Green A City

Jerry Brown to California Cities: Curb Greenhouse Gases or I'll Sue You

California Attorney General Jerry Brown gave members of the California League of Cities convention yesterday in the state capital the threat of lawsuits if the state's 400+ cities don’t account for the greenhouse-gas producing activities related to their planning processes.

The former California governor and mayor of Oakland earlier this year in his new role as self-proclaimed "top cop," sued one hyper-growth California county for not calculating the impact of its extensive development plans on greenhouse gas production.

Brown used the state's groundbreaking 2006 AB 32 global warming mitigation legislation as precedent in a now-settled lawsuit against San Bernardino County. His office is compelling the county to inventory its total greenhouse gas emissions and to come up with a greenhouse gas reduction action plan for reducing emissions tied to new development, through a long-existing regulation known as the California Environmental Quality Act.

"We've got to adopt feasible measures to reduce greenhouse gasses through public processes--every city and county in California can do it," Brown told the gathering of hundreds of mayors and city managers. "I want to join with you to help. If you don't, I'll sue you. You have your roadmap, your threat, and the carrot of good things you'll achieve and bad things you'll avoid, so let's do it!"

The “bad things” he referred to that could be avoided included more smog and forest fires because of higher temperatures and broken levees because of increased flooding risks attributed to global climate change.

Brown, in his gruff San Francisco "Out-the-Mission" accent (which to this native Chicagoan always sounds more Chi-Town than anything), lauded Republican Gov. Schwarzenegger and the state's General Assembly for its far-reaching global climate change emission reduction targets.

"What California has done in adopting AB 32 is more comprehensive than the greenhouse gas reduction goals in any state and in some ways is more complete than anything accomplished by any nation."

Brown alluded to the California Environmental Quality Act being signed back in 1970 by then Governor Ronald Reagan and how last year Gov. Schwarzenegger signed AB 32 into law.

"A Republican signed the most far-reaching, invasive measure to make your life more difficult and now I'm the top cop to chase down people who emit greenhouse gasses," the long-time Democrat said, with a hint of irony.

The crowd of city officials, representing every political stripe, guffawed and cheered the former-seminary-student-turned career politician.

The Impact of "Boomburbs" on Metro Sustainability

The Brookings Institute recently released a new book, Boomburbs: The Rise of America's Accidental Cities, and we were astounded by the hyper growth of many places that few have heard of nationally.

What's troubling is the negative impact these cities will have on the best efforts of urban centers to green their communities.

Located in more than 25 metro areas in the US, so-called boomburbs have doubled, tripled, even quadrupled in size since the 1970s or 1980s, with metros such as Phoenix having as much 42 percent of its total population residing in these new clusters.

Photo source: Wikipedia

While the SustainLane US City Rankings of the largest 50 US cities included only two of these so-called Boomburbs--Mesa, Arizona          and Arlington, Texas--these and other cities such as North Las Vegas, Nevada; Hialeah, Florida; Peoria, Arizona; and Chesapeake, Virginia will be truly pushing the limit in impacting smart growth planning approaches for water, natural resources, air quality and traffic impacts.

The problem is many of these boomburbs lack city planning, and rely instead on housing developers for master plans, which may or may not be cobbled together to form the basis for transportation and resource planning.

Worse,  say authors Robert Lang and Jennifer LeFurgy, boomburbs are quickly leapfrogging into cheaper agricultural land beyond metro cities, with even newer "mini boomburbs" that push into "increasingly remote locations and use legislation intended to promote rural economic growth to steal businesses from older, more developed suburbs."

Examples are provided of cities such as Frisco, Texas, which is outside Dallas-Forth Worth, poaching business from older Texas boomburbs such as Plano and Irvine.

"Boomberbs are truly 'driving cities'," say the authors. "Not only is public transit use low, but also average travel time to work is high." It's not surprising that Arlington, Texas (pop. 360,000), was the only city in the SustainLane US City Rankings to have 0 percent of its population commuting on public transit or biking to work.

The authors report on "freeway exit economies," where a community's economic growth potential is measured by the number of freeway exits and miles of freeway-facing frontage road it has. That's so it can pencil out how much land it can develop with low-slung strip malls, big-box retailers, corporate campuses and massive residential housing projects.

Boomburbs never mentions the environmental impacts boomburbs foist upon neighboring communities, regions and states (the book and supporting study were funded by the Fannie Mae Foundation).

