Policy and Regulation

Archive for the ‘Policy and Regulation’ Category

In the Wake of Hurricane Sandy, Design a More Resilient Rockaway

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Opportunities, Policy and Regulation, Water Management on 05/09/2013 | Leave a Comment »

Rockaway, Queens, a low-lying area in New York City, was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy, so a fascinating new design competition seeks to create a more resilient and sustainable form of development for this vulnerable area, and, really, others like it in New York City and other coastal cities. FAR ROC [For a Resilient Rockaway] is a design competition that will delve into “innovative strategies for the planning, design and construction” of a more resilient place at Arverne East, an 80+ acre site on the Rockaway Peninsula. Their ambitious goal: new best practices for development in waterfront areas.

The conference organizers, which include the NYC Department of Housing and Development, AIA NY, and others, write that finding a new approach will be tricky, given many argue that some flood-prone areas should really be left undeveloped. “Costly damage to buildings, roads, and utility systems by the storm raises the controversial question of whether areas of particular geographic vulnerability should be rebuilt, maintained and defended, or simply abandoned.”

Averne Avenue is located in FEMA Special Flood Hazard Area Zone A section of the Rockaways, a place that “experienced significant storm surge inundation” during the storm. Within the 80+ acre location at Averne East, the jury will be looking for imaginative yet practical designs for a “comprehensive, mixed-use, mixed-income, sustainable and storm-resilient community that will meet the new physical and regulatory challenges of waterfront development while maintaining a balance between innovation and affordability. Proposed solutions should promote new housing, employment, and recreational opportunities for area residents and visitors from throughout the region.”

To be specific, landscape architects and other design professionals proposing new design solutions will need to work with 1,500 units of housing, with a mix of low to mid-rise buildings; up to 500,000 square feet of commercial / recreational space; a 35 acre nature preserve; a 9 acre dune preserve; and 3.3 acres minimum of active and/or passive open space.

They add: “The project must incorporate all new infrastructure [roadways, water mains, sanitary and storm sewers, utilities, smart grids, etc.] and both active and passive landscaped open space on the site bordering the Atlantic Ocean waterfront. Proposals should emphasize sustainability and resiliency but present a quality, marketable, and constructable project.”

Once submissions are received, the jury, which includes landscape architect and ecologist Alex Felson, ASLA, will select four finalists. These finalists will each be provided with $30,000 to further flush out their concepts. The winner, who will be announced before the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, will receive an additional $30,000.

Submit your concepts by June 14.

Another design competition worth exploring: Washington, D.C.’s water utility, DC Water, just launched a $1 million green infrastructure competition to help the District fix its combined sewer overflow (CSO) problems. Green infrastructure projects can include green roofs, rain gardens, rain barrels, and pervious pavements, removing impervious surfaces, and using other natural means to capture and infiltrate rain water. They are targeting the Potomac and Rock Creek drainage areas in D.C.

They write: “This challenge will serve as a model to support DC Water’s proposal to conduct a large-scale, multi-million dollar demonstration project in the Potomac and Rock Creek sewersheds” and also help them “evaluate the feasibility of using green practices, in place of or in conjunction with ‘gray’ engineering solutions.”

Image credit: Rockaway, Queens / FAR ROC

Read Full Post »

Interview with Kevin Shanley on Protecting Our Coasts

Posted in Climate Change, Environment, Landscape Architecture, Policy and Regulation, Water Management on 05/01/2013 | 2 Comments »

Kevin Shanley, FASLA, is CEO of SWA Group and a long-time resident of Houston.

You were recently in Washington, D.C. speaking at the Renewable Natural Resources Foundation on improving the resiliency of our coasts in an effort to protect them from increasingly damaging storms and sea-level rise brought on by climate change. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, this is an issue on the minds of just about everybody who lives on the coast. What were the lessons of this disaster?

There are several lessons. There are real-world lessons and then “should-be” lessons. The real-world lesson is that everybody is at risk. These storms don’t just happen to Florida or Bangladesh. They can hit New York City. The storm could have hit Washington, D.C., with disastrous results. We’re not ready.

The other lesson we need to learn is quite important: we forget really quickly. Katrina happened, now eight years ago. Some structural changes were made to the levee system, but all of the really great plans to re-build New Orleans as a more sustainable community, a better community, a more integrated community came to nothing. In Houston in 2008, Hurricane Ike was a near miss. The SSPEED Center at Rice University is involved with this and has been working to make sure we don’t forget what happened with Ike. If Ike had come in, it would have been a disaster ten-fold Katrina. It didn’t, so we were lucky. It swerved about sixty miles to the east and it literally wiped the Bolivar Peninsula clean, virtually every structure on the peninsula was gone. It went up Chambers County, an agricultural community, and created huge damage, but relatively light because there’s nobody there, which is a lesson to learn.

The challenge after Sandy is to ask ourselves what’s the next thing that’s going to distract everybody? In 2001, Houston was hit not with a hurricane but with a really amazing tropical storm called Allison. It dumped thirty inches of rain in twenty-four hours. It flooded seventy-five thousand homes and ninety five thousand cars. It was an amazing flood. It actually tracked all the way up to Canada. Post-Allison, many good things started to happen and a number actually did happen. There were bigger policy changes and changes that many of us were working on, but then in September 2001, guess what happened? The national attention, the local attention, everybody’s attention totally changed and a lot of policy-changing momentum was lost.

So will there be a diversion from Sandy? Yes. North Korea is percolating, and, now we’re focused on whether or not something terrible will happen there?” As is the case with media and big events, each successive one diverts energy and intellectual focus from the present problem—in this case, Hurricane Sandy. Sandy will be forgotten in the national attention, and unfortunately at the local level, attention might diminish as well. While there will be some good policy people working at it, and the number of people personally affected won’t forget, our national focus on Sandy will fade. In some respects, the recovery is amazing. The human species is amazingly resilient. The Bolivar Peninsula was wiped clean. Today, you wouldn’t know it. People have rebuilt right there in exactly the same place. It’s phenomenal. The key is finding a way to rebuild strategically and learn lessons from these disasters to shape our future plans. We also need to find a way to take a long-term view on many of these problems.

The New York Times reported that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wants to spend $400 million to buy up homes in New York City, demolish them, and then preserve the flood-prone land as undeveloped coastline. The idea is to spend some big bucks to turn some coastal areas into wetland or parkland. Does this approach make sense? Can this model be realistically scaled-up elsewhere in the U.S.? What are the alternatives?

It’s a potentially very powerful tool. Speaking globally, the British and Dutch have been at it for decades. It’s called “managed retreat.” It’s about getting out of harm’s way. FEMA has been funding buyouts like that for a while now. It’s a really good program to remove the most at-risk structures, particularly federally-insured structures that time after time are repeat sinks for federal flood insurance claims.

What needs to be thought about, however, if you’re talking about scaling it up, is how to replace the economic value of the development that’s being removed from harm’s way. It’s about the loss of tax revenue. There are sales taxes based on the occupants, all kinds of revenue to the community. This revenue pays for schools, sewer systems, security, and all of the other things that we take for granted in government. Coastal real estate is expensive because it’s attractive. If you take that out of the equation, you’ve got to be ready to think how to replace that. That’s the challenge facing all of us. Great ecological strategies need to be considered economically, and vice versa.

