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21 Oct 09

Carbon Neutral Now

Nice article about Yale's Kroon Hall and Victoria BC's Dockside Green as true carbon-neutral projects (with Dockside Green a model for building entire neighborhoods as green/ carbon neutral).
"Across the continent, at the southern tip of the mountainous and densely forested Vancouver Island, Dockside Green will soon become carbon neutral. A mix of town houses, mid-rise apartments, and commercial buildings being built on a brownfield at the edge of downtown Victoria, British Columbia, the large, multiphase urban development takes a comprehensive approach to carbon reduction, showing how much is possible at the neighborhood scale. "

www.metropolismag.com/...carbon-neutral-now - Preview

green_strategies green_buildings dockside_green victoria metropolis_magazine yale kroon_hall

17 May 09

Germany Imagines Suburbs Without Cars - NYTimes.com

Discussion of Freiburg suburb, Vauban, and its "car-free" environment:
QUOTE
Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community.
UNQUOTE

www.nytimes.com/...12suburb.html - Preview

suburbia cars green_strategies vauban germany

In Germany, a country that is home to Mercedes-Benz and the autobahn, life in a car-reduced place like Vauban has its own unusual gestalt. The town is long and relatively narrow, so that the tram into Freiburg is an easy walk from every home. Stores, restaurants, banks and schools are more interspersed among homes than they are in a typical suburb. Most residents, like Ms. Walter, have carts that they haul behind bicycles for shopping trips or children’s play dates.
The original buildings have long since been torn down. The stylish row houses that replaced them are buildings of four or five stories, designed to reduce heat loss and maximize energy efficiency, and trimmed with exotic woods and elaborate balconies; free-standing homes are forbidden.
1 more annotations...
- In the past few years, Vauban has become a well-known niche community, even if it has spawned few imitators in Germany. But whether the concept will work in California is an open question.
  More than 100 would-be owners have signed up to buy in the Bay Area’s “car-reduced” Quarry Village, and Mr. Lewis is still looking for about $2 million in seed financing to get the project off the ground.

09 Apr 09

affordable green housing (podcast.mov (video/quicktime Object))

Excellent short film about biophilia and how to make sure it's satisfied in urban environments, with specific reference to one project by developer Jonathan Rose (of Jonathan Rose Companies).

www-tc.pbs.org/...able_green_housing_podcast.mov - Preview

biophilia cities urbanism green_strategies

10 Mar 09

Green Cities, Brown Suburbs by Edward L. Glaeser, City Journal Winter 2009

Ed Glaeser makes the point that cities are much greener than non-urban areas, all things considered. Your country or suburb carbon footprint is huge compared to your urban carbon footprint.

www.city-journal.org/...19_1_green-cities.html - Preview

edward_glaeser city_journal urbanism green_strategies suburbs cities

if you want to be good to the environment, stay away from it. Move to high-rise apartments surrounded by plenty of concrete. Americans who settle in leafy, low-density suburbs will leave a significantly deeper carbon footprint, it turns out, than Americans who live cheek by jowl in urban towers.
second paradox follows from the first. When environmentalists resist new construction in their dense but environmentally friendly cities, they inadvertently ensure that it will take place somewhere else—somewhere with higher carbon emissions. Much local environmentalism, in short, is bad for the environment.
14 more annotations...
- Matthew Kahn, a professor of economics at UCLA, and I have quantified the first paradox.
- we’re trying to determine where future home construction would do the least environmental damage.
  - - that's key. - on 2009-03-10
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- In almost every metropolitan area, carbon emissions are significantly lower for people who live in central cities than for people who live in suburbs.
- New York City has the largest gap in emissions between central city and suburbs of any metropolitan area in the country—unsurprisingly, since New York’s central city is the epitome of dense urban living. Our estimate is that an average New York City resident emits 4,462 pounds less of transportation-related carbon dioxide than an average New York suburbanite. The reductions in carbon emissions from home heating and electricity are comparably large, thanks to New York’s famously tiny apartments. Manhattan is one of the greenest places in America.
- These four cities notwithstanding, the data suggest a strong general pattern: households in dense urban areas have significantly lower carbon emissions than households in the suburbs. The lifestyle that Thoreau preferred, living surrounded by green space, tends to be far less kind to the planet and far likelier to raise global temperatures, just as Thoreau himself did that afternoon in 1844.
- There is a large and growing literature, ranging from complete skepticism to ultra-alarmism, devoted to the question of just how much environmental damage is associated with carbon emissions. The widely cited Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change claims that each ton of carbon dioxide emissions causes $85 worth of damage to the planet. More commonly accepted estimates are considerably lower; one meta-study suggests an average cost of about $15 per ton of carbon dioxide. The right number probably lies somewhere between $15 and $85.
- Even if, like many economists, you think that the Stern Review overstates the true damage per ton and you chop its proposed cost in half, then the average new home in Memphis still does about $620 worth of environmental harm per year more than an average new home in San Francisco, since San Francisco homes are associated with 14.65 fewer tons of carbon dioxide each year. Once you crunch the numbers, that makes the lifetime environmental cost of building in Memphis, rather than San Francisco, $12,400 per home—a big number relative to Memphis’s average housing price of $90,000.
- Before even considering carbon taxes, the country should rethink its land-use policies, which currently push people toward high-emissions areas and away from green ones.
- The chart shows a strong negative correlation between restrictiveness and carbon dioxide emissions.
- But California’s abundant restrictions on new construction don’t do much to deter building across America as a whole. No matter what the Bay Area does, plenty of new households will come into being, and they will need new homes. By restricting local development, California regulators just make sure that construction occurs someplace else. That someplace else tends to be a lot less environmentally friendly than the California coast, blessed as it is with a superbly temperate climate. The net result of this process: land-use restrictions in California increase carbon emissions and raise the risks of global warming.
- The great irony, of course, is that land-use regulations are so often justified by environmental arguments.
- So California environmentalists have things exactly backward. If climate change is the major environmental challenge that we face, the state should actively encourage new construction, rather than push it toward other areas. True, increasing development in California might increase per-household carbon emissions within the state if the new development, following the current model, took place on the extreme edges of urban areas. A better path would be to ease restrictions in the urban cores of San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, and San Diego. More building there would reduce average commute lengths and improve per-capita emissions. Higher densities could also justify more investment in new, low-emissions energy plants.
- Similarly, limiting the height or growth of New York City skyscrapers incurs environmental costs. Building more apartments in Gotham will not only make the city more affordable; it will also reduce global warming.
- Thoreau was wrong. Living in the country is not the right way to care for the Earth. The best thing that we can do for the planet is build more skyscrapers.
  - Best ending sentence, ever. - on 2009-03-10
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27 Dec 08

