Cities, Going Green Bill Lascher Cities, Going Green Bill Lascher

Where should green planning efforts come from?

Hundreds of urban planners, architects, developers, environmentalists, entrepreneurs and policymakers danced around this question last week as they convened on Portland for the second annual Ecodistricts Summit.

Hosted by the Portland Sustainability Institute (PoSI), the event complements a maturing experiment to make five of the Oregon metropolis's neighborhoods into "Ecodistricts," neighborhoods designed to be more sustainable.

Photo of Portland bike lane courtesy Flickr user Eric Fredericks

Photo of Portland bike lane courtesy Flickr user Eric Fredericks

This week's post for High Country News's "A Just West" blog explored discussions that came out of last week's Ecodistricts Summit in Portland. Check it out here or read it -- and many other great stories -- on HCN.

Hundreds of urban planners, architects, developers,  environmentalists, entrepreneurs and policymakers danced around this  question last week as they convened on Portland for the second annual Ecodistricts Summit.

Hosted by the Portland Sustainability Institute (PoSI), the  event complements a maturing experiment to make five of the Oregon  metropolis's neighborhoods into "Ecodistricts," neighborhoods designed  to be more sustainable.

Though the ecodistricts concept is defined differently in different  cities, in Portland they are built around developing ambitious  sustainability goals that stakeholders in a strictly designated  neighborhood commit to meeting. These goals might include capitalizing  on district  energy to limit the need for power generation from outside the  neighborhood, encouraging transit oriented development and walkability,  or establishing neighborhood-wide building efficiency standards.

But backers of all sustainable growth projects need to focus more on  building community support, said John Knott, the president and  CEO of Noisette LLC, which is working on a sustainable restoration  project in the lower-income area of North Charleston, South Carolina.  Ambitious energy efficiency goals and other high tech solutions to  environmental problems will fail if they come without the buy-in from  communities who are just trying to make ends meet.

"We have a huge social mess we have created in the last 40 years,”  Knott said in the event's opening panel, referring to the segregation of  communities by income, lack of access to environmental amenities by  many low-income neighborhoods, and the problems of gentrification and  urban flight. “If we don't fix that, we will have a revolution and it  will be justified.”

It's rare to hear a developer publicly stress the need to  rearrange underlying social structures. As Knott noted, the problem of  poor planning and design doesn't just face urban areas. He believes  people will flee suburbs, putting further strain on central cities without solving growing economic imbalances.

Portland's own proposed ecodistricts weren't identified internally by residents clamoring for greener planning.  Among other motivations for their selection, each is already part of an  urban renewal area set for infusions of redevelopment funds.

One of them, the largely commercial Lloyd  District, will be one of the first to experiment with an ecodistrict  designation. It will model its efforts on the success of a previous  project, a transportation management association that corralled  investments in mass transit infrastructure and developed incentives that  encouraged office workers to take transit or ride bikes to work, said  Rick Williams, the TMA's executive director. Now the district wants to  replicate the TMA's success with a “sustainability management  association” to set the new ecodistrict's goals.

The first steps toward defining sustainable development goals for  the neighborhood won't include everyone who lives and works there,  though. Instead, Williams said, the first step requires targeting major  land owners to sign “declarations of collaboration” on the ecodistricts  project.

“We believe we have to start with developers because we know them  and because they have bigger checkbooks,” Williams said. “The real key  to this is getting key stakeholders in the room and defining targets  before we start talking about solutions.”

Williams is right. You can't solve a problem without defining it.  When we're talking about sustainability, though, are property owners and  major institutions really the only “key stakeholders?”

Probably  not. Green initiatives don't mean anything if behaviors don't change,  and it's hard to change behaviors among people left out of the  decision-making process. Some of the organizers of Portland's ecodistrict movement get this. Tim Smith, a principal and director of  urban design for Portland Architecture Firm SERA touts a concept of a  “Civic Ecology.”

