays, protesting agrarian debt in Massachusetts and the Connecticut Valley, didn't want the government to intervene.)

Will it play?

Photo: "Truck driver David Santiago, of Valrico, Fla., speaks to the media after about 50 independent truck drivers parked their rigs Tuesday morning, April 1, 2008 in Tampa, Fla., in protest of rising diesel fuel prices." --AP/Jeffrey Gold/Chris O'Meara

I am in the midst of a whirlwind green cities tour of Korea, lecturing and meeting with people on green city development and metrics. Tour was set up by State Department and US Embassy as part of a cultural exchange.

Day One:

Seoul 

Radio interview for Cafe USA, which also was filmed for Korean portal "Daum" (listen online). Met with Green Transport NGO leader Min Man-gee, first group to focus on transportation in this city of 10 million. They try to ensure safety for pedrestrians, cyclists and improve planning and use of public transit. Green Transport provides funds for families of victims killed in traffic. Amazing. Reported 64% public transit use in Seoul Metro, which they are trying to get increased to 70%. Seoul is already better in terms of ridership than anything in US (NYC 55%). I hope to blog more about this more in detail for Worldchanging.com

Lunch in Seoul old town area with professors from Chungang University, Konkuk Univesity, Kookmin University, Inceon Development Institute and Eco Plan Research Center. Talk of urban forest preservation and restoration. Korean food is a rich secret: fish, sauces, kim chee, cooked roots and radishes, numerous short-rice courses and broths. No barbecue in sight.

Korean Green Foundation. Turns out the foundation's energetic Executive Director Yul Choi is a former recipent of Goldman Prize in 1995, where my wife worked as program executive for 14 years. She recommended I look him up, but he was already on my schedule thanks to Embassy/State Department schedulers and we met and had dinner together after my presentation. I agreed to be on the advisory board of this, Korea's largest Environmental NGO along with Jane Goodall, Helena Norberg Hodge and Lester Brown. Did interview for national MBN TV to air Wednesday.

Day Two

Gyeonggi Province

This morning I presented to Korean Land Development Corporation, the government agency responsible for nation's planning and land development. I lectured to and was grilled by about 50 staff members in urban planning, "new town" development and clean transportation division. In the end I was invited to collaborate on ranking Korea's cities on green factors by director of that extensive effort, Duck Bok Lee. Lunch of more yummy, mostly unidentified stuff.

Photos by Warren: KLDC banquet, lunch fare


Busan

I write from Korea's second largest city, Busan (they don't call it Pusan anymore), which has about 3.5 million people, a giant port town in Southeast, where I took a bullet train with program people from State Dept./ Embassy. The ocean pounds outside my window. Had dinner and discussion with "Environmentally Friendly Busan" citizen group, including doctors (one from Green Doctors), a news anchor, dentist, YMCA and YWCA presidents, newspaper editor and city council member. We had good discussion about their goal of getting more open space for the city, as Korea is developing on a China-like scale from what I can see on my short tour of duty. The Green Doctors rep invited me to help in work he is doing with North Korea, which he says is environmentally devastated, in addition to floods, famine, etc. 

Time to sleep and do it again tomorrrow: Changwon University, Panel with UN and Japan in Changwon, "The Environmental Hub of Asia," etc.