Recently in Planning / Land Use Category

Friday was a typical feast day in the Bay Area for sustainability events. Something had to give.

The Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) held "Sustainable Communities 2008," West Coast Green did its annual show in San Jose and Gov. Schwarzenegger addressed the SF Commonwealth Club on the second anniversary of AB 32.

I spoke at West Coast Green on Sustainability Dashboards with Gil Friend of Natural Logic and Peter Sharer, CEO of Agilewaves. I've known Gil since the early 1990s, in 1997 we devised the Integrated Resource Efficiency Management Plan for Willie Brown and Mission Bay in SF. I had just met Peter at the event. We had a nice full room, good questions and no margin for error in a packed 45 minutes.

CNU's morning program was brilliant, with Peter Schwarz from Global Business Network; Whole Earth Catalog publisher and The WELL founder Stewart Brand; and Smart Growth guru Peter Calthorpe all honoring Sim Van Der Ryn, the legendary green building and community designer.

Schwartz told how a broken Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and an imploding Ferderal Interstate Highway System are leading indicators of the collapse of sprawl as the uberforce of American community design.

Said CNU President and former Milwaukee mayor John Norquist "Sprawl is the number one risk factor in real estate development," he said. "The good news is that you can retrofit sprawl and make it enjoyable."

Schwartz, who co-authored some of the leading scenarios (pre-"Inconvenient Truth") on the security impacts of climate change for the Department of Defense, said that global climate change demands something akin to a world EPA.

Calthorpe, of Peter Calthorpe and Associates, told the oft-repeated truism of how cities are leading the way with sustainability policy and thought over national government with a new twist: cities are sharing best practices by traveling around and kibbitzing with one another in what he called "lateral learning."

"The feds are last to get the message," he said, and he went on to illustrate how Sim Van Der Ryn's systems thinking (and doing) as State Architect under former California Governor Jerry Brown in the 1970s--passive daylighting, active solar, social engineering, geothermal and biomass energy, and bio-retenion systems--set the stage for his firm's projects with barrier islands in Lousiana, transit villages in Los Angeles and Portland's city streets.

Most memorable was Brand's video of a just-in-time market in Mumbai, India, that is unpacked when a train comes to let it through, and then people pop down awnings, produce and wares right on the tracks seconds from when the train has rolled through.

Meanwhile, Sim table hopped, to sit with his many different admirers. Sorry I had to miss his award and hope we are able to get together soon as planned. He has been using slides from my book How Green is Your City? in his presentations, we are on some parallel paths.

And Gov. Arnold? As I said, something had to give.

 

 

California's Air Resources Board (CARB) released late last week its Draft Scoping Plan, or what it is calling "a market-based roadmap guiding California toward its greenhouse gas emission goals."

 

The plan will be baked into more final recommendations by November, when it will begin to lay out what legal measures the state will take to reduce carbon emissions in 12 category subgroups, including land use (which includes transportation design).

 

Local and regional government is being called upon by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers to create more densely developed, better planned communities, meaning towns, cites and developments that have good public transit, walkability and bikeability so people aren't forced to drive everywhere for every need.

 

Transportation is the highest single category for carbon emissions in California, at 38% in 2004; unlike other categories, transportation is fast growing emissions--at a rate of 25%. In some areas of the state, such as the San Francisco Bay Area, transportation is responsible for about 50% of total carbon emissions. Other local or regional government areas targeted will be energy use, waste recycling and water use.

 

The state cites forecasts that global climate change can reduce California's GDP by 20 percent or more from droughts, heat waves and severely reduced snowpack, impacting everything from its massive water distribution systems to coastlines, low-lying properties and its large winter sports industry.

 

We're already seeing in California all-time record heat waves, droughts  and crazy numbers of wildfires. How much of all of this can be attributed to global climate change is debatable. After large parts of the state had its worst air quality on record last week from more than 1,000 wildfires that today required intervention from the National Guard, no one can reasonably argue that global climate change won't produce at least the substantial risk of significant health and economic impacts.

 

The AB 32 scoping plan puts climate change mitigation costs--for everything from low-carbon fuel technologies to building improvement--at between -1 and 1% of its GDP.

 

In terms of local and regional governments, economic costs will result from "policies to reduce (GHG) transmissions by changing how we grow and build our communities." Look for more actions like those taken by the Attorney Governor's office last year against Southern California's San Bernardino County for not including carbon emission impacts as part of planning and land use under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

 

Also expect regional "blueprint planning networks" to take a major role in determining how carbon can be cut through coordinated scenario modeling, planning, actions and performance indictor metrics. These blueprint networks are already working with the Governor's Office of Planning and Research to make sure general plans and projects are consistent with carbon output scenarios and indicators that will be required under CEQA.