“We're in danger as an expert class of creating a bunch of great  green hardware where we have an ignorant citizenry that is obliged to  buy this stuff, as opposed to having citizenry own their  sustainability,” Smith said.

Most people in the sustainability and environmental movements  know there's a need for equity, justice and economic opportunity, but  they don't have clear models for providing opportunities to marginalized  communities, said Alan Hipólito, the executive directory of Verde,  which works in the Portland neighborhood of Cully to build links between  economic health and sustainability though job training, employment and  entrepreneurial opportunities. Cully is not included among the five officially designated ecodistricts.

Hipólito was the first to explicitly discuss the risk of  gentrification, though it was implied by others during the three-day  event (a point also discussed in a post about the summit in  the Portland Architecture blog).

“Our sustainability movement makes investments in certain people and  places,” Hipólito said. “This movement has not prioritized diversity.”

He  said residents of his neighborhood have joined together at a grassroots  level to address Cully's lack of environmental wealth, mostly from  within, without being directed by outside organizations.

“From our perspective, it means investing in assets that meet  community needs as an anti-poverty strategy first that's going to  automatically build environmental benefits in an area,” Hipólito said.

Statistics  from the Regional Equity Atlas, a project organized by the Coalition  for a Livable Future, reveal that 18 percent of the neighborhood's  residents live in poverty, about twice the regional average. Access to  parkland is far below the regional average, and access to natural  habitats is even worse. That's why Verde gets developers to sign  community benefit agreements that provide well-paying jobs – many to  minority and women owned businesses – on projects that keep what  resources – even unconventional ones like district heat – in Cully.

“When you put all this together we suddenly discover we're making an ecodistrict, so we've decided to call it that,” Hipólito.

Portland  isn't alone among cities toying with ecodistricts. Denver's Living City  Block and the Seattle 2030 District, for example, share ambitious goals  to slash energy usage and promote economically revitalized urban  districts. Each also relies on partnerships with property owners, and  that top-down focus leaves me wondering how engaged those cities'  citizens will be in positioning their communities as models for global  change.

I'm not suggesting that large property owners and developers  shouldn't be engaged. Clearly they're important stakeholders, but it  seems like the most successful approaches – like the one already  underway in Cully – secure the participation of the entire community  first.

Photo of Portland bike lane courtesy Flickr user Eric Fredericks.

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Bill Lascher Bill Lascher

A Renter's Market?

For the first time in decades it's cool to be a renter. So why is it so hard to rent a home and still be “green"? This week, as news outlets across the board reported a steep decline in home sales and prices in July, especially in the West, some reported increased preferences for renting, especially with the added uncertainty wrought by high unemployment levels. Particia Orsini of AOL's Housing Watch reported Aug. 26 that Americans, particularly homeowners, are now more likely to think that renting a home is more prudent than buying one. Other news outlets, such as Forbes and the Real Estate Channel and Time's “Curious Capitalist" blog, also recently dissected the growing preference for renting.

Orsini cited statistics from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies. I took a glance at that report – titled State of the Nation's Housing 2010 – and found it shows that rental vacancies grew from 2006 to 2009, even though the renter pool was growing at the same time. In fact, U.S. Census Bureau housing vacancy survey data cited by the report shows that fewer people own homes in the West compared to any other region in the nation. The same numbers also show that nearly three-quarters of white Americans own homes while fewer than half of minority populations do.

So, what does this all have to do with the environment?

My latest post for High Country News's"A Just West" blog explores why it isn't easy being green if you're a renter

For the first time in decades it's cool to be a renter. So why is it so hard to rent a home and still be “green"?

This week, as news outlets across the board reported a steep decline in home sales and prices in July, especially in the West, some reported increased preferences for renting, especially with the added uncertainty wrought by high unemployment levels. Particia Orsini of AOL's Housing Watch reported Aug. 26 that Americans, particularly homeowners, are now more likely to think that renting a home is more prudent than buying one. Other news outlets, such as Forbes and the Real Estate Channel and Time's Curious Capitalist" blog, also recently dissected the growing preference for renting.