New York City seems to be seriously considering using “soft” green infrastructure instead of “hard” infrastructure, like hugely expensive seawalls, to protect against another disaster. In a recent Metropolis magazine piece, Susannah Drake, ASLA, ASLA NY Chapter president, described soft infrastructure as “transforming the waterfront from a definitive boundary into a subtly graded band.” The Dutch are already moving ahead with this kind of infrastructure, having seen the ecological damage caused by hard infrastructure. Will American policymakers ever buy into this?

Soft green infrastructure along coastal fringe areas can play a really important role in restoring ecological functions to our coastlines. Our coastlines have been severely degraded from an ecological performance standpoint. Green infrastructure as protection for urban areas needs really serious science and engineering studies to figure out the effectiveness of the interventions across different scenarios. Just how effective is a coastal marsh of several hundred yards wide? We’re not talking about miles wide. We’re talking probably several hundred yards or hundreds of feet. What is the benefit to, say, Manhattan? How does that compare to other strategies? Can we take a blended approach to soften our edges and create redundant and resilient strategies?

I’ve seen some beautiful renderings of the edge of Manhattan as it could be. There would be dramatic changes in ecological performance and a transformation in public perception about the city as a green place. There are a lot of wonderful aspects to this. But from a surge and hurricane risk-protection standpoint, we need to be careful not to set up false expectations. To what extent do coastal marshes protect us when a surge comes in that is 15 or 20 feet above those marshes? The green infrastructure could impede the wave action and the movement of the water or even exacerbate the run-up of a surge in shallow waters. The Gulf Coast of the North American continent has a long, shallow coastal run-up, which tends to exacerbate wind-driven surge.

We need to ask specific questions about where the benefits are. We need to ask our scientists, engineers, policymakers, and economists if we are looking at increased sea-level rise rates that are projected to be about a meter every 100 years (three feet every 100 years). Also, rising water levels drown coastal marshes. That’s what has happened in the Galveston Bay complex. Because of subsidence caused by groundwater withdrawal, we lost square miles of emergent coastal marsh. The bottom dropped out and it drowned the marshes. How does this progression work? One can say, “Well, the marsh will just march inland.” Well, will it? Does the actual geography allow it to just march inward? Will there be a period where there’s nothing and then it has to get above a small bluff elevation? Those are important questions to ask if we’re talking about putting really significant resources into this green infrastructure approach to improving coastal resiliency.

Respected scientists argue that sea levels could rise four feet by 2100. If any of the recent hurricanes to hit the U.S. had occurred at higher sea levels, the damages would have been that much more extensive and costly to repair. What are you hearing about seal level rise? How does this change the timeline for action on improving coastal resiliency?

Sea level rise is like watching the hour hand move. We are like grammar school students: the hour hand doesn’t seem to move during class. Our time horizons are measured in just a few years at best. If we’re forward-thinking, we might think out 10 years. The meaningful impacts of sea level rise, the really serious impacts are happening right now, but this is a process that’s been going on for thousands of years, millennia, actually millions of years.

Are anthropomorphic forces going to increase the rate of change? It’s a really good question and there are certainly many scientists who think that the burning of all this fossil fuel is increasing carbon dioxide, which is increasing the temperature of the globe, which is melting the icecap and raising sea levels. Will public policymakers be able to think out beyond a year or even 10 years to 100-year thresholds? The dialogue is there, but I don’t see it coming down to meet real public policy changes yet.

There are outliers in the predictive scientific community who suggest the possibility that if the Greenland icecap, which is the big gorilla in the room, increased its rate of melt or disintegrated due to some threshold that we’re not sure about, sea levels could rise very rapidly within an individual’s lifetime. It could be a disaster. Would we be prepared for that? Absolutely not. As somebody who thinks about public policy, I think we should be running scenarios. We are uncertain as to the disposition of our climate and sea levels. When you’re not sure of something you should be thinking about different scenarios. You should be thinking “Well, what if it’s only three feet in 100 years? What do I need to do? But what if it’s six feet? What if it’s 10 meters, 30 feet, in 100 years? What should I do?” This dialogue should be occurring so that if the natural world presents us with an existential challenge at least some part of the community has been grappling with it and may have some appropriate paths to take.

You’ve been a long-time advocate for using natural systems to deal with water. In a recent article in The Huffington Post you write that Houston and other cities along the Galveston Bay rely on “antiquated storm-protection techniques and land practices doomed to repeated failures.” What’s needed are “policy shifts rooted in a natural systems-approach that work with nature’s tremendous forces.” What’s holding back these policy shifts? Where are the biggest obstacles at the federal and local levels?

The biggest obstacle is the lack of public awareness. FEMA creates flood-risk maps or flood insurance rate maps. In the coastal areas of North America they are woefully inadequate. FEMA realizes that and they’re in the process of updating them. In our region we haven’t seen the updates. We’re waiting with bated breath. We’re not sure we’ll entirely agree with their characterization of risk. Large swaths of the community rely on this public information to advise them about the level of risk. They look at the maps and say “I’m not at risk,” whereas actual surge models being prepared show huge areas are at risk. So, first there has to be clear science that determines what defines the level of risk.

Second, there needs to be clear communication about the risks. That can be through things like flood insurance rate maps, but it also needs to be through public education and policy. There needs to be clear disclosure on every real estate transaction. There was an effort in the Clear Lake City area, which is in the Houston metro region where NASA’s Johnson Space Center is located. They actually put up signs, little colored pylons, that indicated “This is the water level for a category four storm. This is the water level for a category five storm.” These little pylons were 10 feet tall and very clear. You see it there and you would wonder, “Gee, should I buy a house here?” or certainly “Gee, should I make sure I renew my flood insurance?” A local politician, at the behest of the real estate community, insisted they be taken down.

Beyond research you’ve also made these natural systems work in real-world landscapes. The Buffalo Bayou Promenade in Houston really set the example for how to turn a trash-soaked eyesore into a beautiful piece of parkland that also supports flood control. Houston seems to really understand the value of this kind of multi-use infrastructure. What led to the changes in Houston’s approach to its waterways and green space?

Houston is just beginning to learn the value of its waterfront real estate and for Houston it’s the value of our rivers and streams (we call them bayous).

A lot of cities around the country are actually way ahead of Houston in having recognized that value, whether it’s a coastal waterfront or a river waterfront. In Houston, the new riverfront has been the result of years of work by lots of individuals, non-profit organizations, and government agencies. Each main bayou in the city has its own citizen advocacy organizations. Some of them are fairly significant and have permanent staff, whereas others are purely volunteer citizen groups. There have been willing ears in the public agencies. More recently, there has been support at an elected official-level, including a very supportive mayor right now. That’s very encouraging. But we have a long ways to go. We’re just starting on this effort. We have 2,000 miles of open stream channels in Harris County alone, so we’re just beginning.

You’ve done a lot of work in China. What is your impression about how they are approaching coastal resiliency? Is there a uniquely Chinese approach to these issues that we can learn from in the West?

The universe of what’s going on in China is amazing. You might think “Ah, Beijing controls everything. They can tell everyone what to do.” Well, it actually doesn’t work like that. The local government officials can have a surprising amount of independence and resistance to federal or provincial policies. There’s that normal political friction that happens between different units of government. Good policies are being generated at the federal level, at the Beijing level; good policies are being generated at provincial levels. Good policies and projects are being implemented at local municipal levels. That’s exciting news.

