city planning – EcoSalon

San Francisco To Mitigate Growth and Conserve Energy Resources with Eco-Districts

Beth Buczynski — Sun, 28 Jul 2013 07:00:01 +0000

Can Eco-Districts help a major city grow sustainably while conserving energy resources? San Francisco’s about to find out.

San Francisco already has a lot of distinct neighborhoods–Chinatown, the Castro, Haight-Ashbury. Each has its own distinct personality, type of resident, and geographical area. These fascinating neighborhoods formed organically over time, building a strong sense of community that’s almost like tiny cities within a city.

Now, the City of San Francisco wants to manufacture a new kind of district in hopes of reducing water consumption and waste, and enhancing community-scale energy resources. They will, unsurprisingly, be called Ec0-Districts, and if successful, they could help San Francisco continue to grow without increasing its negative environmental impact.

“To aid in the fulfillment of these goals, the program is implementing a tool called Eco-Districts – a community of property owners, businesses and residents within a neighborhood that collaborate to develop and initiate sustainable development projects in their area,” reports ArchDaily. “Using a set of performance metrics, neighborhoods can shape their projects with custom strategies for their community.”

So what exactly will these Eco-Districts look like? Well according to the SF Planning Department, there will be four different types of Eco-District, and true to form, they all have creative names.

The Blank Slate

In a Blank Slate district, most of the land is undeveloped and typically owned by a single property owner. With very little existing development to work around, this type of district enables “horizontal infrastructure development to be implemented in advance of vertical development to help optimize Eco-District goals.”

The Patchwork Quilt

In a Quilt District, there is both undeveloped, underdeveloped, and developed land, owned by different property owners implementing development projects under different time frames. This presents more of a challenge than the Blank Slate. The goal with a Quilt is to align “development time frames to maximize opportunities to meet environmental goals.” The community will be encouraged “to build on its existing character and to integrate the physical qualities of the area as part of its character.” (San Francisco’s Central Corridor is an example of this type of Eco-District in action.)

The Strengthened Neighborhood

This is one of the most exciting types of Eco-Districts, because it’s a neighborhood that’s already at capacity, but perhaps not operating at optimal efficiency with regards to energy resources. In this district, the Office of Economic and Workforce Development’s Invest in Neighborhoods Initiative, would use strategies of “tactical urbanism” to “bolster distinctive character and support eco-friendly behavior.”

The Industrial Network

Cities can’t be all parks and courtyards. In every metropolis, there is a section dedicated to industrial purposes, where power is made, and where distribution and repair of all types of services for energy resources occurs. Aligning these industries so that their operating and distribution systems can work more efficiently is the primary focus of the Industrial Eco-District.

In each of these neighborhoods, similar tactics to increase sustainability will be deployed, all in line with the waste-reduction goals of the city and state. Coordinated neighborhoods could take advantage of group purchasing of solar power at lower rates, or perhaps even a community-shared solar installation.

“An eco-district could also set up an efficient district energy system, which produces steam, heated water and chilled water at a central plant and distributes the energy to multiple connected buildings, so they do not need to have their own boilers or chillers,” writes Sustainable Development Policy Director Laura Tam. “An eco-district organization could facilitate water reuse between properties, too, such as harvesting rainwater from multiple properties to irrigate a neighborhood park or street landscaping.”

The possibilities, when communities are organized and invited to participate in their own planning process, are endless. Learn more about how other cities–Austin, Boston and Seattle–have already put Eco-Districts to work at ecodistricts.org.

Images: Wikimedia Commons, Jihee Chung, SWA Group

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Blazing Trails: What 5 Pioneering Cities Have Banned

DivineCaroline — Thu, 20 May 2010 17:21:47 +0000

Change, whether good or bad, supported or maligned, always begins the same way: with one person, one idea, and one moment of courage. Many people find change suspect because the outcome is unknown; there are too many unforeseeable consequences. They naysay new ideas about old ways of thinking, not realizing how remiss we’d be without the positive progress in equality, health, and the environment that change makes possible. They forget that just years ago, secondhand smoke in offices, restaurants, and other crowded areas was just an accepted aspect of life. But thanks to one city – San Luis Obispo, California – the majority of indoor public spaces in America are now smoke-free, and we’re much healthier for it.

