The housing boom of the 90’s brought the explosion of “McMansions” across U.S. suburbs leaving us with hundreds of thousands of examples for a new wave for upper class living. While the recession may have created a lull in the construction of these shrines to excess, there is no data to suggest that Americans have outgrown their hunger for raw square footage and the public perception that space equals societal stature. The idea of a green home two, three or four times the size of the average house is a bit of an oxymoron with notions of efficiency and excess instantly butting heads, but perhaps there are ways for the lives of the luxurious to follow a more sustainable path. Continue Reading…
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Sometimes the products of technology and infrastructure have a certain beauty that compliments their functional necessity, but all too often our aversion to the appearance of key service components conflicts with our desire for their services to be readily available. Renewable energy production, such as wind turbines and solar power stations, are increasingly becoming the targets of backlash, even from environmental supporters, when it comes time to locate them. A new strategy for overcoming the next generation of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) sentiment is imperative to avoid our recent progress in sustainability from hitting a wall.
Polling from numerous sources repeatedly points to a growing population of U.S. citizens supporting the need to address climate change and transfer our production of energy to renewable sources. People will sign petitions, click “yes” on websites and maybe even call their Congressman in support of green energy. But in true American style, when it comes to actually implementing the goal the discussion turns into a barrage of finger-pointing with no one wanting to have to look at the finished product.
The lack of willingness to actively participate in the necessities of society is one of our blaring moments of shortsightedness. As a country that enjoys an elevated standard of living, its rise has been paralleled not only by an increasingly complex and expansive array of technology necessary to sustain it, but also a lack of responsibility for making it possible. Having a water treatment facility within a block from your home is a fallacy, but blame is thrown instantly at the onset of an E. coli breakout. No one wants to see high voltage power lines but brownouts are unacceptable.
One of the more famous examples is the repeated stalling of the Cape Wind Project that meant to erect 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound with a maximum capacity of 420MW. The program claims that in average winds the wind farm could provide 75% of the energy for Cape Cod and its surrounding islands. However, local residents have opposed the project due to the possibility of tarnishing their ocean view. Keep in mind that the wind turbines will be 5 to 13 miles from shore so that an onlooker could reportedly extend an arm and cover one with the fingernail on a thumb.
Unsurprisingly, continuously pushing renewables to the outskirts of society increases the amount of transmission (materials, land, installation, maintenance, replacement) needed to transport the power, increasing the amount of power lost in transit and raising the price of the power that gets there (which in turn compounds the problem.) Heaven forbid we need to pay more for power that is more sustainable and less polluting. Who would think that in a capitalistic economy the cheapest solution is not always the best?
One option is to give the federal government more power in making decisions for renewable energy sites and new transmission lines, but the prospect of increased government intervention is already causing politicians to butt heads on the Climate Bill. Another option is to use government policy that sweetens the deal for proximity to new energy solutions. (For Liberals, this would mean tax people the farther they get from renewable energy. For Conservatives, it would mean provide subsidies for those willing to live next door. For me, I would say do both.)
Yet another possibility is to redesign these facilities for a new aesthetic reading. After all, most of the time these components of infrastructure are designed by engineers. As an architect, I can respect and appreciate the simplicity and functional efficiency of how engineers design. Their goal of streamlined products that serve a specified purpose can be seen in old warehouses, factories and power stations. Nonetheless, they are usually not trying to win beauty contests. Some of these creations could not get a facelift to draw a different impression from surrounding onlookers.
Spanish architecture firm Abalos and Herreros has a portfolio of work that has reinvestigated the appearance and nature of industrial programs like their recycling center in Valdemingómez, Spain. Contrary to the American standard of cheap metal siding and standing seam roofs, their facility is wrought with light to illuminate a terraced interior designed with an elegant order for industrial function. Solar farms and biomass plants could conceivably be realized in a second generation that is more viewer-friendly.
I do not believe that the largest impediment in the path of environmental stewards is convincing people that changes should be made. Regardless of the debate on climate change, sustainability and efficiency just make sense. Preserving our resources, keeping our air, water and land clean; it is just smart and more people realize that everyday. The impasse is instilling not the notion, but the drive for everyone to contribute and accept part of the collective onus to change—and make no mistake, things will need to change. Sustainability is not a technological fix. Our levels of consumption cannot be supplemented with gizmos.