The country is doing great wetlands restoration projects. Wetland parks are all the rage across China. Kongjian Yu, FASLA, principal at Turenscape and professor at Beijing University, probably has a dozen wetland parks on his desk in his office at any given time. We’re working on a number of them. It puts to shame anything we’re doing here. On the other hand, one has to balance that against the unbelievable rate of urbanization and its impact on the environment in China. It’s maybe only a drop in the bucket toward mitigating the impacts of urbanization that are going on right now.

The good thing is they’re very interested in the topic. The people that we work with, which is a very self-selected group who are willing to pay a foreign consultant to come and advise them, are already interested. I have a biased view… I could paint this rosy picture of China because we go over there and we are talking to people that share our environmental values. But there are many who don’t share those values and that are in business just like in any country anywhere in the world. They’re just trying to add value and sell that value and profit and move on to the next project.

You take the whole climate issue in China. China’s doing some of the most progressive carbon-capture energy production in the world. For a while, they were the largest producer of solar cells. They’re the largest producer of wind generating equipment. There are all these sort of extremes of what they are doing. Yet in the global sense, they’re producing more carbon dioxide than anybody on a more rapid basis. They’re increasing their carbon and energy footprints. They’re still below us on a per-capita basis, but they’re working very hard to catch up to our own huge footprints. So you will find a really mixed bag in China.

What can we learn from China? We ought to be studying what they are doing right and trying to learn from their successes. To the extent they’re interested in partnering so they can learn from us, we ought to be sharing those solutions with them. It’s a wild ride, like a rollercoaster, and one who’s end we can’t see from our vantage point.

Image credits: (1) Kevin Shanley, FASLA / SWA Group, (2) Hurricane Ike damage at the Bolivar Peninsula / Bryan Carlile, Beck Geodetix, (3) Galveston Texas Galveston Island State Park near the gulf of Mexico / Chris Cornwell. Flickr, (4) ASLA 2009 General Design Award of Excellence. Buffalo Bayou Promenade. SWA Group / Bill Tatham, (5) Fuyang Waterfront Park / SWA Group

Read Full Post »

New Video: ASLA Advocates for Change

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Policy and Regulation, Sustainable Transportation on 04/30/2013 | 1 Comment »

Last week, ASLA leadership landed on Capitol Hill for their annual advocacy day. More than 150 ASLA leaders met with Senators and Congressional representatives to talk about the issues that matter most to landscape architects (see video above about ASLA’s advocacy work).

During the day, ASLA advocates heard from Representative Thomas Petri, who is a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and chairman of the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit. This subcommittee oversees highways, recreation trails, pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, and Safe Routes to Schools projects.

Representative Petri said Congress is in the beginning stages of reauthorizing a 5-6 year transportation bill. He said these longer-term bills are important because they set the stage for “long-term planning and investment by the private sector.” Representative Petri said he gets many calls from companies asking him “what to plan for.” Right now, federal transportation investments are only being planned one to two years out, through extensions, which means private sector may be holding back on spending on infrastructure.

Unfortunately, there will be winners and losers with the new bill. Representative Petri said “only 68 percent of the current programs can be financed. We have to come up with new revenue or scale back.” The federal government uses a gas tax to finance transportation infrastructure work. Now the federal gas tax is 18.4 cents a gallon, “not a lot.” Getting a gas tax hike through Congress may be difficult to achieve. States are confronting the same challenge. Some states like Virginia have even eliminated gas taxes, while others like Wyoming are raising theirs dramatically.

Representative Petri said a broad coalition is needed on the Hill to ensure the transportation bill “aims for the highest common denominator instead of the lowest.” The U.S. should aspire to have a excellent transportation system again, instead of crumbling highways that earn a D+ from the American Society of Civil Engineers. Representative Petri mentioned Lady Bird Johnson’s “roadside enhancement” program, which happens year after year, as a great example. “We now have some beautiful parkways, even in urban areas.”

Investment in mass transit can also support the right kind of urban growth. Representative Petri said that once a urban area reaches a certain size, it must “grow up instead of out.” To finance the process of growing up, Representative Petri said the federal government must fund urban mass transit projects that lead to greater density, or at least kick-start their development. “Federal commitments can help cities and states secure Wall St. financing.” Petri also called for keeping “street improvements,” those “transportation enhancements” that were the subject of so much debate last year.

And while there will be tradeoffs in the new bill — not everyone will win — “we must work together to achieve a balance.” Let’s just hope that balance means a lean towards more investment in the pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure so many communities need. As Representative Petri argued at the end, “there are great prospects for improving the system, while also making it more livable, beautiful, and human-scale.”

Read Full Post »

How to Preserve Open Space

Posted in Policy and Regulation, Public Spaces on 04/26/2013 | Leave a Comment »

Given the cost and complexities involved in purchasing and setting aside green, open space, no one type of organization can go it alone. Local governments, land trusts, non-profits, and private sector developers must forge public-private partnerships (PPPs) to make the big deals happen that can preserve the natural character of places. In a session at the American Planning Association (APA) conference in Chicago, Richard Pruetz, Planning & Implementation Strategies; Ole Amundsen, The Conservation Fund; and Dr. Tom Daniels, University of Pennsylvania, explained how some communities have made PPPs work.

Pruetz said any good smart growth strategy has to include preservation. “Preservation promotes environmental quality, disaster mitigation, local food production, and compact communities.” One prime example of how to promote smart growth while setting aside land for the benefit of the entire community is the plan created by Marin County in California, which was developed in 2007 to guide “preservation and restore the natural environment.” The plan’s ambitious goals were entirely due to “the participation of non-profits.”

Back in the early ’70s, local non-profits like Save the Seashore and the Sierra Club started to agitate, asking policymakers, “will the last open space last?” They wanted to keep development out of Pt. Reyes seashore, the Golden Gate area, and other green belts and farmlands. With 500,000 signatures in their petitions the seashore groups won broad political support that turned into action. The government acquired 70,000 acres of the Pt. Reyes seashore in 1972, making it a “national seashore.” In the same vein, a collection of 65 or more non-profits, including the Nature Conservancy, Trust for Public Land, Sierra Club, formed a coalition to push for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. They also achieved their goals, with that area now one of the most beautiful and well-visited places on the west coast. Other campaigns worked to keep farmland and other green spaces undeveloped by partnering with private farmers’ groups and using private financing. The end result today: roughly 160,000 acres, or nearly one-half of Marin county, is “permanently preserved.”

In another example, Boulder, Colorado decided to keep to Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.’s original 1910 open space plan, which called for a green belt all the way around the city. FLO, Jr. had said “this is a wonderful place, don’t spoil it.” So in the ’60s, as development could have started to sprawl out, community debate led to a process of creating a open space plan. Local conservation groups persuaded the city government to “create urban growth boundaries.” To make this a reality, Boulder created an “open space bond,” which the voters approved. The bond required all community members, including the private sector, to pay for the privilege of not developing outside the growth zones. This way the community could still finance all the services it needed to provide without sprawling out. Now, Boulder uses those funds to acquire land and expand its great open space.