Orsini cited statistics from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies. I took a glance at that report – titled State of the Nation's Housing 2010 – and found it shows that rental vacancies grew from 2006 to 2009, even though the renter pool was growing at the same time. In fact, U.S. Census Bureau housing vacancy survey data cited by the report shows that fewer people own homes in the West compared to any other region in the nation. The same numbers also show that nearly three-quarters of white Americans own homes while fewer than half of minority populations do.

So, what does this all have to do with the environment?

Everything. When we discuss incentives for energy efficiency we often focus on homeowners. Doing so leaves out millions of Americans, who by necessity or choice, rent their homes instead of buy. These renters may not be paying property taxes, but they still often pay for utilities such as electricity, gas and garbage disposal. As fewer Americans own homes, more will rent. Since they're more likely to be renters, minorities are less likely to have access to financial incentives for making their homes more environmentally friendly. (The same could be said of residents of any ethnicity living in the West, where home ownership rates are low.)

In an Aug. 18 Palo Alto Online article, Ryan Deto points out that the thousands of dollars in upfront costs for homeowners to install solar systems or edible gardens are out of reach for low-income renters. Those costs would be even greater for a multi-unit property owner who, in many cases, isn't the one who would see the savings of efficiency measures on utility bills.

That's why it was encouraging to read Willey Staley's Aug. 24 “Urban Nation” column in Next American City. In the piece, Staley described how an 81-unit senior housing complex in Boulder, Colo., was one of 100 affordable multi-family housing complexes to receive a share of $112 million in stimulus grants and loans from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for green retrofits such as solar panels and new, more efficient appliances.

In lauding the grants, Staley captures some of the early drama and, dare I say it, hope for a possible “Green New Deal” that surrounded early coverage of the economic stimulus.

“In a sense, this is a perfect example of what the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act was supposed to accomplish,” Staley writes. “It saves money both for property owners and tenants (emphasis mine), the federal government, creates domestic green jobs, and will contribute to reducing carbon emissions down the road. It’s hard to imagine a program that better encapsulates the Obama Administration’s policy goals: public spending that attracts private investment in more sustainable technologies, and helps ensure long- and short-term prosperity.”

Staley's optimism is great, but there's a problem. The West – which is being hit harder than anywhere else in the country by the shifting housing market – received far less than other regions from HUD's recent series of green retrofits. Of the 100 green retrofit awards announced by the department (the department's press release about the retrofits includes a link to a PDF copy of the list), only 17 were directed at projects in the region. In fact, money was doled out for projects in but five states in the region – California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada and Colorado. Of the nearly $112 million in awards, only a little more than $15 million, or about 14 percent, went to these states.

Even so, the grants only serve low-income renters who live in federally assisted housing. Millions of low-income renters don't, as detailed in the Harvard housing study.

“Despite federal support for rental assistance of about $45 billion per year, only about one-quarter of eligible renter households report receiving housing assistance,” the report's executive summary said.

If we want lasting economic and environmental prosperity shouldn't we as a nation be investing in everyone who is participating in our economic system and interacting with our environment?

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California, Journalism, Development, Housing Bill Lascher California, Journalism, Development, Housing Bill Lascher

The eyesore, history and the untold story

What are we really protecting? We have a great deal of unsold housing stock. Oxnard has buildings that already exist. Ventura County has miles upon miles of substandard homes and poorly utilized space. What if we spent the same time, the same money, the same energy and investment and subsidies we would put into new projects on instead reconstructing the cities and communities and neighborhoods that already exist? What if we brought our county, and our country, back to life?

The Ventura County Star reported Oct. 30 that Ventura County Superior Court Judge Glen Reiser halted the demoliton of the Wagon Wheel hotel. The stay came after what seemed like the end of a long fight between developer Vince Daly and the San Buenaventura Conservancy.

