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February 23, 2010
The Cleveland Model
Let's go back to the co-op theme, shall we? Tom Philpott of Grist wrote some time ago about the need for a "less efficient and more robust food system." He sketched a vision, based on his experience with his own farm, of small interrelated businesses benefiting communities via the local multiplier effect and generating jobs, good wages and affordable, healthy food far beyond what globalized multinational corporations have been able to manage for most American regions. It's a vision that without doubt shouldn't be restricted to the food system. Philpott closed the piece with a question: "How do we get there?" Well, Cleveland, Ohio -- of all places -- has attempted an answer which caused Philpott to review the Nation's coverage of this "new" phenomenon of large scale cooperatives: In a must-read article in the March 1 issue of The Nation, Gar Alperovitz, Ted Howard, and Thad Williamson lay out what they call the "Cleveland Model," a reference to that city's emerging complex of worker-owned businesses under the Evergreen Cooperatives umbrella. The key enterprise in the Cleveland initiative is the Evergreen Cooperative laundry, "a worker-owned, industrial-size, thoroughly 'green' operation" that "opened its doors late last fall in Glenville, a neighborhood with a median income hovering around $18,000," The Nation reports. Overall in Cleveland, the poverty rate stands at about 30 percent; the population has halved since 1950. The hollowed-out city, like Detroit, Pittsburgh, and other rust-belt metropolises, stands as a stark rebuke to 30-plus years of de-industrialization and corporate-dominated globalization. While these are "not your traditional small-scale co-ops," the authors report, they are also not faceless entities that turn workers into cogs in a vast machine. The authors write: The Evergreen model draws heavily on the experience of the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation in the Basque Country of Spain, the world's most successful large-scale cooperative effort (now employing 100,000 workers in an integrated network of more than 120 high-tech, industrial, service, construction, financial and other largely cooperatively owned businesses). ...To fund the Evergreen initiatives, the project's founders have been resourceful: they've cobbled together funds from a combination of local foundations, banks, and city government, The Nation reports. And get this: An important aspect of the plan is that each of the Evergreen co-operatives is obligated to pay 10 percent of its pre-tax profits back into the fund to help seed the development of new jobs through additional co-ops. Thus, each business has a commitment to its workers (through living-wage jobs, affordable health benefits and asset accumulation) and to the general community (by creating businesses that can provide stability to neighborhoods). Besides the laundry, Evergreen also runs Ohio Solar Cooperative, which installs PV solar panels on commercial and government buildings and provides weatherization to homes. The group will soon roll out Green City Growers Cooperative, "a 100% worker-owned, hydroponic, food production greenhouse."
That's change we can believe in. Sadly, I question how much commitment there will be from the administration for this kind of thing. From the federal government's perch in DC it's easy to mistake what Cleveland is doing as "too small" to address the jobs crisis that we face. But that is nothing more than a failure of imagination. Still, the leadership on this will likely come from cities. Even so, we should all be thinking about how we might be able to get something like the Cleveland model to take root in our own communities. Labels: food, politics, smart_growth
January 14, 2010
New York City and Rising Seas
As a complement to my post on The Vine asking if we're doing enough to prepare for the climate change-induced -- and inevitable -- rise in sea level, here's something from the NYT that takes a slightly different tack on the issue (thanks to TNR's Brad Plumer for pointing it out to me): This weekend, the public was given its first glimpse of a project a year in the making: a collaboration between the Museum of Modern Art and its affiliate P.S.1, an art exhibition house. The museums have asked five separate architectural teams to come up with plans for transforming the metropolitan area's coastlines after warmer oceans and melting Antarctic ice have raised global sea levels, something many scientists predict is inevitable. A full exhibit opens at MoMA on March 24, but what the teams are already coming up with has people talking. They envision a city lined with marshes, permeable coastlines, and oyster farms used as wave breaks. To adapt to climate change, the teams are asking New Yorkers to look at things in a more positive light -- namely, as a chance to bring a city famous for blocking out the ocean back to dealing with it.
Oyster farms, eh? That's certainly seeing opportunity in the face of disaster. Of course, it's not just coastal development that kicked out the oysters -- it was water pollution. And New York Harbor, though far cleaner that it was a few decades ago, still "harbors" enough heavy metals, pollutants and bacteria that I don't think anyone will be slurping "ersters" from its waters anytime soon. Still, power of positive thinking and all that. And I do like one team's idea of letting parts of Manhattan go all Venice and just accept streets full of water at high tide.