 

Other parts of the mix may include congestion pricing, as well as other ways to reduce indirect sources that will reduce vehicle trips, such as The US Green Building Council's upcoming LEED--Neighborhood Development standards.

 

On the revenue-positive side of the ledger, towns, cities and counties should look to receiving "revenue generated as part of the program that could be distributed in a way to substantially mitigate any price increases."

 

Local and regional governments in California are also already the nation's leading beneficiaries of tax revenues from the rapidly advancing green economy. The growth of green technologies, such as PV solar, and advanced transportation (electric and plug-in hybrid fuel technologies), as well as building products and services (architecture, construction, landscaping, consulting) are some of the hottest growth industries in an otherwise stagnant job market.

 

All in all, AB 32 seeks a per-person carbon reduction from 14 tons for every state resident down to 10 tons per person by 2020.

 

So far, regional and local governments in California are expected to make only about 1-4 percent of these reductions; the next few months will shape until 2020 how every town, city or county will be expected to contribute its part in the nation's first major systematic carbon reduction legislation.   

Almost two weeks ago I presented to the European Union's Committee of the Regions special meeting on "Green and Connected Cities" which was held in Brussels. I also presented on the same theme at an event in Paris the same week.

(Please excuse the late post).

I was struck by how much more advanced Europe is in policy as it relates to the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to acheive sustainability, and that naturally includes economic dvelopment. The EU has an official mandate to use ITC to help not only reduce climate change through greater energy efficiency, but to:

"stimulate the development of a large leading-edge market for ICT-enabeled energy efficiency that will foster the competiveness of European Industry and create new business opportunities."

The event was oragnized by ACIDD, the European association for communication and information for sustainable development, and it featured 31 other presenters from Europe and Africa.

Two of my fellow presenters on my panel were notable. One was Charles Secrett, of the London Development Agency, who guided sustainability policy including but by no means limited to the congestion pricing scheme implemented by outgoing London Mayor Ken Livingston.

Though Livingston lost in a recent election, congestion pricing has been a great success reducing traffic congestion and air pollution in the range of 20-40 percent. Secrett told me it's anyone's guess whether incoming mayor elect Boris Johnson will maintain congestion pricing or Livingston's other well-laid plans for carbon reduction.

Also on my panel was Leda Guidi, head of Iperbola. She described in detail the electronic participatory democracy of Bologna, Italy, which has been garnering citizens votes and feedback on sustainability planning since 1995, with impressive participation rates (30k visits per day).

Cisco presented on its Connected Urban Development initiative which is working with cities such as San Francisco, Amsterdam and Seoul on everything from wireless building networks and transportation systems, to teleworking centers for commuters to use in lieu of driving. Madrid, Lisbon, Hamburg, and Birmingham, England are the next locations for pilot projects. 

A dose of realism was brought to the proceedings by Ronan Uhel from the EU's Environment Agency, as he said the EU's 27 countries and countless regions and cities will need to develop common data methodologies and processes to make these scale up across the EU.

"Stop exchanging data," Uhel told the Brussels audience. "And start sharing data, ontologies, multi-lingual websites, metadata and formats. Success will be predicated on the work that goes on backstage." 

EU Commissioner Nicholas Hanley gave paticipants the big picture of why cities should be the focus of sustainability and climate change policy engineering: "Cities concentrate the problems related to sustainability, but they also concentrate the capacity for response." 

 

 

Now that I've been initiated into the bicycle velolution through the Velib' bike sharing program in Paris, I can confidently predict further such successes in the United States.

With $5-a-gallon gas and global climate change mandates on the visible horizon, these programs come not a moment too soon.

Washington DC signed on this spring as the first US city to start such a program, where sturdy "comfort" (upright with plush seats) bikes are made available at automated racks. Swipe a credit card and get the bike at low costs for anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours.  In Paris its like one Euro, or a $1.60, though I have yet to get my credit card bill. After that initial period costs go up more.

In Paris last week I tried to navigate the push buttons on the Velib'  payment machine unsuccessfully at first, until an enlightened ex-pat told me you need to have a credit card with a chip inside of it like French cards have.



My American Express card had a chip, so with her help we made it work.

And so my wife and I both got our bikes. The 10,000 Velib' bikes at 750 stations in Paris are provided by the French advertising firm JCDecaux. They are distinctive upright handle-bar style beasts that have thick bodies, baskets, locks, and easily visible headlights and tail-lights that operate through pedal power.



We both found the bikes to be easy to operate, with three gears and hand brakes. Diana liked the way the bikes were stable on bumps (this was the first time she has been able to ride a bike since breaking a vertebrae in January, so this was a huge factor for her, a casual bike user). And I was just happy to join the thousands of people we saw riding them throughout the City of Light.