Personally, I think that wind turbines and CSP plants have their own manner of beauty to them, like an ipod or a 40” Samsung LCD television, but I do not know if my sentiment has reached the majority yet.
Photo Credit: Flickr via AbracaDebra
In an international landscape, many claim that sustainable measures in the U.S. lose their steam if the industrial economies of China and India are not on board. Similarly, within the U.S., efforts of individual citizens need to be paired with corporations doing their part to change the course of business to greener ends. A recent study suggests that some large corporations are beginning to alter their daily operations to align themselves with greener options of stocking their paper products. According to the Green Grades report of twelve companies, conducted jointly by the Dogwood Alliance and Forest Ethics, corporate powerhouses like Fed-Ex and Office Depot are on the path to a more sustainable paper trail while others still have a long way to go.
The Green Grades study looked at six areas of sustainable paper usage including FSC certified products, avoiding paper from endangered forests and recycling policies. Fed-Ex stood at the head of the class, earning an “A-“ from the study for excelling in responsible sourcing of materials and using FSC certified products. They are not a bad company to be leading the pack as not only one of the largest shipping companies by the owners and operators of one of the largest copy-center chains as well. Followed by Staples, Office Depot and OfficeMax, some of the bellwethers seem to be catching on.
On the other hand, not every company can join Bank of America and its One Bryant Park as the epitome of environmental reform. Some companies have yet to even scratch the surface. I was surprised by some of the laggards. Amazon.com and Costco received failing grades, followed closely by the “D+” rankings of Target and Wal-Mart, all apparently suffering from sourcing their paper products from endangered forests and questionable suppliers.
There is a lot to be said for targeting paper products as a component of our waste stream. According to the EPA, in 2007 paper and paperboard comprise a third of our waste— 83 million tons. The negative effects of the paper industry are also relatively immediate and encompassing. Illegal logging in both Asia and South America lead the destruction of rain forests and risk removing entire ecosystems of life around the planet, not to mention the tremendous carbon sinks that old growth trees provide.
But the largest waste source is also one of the easiest to fix. Sustainable forestry is growing in popularity as organizations like the Forest Stewardship Council gain exposure and notoriety. As digital media continues to advance, numerous extraneous paper habits can be replaced with a bit of foresight and focus. For the material that has to still be printed, paper is also one of the easiest products to recycle.
I was not surprised at the deficiencies in recycling which comprised the lower marks of even the highest ranking companies. Years ago, a discussion I had with Tom Rhoads of the Onondaga Country Resource Recovery Agency in Syracuse, New York, he told me that when it came to recycling many residents were already on board, earning Syracuse one of the highest recycling rates in the state. But it was the businesses that were notoriously hard to convince. Here in Manhattan the field is much the same.
It is markedly easy for a slightly educated consumer to contribute to more sustainable paper purchasing. Whether it is essentials like paper plates, toilet paper and paper towels or supplies like printer paper, purchasing FSC certified or recycled content is a small added price to pay (perhaps an extra dollar) while the effects are far reaching. The more responsible materials we can purchase, the more that the rise in demand will shift jobs from older corners of the industry to their more responsible counterparts until a new standard is fully implemented and better practices are commonplace. Less consumption and waste all lead to fewer landfills, lower costs of removal, more efficient manufacturing and healthier ecosystems to reduce the carbon pressure on the environment.
Visions and promises for the “new standard” are becoming a daily attraction. Enough people have realized that for an advanced society many of our vital networks are often outmoded prompting plenty of innovators to work on replacement parts. Energy production, transportation, waste disposal, utility conveyance; all show signs of promising upgrades over the next half-century towards the endgame of efficiency. But for all the thought devoted to the new infrastructure systems, what should we be doing with the old ones?
Sustainable societal innovation is a two-sided coin. Defining a better standard should be paired with ways to allocate our existing landscape for new uses rather than simply calling it trash. Over the past century trillions of dollars have been used to construct the vast, national networks that we rely on implicitly. All of that is now latent value that should not be squandered. Like anything other byproduct of our economy these systems hold possibilities for new lives and uses along side their replacements.
Not long ago I sat in a conference room at the Green Buildings New York exposition listening to an engineer talk about improving efficiency through water reclamation and reuse. His name was Edward Clerico and he worked for Alliance Environmental as part of their team specializing on water efficiency—coincidentally, he is reportedly participating in efficiency work for One Bryant Park. From behind a wooden podium with a grainy microphone carrying his voice over worn carpet and faded ceiling tiles, he spoke with excitement about the growing trends of onsite water treatment and reuse. He pointed out that if more people take advantage of things like greywater systems and green roofs then our demand for water (and its disposal) may drop to the point that our infrastructure may no longer be completely necessary. Reservoirs, aqueducts and huge pipelines guiding water to major cities could wind up as over-built, archaic achievements of a different age. Could these things have another use in the face of drastic improvements of water efficiency? It occurred to me the design problem extended far beyond simply water.
With all hope, the future of distributing power will only hold a pale comparison to our current methods. Technologies like Smart Grid systems or completely decentralized systems can begin to shape how our new power grid could work. New steps in transporting power like high voltage superconducting lines could remove high tension wires and the scars that they cast across our landscapes. There must be countless uses for the metal of those giant towers while the land beneath them can return back to the forests, plains and wetlands that they disturbed upon construction.
Power production is another scenario where some of the oldest methods of generation are also the least sustainable—namely coal. Some of our oldest coal plants have already seen their 50th birthdays and are prime targets for retirement. Being one who completely supports ridding our country of coal-fired power, I am often asked what happens to the jobs and facilities at existing plants. Not a problem, we can still use them! Complete conversions of coal plants to accept new feedstocks, namely biomass, is already underway. Cleveland.com recently posted an article describing how FirstEnergy Corp released its plans to convert a 54-year-old plant on the Ohio River to burn grass and wood cubes to produce 312 megawatts of power, leaving it as one of the largest biomass plants in the country. The retooling of the plant purportedly saves 105 local jobs.
Perhaps my favorite candidate for infrastructural reuse is our road and railway systems. In response to the industrial boom, the first half of the twentieth century brought tens of thousands of miles of paved highways and metal track carving through cities across the country. The eventual decline of industrial production and shipping in the U.S. evaporated the necessity for many rail lines, so too providing an opportunity of reuse for these aging strips of land. The first section of The Highline opened only last week in Manhattan providing the first realization of a project that has been pursued by local residents for years. The elevated tracks snaking through the city’s west side that once carried freight trains up and down an industrialized Manhattan coastline now support a growing garden and a unique urban park. Having personally experienced the Highline since it’s opening, I can attest to its outstanding realization of an amazing urban project. Likewise, retired grade-level track beds are becoming perfect locations for bike and running trails, generating ties through existing communities. The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy is one of the movement’s strongest proponents.
Strides in mass transit could help bring about the same opportunities for our aging highways and viaducts. The Toronto Sun reported on the results of a conceptual design for the city’s Gardenier Expressway. Grown from the same seeds at the vision for the Highline, the “Green Ribbon”, designed by Les Klein of Quadrangle Architects, proposes to reclaim the elevated roadway for use as gardened parks and bicycle paths. The hypothetical model includes small wind and solar arrays to create power for the lighting systems of the gardenway. With an estimated price of $500-600 million (which is likely low), it is far from modest, but the figure becomes more plausible when one considers the estimated cost of $300 million just to tear it down.
The benefits to reuse are clear. Massive waste streams would be averted as well as the pollution and energy that is wasted on demolition. New visions mean more work, and work means jobs—which everyone loves. And new infrastructural archetypes can indirectly contribute to energy production, food growth and water management while still providing public amenities. All we need is a broader view of opportunity. Solely devoting focus to what we can create can raise the risk of forgetting what it is we already have.
Highline Photo Credit: David Berkowitz
Power Plant Photo Credit: Cleveland.com
A number of government sponsored initiatives are targeting sustainable technologies that want to provide an easy fix to climate change (renewable energy, fuel cells, energy efficient home upgrades.) But when it comes to sustainable progress, if we are going to delve into the policy game then we should be including measures that actually change the way we are doing things, not merely advance the technology that allows us to do things the same. As a result, I would suggest taxing the development of greenfield sites and, conversely, offering incentives to redeveloping existing buildings or property near town and city centers.
Sprawl is a familiar term in design and planning used to describe our common pattern of expansion and construction over the past half century. As the impressive nature of high-rise steel faded in the 1950’s, Americans were less concerned with making gleaming spires of progress and turned instead to cheap tracks of untarnished land. We saw the rise of the residential development and the suburban office park—blemishes on our built environment that result from a top priority of low-cost, speedy construction. Under the proposed plan, developers of such plots would be taxed, effectively making their construction more expensive.
Perhaps the biggest challenge is the fact that fighting against greenfield development is fighting against decades of cultural norm. In a paper titled Greenfield Development Without Sprawl the Urban Land Institute’s Jim Heid writes:
“From the start, greenfield development has promised ordinary Americans a way to enjoy the best of city and country, and remarkably often this mix of utopia and pragmatism has delivered.”
Undoubtedly, building on the edges is building cheaper. The land often goes for a song. Labor is less expensive. Access to sites is easier and building codes are less stringent. But the cheaper choice for builders can be more expensive for municipalities (and we know where their budgets comes from.) Sprawling development is notoriously inefficient; each an oasis of occupancy connected by thin veins of pavement that make car travel a considerable portion of daily life. May it be plains, farmland or forests, virgin land is mindlessly swallowed for the sake of inexpensive elbow room. Greenfield development can mean funding for new power lines, new sewers and new roads for a relatively small group of new citizens. It expands the coverage areas for maintenance crews, emergency vehicles and mail delivery that can drastically offset the incremental rise in tax revenue. All of this is only clearer in our current economic crisis where municipalities are being pushed closer to Chapter 9 (municipal bankruptcy) as budgets cannot meet costs of daily routine. Suddenly the cheap route can get pretty expensive. Taxing this kind of sprawling development may help curb its growth in the country.
Most importantly of all, there is no need for greenfield building. We have loads of existing space in close proximity to transportation and infrastructure. Moreover, the timing could not be better for instigating a switch. The Wall Street Journal reported that the recession has prompted a jump in vacancy rates around the country even as rental rates are falling. The article reports that the average vacancy rate in the top 79 markets in the U.S. rose to 7.2%.
On the other side of the tax lie subsidies to shift new construction and home ownership to areas with an existing populace. New homes and offices can benefit from utilities and services that residents have already paid. In addition to possibly being cheaper than new construction, reusing existing structures drastically reduces waste from demolition and construction and negates the need for the production of new virgin materials. All of it points to lower carbon footprints and lighter lifecycle costs. Subsidizing infill development could help take the edge off of the costs needed to upgrade existing properties and make buyers think twice about their location. Remember, the goal is not for less development, merely shifting it for a smarter solution. Reinforcing our town and urban centers would support a critical mass of residents that breeds efficiency where fewer services could reach more instead of wasting more taxpayer dollars on diluted redundancy.
At a local level, some places have taken an initial step of intervention. The WSJ’s Jim Carlton highlights how the city of Arcata, California purchased a 175 acre redwood forest for $2.05 million in order to curtail development. These kinds of efforts affect where developers will put new buildings which will, in turn, affect how suburbanites live. Carlton goes on to say that some experts believe that 10% of the country’s existing forests will likely be developed by 2030. While only a first step, it does demonstrate how development patterns can be guided in the responsible direction.
As I have said before, I believe sustainability is a concept that encompasses more than a technological fix. It is an understanding of balance and stasis that has to be experienced as way to live rather than inventions that supplement wastefulness. If we are going to use the government as a tool to help make sustainable decisions (I think we are already there) then we should be doing something to address the roots of the problem. This kind of legislation would create no less development, no fewer jobs and, when combined with the municipal money it would save through efficient building and planning, may largely pay for itself.
Photo Credit: http://www.plannersweb.com/sprawl/place-nj.html
So maybe harder times are not hitting green goals that hard after all. Recent polling efforts targeting how citizens respond to green issues bears some surprisingly strong support for sustainability in the economy. The numbers come as a welcome counter to the Gallup poll that showed a continually declining support for the severity of global warming, suggesting that either support for green efforts were growing soft or that global warming may not be a great front runner for the movement.
The necessity of environmental reorganization may be sinking deeper into the population. The polling questions by the Washington Post/ABC targeted the regulating of Greenhouse Gases by the government and showed considerable support—counter to the conservative voice of opposition with a strong presence in the media as of late. 75% of American voters are pro regulation with 54% being strongly in favor. Similarly, when asked as to their concern about rising costs associated with GHG regulation, 77% said they were concerned. It is reasonable to believe that, for many, despite their concern for higher prices they are still in favor of a more sustainable goal.
The polling of NBC/Wall Street Journal is somewhat tempered, but still positive. Their more pointed question of whether we should regulate GHG if it will raise energy bills revealed 53% being in favor. Moreover, 68% of voters agreed with President Obama’s plans to devote $121 billion over ten years to develop green energy.
If the numbers carry some truth then we may be avoiding one of the worst fears of environmentalists and green company investors: the economic downturn and resulting financial worries will surmount years of growing interest (and capital) for green spending and policy. If sustainability in the marketplace can survive the worst financial crisis since the depression, then we may be poised for meaningful progress.
A recent article from the New York Times, courtesy of green correspondent Kate Galbraith, highlighted the shift in opportunity for professionals with experience in environmental policy. With a presidential administration so much more committed to tackling issues of ecological stewardship the need for more green veterans continues to rise. Galbraith points to college professors and state level administrators as ripe pickings for higher federal posts. This reminds us that as we highlight the opportunities for national sustainability to generate job growth, one of the most valuable products needed by a maturing market is experienced human capital. At the same time, the move is a bit of a double-edged sword. Continue Reading…
One cannot talk about sustainability for long without eventually encountering “resources.” Every product stream, mechanical process and human action has a source of incoming energy. Our capitalistic market has a couple of favorites that craft the battlements for daily conflicts between corporations and citizens: wood, oil, water, coal. Businesses stuck in narrow focuses of how to utilize and maximize stores of natural resources are fending environmentalists off with a stick and the fight will only get more painful. Sooner or later they will lose. Our country will no longer drill for new oil and the amount of coal we burn each year will progressively decline. What will define the next surge of resource harvesting in the economy over the next century?
Well renewable energy is an easy pick. Wind and solar power will continue to be perfected to peak levels of efficiency and their position in the marketplace will continue to grow, but one of the greatest latent sources of value in our culture is decidedly unnatural. It is available almost anywhere in the country though its particular characteristics vary from one source to the next. Public demand for it is currently a small portion of the greater marketplace but it will only rise over time. The source is our existing buildings. The resulting growth market is deconstruction. Continue Reading…
Imagine turning off a main road onto the quiet street of a new suburban housing neighborhood. Down the road waits tree-lined streets of energy efficient homes with their organic gardens and hybrids parked in the driveway, but no electric meter hanging on the wall. On the right you pass a building with few windows and judicious planting. Instead of a development “clubhouse” with a substandard weight room that no one uses and cabinets holding communal board games, the structure is actually an anaerobic power plant that takes the food waste of the neighborhood and turns it into the power for their homes. Throughout your trip you travel under no high tension wires. You dip under no telephone poles.
Impossible? Maybe not.
Transit initiatives have grown in popularity and acceptance due to their inherent ability to address two large concerns in the country: sustainability and stimulus. Truly, it’s about time. For all the advancement we tote around as a nation our public transit systems are often stymied by our foreign peers. The buzzword solution has become “High Speed Rail” prompting images of sleek trains zipping across the landscape as a blur epitomizing modern advancement. That’s all well and good. I am a big fan of high speed rail, but when it comes to assessing the ways to lower our environmental impact and bolster the economy there are other options. It is possible that a system that provides an answer is not bleeding edge technology, but one we have had for centuries. The Streetcar. Continue Reading…