Many comments posted to the Star's Web site featured the theme of the Wagon Wheel as an eyesore, a blemish to the entrance of Oxnard, Ventura County's largest city. The building and its surroundings, they argue, should have been torn down long ago. Some commenters argue the conservancy should repay Daly for the costs of the delay, costs he claims mount by the thousands each day the construction is delayed. For his own part, Daly argues in the Star article that blocking the demolition permit further delays construction of the affordable housing element of his development. On the other hand, neither Star reporter Scott Hadly, his sources on either side of the story, nor any of the commenters pouncing on the article address one crucial question: why is Daly building this project now? Why is it so urgent?

Drive across the 101 from the Wagon Wheel, located here and one finds the massive development known as RiverPark. On the north side of the freeway, just outside of that development, stands a billboard declaring homes starting from "the 200s." That simple advertisement, that homes in RiverPark are selling for only 200 grand, tells the entire story. Homes aren't selling in Ventura County. Even with reports Oct. 29 of an unofficial end ot the "worst recession since World War II," our economy is sputtering. Should Daly, or anyone, be building new homes right now?

Let's argue for a moment that he should, that he has a right to, or that, simply, as the owner of the property upon which the Wagon Wheel Motel stands he should be allowed to finish the project he's started. Does that mean A) It's right if he does so or B) It's wise if he does? Daly seems to be gambling that by the time the project is completed we will be out of this gut-wrenching time, that consumers are going to return to the table unaffected by the misery of the past two years, give or take a quarter, that every American is going to want a condo or a townhouse across a freeway offramp from a cookie cutter mini-mall and down the block from a thousand other condos and townhouses just like their very own (though the possibility of a "transit center" at The Village raises some intriguing possibilities).

Are we so sure of that? Are we so sure that our behaviors are not going to change after this recession, that we're not going to think strategically, that we're not going to act differently, that we're not going to operate differently? Even if we get ourselves into some other economic mess — which is quite likely — some lessons, even if they're not the right ones, have surely been learned during this period.

Besides the possibility Daly is hoping for a boom by the time The Village is done, another reason one might want to see it started immediately directly relates to the current economy. Perhaps, one might argue, every day we hesitate to build is a day we cost ourselves valuable construction jobs, jobs that could earn money to feed families, jobs that could pay residents money they can use to spend on clothes and food and cars and gadgets and all the other everythings sold in the county's stores. Aren't we, by blocking those jobs, which provide that income, which allows that spending also preventing the economic growth that comes from that spending, preventing the jobs created by that growth, and preventing the income those jobs allow?

Perhaps.

What are we really protecting? We have a great deal of unsold housing stock. Oxnard has buildings that already exist. Ventura County has miles upon miles of substandard homes and poorly utilized space. What if we spent the same time, the same money, the same energy and investment and subsidies we would put into new projects on instead reconstructing the cities and communities and neighborhoods that already exist? What if we brought our county, and our country, back to life? We might accomplish multiple goals. We would still put our contractors and construction crews and architects and plumbers and electricians and welders back to work, but we would do so without turning our backs on our neighbors and on our past. We could engage our community. What if we integrated our history into our past, instead of throwing it out? What if, instead, we learned to reuse the materials that already exist across Ventura County and beyond, to really recycle the world in which we live, rather than throw it out like the 4.5 pounds of trash we still throw away each and every day?

The Untold Story

Meanwhile where is the Ventura County Reporter? The county's alternative newsweekly — which I edited from 2007-2008 — has the luxury as a weekly publication to dig deeply behind this story. Why hasn't it looked at the subject in more depth since Matt Singer's 2006 examination of the project, in which Singer took the time to speak with Daly? The Reporter barely touched on the topic since then. (including during my time at the helm, though I did mention it in this Nov., 2007 piece about a proposed traffic control initiative in Oxnard). In March, Staff Writer Paul Sisolak wrote a piece about the Conservancy's lawsuit against the city for allegedly violating state environmental rules by approving the project, but that's the only significant reference. Sisolak's piece introduced the story, but it paired extensive discussion of the conservancy's position with only a brief quote from a city councilman supporting Oxnard's official position.