Anyway, it's worth noting that the architects' plans only account for about a 2 foot increase in sea level. As I highlight in my TNR post, we should plan for a 7 feet rise and very likely will get even more. An increase like that would swamp any city's most ambitious adaptation plans.
Labels: climate, food, infrastructure, smart_growth
November 23, 2009
Treat Energy Efficiency as a Utility
With David Leonhardt's piece on a new weatherization program/jobs bill nicknamed "Cash for Caulkers" generating some buzz, as well as questions, it seemed a good time to resurrect a post I wrote about a year ago on the general subject of energy efficiency improvement. I had been inspired by a lengthy post at Grist on a post-carbon economy which observed that the way to jumpstart efficiency and incentivize improvements is to copy the British and set per square foot emissions levels for building (unlikely, I know). But more practically, we should also make energy efficiency a "utility" like electricity, gas or water. Here's what I wrote: [N]ew entities called "efficiency utilities" ... would pay for efficiency upgrades in order to bring an existing building in compliance with the limits. Owners/tenants would pay for these improvements via a monthly bill and, though they would be part of the building, the improvements' cost wouldn't require "recouping" by the owner in the form of rent hikes or higher a sales price. A particular unit would simply have a particular monthly cost for "efficiency" like it has a monthly cost for heating.
And like electric service, the "efficiency" bill can be stopped - if an apartment sits unrented, for example. Because both the utility as well as the bill itself could be subsidized in various ways it would, according to Lipow, remove a major stumbling block to making improvements in existing buildings. For the record, an efficiency utility could cover the costs associated with:
Of course an efficiency utility wouldn't just cover insulation, caulk and new windows -- it would cover heating systems, appliances, shower heads, etc. A further advantage to a utility model over the financing model that Leonhardt discusses -- the idea of adding weatherization costs to homeowner's property tax bills -- is that it addresses the fact that weatherization doesn't lend itself to one-size-fits-all solutions. As Leonhardt observes, the complexity of retrofitting old homes is enormous: What share, say, of Midwestern homes built before 1950 could use more attic insulation? How quickly would the insulation pay for itself on average? Every home is different, obviously. But without any reference point, many people won’t be confident enough to plunge into a project. Even if they don't ultimately perform the work themselves, a utility would have the scale to provide the expertise as well as the data for what particular homeowners should do. Obviously, this kind of program would go beyond what any stimulus bill is likely to enact. But if we want to make efficiency a goal unto itself, a utility model -- not to mention per square foot emissions limitations -- is the way to go. Labels: energy, infrastructure, politics, smart_growth
Sewer Improvements Can Be Radical, Too!
 Other than the gross-out factor involved with the NYT's piece on our nation's collapsing sewer systems, I was most struck by this: The only real solution, say many lawmakers and water advocates, is extensive new spending on sewer systems largely ignored for decades. As much as $400 billion in extra spending is needed over the next decade to fix the nation’s sewer infrastructure, according to estimates by the E.P.A. and the Government Accountability Office. This came after a nod to Philadelphia's new radical plan to address its severe rainwater runoff problem almost entirely through ecological means. The whole point of what Philadelphia is doing is that it will "only" cost $1.6 billion, doesn't involve huge infrastructure projects and will very likely solve the problem. It's true that Philly would be blazing a trail, but it's one that, if successful, other cities are ready to follow -- why was this development almost entirely downplayed? I'm aware that local officials aren't always the most creative infrastructure thinkers at the same time as progressives are looking for promising areas for infrastructure improvements (and thus stimulus) -- water treatment systems are surely one of those. But infrastructure in the Obama era is supposed to be about both kinds of green. Let's keep that in mind, shall we? Photo credit: Cynthia Greer, Philadelphia InquirerLabels: infrastructure, politics, smart_growth
September 29, 2009
It's Always Raining in Philadelphia
Or so it's seemed the last few months. And rain can be fun, except when it overloads your stormwater system and causes raw sewage to pour into your rivers. It took Grist to alert me to what's going on in my own backyard but now I know that Philly's got a plan: Philadelphia has announced a $1.6 billion plan to transform the city over the next 20 years by embracing its storm water - instead of hustling it down sewers and into rivers as fast as possible. The proposal, which several experts called the nation's most ambitious, reimagines the city as an oasis of rain gardens, green roofs, thousands of additional trees, porous pavement, and more. The plan is a radical departure from the highly engineered tunnels and sewage plant expansions cities have traditionally opted for. "This is the most significant use of green infrastructure I've seen in the country, the largest scale I've seen," said Jon Capacasa, regional director of water protection for the Environmental Protection Agency, which has the final say on whether the plan passes muster. "We commend Philadelphia for breaking the ice," he said.