King County, Washington, the county around Seattle, provides another model, said Pruetz. There, King country government and the Trust for Public Land created a vision for protecting 500,000 acres from development. The non-profit, Forterra, which led a coalition of more than 100 businesses, non-profits, and government organizations, put on a sort of planning conference that was even more ambitious, calling for one million acres to be preserved. But shooting for the stars was a good plan: the end result was a plan to acquire 265,000 acres at a cost of $7 billion. Some $4 billion is to be financed through the transfer of development rights (TDR), which is a powerful tool for transferring development from protected areas to acceptable ones.

Pruetz called King County’s approach to TDRs the most successful in the country, in part because it also spurred the development of a “regional TDR alliance,” which enabled neighboring communities to join in a broader regional development vision. While most TDRs can only be used in the jurisdiction that creates them, in this regional group, TDRs can be used across jurisdictions in a TDR exchange. To date, King County has preserved nearly 142,000 acres of nature with its TDR program. The private sector also benefits in this innovative PPP scheme.

Amundsen then discussed how communities can work with land trusts like his, The Conservation Fund. He said land trusts, in contrast to other non-profits and government agencies, are highly “action oriented.” But still, land trusts need to partner with the government and private sector groups because “partnerships increase the odds of full plans and implementation.” The Conservation Fund has been active in communities across the U.S., including Nashville and Davidson county, where it helped create an open space plan that preserved a 27,000-acre natural area. Within this preserve, efforts are underway to clean the water in streams and restore the habitat for the native crayfish populations. A broader plan aims to set aside 1,500 acres for local food production and make Nashville a “leader in urban agriculture.” The private sector has largely bought into these goals as the whole community seems to understand that “creative people are a city’s brightest asset and they want a place where they can walk and breath clean air.”

Indianapolis is also seeking to preserve hundreds of thousands of acres for green infrastructure plans. These projects involve replanting river corridors with native plants and cleaning up streams so they can better function as stormwater management systems and natural habitat. All these projects have benefited from the Conservation Fund’s revolving loan trust fund. “Money is cheap. Now’s a good time to borrow money to buy land.”

Professor Daniels added that land trusts have only proliferated because the government, with $16 trillion in debt, can’t afford to buy up lots of land and set it aside as open space. They also grew up because “local planning was so bad,” so in many places they have become “proxy planners.” In the ’80s, there were about 400 land trusts; now there’s are about 1,200. Together, they’ve ensured that some 50 million acres has been preserved.

Daniels said PPPs are a smart way to go with land preservation because “there’s more money” and these deals “better respond to individual community’s needs.” In Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, where Daniels was planner and still lives, permanent growth boundaries were established to ensure the pastoral agricultural character of the area is preserved. Lancaster is home to the Amish, and all together the county’s farmers produce $1 billion in crops and livestock each year. In the late ’80s, Lancaster set up a farmland trust with a mix of local private and government money that preserved 25,000 acres of farmland and protected hundreds of farms from sprawling-out residential homes. Now, Lancaster is number-one in terms of locally operated farmland preservation, which means there will always be a long-term supply of farmland.

Also, more land is preserved each year than developed upon. While it took time, “the development community has made peace with this.” In the Warwick Township, developers buy TDRs to build on to increasingly dense communities. Interestingly, Daniels said “you have to pay for density, but only a nominal fee.”

Image credit: (1) Marin County / Frog City Cheese, (2) Boulder Open Space / City of Boulder, Colorado, (3) Lancaster County / Lancaster Online

Read Full Post »

ASLA Event: Learn about Green Infrastructure

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Opportunities, Policy and Regulation, Water Management on 04/26/2013 | Leave a Comment »

To celebrate High Performance Building Week, the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) is hosting a Congressional green roof reception and tour. Policymakers, design professionals, local media, and interested members of the public are encouraged attend.

In a presentation, ASLA CEO / Executive VP Nancy Somerville, Hon. ASLA, will be covering the economic and environmental benefits of green roofs and green infrastructure. Somerville will explain how green infrastructure is a less expensive solution for controlling stormwater runoff, conserves water and improves water quality, reduces the urban heat island effect, lowers building energy use, improves air quality, stores carbon, and creates biohabitat.

The event is part of an annual set of discussions and tours organized by the High-Performance Buildings Caucus Coalition, a private sector group that works with the High-Performance Buildings Caucus of the U.S. Congress to showcase best practices in building and site design. The Congressional Caucus is focused on increasing awareness among policymakers about the “major impact buildings have on our health, safety and welfare and the opportunities to design, construct and operate high-performance buildings.”

When: Thursday, May 16, 2013, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Where: ASLA Headquarters’ Rooftop, 636 Eye Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20001

RSVP at governmentaffairs@asla.org by Friday, May 10th.

For questions or more information, please contact Roxanne Blackwell, Director, Federal Goverment Affairs, ASLA, at rblackwell@asla.org or 202-216-2334

This is a widely-attended event so attendance is permissible under both the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate rules.

Image credit: ASLA Green Roof / ASLA

Read Full Post »

Green Infrastructure: A Landscape Approach

Posted in Ecosystem Services, Landscape Architecture, Policy and Regulation, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization, Water Management on 04/25/2013 | Leave a Comment »

Green infrastructure is starting to mean different things to different people, said David Rouse, ASLA, a landscape architect and planner at Wallace, Roberts & Todd (WRT) during a session at the American Planning Association (APA) conference in Chicago. Rouse was there with Theresa Schwarz, Kent State Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative; Karen Walz, Strategic Community Solutions; and Ignacio Bunster-Ossa, FASLA, a landscape architect with WRT, who together co-authored a new book published by APA called Green Infrastructure: A Landscape Approach.

There are really two definitions of green infrastructure. One is an inter-connected network of green open spaces that provide a range of ecosystem services — from clean air and water to wildlife habitat and carbon sinks. The other is a more limited one promoted by the E.P.A.: small-scale green systems designed to be urban stormwater management infrastructure. In either definition, green infrastructure is about bringing together “natural and built environments” and using the “landscape as infrastructure,” said Rouse.

Beyond getting the definitions right, Bunster-Ossa said the purpose of the book was to make sure these important concepts weren’t mired in the ugly debates about landscape urbanism, which has become a loaded term for many new urbanists, smart growth advocates, and others promoting increased density. He said “there’s been too much fighting over that, so here’s a way to clearly define the benefits of these systems.”

For Rouse, green infrastructure can improve our health, particularly our mental health, by making places more green and walkable. Think of green spaces and how they are much better to walk through than treeless, concrete environments. Those greener spaces are also safer. As research is proving, greener spaces have less crime, particularly domestic violence. The presence of greenery can also boost children’s education performance as well as the cognitive ability of adults.

Given the multiple benefits of green infrastructure, it should be understood using terms like “multifunctionality, connectivity, habitability, resiliency, and identity,” along with “return on investment.” Rouse said these principles can be applied at green infrastructure projects at all scales.

Here are some lessons from the experts who’ve tried to apply green infrastructure at the landscape scale (these are also case studies in the book):

Put the Green Before Grey

Schwarz said “cities in transition” sounds better than a “shrinking” city, which is what Cleveland is. Cleveland has lost half of its population so it has surplus real estate. Vacancies are everywhere “but not aggregated.” In total, Cleveland has about 20,000 vacant homes over 3,000 acres of land.