The quote is, in fact, a doozy. Oxnard Mayor Pro Tem Andres Herrera told Sisolak "But I vividly recall … that the original plans the owner had never included preservation. I just don’t see the historical significance to a dilapidated hotel.”

What original planner of any building includes historic preservation its plans? Who sits down and says "this will be a historic space?" (actually I imagine there are many ego-driven builders who proclaim the significance of a building, but I believe you understand my point)? Again, isn't there an argument to be made that perhaps the reason the complex is dilapidated, perhaps the reason it looks so uninviting is because it has hung in limbo for so long?

More importantly, why did the Reporter stop there with that story? Granted, the Oct. 30 stay occurred after the most recent Reporter went to press, and Reiser's decision two days earlier not to halt construction may have missed the print deadline as well; however, where was the paper for the runup to the decision or any of the past seven months since it last covered this subject? Why hasn't it investigated the nuances of land use in Oxnard, the ways in which the city is cast again and again as the toilet of Ventura County, as the dump that must be saved from its past by some glorious new future, the city that, in order to be saved, must be destroyed? Perhaps it might even discover, or present a feature that allows its readers to discover, that Daly's proposal is a needed project. Yet the story remains untold.

As it turns out, the Reporter's most recent cover story focuses on "the top 10 stories not brought to you by the mainstream media in 2008 and 2009," an annual list of under-reported news stories compiled by Project Censored. While it's important to draw readers' attention to buried subjects, countless other online outlets make available the content the Reporter repackages here. In doing so, it misses opportunities to inform its readers and strengthen civic engagement by digging into subjects it has the ability to sink its teeth into. Instead of opening eyes, it's missing the opportunity to start a real discussion within the community about how Ventura County will move on from the recession and whether Oxnard can ever grow in a different fashion. Those are the sort of stories that can't be duplicated, and thus the sort of stories that make a publication indispensable. Like any business in any industry, any news outlet that wants to survive must make itself indispensable.

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Creativity, Play Bill Lascher Creativity, Play Bill Lascher

Rearranging Our Pieces, Playing With Our Future

Is our imagination so limited that we think anyone will survive by doing the exact same thing we've done for half a century? Why can't we take the same simple wonder of an afternoon of play and build a new world with the pieces we already have? Why can we not take our bricks and track and blocks and rearrange them, as we did countless times as children, into new buildings, new cities and new transportation networks? Why can't we put our architects to work redesigning the decrepit spaces that already pepper our world? Why can't we put builders to work reconstructing our destroyed communities? Why must we mine new materials and continue the urbanization of our wild lands when so much unused housing stock and other structures sit vacant?

Why can't we rearrange the pieces we already have? If we could do it endlessly as kids, we really can do it now.

When I was a kid, Legos were quite possibly my number one toy. Sure, I spent untold hours in front of our 13 channel Sony Trinitron with a gray plastic controller in my hand exploring pixelated worlds on my Nintendo Entertainment System, but it was the Legos that best stirred my imagination. It was the Legos that were everywhere.

That's just what Jonathan Glancey of The Guardian captured in an article last week in which he wrote about the resilience of the toys, of their persistence, the way Lego

“Seems to breed in boxes tucked under beds or in the recesses of spidery cupboards. It's a game that generations add to. And one that children and grandparents can enjoy. From the child's viewpoint, Lego is simply there, like St Paul's Cathedral (a bit tricky to model in right-angled plastic bricks), the Empire State Building or St Catherine's College."