Urban RainCatchers Gazette: Frontpage

QUOTE
Judging by what's covered in the media, it would appear that so-called "green" developers are leading the way when it comes to sustainable water and stormwater practices. But there is plenty of evidence to debunk that myth.

This website will showcase innovation in the public sector, leadership from the grassroots, inspiration from NGOs and - above all - partnerships that empower citizens to become part of the solution to floods, droughts and stormwater problems.
UNQUOTE

www.urbanraincatchersgazette.ca - Preview

raincatchers urban_design water stormwater_management green_strategies sustainability

01 Dec 08

Business Guide - David Suzuki Foundation

"New guide to cutting greenhouse gas emissions shows how businesses can save millions and the environment." Portal page for downloading the document(s), etc.

www.davidsuzuki.org/...dsfnews11260801.asp - Preview

environment ecology economics business david_suzuki green_strategies

21 Nov 08

The Gospel of Green | CBC News: the fifth estate

CBC portal page for a program on Germany's shift to a green(er) infrastructure/ economy, w/ focus on Hermann Scheer, parliamentarian who helped make it happen.
QUOTE
Hermann Scheer is a German parliamentarian who has turned ideas into practical solutions. Because of the laws that bear his name, Germany is now a solar-paneled, windmill-building, job-producing green powerhouse of the industrialized world. Fifteen per cent of Germany's electricity now comes from renewable energy systems. Scheer predicts that, if his country continues on this course, that number could be 100 per cent by 2030.
UNQUOTE

www.cbc.ca/...the_gospel_of_green - Preview

cbc hermann_scheer environment economy green_strategies germany

17 Sep 08

Protein® Feed | To Tackle Global Warming, California Takes Aim at Sprawl

Interesting short notice by Adam Stein about California's proposal to "pass legislation that would harmonize regional planning efforts with the state’s overarching goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The most ambitious anti-sprawl legislation in the country, the bill seeks to coordinate housing, transit, and commercial development to reduce the impact of growth on the environment."

Stein reviews this in relation to Robert Bruegmann's "Sprawl: A compact history," which he happens to be in the middle of reading. Some interesting thoughts here on whether or not sprawl can really be mandated away. Also, not mentioned directly, but I can't help but hear Jane Jacobs, too, warning about restrictive overplanning...

proteinos.com/...ng-california-takes-aim-sprawl - Preview

sprawl worldchanging urbanplanning california green_strategies robert_bruegmann

Although not quite pro-sprawl, the book is decidedly anti-anti-sprawl, portraying efforts at shaping or controlling land use as largely the outgrowth of shifting and highly subjective aesthetic standards that disregard the desire of ordinary citizens for privacy, mobility, and choice.
Without entirely dismissing the problems associated with sprawl, Bruegmann suggests that many of the proposed solutions are destined to fail, either because complex urban systems respond in unexpected ways to simplistic planning measures, or because such measures offer fragile levees against so strong a flood of consumer desire for room to stretch out.
3 more annotations...
- Although Bruegmann’s argument is thin in places, the book does raise useful questions about how, when, and even why to try to shape the development of our cities and their surroundings. Such questions are helpful in clarifying goals and focusing legislative efforts toward areas they are most likely to have a positive impact (and least likely to do harm).
- In many respects, California’s new regulations start in a strong place. They have a clear and quantifiable aim: the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, particularly those from transportation. Further, the regulations avoid a one-size-fits-all approach, as they must in a state as large and diverse as California. Instead, local governments will submit regional plans to state officials, who have billions of dollars of infrastructure funding to grant as incentives.
  - - sounds a bit like what Campbell Liberals are trying to do in BC with Bill 27...? - on 2008-09-17
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- Further, the bill unites a diverse coalition of often adversarial groups. Developers, affordable housing advocates, and environmentalists (with some notable holdouts) have rallied around the legislation’s balance of carrots and sticks.

25 Jan 08

My Other Car is a Bright Green City - WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future

via CEOs for Cities, an article by Alex Steffen, which argues for dense, urban communities that will help curb (literally) car use. \n\nFrom his intro preamble: "This is a rough draft of a long essay about why I believe building compact communities should be one of America's highest environmental priorities, and why, in fact, our obsession with building greener cars may be obscuring some fundamental aspects of the problem and some of the benefits of using land-use change as a primary sustainability solution."

www.worldchanging.com/...007800.html - Preview

alex_steffen cars cities environment green_strategies sustainability urbanism worldchanging

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