So the city has created a new plan to redevelop in strategic places, keeping density in key areas while using cleared areas for green infrastructure to handle stormwater. The city is now demolishing huge chunks of the vacant homes, adding about 120 acres of cleared land every year.

Much of these cleared surfaces can be used for infiltration, but a plan was first needed first target existing watersheds and understand the soils. Schwarz said soil surveys of Cleveland found there many types of soils, but really only the sandiest ones allow for infiltration. Other soils may appear fine but were actually heavily contaminated from industrial use.

In many cases, finding the original watershed was also tricky: So many indigenous waterways were buried underground to make way for some earlier development. Schwarz’s team worked on identifying the “headways” of rivers and culverted streams, seeing them as the best places to bring back vegetation to deal with stormwater. At the neighborhood scale, riparian corridors are planned as well.

While all of this sounds great, the E.P.A. was really forcing Cleveland to do all this work. The aging combined stormwater and sewer system in the city means there are 126 combined sewer overflows (CSOs) into Lake Erie each year, dumping some 4.5 billion gallons of runoff and waste. The E.P.A. is forcing the city to spend $3 billion as part of a “consent decree” to address the issue. While her group is pushing forward with green infrastructure mapping, Schwarz said, unfortunately, much of this money is going towards hard grey infrastructure — “seven really big deep tunnels” — with only some $42 million available for green infrastructure. “This is expected to handle around 44 million gallons of runoff, not much out of 4.5 billion gallons.”

Schwarz said the green infrastructure would have been more effective if “the green was designed first, before the grey.” Still, her group and others are pushing the city to make the best of it and add green infrastructure along the strategic reinvestment zones, the highly-trafficked corridors, making those “sustainable patterns of development” even more attractive. She’s also making sure the city applies a “green infrastructure decision making framework,” so that when land becomes vacant it can quickly be evaluated by the city to determine if it’s best used for redevelopment or green infrastructure.

Look for the Long-term and Large-scale

According to Walz, the North Texas region, which encompasses Dallas and a number of other cities, is the 4th largest metropolitan region in the U.S. The area has a “strong economy” so there’s been rapid population growth. In 2000, the area had 5.3 million. Double that is expected by 2050. Within the region, efforts are underway to let the Trinity River meander through Dallas, taking it out of its levees, and preserve and expand green infrastructure. Broader visions, including Vision North Texas, Trinity River Common Vision, and others, aim to “create regional thinking, but local implementation” on green infrastructure.

To make the local implementation part happen, Walz worked with the local community using “green printing” and integrated stormwater management (ISWM) approaches, a kind of mapping process to gauge what the local values are, where green infrastructure opportunities are, and find the places where the values and opportunities co-join to create “triple bottom line benefits.”

For Walz, the lessons learned were that “landscape shapes development. This is a concept we used to understand.” She said her public process has helped people understand how to “combine a landscape analysis with local residents’ values, so that in the future the landscape can actually shape development patterns.” Through public input, the community could find out which areas it values the most and preserve. She said those watersheds and natural areas that the community deemed to have the highest value were also “the same assets that will them create a more sustainable and distinctive community.”

She added that planning at the regional scale creates more benefits for communities. “Green landscapes, natural systems don’t end at the city limits.” Forming those partnerships that cross city lines helps create the broader regional vision.

To craft that vision, multiple disciplines should be be involved. “While that brings challenges, there are also great rewards.”

Lastly, Walz said “look for the long-term and large-scale” opportunities. (It’s also clear that the lingo or terminology around green infrastructure may get in the way when trying to reach a community. Walz said “these green infrastructure approaches are valuable regardless of what they’re called.”)

Create Local Connections to Green Infrastructure

WRT is working on a massive project in Louisville, Kentucky — the Parklands of Floyd’s Fork. At the edge of the city, four parks, each named for a tributary to the waterway, will protect some 3,700 acres along a prime watershed, helping to create a green edge around a city sprawling out.

Bunster-Ossa said he approached the green infrastructure aspects of the project using the “principle of connectivity.” Also important were creating a real local identity for the green infrastructure systems. While the proposed designs offer lots of ecosystem service benefits (approximately $18 million worth, said Bunster-Ossa), it’s really about creating a place people that people can connect to.

Bunster-Ossa introduced another example WRT worked on with Margie Ruddick, ASLA, this time in a highly urban environment: the new 1.5-acre, $45 million Queens Plaza park, which uses plants while also protecting pedestrians in a dangerous intersection, “making green infrastructure visible.” Sidewalks were dug up to form barriers that prevent pedestrians from jaywalking, while rain gardens provide a respite from the urban jungle. The park is viewed as such a useful amenity that Jet Blue recently put its new headquarters a few blocks away.

Bunster-Ossa said nearby buildings weren’t excluded from discussion about the new park. With green infrastructure, you can “flow from the interior of buildings to parks to wateryways, all the way to the region.” Now there’s landscape-scale thinking.

Read the book.

Image credit: (1) APA Books, (2) Demolishing vacant buildings in East Cleveland / Cuyahoga Land Bank, (3) Vacant land in Cleveland / Urban Current, (4) Trinity River / Trinity River Project, (5-6) Floyd’s Fork / WRT, (7) Queens Plaza / Margie Ruddick, WRT.

Read Full Post »

What Is the Most Critical Issue Designers Don’t Even Know Exists?

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Policy and Regulation, Water Management on 04/24/2013 | 1 Comment »

According to the heads of the major built-environment design organizations, the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), the American Institute of Architects (AIA), and the American Planning Association (APA), it’s water. Water is going to become increasingly scarce. It’s particularly a problem in the United States as many of the highest growth areas are in parts of the country that are already stressed with water shortages. Worldwide, countries are struggling with diminishing ground water resources and some are even worried about water wars. Mitchell Silver, the outstanding (and unfortunately outgoing) president of APA, said “water is going to make oil look minor league.” This insight and a slew of others were offered up in a session among the three presidents at the American Planning Association (APA) conference in Chicago. Each talked about the big issues for designers.

ASLA

Up first to speak was Mark Focht, FASLA, upcoming president, who was filling in for Tom Tavella, FASLA, the current president. Focht said ASLA, which was founded in 1899 and now has more than 15,000 members, has always made advocacy on Capitol Hill a priority. The focus of the next few years will be pushing for land and water conservation, community parks, a national complete streets program, more federal support for green infrastructure, and benefits for small businesses. He noted that most landscape architecture firms are small businesses.

ASLA is active in all of these areas, but been especially focused on green infrastructure. Banking on Green, a report ASLA recently co-authored with a set of environment and water organizations, seeks to boost the case for using green infrastructure approaches — green roofs and streets, bioswales, tree pits, and parks — to manage stormwater. Focht said this was near and dear to his heart, too. He is first deputy commissioner of Philadelphia’s Parks and Recreation, and worked on the “first E.P.A.-approved plan for managing stormwater with green infrastructure.” Philadelphia is a true innovator in this approach.

Focht said landscape architects are also focused on protecting licensure. Currently, all 50 states require landscape architects to be licensed to practice but there are some states that are threatening to roll back these licensure requirements with “sunset reviews.” ASLA in D.C. and local chapters are doing state-level advocacy to prevent this.