Cities effect change through bans, setting precedents that are sometimes revolutionary and almost always controversial. Over the past few years, a number of U.S. cities have gone the way of San Luis Obispo: initiating bans that are aren’t always popular with everyone but have the power to change things for the better.

1. Santa Clara, California: No Happy Meal Toys

In April 2010, Santa Clara County’s Board of Supervisors decided to prohibit fast-food restaurants from adding toys or other promotional items to kids’ meals. The ban applies only to eateries in certain areas of the county, and only to kids’ meals that have significantly high levels of calories, sodium, fat, and sugar. Fast-food establishments have ninety days to give up the toys or develop more nutritionally sound menu choices for kids. Those supporting the ban feel that offering toys with fast-food meals rewards kids for eating McDonald’s, Burger King, and so on. It lessens the incentive for the fast food industry to target children, which could help curb the increasingly growing rates of childhood obesity in this country.

2. San Francisco, California: No City Money for Bottled Water, No Plastic Bags

San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom declared in 2007 that no more of the city’s money would go toward bottled water (as in buying it for government offices or city functions). Other cities, like Los Angeles, Seattle, and Salt Lake City, followed suit and cut local-government spending on bottled water. Some went further, like Chicago, which tacked on a five-cent tax to every bottle of water sold, and Concord, Massachusetts, which banned the sale of any bottled water from within its borders starting in January 2011. The anti-bottled water legislation in these two cities is much more extreme, and therefore much more disputed. Banning or reducing bottled water at the government level first seems like a more popular, and therefore possibly more effective, first step.

San Francisco put forth another groundbreaking law in 2007, banning plastic bags from all major supermarkets and pharmacies in the area. The government gave businesses (exempting small ones) a year to switch to paper or compostable bags. NPR estimated that this legislation would reduce plastic-bag usage by five million bags each month. The move inspired similar action in Los Angeles, Paris, and London. In Washington, D.C., residents now pay five cents for paper or plastic bags from stores, restaurants, and pharmacies.

3. North Olmsted, Ohio: No Sweatshop Goods

North Olmstead is a suburb in Cleveland that also happens to be the first area in the country to forbid products made in sweatshops. Mayor Ed Boyle came up with the idea in 2007, creating an ordinance that banned city vendors from buying, renting, or selling anything produced in a work environment with sweatshop-like conditions. Another Cleveland-area city, Bedford Heights, adopted the same ban, and other cities have looked into doing something similar.

4. Los Angeles, California: No New Fast-Food Restaurants

Los Angeles’s City Council made this highly controversial ban in 2008, deciding that South Los Angeles had more than enough fast-food establishments (about four hundred at the time), and put a yearlong moratorium on any new ones opening in the thirty-two-square-mile area. The council wanted to use that year to entice healthier restaurants and grocery stores into the neighborhood; the ban specified eateries that have drive-through windows and/or use heat lamps in lieu of freshly prepared meals. The council also enacted the ban to reduce the higher-than-average obesity rates in South L.A., though opponents argue that’s a form of food policing. But residents can still access hundreds of fast-food joints in the area. The problem is that there are very few grocery stores in comparison; the ban is supposed to close the gap a little and give people in the neighborhood more dining options.

5. New York, New York: No Trans Fat in Restaurants

Even more contested than the L.A. fast-food ban was Manhattan’s infamous trans-fat ban in 2006. The Board of Health voted to eliminate the unhealthy ingredient from all city restaurants by July 2008, giving chefs two years to replace it in their recipes. Even though trans fat is linked to heart disease and increases bad-cholesterol levels, many restaurant owners and citizens feared the ban would make food taste worse. Despite their doubts, a 2009 report in the Annals of Internal Medicine by the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene found that the ban-which reduced the amount of trans fat in NYC restaurants from 50 percent to 2 percent-didn’t hurt restaurant business. Plus, the amount of both trans fat and saturated fat was reduced in french fries by 50 percent, suggesting that restaurants offer more-healthful fare postban.