Last weekend, in between an afternoon in Santa Barbara with former colleagues of mine from the Pacific Coast Business Times and an evening with a freelancer who wrote for me when I edited the Ventura County Reporter, I passed a night at my childhood home. I arrived at my mom's in the early evening. She was out watching a close friend perform in a play. A house guest staying over while completing a residency at one of the city's hospitals was also out. I had the house to myself.

Much as i might have done returning home from school, I dropped a bag off in my bedroom — now painted a rather cheerier color than it ever was during my childhood — and walked straight to our family room. That room really hadn't changed much in the 11 years since I graduated high school and wandered out into my life.

Sprawled across the coarse carpet of mottled dark and light greens were winding feet upon feet of wooden train tracks assembled by my three-year-old niece more than a month earlier.  I smiled, both at the reminder of how the frenetic pace of my family's life sometimes keeps such clutter unchecked, and  at the memory of spending a lazy holiday weekend playing with my niece.

She enlisted me in building an elaborate network of railroad tracks and bridges and boat docks. Nearby, the surprisingly elaborate complex of building blocks she had constructed still stood. Wrought by her own imagination and design it looked like a modern civic center any city would be proud of. I smiled at how she had determinedly created her own world that weekend (my only role was to take instruction from my young forewoman and occasionally solve vexing engineering struggles such as the proper support for a railway bridge).

Instantly I remembered my own years in that room, a room I probably spent far more time in than my own bedroom, perhaps even counting the time I spent asleep. I remembered building similar train networks, sometimes spanning multiple rooms. Along the back wall of the room were stacked crates of Legos and I wondered how many adventures and landscapes and universes I had conjured up with them, and how many more would still be conjured up with the very same pieces by my niece and her sister at some future point, not to mention any other children that might join our family.

I'll interrupt myself here to note the lingering privilege I have to share this description. Scandinavian building toys, whether colorful Lego sets or simple Brio trains, are not the most affordable toys, nor are video games. To have had the opportunity to choose between the three is a liberty not all children have (or, perhaps, need). But I can't deny or lament a truth like that. I can only acknowledge it and move on.

As I think one can extrapolate from the following excerpt from Glancey's article, though, some form of this imaginative play is important to most kids' lives, wherever they're from, whatever background they have.

“One of the first things we draw as children is our home, which, in many cultures, is an elemental four-square house, of the kind you might make with Lego, although I'm not sure if Lego makes pitched roofs,” Glancey writes. “And, from wooden bricks to sophisticated plastic toys, children will go on, quite naturally, to build. There is a homemaker, brickie and even an architect in most of us.”

Glancey is on to something, particularly because the core message of his piece is really less about Lego specifically and more about the rise in do it yourself culture in many forms, of the “value for lasting things” that we so desperately need to learn.

I think about this often these days. As we seek a path out of our economic malaise, too often I hear that positive signs will come in the form of new housing starts or increased consumer spending. How can that possibly be the answer? How can creating yet more seas of unimaginative little boxes filled with yet smaller boxes ever satisfy us?

One might say “But we need these boxes to put people back to work. How will the construction crews and architects and engineers and road builders survive?”

I wonder, is our imagination so limited that we think anyone will survive by doing the exact same thing we've done for half a century? Why can't we take the same simple wonder of an afternoon of play and build a new world with the pieces we already have? Why can we not take our bricks and track and blocks and rearrange them, as we did countless times as children, into new buildings, new cities and new transportation networks? Why can't we put our architects to work redesigning the decrepit spaces that already pepper our world? Why can't we put builders to work reconstructing our destroyed communities? Why must we mine new materials and continue the urbanization of our wild lands when so much unused housing stock and other structures sit vacant?

Why can't we rearrange the pieces we already have? If we could do it endlessly as kids, we really can do it now.

Meanwhile: is this comment from the Guardian page with the article not one of the funniest things you've read or what?

Thanks to the always amazing commondreams.org for tipping me and other readers off to the Guardian story.

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