For many years in a row, the ASLA Board of Trustees has also made public awareness a priority, given that there is still a lack of understanding out there about what landscape architects actually do. So, a public awareness campaign was launched, resulting in more than 600 local events organized by landscape architects. During these events, landscape architects reached out to the public, explaining their value. Focht laughed, adding that this proves that “landscape architects aren’t the shade loving species” many think they are. Additional events will be held this year, along with projects conducted as part of the Year of Public Service. “Right now, 49 chapters have committed to leading and documenting events.”

Lastly, launching the Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) rating system, the first rating system for landscapes, is a major focus. ASLA, the U.S. Botanic Garden, and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at the University of Texas at Austin are the three key partners behind SITES. In total, some 1,500 comments have been received about the rating system during its public comment phase, with only 50 percent of those coming from landscape architects. Focht said ideas came in from all types of designers, planners, and policymakers, which ultimately makes SITES more usable for more of the world. Now that the pilot testing phase is complete and the first projects are becoming certified, discussions are underway with the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI) to handle certification of SITES projects from here on.

AIA

Jeffrey Potter, former AIA president, said AIA, which was founded in 1857, has largely bounced back from the recession and now has 80,000 members. Some 55 percent of licensed architects in the U.S. are members. The average age of members is 52, which may increasingly be a problem, he noted. AIA is trying to become the “global institute of architects,” with a growing focus on the big issues facing the world. But there are some who dispute the move in this direction. Potter said a big chunk of the membership is “issues-based and progressive like ASLA and APA members, but another set says ‘your job is to advocate for my business and make me successful.’” Potter said the challenge was to be both “a big tent across the world for all the issues we need to focus on” and an organization that can “maintain a narrow focus” on job growth.

Potter said the architecture practice was in a state of transformation. He said the world is struggling with how to create “place-based knowledge in a digital era.” In the past, “knowledge was linear. You read a book from start to finish. Now, we are in the networked age, with bits of knowledge here and there across the Web.” Potter believes this networked age will be a “great advantage for designers” because they already think and work in a networked manner. In this new world, architects are increasingly focused on “high performance places, public health, and disaster mitigation.”

To spur the growth of high-performance places, AIA has supported the launch of the International Green Construction Code (IGCC). The goal there is to create a “regulatory framework for new and existing buildings, establishing minimum green requirements for buildings and complementing voluntary rating systems.” The idea is to offer up a model code that localities can plug in encourage more rapid growth in green buildings. Beyond IGCC, AIA has also officially signed on to Ed Mazria’s Architecture 2030 initiative, with its AIA 2030. To better use the built environment to improve public health, AIA has started the American Design for Public Health Initiative with Dr. Richard Jackson, the pioneer in this field. Working with M.I.T. and other universities, AIA will ramp up efforts on how to design more healthy communities. To strengthen communities’ capacity to handle disasters, which seem to be happening more frequently, local AIA chapters and regional groups are forging new partnerships with local governments.

APA

With 40,000 members in 90 countries, APA is concerned about global issues like climate change, population growth, urbanization, and suburbanization but also focusing on U.S. communities. In the 21st century, Mitchell Silver, APA president, said, America is “greying and browning and single-family households are rising.” In the U.S., “people are getting older, living longer, increasingly diverse and multicultural, and one in five are disabled.” By 2050, a majority of households will be single people. By 2043, there will be no majority race. All of these demographic changes mean huge changes for the built environment. As such, the market will change and so will demand.

APA, following its code of ethics, is interested in making sure the next wave of communities that spring up to meet this new demand will be “sustaining places,” that “protect public health, safety, and welfare” of the people living there. APA was formed in 1909 to combat the negative public health impacts that came with living in cities. “People were dying because they lived in cities.” New York City was filled with slums not much different from the ones in New Delhi today. “More than 100,000 people lived in one square mile in lower Manhattan.” Back then, water-borne illnesses were the preventable diseases that had to be tackled. But today, Silver said, it’s cancer and heart disease, the diseases that come from eating too much and not getting enough exercise, the diseases of suburbia. Silver said at our current rates, “half of the country will be obese in 20 years.” So APA is increasingly focused on healthy planning.

To improve safety of the built environment, APA wants to ensure “people don’t die from unsafe buildings.” So planners are focused on ensuring building codes protect people. Silver said buildings built before World War II (pre-war) were “basically sound,” but post-war buildings are “lower quality.” In 50 years, then, what will happen to these less-safe buildings, particularly with the rise of extreme weather? This challenge is only compounded by the twin growing threats of climate change and more natural disasters.

The future then is about “comprehensive planning” to ensure communities are more “adaptable and resilient” to changes, whether they are due to population growth, water shortages, economic change, climate shifts, or natural disasters. Unfortunately, not every community agrees this is needed. APA is increasingly fighting “Agenda 21 myths,” and those who believe that planning is a form of UN-driven top-down control. A movement that seems like an off-shoot of the rabid Tea Partiers, the anti-Agenda 21 crowd has actually succeeded in rolling-back planning efforts in some states. One community actually just recently threw out all its building codes. “There are now no architectural standards there.” Silver said “80 percent of the public actually supports planning. The subset of people who oppose it are driven by ideology.”

To combat this “anti-planning backlash,” Silver said APA has to get out front and convince the public about “the value of planning and how its in the public interest.” Silver and APA CEO Paul Farmer both complimented ASLA on its public awareness campaign (Farmer called it “brilliant”), arguing that planners also need to take to the streets to boost awareness of the value of planners.

One audience member asked all three heads of the organizations what they would tell President Obama if they had the chance to sit down and meet with him. Focht said he would “make the case for green infrastructure and clean water. I would tell President Obama that the E.P.A. is doing great work on this but to become even more flexible, broad-minded, and push their boundaries. I would tell him to continue to make those investments.” Potter said unlike designers, realtors and home builders have real “brute force” on Capitol Hill so they can “really push an issue through.” So, “I would focus on the issues, not turf. I think there should be a greater focus on our national infrastructure. Working with engineers, this should be our priority.” For Silver, a meeting with Obama would give him the opportunity to say “the U.S. needs to pay for the true cost of a gallon of gas.” Obama also needs to find a way to “get dollars straight to mayors and bypass the state-level wrangling over dollars.” Mayors “have shovel-ready projects and know how to get things done.”

There was some discussion about how ASLA, AIA, and APA could formalize their alliance and possibly add in engineers to their group, to strengthen their voice on Capitol Hill.

Another audience member said if Obama was smart he’d create a national design review panel with the heads of the design organizations, so that every federal policy and major built-environment project went thorough design review before it went forward. This is actually not a crazy idea: Denmark has just such a system. Focht said, in fact, Philadelphia just set up such a review panel after the city rewrote its comprehensive and zoning plan. Let’s hope this idea gains steam.