I always feel a little suspicious when something’s completely eliminated from public use because it can be a slippery slope. Even though I’m vehemently against smoking, I do feel that legislation limiting the right to smoke in cars and homes infringes upon people’s rights. That’s why I understand the outcry against fast-food and trans-fat bans, and even plastics and happy meal toys, to an extent-when does external enforcement of citizens’ personal lives and choices stop? Could these decisions, though meant for the greater good, be used to justify others that go too far? But limiting oneself to that mindset also limits anything good that can come from the restrictions, like healthier people and environments. These specific bans have the potential to do just that, which is why I hope they’re successful and influential, and that they’re not taken too far beyond their intentions.

Article by Vicki Santillano for DivineCaroline. First published May 2010.

Related DivineCaroline posts:

New Plans to Get America Moving
You Are What you Eat: Inside America’s Refrigerators
Six Good Deeds That Take Less Than Five Minutes

Image: kla4067

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A Tree Grows in Michigan

Sarah Irani — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:00:42 +0000

Raze the roof for green.

I’ll let you in on one of my secret eco-dreams: to tear down dilapidated buildings and allow nature to recover the land. As it turns out, this just might be a new municipal strategy in combating urban blight.

The first site of this radical experiment? Flint, Michigan: a sprawling and impoverished, underpopulated city. At 34 square miles, Flint requires a lot of maintenance and upkeep (think: garbage trucks, road repair, electricity lines).

So, how to maintain a city’s integrity without the taxpayer base to support it? Just tear down the buildings and parts of town that are already on the decline. It’s “pruning the deadwood,” to put it in gardening terms. The idea is to raze decrepit buildings and replant them with trees or allow natural meadows to grow on the land.

According to Dan Kildee, the brains behind this project, nobody is being forced to move and people are being offered better homes in more maintained parts of town. The ones who choose to stay will simply have more natural areas surrounding their homes.

The U.S. government and various charities have approached Mr. Kildee and asked him for advice on how to proceed with this idea in other declining cities around the United States. Seems like “less is more” and “back to nature” may come together on a grand and tangible scale.

Image: Saquan Stimpson

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The Empire Strikes Back: Renewing Our Landmarks

Mike Sowden — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:00:12 +0000

With the current barrage of amazing new green building projects, it’s nice to see the old-timers are getting in on the action as well.

More specifically, the most famous profile on the New York skyline – the Empire State Building. This Wonder Of The Modern World looks set to impress the next generation of eco-friendly architects by being the focus of a major efficiency overhaul. Excitingly, not only are the redevelopers shrinking the building’s energy footprint by over a third (and in doing so saving $4 million a year – now there’s a utility bill), they’re also using the experience to trial new techniques, including:

– Viewing the tenants as an important element of a green building, by offering incentives and an automated tenant energy management system to let occupants see how much energy they’re going through.

– Constructing “green suites” to showcase green innovation within office and residential space.

– A performance-based retrofitting contract – so the redevelopers are legally obliged to follow through all their planned energy savings. This also serves as a template for further redevelopment contracts.

For the specifics, take a look at the report at Greener Buildings. To our minds, there are still a few elements missing. Where are the vertical gardens? Any room on that famous roof for a lawn or two? And doesn’t one of the tallest buildings in New York deserve the mother of all wind turbines? (I hope these are in the plans and I’ve just missed them).

The biggest implication? The world’s landmarks are suddenly ripe for a high-profile lick of green. Take the top of the Eiffel Tower, where it gets so windy it makes the structure sway – that’s a lot of electricity to harvest.

Image: Eric Mayville

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A Swedish City Goes Cold Turkey on Fossil Fuels

Liz Lewis — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:00:55 +0000

Can an entire city eliminate the use of fossil fuels?

One Swedish city is going to try. The city of Kalmar, located in southeast Sweden, plus the surrounding 12 towns in the region, are trading in nearly all gas, oil, and electric furnaces.

Instead, the residents will get their energy requirements from “district heat” – energy that’s created from burning sawdust and waste wood from timber companies. The remainder of energy requirements will be supplied by hydropower, windmills, and nuclear power.

Cars and buses will run on either locally-produced biofuel made from waste wood and chicken manure or a 85% ethanol blend imported from Brazil.