But there is one glimmer of hope: most mayors and city councils of boomburbs are pursuing light rail as a solution to the congestion, air pollution, inconvenience and the resulting lack of prestige these mushrooming "driving cities" and their 10 million inhabitants are experiencing.

Design Like You Give A Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises

Announcing... SustainLane Government book reviews! Whip out a pen and start your summer reading list. Today, Research Associate Ramsay Millie reviews a book which should be considered by city planners, architecture consultants, and anyone interested in sustainable development. Over the next few days we will post more reviews.   -Editor

Edited by: Architecture for Humanity

Everyone who touches this book on my coffee table is instantly immersed. Design Like You Give A Damn showcases low-cost sustainable solutions that solve some of the most troubling issues of the developing world.  Colorful pages display more than 80 innovative and contemporary solutions to such urgent needs as basic shelter, health care, education, and access to clean water, energy, and sanitation.  Alice Waters states, “This book brings forth the values of sustainability and diversity in a beautiful way—values which are as essential to our housing as they are to food we eat.”  A very powerful and thought provoking read.

-- Ramsay Millie, Research Associate, SustainLane Government

New York City's Small Carbon Footprint

New York released details of its carbon inventory Friday, and its emissions were just under one percent of the nation's, with about 2.7 percent of the national population of 300 million. That means the city emits only about one-third as much as the rest of the nation does on average, mostly because of its strong city and metro region public transit.

The Big Apple's mixed-use zoning, allowing businesses and residents and retail to occupy the same neighborhoods, also contributed to its low-carbon output, as people have no-carbon options besides public transit--you can actually walk or bike to get things done and to go punch the clock.

The new office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability (what an awesome moniker!) was the agency behind the inventory, and the city worked in conjunction with the organization Local Governments for Sustainability, or ICLEI, in what was described by Mayor Bloomberg as, "the most detailed inventory of greenhouse gas emissions in US history."

I might beg to differ considering the detailed greenhouse gas inventories Seattle and San Francisco have undertaken in the recent past, but it's surely the largest in US history because of the sheer size of NYC.

The inventory will serve as a benchmark for the 30 percent carbon emissions reduction goal by 2030 that Bloomberg announced in December.

Buildings produced 79 percent of the carbon emissions, which underscores the importance of green building measures in combatting global climate change.

Top Ten Green Cities: Review of "The Climate Code" Episode on SustainLane's US City Rankings

The Weather Channel's "The Climate Code" covered in-depth The SustainLane US City Rankings yesterday, featuring reports from the top ten cities out of the largest 50 US cities SustainLane ranked in 2006. Look for How Green is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings from New Society Press in April with expanded and updated information on the rankings.

Yesterday (rebroadcast Saturday, January 27 at 3, 5 and 11 p.m. Eastern), we heard about the following cities:

1. Portland, Oregon

Portland provides a great example of what cities, citizens and businesses can do together to improve their quality of life along with the local economy.

Once having some of the nation's poorest air quality, Portland now has some of the best air and tap water quality nationwide, along with free public transit downtown, the highest bike-to-work rate, the most LEED-certified buildings, strong local food and an emerging alternative fuels economy. Plus the real estate community has backed the first residential home multiple-listing service with green features in history.

2. San Francisco

San Francisco is a close competitor with Portland for managing sustainability programs that help provide the nation's best solid waste diversion rate (recycling and commercial composting), and feature bold projects for solar and tidal energy generation. San Francisco's housing affordability remains an issue that forces many to commute long distances into the city. Fortunately the Bay Area features strong public transportation to help make that commuting less polluting and congested.

3. Seattle

Mayor Greg Nickels, who appeared on "The Climate Code," is a strong national advocate for climate change policy, clean technologies, green building and effective sustainability policy management. Seattle, its port authority and King County, have been teaming up on biodiesel ferry and bus initiatives, while the city has strongly pushed for restoring native forests in the Emerald City.

4. Chicago

My hometown, and each time I visit, I'm more wowed by what I see under Mayor Daley's leadership. Mayor Daley, who spoke on "The Climate Code" about wanting to go from #4 in the SustainLane rankings to #1, has been greening streets, freeways and even abandoned industrial sites.

Chicago blends the aesthetic with the technical aspects of sustainability: the world's largest green roof at Millennium Park underlies a Frank Gehry-designed bandshell, all part of an ongoing study to reduce urban heat-island effect.