Image credit: Water shortages in Western U.S. / University of Texas

Read Full Post »

Year of Public Service Comes to Alaska

Posted in Active Design, Landscape Architecture, Policy and Regulation on 04/23/2013 | Leave a Comment »

2013 is the Year of Public Service at ASLA. The goal is to highlight the public service activities performed by landscape architects and advocate for a deeper commitment to community service by all. ASLA invites current members to submit projects. Selected projects will be highlighted in the campaign’s Web site and outreach materials. Descriptions, quotes, and multimedia content may be used – with proper credit – on the YPS2013 web site, blog and The Understory Facebook page. Here are two recent public service projects, performed as part of the ASLA’s partnership with the National Park Service Rivers and Trails Conservation Assistance Program. These projects were recently submitted by Heather Rice, NPS-RTCA & Jonny Hayes, ASLA, ASLA’s Alaska Chapter.

Kachemak Bay Water Trail (KBWT): ASLA Alaska Chapter members Jonny Hayes, ASLA, and Mark Kimerer, ASLA, have been actively engaged in this project from its inception, working in tandem with the KBWT Steering Committee, National Park Service Rivers and Trails Conservation Assistance Program, and City of Homer.

Hayes and Kimerer began the trail branding process by working with a special committee of KBWT to facilitate and generate logo concepts. The pair worked with the committee during the process to refine the selected concept and produce a final logo that has been used extensively to promote the water trail vision, which will serve as a basis to guide future marketing efforts. Hayes and Kimerer have continued to lend their expertise to assist the Steering Committee to identify water trail branding options, develop a site inventory review form, evaluate potential launch sites, and prepare an RFP for the design and build of a water trail web site.

In April, Hayes will be leading a planning and programming design charrette with key stakeholders and the City of Homer to begin the design and permitting of the Kachemak Bay Water Trail launch in Homer, with a similar effort to take place in Seldovia at a later date.

Palmer Bike Park: The Palmer Bike Park, in Palmer, Alaska, is envisioned as a place where cyclists of any ability can hone their biking skills so they can enjoy all types of terrain. Cyclists of all ages will be able to learn how to bike safely and have fun. At the park, they will gain the confidence they need to ride their bikes anywhere, from sidewalks to roadway bike lanes to back country mountain bike trails.

To help move this project forward, Eric Morey, ASLA, Alaska Chapter, and Luanne Urfer, ASLA, Washington Chapter, collaborated with the the National Park Service Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program. They volunteered a generous amount of their time and expertise as participants in every part of the planning and early concept development process, including crafting the initial vision and building community support.

Viewed as stepping stones toward the larger Palmer Bike Park, smaller neighborhood parks and bike pump parks are also being developed to encourage kids and families to get outside and play. The goal is to create a constituency for the bike park. In the Wilson Neighborhood Park, Morey, Urfer, and Zach Babb, ASLA, Alaska Chapter, put kids’ dreams to paper during the 2012 Wilson Neighborhood Park design charrette. Thanks to these ASLA members’ colorful conceptual drawings, the City of Palmer approved funding for design and engineering and the community now looks forward to construction beginning this summer. With continued support from ASLA – and the community – the Palmer Bike Park is sure to be a success soon.

Image credits: Heather Rice, NPS-RTCA & Jonny Hayes, ASLA

Contact Phil Stamper at pstamper@asla.org with any questions related to the Year of Public Service. Join the conversation on Twitter by using the hashtag #YPS2013.

Read Full Post »

Making Sure Smart Also Means Equitable

Posted in Policy and Regulation, Urban Revitalization on 04/17/2013 | 4 Comments »

With the rise of “smart growth” approaches to urban development, which promote dense, walkable urban centers as an alternative to sprawl, there are questions about whether smart growth is actually equitable. Those compact, walkable neighborhoods are in hot demand across the country so it costs more to live there. So this also means not everyone gets to reap all the health benefits from living in a walkable community. In gentrifying neighborhoods, the issue is further compounded. People who lived in these communities and got to walk everywhere are being pushed out because they can’t afford the rising rents and property taxes. They are instead being shunted to the suburbs, the growing place for the poor in the U.S. There, many of the poor can’t afford cars so they are even more affected: they’ve lost their community, ability to walk around and get exercise, and can’t get to work easily. At the American Planning Association (APA) conference in Chicago, a group of really-smart smart growth advocates, David Dixon, Goody Clancy; Dena Belzer, Strategic Economics; and F. Kaid Benfield, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and The Atlantic Cities blogger, took a hard look at these issues.

Dixon painted a pretty gloomy portrait of inequality in the U.S., arguing that it’s just going to get worse given how the U.S. economy is now set up. While manufacturing’s share of the total economy has grown 50 percent over the past decades, the share of jobs in manufacturing has fallen by 30 percent. Manufacturing is becoming much more efficient, which means fewer middle class jobs. At the same time, 60 percent of employers demand educators workers, those with at least a college degree. But by 2020, only 40 percent will find those workers. More and more college students aren’t completing their programs due to rising education costs. “This is a built-in engine for greater economic fragmentation and increased inequality.” Dixon added that the middle tier of workers will be “lucky to stay in place” over the coming decades.

At the same time, demographics are also changing so that there’s a greater demand for walkable neighborhoods. Married couples with children are less than 25 percent of the population now. Singles or couples now make up 62 percent of the country. “Non-traditional households outnumber traditional families.” These different families want different places to live. “In the ’90s, it was about golf courses, escaping from work, homogeneity. In 2012, it’s about walkability, transit, diversity, and living near work. Sustainability is also important.” Moving toward 2030, there will be a “tectonic shift in values, with the majority of people in cities as opposed to suburbs.”

Where are all those people who want to live in dense, walkable environments going to go? For Dixon and the others on the panel, they are most likely going to displace the people already living in cities. “In fact, people are already being displaced at a rapid rate.”

In Brooklyn, Dixon explained how that city has two of the country’s fastest gentrifying neighborhoods. There, “the cost of a good walkscore means poverty has moved to the suburbs.” Housing nearer to transit is expensive, but housing further out that requires more transportation is even more expensive. Some 40 percent of low-income people can’t afford a car “so moving to a suburb is a catastrophe.” Beyond that, pushing these people to the suburbs is condemning them to a less healthy life.

For Belzer, who is an economist, the big issue in the ’90s was “dumb growth or suburban sprawl.” The response was to try to save farmland and preserve open space. The Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) pushed for “traditional neighborhood development,” really new cities that replicated old ones with their dense, compact, mixed-use neighborhoods. In the ’00s, the issue became how distant housing was from transit and employment centers and rising greenhouse gas emissions. To combat these trends while also improving health, advocates began to push for urban infill and “transit-oriented development.”

Now, according to a recent Brookings Institution report, for the first time in nine decades, major cities had more population growth than their combined suburbs. This means that white flight is certainly over: in fact, the opposite trend is now at work.

Belzer said gentrification is certainly happening but not uniformly everywhere. She argued that the only way to prevent widespread negative impacts of gentrification is for “smart growth advocates and equity advocates” to join forces and become “community advocates.” These community advocates can then force infill growth. So what do these community advocates need to make happen? She said they must make “social investing central to any physical planning strategy.” Healthcare, daycare, and food banks are important. “Every $1 invested in childhood education can return 4-5 times in social value.” Another priority must be preserving and even adding to the stock of affordable housing, particularly in places where high income households are coming in. If done right, affordable housing can even boost property values. She added that communities need to diversify their sources of income. “You can’t just rely on hipsters coming in to finance urban amenities.”

