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Post Carbon Cities – Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty
Peak Moment via Global Public Media
Smart municipalities are planning and preparing for energy vulnerability and climate change. Daniel Lerch, manager of the Post Carbon Cities project, has prepared a guidebook including case studies of cities large and small planning how to maintain essential services in the face of energy and climate uncertainty. Episode 73.
Janaia Donaldson hosts Peak Moment, a television series emphasizing positive responses to energy decline and climate change through local community action. How can we thrive, build stronger communities, and help one another in the transition from a fossil fuel-based lifestyle?
(17 September 2007)
New York City turning to biodiesel for heat
Ron Scherer, The Christian Science Monitor via Post Carbon Cities
Many New York City buildings –perhaps numbering in the thousands by this winter– are turning to biodiesel for heating. Starting next year, the City government itself has plans to use a biodiesel blend to heat city-owned buildings. “Fuel diversity is important,” says Ariella Rosenberg Maron of the City’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability. “As we become more and more dependent on natural gas, we need to consider ways to mitigate the financial and other impacts of disruptions to our natural-gas supply, such as we experienced during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina.”
(18 September 2007)
Original article at Christian Science Monitor.
Green roofs sprouting new adherents
Kerry Gold, Globe & Mail
They can last as long or longer than some conventional materials and they’re good for the environment – the living roof is setting down roots in B.C.
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The residential application of a roof or wall that is alive with vegetation has long been too daunting a proposition for most British Columbia homeowners. But things may be changing.
The idea of a green roof is nothing new. In Europe, they’ve been deliberately growing vegetation on their rooftops for centuries.
Big commercial projects such as Paris’s Musée du Quai Branly has taken the idea to an avant-garde, vertical extreme, with the building’s façade covered in a lush 8,600 sq. ft. carpet of plants.
B.C. is just now catching up with this growing trend. Over the last year or so, there’s been a sudden surge of interest that’s meant a new market for the companies that supply the systems for rooftop gardens.
(7 September 2007)
California regulators propose developing energy self-sufficiency by 2020
David R. Baker, San Francisco Chronicle
All new housing developments in California should be so energy-efficient by the year 2020 that they could produce all the power they need on their own, state regulators proposed Monday.
The California Public Utilities Commission suggested sweeping changes to the way the state deals with efficiency, the effort to squeeze the most use possible out of every electron and drop of fuel. The commission wants California’s electric utilities to collaborate on creating one grand plan for improving energy efficiency throughout the state, rather than pursuing their own separate programs the way they do today.
The commission’s most eye-catching proposal calls for radically increasing the efficiency of new buildings, even though the commission doesn’t regulate the housing industry.
New housing developments would need to be “zero net energy” by 2020. They would require far less power to run than existing homes, so little that each development could generate all the power it needed, either with solar panels, windmills or small generators.
(18 September 2007)
Zoning the ‘enemy’ of affordable homes
Aubrey Cohen, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Cities can spur development of homes affordable to typical workers by changing rules that distinguish among home types and that separate housing from other uses, one of the nation’s most prominent experts on work-force housing told a Seattle audience Tuesday.
“Local zoning is the No. 1 enemy of work-force housing,” Ron Terwilliger, chairman and chief executive of Atlanta-based developer Trammell Crow Residential, said at a talk hosted by the Seattle chapter of the Urban Land Institute, a national land-use think tank.
Seattle created urban nodes that mix apartments and condos with stores, services and transit. But, with the exception of a recent decision to allow backyard apartments in southeast Seattle, elected officials are reluctant to increase the number of homes allowed in single-family zones, which take up 65 percent of the city’s land.
“It would seem to me like at least your single-family zoning ought to have some flexibility,” Terwilliger said in response to a question on the matter from Seattle Planning and Development Director Diane Sugimura. “It seems like an overallocation of single-family.”
Residents might be more accepting if they knew more about how, for instance, mixing uses and density does not decrease property values, Terwilliger said. And, he added, members of the business community should make a point of supporting politicians who pledge to address the housing situation.
…The cost of urban housing leads many workers to live farther from cities, adding to commutes that cost workers money and time, Terwilliger said.
(19 September 2007)
A radical new approach to affordable housing isn’t just an option anymore – it’s imperative
Our three-point plan to save San Francisco
Sarah Phelan & Tim Redmond, San Francsico Bay Guardian
Curtis Aaron leaves his house at 9 a.m. and drives to work as a recreation center director for the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department. He tries to leave enough time for the trip; he’s expected on the job at noon.
Aaron lives in Stockton. He moved there with his wife and two kids three years ago because “there was no way I could buy a place in San Francisco, not even close.” His commute takes three hours one way when traffic is bad. He drives by himself in a Honda Accord and spends $400 a month on gas.
Peter works for the city as a programmer and lives in Suisun City, where he moved to buy a house and start a family. Born and raised in San Francisco, he is now single again, with grown-up children and a commute that takes a little more than an hour on a good day.
“I’d love to move back. I love city life, but I want to be a homeowner, and I can’t afford that in the city,” Peter, who asked us not to use his last name, explained.
“I work two blocks from where I grew up and my mom’s place, which she sold 20 years ago. Her house is nothing fancy, but it’s going for $1.2 million. There’s no way in hell I could buy that.”
Aaron and Peter aren’t paupers; they have good, unionized city jobs. They’re people who by any normal standard would be considered middle-class – except that they simply can’t afford to live in the city where they work. So they drive long distances every day, burning fossil fuels and wasting thousands of productive hours each year.
Their stories are hardly unique or new; they represent part of the core of the city’s most pressing problem: a lack of affordable housing.
Just about everyone on all sides of the political debate agrees that people like Aaron and Peter ought to be able to live in San Francisco. Keeping people who work here close to their jobs is good for the environment, good for the community, and good for the workers.
(19 September 2007)
Parking drives up costs
Charlie Smith, Georgia Straight
Almost everyone who owns a car knows that parking has become more expensive in Vancouver over the past decade. But most of us don’t make any connection between the rising price of parking and the cost of housing.
Vancouver parking consultant Paul Bunt is an exception. He advises developers on how many spaces they should include in their real-estate projects. And in a phone interview with the Georgia Straight, Bunt said that nowadays, each new underground parking stall costs approximately $50,000 in a new residential development. He is working on a project in Calgary where the cost is $60,000 per stall.
“I would say it’s more than doubled in the last 10 years,” Bunt said. “It is construction costs that have driven that.”
So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that developers are looking for ways to reduce the number of parking stalls. Concord Pacific, for example, offers buyers a lower price for condos at its Smart project in Gastown if they don’t include a parking stall with their purchase.
…”Everyone’s awareness increased probably around the time gas prices peaked above $1.10 [per litre],” she said. “With peak oil will come more and more people who are car-sharing, absolutely.” [quote from Tracey Axelsson, executive director of the Co-operative Auto Network]
(20 September 2007)