5. Oakland, California

Oakland is a great "sleeper" in the top ten, with growing public transit use, policy supporting more local food, renewable energy and a move toward energy security. New Mayor Ron Dellums is instituting a "green collar" jobs program for youth and low-income workers, so that the clean tech jobs the city is trying to lure can equally benefit professionals, skilled people in the trades, unskilled workers and students.

6. New York City

With the country's best urban public transit system, New York is not resting on its laurels. Mayor Bloomberg is putting his weight behind city appointments, committees and processes that are making a sustainability plan a reality in 2007. Out of such activities, look for the city to assume a leadership role in developing alternative fueled vehicles, renewable energy (including tidal) and Gotham-scaled green buildings.

7. Boston

The Bean goes Green. Boston is poised to become the leading city for green building with its new zoning requiring that all buildings over 50,000 sq. feet be LEED (the US Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified. Add that to high renewable energy use, great public transit, walkability and low sprawl, and you get a promising future. Weakness: recycling. 

8. Philadelphia

Philly's #8 has been a surprise to some, but the city is a great model for local urban food, with strong networks of farmers markets and community gardens. The city also is riding a wave of interest in sustainability from citizen groups, business (including the local Business Alliance for Local Living Economies), and just plain folks who have been attending large planning and visioning meetings.  From that process the city needs a sustainability plan that city officials buy into, along with more recycling and renewable energy.

9. Denver

When cities claim that they can't build public transit like that of such "older cities" in the top ten, I always point to Denver. The city and 30 surrounding towns in 2004 passed a ballot measure to build out more than 100 miles of new light rail and other new public transit lines.

Mayor Hickenlooper has made sustainability the foundation for the city's future, through economic development that will be integrated with the new public transit. The skinny: 4x current public transit ridership in 15 years and a vital new American city.

10. Minneapolis

Minneapolis wants to increase its energy and food security, as Mayor R.T. Rybak described on "The Climate Code" yesterday. The city will continue being the leader in renewable energy for Midwestern cities, while bolstering farmers markets and community gardens (it's already #1 in that area), and green building. 

New York City's New Sustainability Plan

The Economist last week had a piece lauding New York City's effort to make itself into a "Sustainable City".
As reported here in October, Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed a new director of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, a move auguring well for Gotham's org chart in terms of inculcating sustainability across budgets, functions and 15 city agencies.  Now Bloomberg is turning it up a notch.

"New Yorkers needed a long-term plan for sustainability," Bloomberg told an audience last week at the Queens Art Museum. "...doing nothing has its costs, too – economic and environmental, costs that will only escalate with the passing years."

Mayor Bloomberg has begun casting a city-wide sustainability plan with multiple actors, guided on policy by a Sustainability Advisory Board. On point, besides Sustainability Director Rohit Aggarwala, is Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, leading community-based land-use planning.  The board's ten program goals Aggarwala and Doctoroff will shepard include:

• Turning Fresh Kills Landfill (yes, that of the famous 1988 Mobro 4000 "Garbage Barge" incident) into the largest city park developed in more than a century.
• An expanded Number 7 subway line to complement the nation's already highest rate of public transit use (more than 50 percent of New Yawkers ride public transit). Forecasts have been made on all the cities subway lines through 2030 to determine congestion based on demographic and ridership trends.
• Launching a public outreach effort to get citizen and community input on developing plans and projects, or what Bloomberg calls "a citywide conversation."
• Having an inventory of more than 1,300 neighborhood playgrounds to see where more are needed.
• Developing power plant efficiency forecasts for next 25 years.
• Creating and preserving affordable housing for 500,000 residents by 2013
• Phasing out pollution-causing heavy-diesel fuel using trucks in the city fleet
• Lowering global warming carbon emissions by 30% by 2030.
• Developing a new tunnel and filtration plant for water delivery to city from its protected Upstate sources.

It's encouraging to see the largest North American city outside of Mexico develop a detailed sustainability plan, something its country cousins in Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco have had for up to ten years.

Bloomberg and the city will need to do much more to develop renewable energy, as it accounts for none of the City's current mix of energy. Some California cities, including Los Angeles, get more than 10 percent of their energy from renewables--partially because of California utility purchasing mandates. But cities such as Chicago, San Francisco and Oakland have renewable energy generation and purchasing requirements.

Takeaway: New York is on its way to having a significant sustainability plan with key public-private players involved, which will make sustainability so much more real for city departments, citizens and the regional economy.