And ride we did. From our Left-Bank hotel, we rode past the Louvre and toured the sculptures of the Jardin de Tulieries, until the guards suggested that we walk our steeds. Before doing so, we even rode through a 1983 Richard Serra sculpture.

Other sights we accessed by bike included the Garden of Luxembourg, and the Catacombs,  as well as countless cafes, restaurants and friends' apartments. Night riding was especially cool because of the wild Parisian street sites, reduced traffic and our nice running lights.

The great things about the Velib' bikes is that when you reach your destination, you just deposit the bike in an open rental slot, stopping the rental clock and making it available for others to ride. You then have the option of jumping on the ubiquitous Metro if you wish.

One complaint--the bike rental racks get full at night and you sometimes need to hunt for others so you get off the clock. There's a way to tell the machine you couldn't find an empty slot, but I couldn't figure out how to do it. Also we had no helmets, and couldn't get any. Though we saw no one wearing helmets anywhere we rode in Europe, a testament to either good city planning, dangerous living, or both.

Many other cities have similar programs in Europe such as Brussels, Seville, Oslo and Vienna, and ridership is varied in terms of age ( we saw riders or passengers 2 to 90 years old), ability, race and social-economic background.

There are 100,000 people a day safely using Velib' in the massive urban center that is Paris, with no road rage, accidents or even near-accidents that we witnessed. I think it's time we either dispel the notion that bikes are unsafe in US traffic or change traffic so that bikes can be a significant part of the mobility mix.
  
Paris also had great walking directional signs for pedestrians, something I've only seen in Philadelphia. That's something else we should consider on this side of the pond, as many times I've noticed street signs are made for cars only to see--even in such eco-groovy places as San Francisco near its City Hall (at Franklin and Hayes, for instance)

With a furious round of meetings in Washington DC and in Sacramento, California, cap and trade for greenhouse gas emissions will be happening in some form in the near future. Cities and metros look like they may have a hand in trading allowances, which will mean a whole new landscape for sustainable land use and planning.

Congress is considering Lieberman-Warner and California, which passed AB 32 in 2006, is starting to lay out its blueprint for its own cap and trade system. It's been done before through the Clean Air Act for other pollutants, but this will be the Big Kahuna.

The goal is to reudce greenhouse gases by 66% (Lieberman) or 80% (California) by 2050, with differing baseline years.

Enlightened efforts in land use and planning, including transit dvelopment, should be the beneficiaries of credits for development, if carried out along the lines of the US Green Building Council's LEED for Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND).

There are many other details, but what is called in the cap and trade world a "downstream" transportation carbon-limiting mechanism, would provide regional and local government flexibility in taking actions to reduce their collective carbon output from transportation (the largest GHG emission category in California, with the largest part being trips made by cars and light trucks).

This is the scenario by which sustainable land use and planning allowances could provide funding for greener local government planning and land use to reduce skyrocketing American vehicle miles driven averages.

"Upstream"-only actions would limit emissions of carbon at the refinery through allowances based on the amount of fuel they sold, with that being the major point of economic impact for the transportations sector. Gas costs would go up unless the refineries absorbed the costs, and the risk is that cities and regional government might continue business as usual, which would mean continued vehicle mile driven increases.

California's efforts and findings as they relate to AB 32 land use regulations at the regional and local government level are mostly summarized in the following three documents: Haagen-Smit Declaration, Seascape Action Plan and in the LUSCAT draft report (warning 86-page document).

Look for an update in late June as the scoping plan for the land use subgroup for AB 32's Climate Action Team gets released by the California Air Resources Board and stakeholders.

The upcoming AB 32 land use release will have implications not just for California, but for our nation and other nations, too. Transportation has largely been unregulated under Kyoto, even in Europe, which has the world's largest carbon-trading market.

California's globally influential AB 32 climate change legislation received lots of attention when announced in 2006, but it's harder to figure out how it's unfolding as it goes through the policy meatgrinder on the way to the sausage factory (kudos to Winston Churchill!).

After dozens of public hearings for public and private industry input, the first major scoping report is due for completion Wednesday. From my sources, it looks like the main target to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 (and 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2050) will be vehicle miles traveled.

The draft scoping plan for state recommended policies and programs is set to be released in late June for public comment, with a final report due in November 2008.

The main category slated for reduction, Transportation, is responsible for more than 41 percent of GHG emissions in California, unlike other states, where utility power plants are the primary source. Electric power is responsible for only 19 percent of Cali's GHGs.

The state's Air Resources Board, which is managing AB 32 implementation, is targeting Per Capita Vehicle Miles Traveled reduction as the best metric for cutting transport impacts.

The Board said in an agenda for a private forum to be held later this week that California cannot meet its AB 32 goals through technology alone: "reductions in vehicle use will be necessary."