In addition, more and more bicycle lanes have appeared, trucking companies are teaching employees eco-friendly driving techniques, and street lights now use low-energy sodium bulbs.

A result of creativity and political will, this change couldn’t come at a better time. With the current worldwide economic downtown, the residents of Kalmar and environs are finding that switching from oil and gas is providing economic relief, both from reduced power bills and a cottage boom with the growth in its clean-technology industries.

Kalmar’s goal is to be totally fossil fuel free by 2030. They are well on the way to making it happen.

Images: ckrantz

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17 Living Roofs: the High Tech Green Future of Architecture

Mike Sowden — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:30:44 +0000

We’ve always thought we had roofs covered. They had to be barren, hostile places the rain and the wildlife slid from before they could do any damage. Nature had no place on our roofs. Except…we couldn’t have been more wrong. A green roof may required a little extra engineering behind the scenes, but it’s far better than its non-living counterparts for regulating house temperature, filtering out pollutants, scrubbing the surrounding air, controlling stormwater run-off, absorbing sound and many more factors that impact our quality of life. A green roof is a healthy roof.

Green design is an enormously popular trend in modern architecture. Take a look at these 17 examples – some in place today, and others still on the drawing board. We may have got it wrong in the past, but we’re certainly making up for lost time…

ACROS Fukuoka, in Fukuoka City, Japan. 35,000 plants, 76 species – and the city’s best view from an office window.

Art and Exhibition Hall roof garden – Bonn, Germany.

Chicago City Hall – the coolest place to be, thanks to this $2.5 million rooftop garden (not open to the public – the 11-storey drop might have something to do with this).

California’s Academy of Sciences (SF) is covered in rolling hills – the perfect place for students to grab their lunch in the sun.

Looking like the ultimate vegan pizza, the Pennsylvania State University’s Center for Green Roof Research is a department that practices what it preaches.

Marriott Hotel, Victoria, BA. Keeping an underground car park cool in the summer, toasty-warm in the winter.

The forwarding link isn’t working, but this rooftop garden (wherever it is) found on This Girl’s Gone Green is an extraordinary achievement – it grows crops!

This design by architect Hoerr Shaudt graces the roof of 900 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago. A haven of natural tranquility, 10 floors up.

After a long, hard day in the School of Art Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), what more cathartic way to unwind than to walk all over it?

This idyllic spot may look terrestrial, but it’s a thing of the air, roofing Toronto’s Mountain Equipment Coop.

The Waldspirale in Darmstadt, Germany, is all about being unique. It doesn’t look like any building you’ve ever seen. Every one of its 1,000+ windows is different – ditto for all the doorhandles. And running along spiraling rooftop is a tree-lined garden (the wald or “wood” in its name).

Turfed roof near Gol, Norway. In days past, this sight would be grounds to condemn your neighbors as the laziest people on the planet. Now they’re obviously the cleverest (although we’re a little worried about that bowing roof).

Vancouver Public Library, Canada. Beautiful, useful, and definitely out of bounds – note the lack of protective barrier around the edge.

And now to more speculative matters. This proposed village for Heden, a sleepy cityblock in Sweden’s Gothenburg, has more than a touch of Hobbiton about it…

…as does this proposal by designer Friedenreich Hundertwasser.

Should green roofs be built to be scaled on foot? The designers of this proposal for the 2007 Fit City 2 conference in New York certainly think so – and there’s a good reason for thinking they’re right.

And finally – this example looks as speculative as they come. But it’s reality: the blueprint for the Vancouver Convention Center, currently expanding rapidly in time to host the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. The 6-acre living roof will house a whopping 400,000 varieties of native plant life – Inhabitat has a closer look here.

More information: Green Roofs (what else?)

Images: hans s / metaefficient / Deutsche Telekom / NREL / California Academy of Sciences / Inhabitat / Treehugger / pnwra / food2gro / trendir / Nanyang Technological University / sookie / Hundertwasser / IGPOTY / Terri Meyer Boake / Kjellengren Kaminsky Architecture / Ecogeek / Archidose / Inhabitat.

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17 Living Roofs: the High Tech Green Future of Architecture

Mike Sowden — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:32:21 +0000