In the United States, people interested in urban sustainability have long looked to The Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia. Indeed, for over 30 years urban planners have tried to copy these European examples by building things like bike paths, pedestrian zones, solar arrays and streetcar lines in some of our own cities. And yet, after all that time and effort, we’ve been unable to turn, say, Seattle into Copenhagen, or Berkeley into Freiburg. What have we been missing?
While we’ve focused on the superficial differences between European and American urbanism, we’ve tended to overlook the underlying differences in how we plan, regulate, own, and invest in both land and transportation. What makes a vibrant European car-free shopping street successful is not so much the lack of cars as the surrounding land use patterns, transportation infrastructure, urban design and local economic context — all of which developed under significantly different influences and conditions in Europe compared to the U.S.
The key to North American urban sustainability, then, is not to build light rail lines everywhere but to change our land use and transportation planning practices so that sustainable urban patterns are automatically the most sensible and profitable things for both the public and private sectors to create. Getting this mix right is a job for urban planners and elected officials, who work with zoning codes, building permits, and long-range infrastructure planning every day.
Having worked on urban sustainability issues for more than ten years, I have often been disappointed by seeing plenty of inspiring ideas, but little substance and even fewer completed projects. Was it possible that the recent surge of interest in green buildings and other sustainability hot topics was making inroads among American planners and officials? What better place to find out than the recent annual convention in Philadelphia of the American Planning Association (APA).
At this five-day event (April 14-18), I was pleasantly surprised to find robust discussions about translating the complex concepts of sustainability into useful strategies and approaches for planning — and not just among a handful of West Coast planners, but among people working all over the country and with communities of all sizes. Here are some of the heartening ideas and trends I came across:
- Unconventional approaches:
- Christopher Duerksen, a former elected official and founder of the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute at the University of Denver (see http://law.du.edu/rmlui), showed how zoning codes can be used to remove obstacles to, and create incentives for, sustainability practices.
- Sarah James, co-author of The Natural Step for Communities, told how over 70 municipalities in Sweden and a growing number of communities in the United States are using systems thinking principles to guide their sustainability planning (see www.sjamesassociates.com/ecomunic.htm ).
- Armando Carbonell, Senior Fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, described a surge of city policy change on sustainability and global warming, exemplified by new plans in London and New York (see http://www.lincolninst.edu/news/atlincolnhouse.asp?alh_id=8).
- Jeff Perlman, Assistant Planner in Hillsborough Township, New Jersey, shared with me how he and a handful of colleagues simply took initiative to start developing a Sustainability Plan for their community. (In his words, “nobody said no!”)
- Christa Koehler of Clean Air – Cool Planet and Steven Whitman of Jeffrey H. Taylor & Associates presented their toolkit of best practices in energy, land use, waste and transportation to help Northeast municipalities reduce their contributions to global warming (see http://www.cleanair-coolplanet.org/for_communities).
- William Klein, APA’s Director of Research ( www.planning.org/research), announced that the APA is developing a high-profile policy guide on planning and global warming.
- Bill Moomaw, Director of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at Tufts University ( fletcher.tufts.edu/ierp), described how some cities are beginning to compete with each other in their efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
- Jan Schach, Director of the Restoration Institute at Clemson University ( restoration.clemson.edu), described how the multi-billion dollar restoration industry is being harnessed in South Carolina to develop “sustainable infrastructure clusters” and achieve both ecological and economic benefits.
Communities large and small:
Developing resources:
Opportunity and innovation:
This long weekend of sessions and networking left me convinced (and relieved) that the planning profession as a whole was finally starting to take urban sustainability seriously.
The following morning I caught a train to Washington, D.C., and I was soon looking out at the reality of the challenges planners face in this country. Approaching Wilmington we passed sprawling townhouse developments and “big box” stores only accessible by car. Crossing the upper reaches of Chesapeake Bay, we passed billions of dollars of waterfront development, all threatened by the rising sea levels and stronger storm surges caused by global warming. And throughout this bumpy ride on America’s poorly maintained rail lines, I thought of James Kunstler’s quip that the U.S. has a train system even Bulgaria would be ashamed of.
We later rolled past the famous white marble steps of inner Baltimore’s row houses, many sitting dilapidated or vacant in neighborhoods that have seen nothing but poverty for too many decades. I noted ironically that this all-but-abandoned inner-city density and urban form was ideal for energy efficiency, pedestrian orientation and mix of land uses. In other words, it was exactly what architects and planners have been trying to re-create for over twenty years of “new urbanism,” “smart growth” and other reformist planning and design approaches.
Of course, many new urbanist developments are ultimately no more “sustainable” than the impoverished neighborhoods of inner Baltimore. These communities are still dependent on fossil fuels for electricity, heat and transportation, still disconnected from the land and processes that provide their food (from thousands of miles away), and still characterized by economic inequity. The problem is that real sustainability comes not just from design, but from addressing the broad and complex swath of a community’s environmental, economic and social equity needs. It requires the deep, long-term attention of planners, elected officials and community leaders.
For those of us who care about creating sustainable cities, the challenge is clear: we need to take a hard look at how we approach land use, transportation, and community development planning in this country. The honest interest and discussions surrounding urban sustainability at the APA’s Philadelphia conference were a promising start.
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