Apparently, cities around the country are waiting to see if the EPA gives the plan the greenlight; if so, this could be the start of a nationwide trend. And all it took was a little shift in perspective: "Instead of figuring out how to manage this pollution, maybe we should be looking at how to prevent it in the first place," said Howard Neukrug, director of the Office of Watersheds in the Water Department. "Let's break down some of the barriers against nature and deal with rainwater where it lands." The idea now is to "peel back" the city's concrete and asphalt and replace them with plants - with rain gardens, green roofs, heavily planted curb extensions, vegetated "swales" in parking lots, and mini-wetlands.
One of the most radical departures for city planners is this shift from "management" to "prevention." Instead just accepting that the city has to vastly increase its built infrastructure to handle the huge amount of stormwater runoff that currently exists (the prospect of which was, among other things, prohibitively expensive), Philly decided that it would attack the problem at the source. It's funny how that subtle shift in mindset leads to such a radical shift in policy. If we can apply this kind of thinking to other things like car usage or, oh, I don't know, carbon emissions, maybe we can make some real progress. Photo credit: Cynthia GreerLabels: infrastructure, local, pollution, smart_growth
February 26, 2009
Bicycles on Broadway
NYC's Mayor Bloomberg just announced that several large sections of Broadway - including Times Square and Herald Square - will be closed to vehicle traffic for the rest of the year. If the experiment works, the closure will be permanent. In the Bush years, we might have wondered if it was for security purposes. But no: The plan calls for Broadway to be closed to vehicles from 47th Street to 42nd Street. Traffic would continue to flow through on crossing streets, but the areas between the streets would become pedestrian malls, with chairs, benches and cafe tables with umbrellas. Seventh Avenue would be widened slightly within Times Square to accommodate the extra traffic diverted from Broadway. Below 42nd Street, Broadway would be open to traffic, but then would shut down again at Herald Square, from 35th Street to 33rd Street. Then, below 33rd, it would open again.
The plan is the latest move by Mr. Bloomberg to change the way the city thinks of its streets, making them more friendly to pedestrians and cyclists and chipping away at the dominance of the automobile.
It comes on the heels of the "Broadway Boulevard" plan that expanded bike lanes and pedestrian areas in Times Square, pictured below. But getting rid of cars entirely? That's just awesome. Next up - the 42nd St. surface rail - if Vision42 gets its way! How cool would that be? "Broadway Boulevard" photo by John Niedermeyer used under CC license
42nd St. tram photo courtesy Vision42Labels: smart_growth, transport
October 8, 2008
A Clean Break
Philadelphia is home to green, well, homes. At least for a two weeks in October and thanks to a project called A Clean Break. According to the exhibit website: From October 17 to 30, a temporary prefab "neighborhood" in Philadelphia will offer an optimistic view of what a revitalized city might look like in the near future. A Clean Break, curated by Minima Gallery, will be a central event of DesignPhiladelphia, an annual series of lectures, studio tours, and exhibitions organized by the Design Center at Philadelphia University. Part of Minima's show will take place in a vacant lot on South Broad Street, just down the street from Philadelphia City Hall A central tenet of the show is to "highlight the importance of sustainable design in an urban environment" and the prefab homes are meant to embody that principle. One of the featured homes is the aptly named Wee House which arrived in our fair city last week.  This is but one of many structures featured in the exhibit, a full line-up of which can be seen here. Philly's own Interface Studio Architects will present their prefab work (pictured below) as well.  Sounds like we should all hop on our bikes the weekend after next and check it out. Labels: housing, smart_growth
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