Benfield complained about the gloomy picture painted by Dixon, saying that many low-income communities may not be rich, but are rich in culture, leadership, possibility. Restoring or revitalization these communities is really the smartest growth strategy. To prove this, NRDC has been working with the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) to help disinvested communities. Applying the LEED for Neighborhood Development (ND) rating system, which Benfield co-created, communities can think through the issues. LEED-ND is unlike LEED because it focuses on the broader context of development, not just inside the building. With its point system, LEED-ND incentivizes walkability, affordability, diversity, and density. “It’s about the green management of systems, the totality of the environmental performance.”

Codman Square, Boston, is an example of one of these rich low-income places. It’s an area that has faced disinvestment, but a new transit station has brought new possibilities. The area, Benfield said, is highly walkable, even pleasant, but “if you look closely, you see elements of decay.” There are brownfields, abandoned properties; other buildings aren’t in good shape. Working with local leaders and LISC, Benfield came in and helped them apply LEED-ND as a planning tool in a two-day charrette to “see the opportunities.” He made a point of applauding two local leaders — Larry, who runs a “net-zero” car body shop that we wants to put a green roof on, and Paul, who runs the Boston Project, a faith-based ministry that aims to restore older, disinvested neighborhoods. Part of his home is a community drop-in center.

Benfield found that the community would achieve a low-level certification as it is now. There were also a lot of “maybe” points that could be achieved. These were what intrigued Benfield the most. To get those points and also make some real gains, the community has decided to “redesign New England avenue corridor, making it much more dense and green; conduct deep energy retrofits; create a new eco-innovation district; and go for LEED-ND certification.” (see a fascinating set of posts by Benfield on Codman at NRDC’s site).

Dixon outlined some other positive examples of smart growth in depressed urban areas. He described how efforts are underway to tear down Claiborne, a freeway running through Treme, New Orleans, and replace with a boulevard. At the center of the effort is a plan to use the amazing local culture to fight gentrification and improve neighborhood cohesion. Local groups are using the deep-rooted culture of Treme to build “human capital” that can have economic benefits. In Minneapolis, Juxtaposition Arts is building social capital in an effort to rebuild the neighborhood.

Also, Baltimore is undertaking a project to avoid the harsh effects of gentrification and create more “equitable density.” There, the goal is to encourage people to stay as density rises. “Otherwise, something has got to give, and it’s usually the poor people.” Dixon said Baltimore will probably need three-times its existing density to “keep existing people.”

Image credit: Codman Square / Kaid Benfield, NRDC

Read Full Post »

Massive Cuts Loom as Sequestration Deadline Nears

Posted in Policy and Regulation on 02/26/2013 | 3 Comments »

With the “sequestration” scheduled to take effect on Friday, massive cuts to the Federal budget loom. So far, the Obama administration and Republicans on Capitol Hill have failed to reach an agreement. Some Capitol Hill watchers argue that no real negotiations are taking place (or even civil dialogue). Obama administration officials recently started a full-out push to highlight the negative impact of cuts on government services, with a different cabinet official making a statement each day. But Republicans have stood firm against Obama’s efforts to raise taxes to cover the cuts. Until we hear more, some $85 billion is expected to be cut from the 2013 budget, with $1 trillion more taking effect over the next decade. While few deny that the federal deficit and accumulated debt are becoming real problems, the scale and timing cuts have many worried that reductions in government spending could slow economic growth.

Thousands of federal employees in all agencies are expected to receive pay cuts and be furloughed. Beyond reduced staff time, here’s a blow-by-blow account of how cuts will impact programs landscape architects and other sustainable design professionals care about:

Environmental Protection

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would lose $716 million in financing this year. In a recent letter by Administrator Lisa Jackson to the senate, Jackson writes sequestration would limit the agency’s ability to monitor clean air and water, enforce rules currently in place, and help states enforce rules, too. E&E News says, “cuts to air and water programs would be especially tough because much of that money is distributed to states, many of which have already seen their budgets significantly reduced in recent years. Grant programs to the states to finance aging water infrastructure and implement Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act programs are among the largest pots of money in EPA’s budget.”

On water alone, Lisa Jackson writes, “reductions under sequestration would impact state’s ability to meet drinking water public health standards and to reduce nitrogen and phosphorous pollution that contaminate drinking water supplies, cause toxic algae blooms, and deprive waters of the oxygen fish need to survive.” In practice, this would mean eliminating 100 water quality protection and restoration projects.

More than $100 million would also be cut from the brownfield clean-up Superfund program.

Green Infrastructure

Research and technical assistance to states on critical areas like green infrastructure would be curtailed. “Under sequestration, reductions to green infrastructure (GI) research would slow the agency’s ability to provide GI best practices to municipalities dealing with costly stormwater managment enforcement actions. Other benefits of GI, such as wildlife habitat, flood and erosion control, recreational opportunities, jobs and increased property values, would also be lost.”

Sustainable and Healthy Communities

The EPA’s great work on sustainable and healthy communities, a priority of administrator Jackson, would be more limited. The EPA’s partners in sustainable community development, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Department of Transportation, would be hamstrung.

Fellowship programs would be eliminated, while two joint EPA / National Institute of Health programs on environmental health and children would go. Research grants to help academic institutions understand the impact of the environment on health would also be reduced.

The EPA would also take big hits in terms of its climate change research programs and adaptation programs on the ground.

Parks

The National Park Service (NPS) will be hard hit, with each federally-managed park taking a 5 percent budget cut, for a total of a $110 million cut overall. According to The New York Times, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar recently said the NPS won’t actually close any parks, monuments, or refuges, but “hours for visitors centers, tours and interpretive programs, like those at the Gettysburg battlefield, would be curtailed.” In addition, access to some “back country trails and camp grounds could be limited if firefighting and rescue teams are cut back.”

Jonathan B. Jarvis, director of the National Park Service, said national parks bring in around 280 million annual visits, contributing huge amounts to the local economies near parks. “National parks generate $30 billion in economic activity and support 252,000 jobs,” so the economic impact could be much broader.

According to Salazar, the timing of the cuts are particularly “grim,” since “they hit as parks are preparing for an influx of spring and summer visitors,” wrote Federal News Radio.

Conservation

According to E&E News, the Fish and Wildlife Service faces similar challenges at its 100 wildlife refuges. Desiree Sorenson-Groves, vice president of government affairs for the National Wildlife Refuge Association, said that environmental education, already a secondary priority at many refuges, may get pushed further down the list. In addition, due to staff time reductions, FWS may not have staff to “oversee the refuges’ 42,000 volunteers, a significant portion of the agency’s labor force that helps conduct wildlife surveys, band birds, raise fish and guide tours, among other tasks.”

Separately, USDA cuts would have impact on conservation. They would limit “technical and financial assistance” provided to farmers for conservation. “The department also plans to put in place a hiring freeze in the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which administers conservation programs.”

Transportation

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has been out front in the media over the past few days, calling the alarm about the possible negative effects of the cuts on air traffic control. Transportation would lose nearly $1 billion in financing, or 1.4 percent of its total budget, with a huge chunk coming out of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Beyond this, funds for the popular TIGER grant program would be cut by $41 million. The “New Starts” program, which finances new transit construction, would take a $156 million hit, while MAP-21 discretionary (non-highway) programs would be reduced by 7 percent.

Image credit: Slate

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »