What does your lifestyle consist of? Would you rather walk to the local grocery store or do you find yourself driving even though it’s a ten minute walk? Welcome to the life of Jeff Heie where he and his family transitioned into the minimalist, greener world of sourcing their energy locally. For the Heie family, a simple walk, or even a couple of trips to purchase fresh foods has become routine. After packing their belongings, of only necessary value, the Heie’s moved from their comfortable space in Arizona to a small town just outside Manchester, England.
According to Jefff, “Every place in the world has local sources of renewable energy, whether it [is] the sun, the wind, hydroelectric, geothermal or tidal power.” The Heie’s felt it essential to utilize these natural “sources” in order to provide a healthy planet for their children and future generations to come. Phasing out fossil fuel and using renewable energy translates to a happier and sustainable life. For them, renting a car once a month means they can get chores done or spend the weekend vacationing. Bicycling and walking, versus driving, means more family time, more exercise and conserving energy.
It is a cyclical process- from the way you use resources, use transportation, from the way you eat and interact with your community, it all affects the world we live in. Jeff highlights how the use of a “milk man” brings a certain familiarity to the neighborhood- a person who gives comfort to the elderly, the children and even raises issues as to how the milk is transported. The local milk man’s vehicle is electric- running on battery. It is astonishing that living locally can be more prosperous than living in a developed nation- a simpler way of living means “reducing carbon food print, prevents military complexes based on the need to protect our economic and political interests, and it is better for our communities to be economically viable and locally self efficient.”
You recognize the nuances of life, meet people, actually offer a smile and exchange a “hello” when you become invested and connected to your community. Understandably, living day-to-day or trying to overcome the exhaustion of long work hours doesn’t afford most the time, or the ability to live unconventionally. We, meaning the U.S., are part of a system that is designed to make our lives more difficult. But if you think about it, if we mirrored the Heie family and put our efforts into living more collectively, we could share Mother Earth and call it our home.
In Richard Florida’s recent piece for the Atlantic, “How the Crash Will Reshape America,” he foresees a more concentrated population centered around cities, leading to the further expansion of mega-regions – systems of multiple cities and their surrounding suburbs – based on their ability to offer higher paying jobs and attract the best talent. Florida views this shift as not only inevitable – loss of jobs forcing people to move where they can find work – but necessary. This geographic clustering he argues, will speed the kind of innovation required to remake our economy into a more resilient and adaptable model. He points us to a study on “urban metabolism” conducted by the Santa Fe Institute:
[W]hen the Santa Fe team examined trends in innovation, patent activity, wages, and GDP, they found that successful cities, unlike biological organisms, actually get faster as they grow. In order to grow bigger and overcome diseconomies of scale like congestion and rising housing and business costs, cities must become more efficient, innovative, and productive. The researchers dubbed the extraordinarily rapid metabolic rate that successful cities are able to achieve “super-linear†scaling. “By almost any measure,†they wrote, “the larger a city’s population, the greater the innovation and wealth creation per person.†Places like New York with finance and media, Los Angeles with film and music, and Silicon Valley with hightech are all examples of high-metabolism places.
But if the future landscape of the U.S. does mean more people in less places, what exactly does that look like and how do we meet the challenges of this reordering? As Florida notes, “We need to ensure that key cities and regions continue to circulate people, goods, and ideas quickly and efficiently.” Much of this touches on ideas about building sustainable communities with smarter infrastructure in place to help facilitate this growth. Not exactly notions that you would expect to be kicking around the halls of Congress – until now perhaps.
On his blog, Fast Lane, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has been writing about his desire to create “livable communities”:
[O]ne of my highest priorities is to work closely with Congress, other Federal departments, the nation’s governors, and local officials to help promote more livable communities through sustainable surface transportation programs. By focusing on livability, we can help transform the way transportation serves the American people—and create safer, healthier communities that provide access to economic opportunities.
To that end, LaHood and HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan presented in front of the House of Representatives yesterday, detailing their plans for creating “a high-level inter-agency task force to better coordinate federal transportation and housing investments.” Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised when our government makes intelligent and ultimately transformative choices, but this move comes as bit of a happy shock. Recognizing the larger context and inter-connectedness of housing, transportation, energy consumption and its effect on people is an enlightened first step on the part of our officials. As Secretary LaHood says, “I like an idea that makes sense. This idea makes sense.”
The US Department of Transportation (DOT) is seeking to use stimulus spending to support livable communities, says Beth Osborne, deputy assistant secretary for transportation policy. DOT has $1.5 billion in multimodal discretionary funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Osborne said in a November 9 Internet conference sponsored by the Center for Transportation and the Environment at North Carolina State University. The multimodal funds are also known as TIGER grants.
“When we put together the criteria by which we would evaluate projects, we put livability at the top,” said Osborne. “It’s up there with safety and economic competitiveness. We could not have made a stronger indication about what our priorities are.”
What does DOT mean by livability? Osborne’s description focused on mixed use, walkable neighborhoods, and pedestrian access to transit, jobs, stores, schools, and other public buildings. The following is Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s definition, according to Osborne: “Livability means a community where you can take kids to school, go to work, see a doctor, go to the grocery store, have dinner and a movie, and play with your kids in a park, all without having to get into a car.”
A “major priority” at DOT will be to focus the discretionary funds on communities that seek to improve livability, Osborne said. “There’s a real bottom line need to reward those communities that make those connections,” she said.
The subject of the web conference was the Partnership for Sustainable Communities that was formed earlier this year in collaboration involving DOT, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Also speaking were Shelley Poticha, senior adviser for sustainable housing and communities at HUD, John Frece, smart growth program director at EPA, and Elizabeth Wilkins, White House policy assistant for urban affairs and mobility and opportunity.
HUD’s 2010 budget calls for $100 million for sustainable communities planning grants, Poticha noted. The budget also requests $40 million for community challenge grants that could be used for zoning reform and other implementation tools for smart growth. Both programs could be authorized by the end of 2009 or early in 2010, Poticha said. After that, detailed criteria for these grants will be announced.
Foreclosures higher in suburbs
Poticha added that HUD research shows that foreclosures have been highest in neighborhoods that lack key aspects of livability. “Our research has shown a remarkable alignment between the neighborhoods that Beth described as places where every trip has to be made by car and the concentration of the greatest number of foreclosures in the housing markets,” she said. “That might be a coincidence but we are not so sure — because we have looked at almost every metro region in the country and found this same pattern.”
Consequently, she said, “We see the sustainable communities partnership as key to getting communities back on their feet after the economic collapse.”
Other highlights:
• Frece estimated that if the US shifted just 10 percent of new housing starts to smarter growth development over the next 10 years, Americans would save about 5 billion gallons of gasoline and about $220 billion in household transportation expenses.
• Osborne reported that Envision Utah, a smart growth regional plan led by Calthorpe Associates, reduced infrastructure costs by $4.5 billion over a 10-year period in the Salt Lake City area while cutting traffic congestion.
California residents living in sprawling suburban developments could save billions of dollars every year if they lived in denser, urban zones and along transit corridors, according to a study released today by smart growth and transit advocates TransForm. Analyzing four metropolitan areas--Southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego, and Sacramento--Windfall for All found that shifting populations in those regions to denser development along transit corridors would save save $31 billion per year, or $3,850 on average per household [Report Summary PDF].
In the Bay Area, where annual car ownership costs on average over $8,000 per person, individuals spend roughly $34 billion every year on personal transportation costs, compared to only $4.6 billion spent by public agencies on transit and roads combined. Households with poor access to public transit not only spend double the amount per year on transportation when compared to those with good access to transit, they produce more than double the amount of CO2, a greenhouse gas.
"The most astounding thing is that agencies pinch their pennies on transit and cut back and we feel like we can't afford not to save that service," said Stuart Cohen, Executive Director of TransForm. "We're already spending more than seven times as much as our agencies spend on public transit and roads just on buying and operating our vehicles."
What's more, the report points out that fuel costs represent a small minority of the cost of owning a car, so the craze for electric and other low-emission vehicles will not dramatically reduce the transportation costs for those living far from their jobs and far from transit. The best solution to combating climate change, the report notes, is to build walkable, vibrant communities where residences are situated close to job centers.
Click to enlarge: household CO2 from transportation in the Bay Area.
The report highlights California's Senate Bill 375 (SB 375), which establishes a legislative framework for mandating smart growth along transit corridors, and it argues there are economic incentives for individuals, developers, cities, and regions for limiting the role of the private automobile in transportation spending.
"By reducing public and private transportation costs and increasing revenues to local governments, SB 375 can help put dollars back in the pockets of consumers and local governments," said Cohen.
Windfall for All counters the claim that SB 375 will be too costly to implement during the current economic crisis with several examples of how planning denser cities and offering alternatives to private car travel can save money.
First, in Sacramento, the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) created a 2050 development blueprint that forecasts current development patterns and compared them to smart growth patterns. SACOG found that Sacramento would save $9.4 billion in public infrastructure costs (transportation, utilities, water, etc), $655 million in annual residents' fuel costs and $8.4 billion less for land purchases to offset environmental degradation from sprawl. The city would also see a 300 percent increase in public transit use if the city clustered development around transit within an urban growth boundary.
Benefits of public transportation for household costs and pollution. Image: TransForm.
Another case study from TransForm's report analyzed the promising results from the University of California San Diego's (UCSD) experiment in promoting non-automobile travel to the campus. Rather than build 10 additional parking facilities that had been planned and using parking revenue from three garages built between 2001 and 2007 at UCSD's La Jolla campus, the university invested in shuttles, expanded routes, discount and free fares on transit, as well as facilities for bicycling and pedestrians, all of which has resulted in a dramatic reduction of solo-driver trips. The alternative transportation measures and the costs savings from not building the new garages were so significant, UCSD has frozen the construction of new garages. The USCD model was successful enough to convince the University of California system to require universities to present a business model analyzing the benefits of transit, ride sharing, and bicycle facilities before building new garages.
In the Bay Area, parking regulations are a significant impediment to dense development. In San Leandro, parking minimums of more than two parking spaces for each new home made dense development a planning impossibility. When San Leandro re-wrote its downtown plan, it rezoned to allow 3,400 new homes, more than seven times the limit under the old zoning laws. The first development in the new Downtown Transit-Oriented Development Strategy, The Alameda, designed by San Francisco Architect David Baker, saves $3.9 million by eliminating a level of parking and produces 30 more affordable units, according to the report.
Based on these and other case studies, Cohen suggested California should consider levying a climate impact fee on gasoline to generate enough money to expand public transit options and expand walkable communities while improving the economy and meeting ambitious greenhouse gas targets.
"Building our communities with the expectation that every driver in a family is going to have to own their own car is part of what is part of what is bankrupting families," said Cohen. "The infrastructure for the... roads and those patterns of growth is part of what is bankrupting our public agencies."
Windfall for All Critical Recommendations
Integrate full economic analysis into planning. The huge dividends from efficient land use become evident once personal costs, not just public budgets, are considered. Without such analysis, we will continue to promote plans and policies that cost too much for families, businesses, and local governments.
Provide cities and counties with an infusion of funds to engage the community in planning. The state should make funds available for updating zoning codes and parking policies to make more efficient use of land and resources. Identifying strategies to maintain and expand the number of affordable homes is also critical.
Fund cost-effective public transportation. The state needs to provide leadership and restore funds for public transit, as well as make it easier for regions to raise new revenues with climate-impact fees. Economic analysis could determine whether such fees, if spent in ways that promote more efficient communities, can reduce our overall costs.
Innovate, evaluate and replicate. There are dozens of innovative strategies – whether an individual program such as car-sharing, or a comprehensive rewards approach such as UC San Diego’s. MTC, the Bay Area’s transportation agency, will soon launch the first “Transportation Climate Action Program.” This program will seed, evaluate and replicate innovative programs. Other regions should follow suit.
New development should minimize pollution from new residents – or pay to mitigate it. The San Joaquin Valley is encouraging efficient development from the start. New developments that don’t provide walkable communities with convenient transportation choices must mitigate the costs of the air pollution that will be generated by future residents. The state and regional air districts should encourage this same system for mitigating the costs of greenhouse gases.
The US Department of Transportation (DOT) is seeking to use stimulus spending to support livable communities, says Beth Osborne, deputy assistant secretary for transportation policy. DOT has $1.5 billion in multimodal discretionary funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Osborne said in a November 9 Internet conference sponsored by the Center for Transportation and the Environment at North Carolina State University. The multimodal funds are also known as TIGER grants.
“When we put together the criteria by which we would evaluate projects, we put livability at the top,” said Osborne. “It’s up there with safety and economic competitiveness. We could not have made a stronger indication about what our priorities are.”
What does DOT mean by livability? Osborne’s description focused on mixed use, walkable neighborhoods, and pedestrian access to transit, jobs, stores, schools, and other public buildings. The following is Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s definition, according to Osborne: “Livability means a community where you can take kids to school, go to work, see a doctor, go to the grocery store, have dinner and a movie, and play with your kids in a park, all without having to get into a car.”
A “major priority” at DOT will be to focus the discretionary funds on communities that seek to improve livability, Osborne said. “There’s a real bottom line need to reward those communities that make those connections,” she said.
The subject of the web conference was the Partnership for Sustainable Communities that was formed earlier this year in collaboration involving DOT, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Also speaking were Shelley Poticha, senior adviser for sustainable housing and communities at HUD, John Frece, smart growth program director at EPA, and Elizabeth Wilkins, White House policy assistant for urban affairs and mobility and opportunity.
HUD’s 2010 budget calls for $100 million for sustainable communities planning grants, Poticha noted. The budget also requests $40 million for community challenge grants that could be used for zoning reform and other implementation tools for smart growth. Both programs could be authorized by the end of 2009 or early in 2010, Poticha said. After that, detailed criteria for these grants will be announced.
Foreclosures higher in suburbs
Poticha added that HUD research shows that foreclosures have been highest in neighborhoods that lack key aspects of livability. “Our research has shown a remarkable alignment between the neighborhoods that Beth described as places where every trip has to be made by car and the concentration of the greatest number of foreclosures in the housing markets,” she said. “That might be a coincidence but we are not so sure — because we have looked at almost every metro region in the country and found this same pattern.”
Consequently, she said, “We see the sustainable communities partnership as key to getting communities back on their feet after the economic collapse.”
Other highlights:
• Frece estimated that if the US shifted just 10 percent of new housing starts to smarter growth development over the next 10 years, Americans would save about 5 billion gallons of gasoline and about $220 billion in household transportation expenses.
• Osborne reported that Envision Utah, a smart growth regional plan led by Calthorpe Associates, reduced infrastructure costs by $4.5 billion over a 10-year period in the Salt Lake City area while cutting traffic congestion.
It is a cyclical process- from the way you use resources, use transportation, from the way you eat and interact with your community, it all affects the world we live in. Jeff highlights how the use of a “milk man” brings a certain familiarity to the neighborhood- a person who gives comfort to the elderly, the children and even raises issues as to how the milk is transported. The local milk man’s vehicle is electric- running on battery. It is astonishing that living locally can be more prosperous than living in a developed nation- a simpler way of living means “reducing carbon food print, prevents military complexes based on the need to protect our economic and political interests, and it is better for our communities to be economically viable and locally self efficient.”