While this agenda also correctly states that "land use is a main driver of long-term reductions," hopefully the Air Board and its private forum attendees will be addressing positive drivers--er, incentives--that can greatly limit future transportation GHG impacts.

Positive actions frame the issue so people, businesses and local government think of what they can do and how they can do it, not what they should do less (drive).

Shall we run through the list?:

* Use public transit more/ fund more public transit (reduces household GHGs by 10 percent if only one household member regularly uses public tansit!). And now that oil/ gas are ready to skyrocket further, keeps money in local economy much more effectively.

* Carpools, car sharing. Make it easy with HOV freeway lanes, employer and government incentives. Gotta love Post Carbon Institute's Solar Car Share program that uses electric cars to reduce the need for GHG-producing vehicle ownership and use altogether.

* Walkability of neighborhoods, developments, cities. Require sidewalks (so much is built these days without them), safe cross-walks, nice streetscapes. Also reduces obesity, our nation's number one health epidemic. Becoming a valuable real estate market feature.

* Mixed-use real estate development: Having jobs, retail and homes in same neighborhoods or development gets people walking and biking to work and shopping, schools and entertainment. The US Green Building Council's LEED-ND standards are a good new benchmark for this approach, another attribute that increases real estate value.

* Plug-in hybrids for city fleets and city employees. Cities, their operating budgets and city-wide carbon emissions will fare much better with 100-200 mpg performance than 20 mpg.

* Communications and IT technologies that help people use public transit more effectively, and that help people carpool, car share or use co-working centers. Cisco and other companies are developing Connected Urban Development; I'll be traveling to Brussels next month to meet with the European Union on this approach, as well as to propose land use and planning metrics that the European Environment Agency may adopt.

Stay tuned for updates of AB 32 progress as it moves down the pike.

 

 

 

This is final entry on my Korean cities tour, sponsored by the US Dept. of State and US Embassy in Seoul.

I'm back in the US after five days in Korea, on a hectic, though quite successful visit to cities of Seoul, Changwon and Busan to lecture at universities and meet with Korean officials about the development of green cities.



Seoul Redux

I took a relaxed journey to Seoul on the high-speed Korean National Rail from Busan--I loved the way the conductors ceremoniously bow to the passengers after entering or before leaving each train car, and the Korean folk music that plays before each station announcement. We then went to Seoul National University, where I was to deliver a lecture at the school of Architecture and Urban Design and graduate school of Environmental Studies.

(Seoul National University is the top public educational institute in the nation.)



First we made a courtesy visit to the Dean of  Architecture and Urban Design, Kiho Kim.  Dr. Kim told us he is preparing this summer to open the Asian Sustainability Institute on the campus, the first such institute for all of Asia. I look forward to collaborating with Dr. Kim and other partners on the institute's positioning and planning.

Seoul National University in conjuncton with the city of Seoul is also hatching a plan to make the university campus a living model of a creative and green neighborhood, celebrating the arts, cultural attractions and the latest in sustainable urban planning, design and technology. Think of a green Dinkytown, the off-campus neighborhood near the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where Dr. Kim previously taught, he told us.


After lunch with Dr. Kim and professors Kyung-Jin Zoh and Jong-Sang Sung, I lectured to about 50 professors and students, including one professor that is working with the Korea Land Corporation on the Korea cities indicators project I mentioned in my second-previous blog entry (see "Halftime Report" blog from March 12).

Our final stop was Seoul City Hall to present to and meet officials from the city's "Green Seoul" program. Seoul's sustainability efforts appear to be more siloed than those of leading US cities, with "green" efforts having separate city management from such areas as city public transportation, fleet management and renewable energy.

On the subject of climate change and carbon action planning, however, I was told by Seoul Green deputy director Yoon Jong Choi that Seoul will be sponsoring the C40 Large Cities summit meeting of the world's most populous 40 cities, sponsored by the William J. Clinton Foundation's Climate Initiative. I attended the first C40 summit in New York City last spring and hope to be back in Seoul for the next C40 event in 2009.



My final night in Seoul was spent checking out the very cool Myeongdong neighborhood with the US Embassy's Eun Kyong. We had green tea lattes and cheesecake, made from local organic tea grown in the southwest of Korea. Turns out Koreans are also very concerned about pesticide and pollution food contamination from Chinese imports, especially heavily pesticide sprayed tea.

Huge thanks to Choi Eun Kyong, assistant cultural affairs officer Jeffrey Beller, Jean Vander Woude, John Dyson and my interpreter Kim Chi Young for all their excellent planning, cultural guidance and hard work in putting the trip, lectures and meetings together. It's extremely heartening to know that the US Embassy has such high-caliber representation overseas!

I'm sure future developments resulting from this tour will be forthcoming. I'll keep you posted.