Integrating Sustainability into Bus Shelter Design

Bus stations provide an open platform for layering multiple sustainable technologies in a single location. Installing photovoltaic panels on top of bus shelter canopies is one of the most common practices of sustainable bus shelter design. Some cities are also beginning to explore the possibility of using bus shelters to capture and manage storm water.

Solar-powered bus shelter in San Francisco

San Francisco is in the process of rolling out 1,100 new bus shelters that use roof top solar panels to run lights and power an on-site wifi network, which has the potential to provide significant coverage when expanded citywide. The creative repurposing of bus shelters as a platform for advancing environmental and social sustainability goals holds tremendous promise and is an area that is likely to see further innovation, particularly as bus rapid transit lines like the Orange Line (and future Wilshire Line) continue to attract riders.

Solar panels on bus shelter canopy in San Francisco

To understand the potential for leveraging bus shelters as a way to advance sustainability in Los Angeles, consider that Metro operates 15,967 bus stops throughout its service area. If the transit authority built bus shelters similar to those being used in Corona, which use roof top solar panels to feed 1,748 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year into the grid, it could generate roughly 27,910,316 kWh per year of energy. That's enough energy to power approximately 4,560 homes.

15,967 bus stops x 1,748kWh/bus stop = 27,910,316 kWh
27,910,316 kWh/6,120 kWh per LADWP res. customer = 4,560 households

With nearly sixteen-thousand bus stops in the Metro system, there's a tremendous opportunity to use these sites for producing renewable energy, showcasing local artists and providing other socially valuable services like wifi or way-finding information. Given DWP's target for renewable energy production (35% by 2030), the demand for renewable energy in Los Angeles is high and as local capacity for renewable energy production increases, there is less need for running expensive high powered transmission lines through sensitive environmental habitat.

Clearly Los Angeles could be doing more to deploy its own contextually sensitive design for sustainable bus shelters and leverage such a program to advance additional co-benefits for the region: "green" its transportation system, decrease carbon dioxide emissions, reduce storm water runoff, create jobs for the manufacturing and installation of new sustainable bus shelters, expand free wifi coverage, showcase local arts and culture, and enhance the dissemination of important public information.

Sources:

- Renewable Energy World, "City of Corona Turns Bus Shelter into Mini Power Plant"

- Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro)

- LADWP Green Power Annual Report 2009

Mapping America

The New York Times complied data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, based on samples from 2005 to 2009, and made it available through a fascinating interactive map, searchable by city or zip code. Search for your city or community here.

The America Community Survey is an ongoing survey, different from the decennial census that attempts to count everyone in America, that generates data every year through a statistically significant sample of the population. The data is used frequently by urban planners to plan investments, infrastructure and sustainable community strategies.

Here are two accompanying articles from the NY Times about the transition of immigrants to suburbia and the changing demographic composition of the New York City metropolitan region.

Next CicLAvia - April 10, 2011

The route will be largely the same - 7.5 miles traveling through East Hollywood, MacArthur Park, Downtown, Little Tokyo and Boyle Heights. Stay tuned for more details and be sure to check CicLAvia's website for additional information and updates.

Mayor Wants to Make Homes EV Ready in 7 Days

While at the 2010 LA Auto Show, Mayor Villaraigosa announced that Los Angeles would streamline the permitting process so that owners of electric cars can have charging stations installed in just seven days. DWP is launching a customer hotline (800-342-5397) and the City created a new website (https://www.permitla.org) to expedite the permitting process.

As I argued in an earlier post, "not only have we dedicated enormous tracts of land to cars in the form of freeways and 6 lane roads, but auto-related infrastructure like gas stations also consume valuable real estate that would be much more productive as housing or neighborhood commercial/retail." De-centralizing the infrastructure needed to "refuel" cars will make it possible to re-appropriate gas stations for uses that are more socially, environmentally, culturally and economically sustainable and productive.

However, it would be nice to see the Mayor find a way to consolidate all of the city's numbers/websites and provide the public with a single, easy to use portal for accessing city-related information and resources. The good intentions of the city are often obscured by an overly cumbersome bureaucracy that makes obtaining permits, approvals, filing complaints or finding information a frustrating process. Streamlining the process for getting an electric car charging station installed in your home is great but I doubt many will hear about the Mayor's announcement, and those that do won't know where to look to find the hotline or website.

West Hollywood's Transit Future

A few things are now certain regarding mass transit in Los Angeles: the subway will be extended as far west as the VA hospital, the Expo Line will be extended to Santa Monica and the Crenshaw Line will connect the Green Line to the Expo Line via LAX. All of these projects are in various phases of approval, funding or construction and are likely to be completed sometime in the next 5-15 years, assuming the Mayor's 30-10 plan takes hold in the new Congress.

Since Metro chose not to include a transfer structure at Wilshire and La Cienega to serve a future subway extension into West Hollywood, the options for providing mass transit to West Hollywood residents are limited. The most viable alternative seems to be a northern extension of the Crenshaw Line, which would create a high ridership transfer point with the Wilshire subway before traveling to Hollywood/Highland via West Hollywood. See figure 1 below for route alternatives.

Figure 1

Demand for a mass transit line that serves the Beverly Center, Pacific Design Center, West Hollywood Library (under construction and across the street from the PDC), and Santa Monica Boulevard corridor is incredibly high. We need to double down on our existing and future transit investments (subway, Expo and Crenshaw) and leverage their construction for strategic enhancements to our transit network. Extending the Crenshaw Line northward through West Hollywood makes a lot of sense, for it would not only serve one of the densest and most vibrant cities in the region but it would also improve the connectivity and overall functionality of Los Angeles' expanding transit network.

LA River Vertical Campus

"A starkly modern grid-patterned skyscraper within the heart of Los Angeles, the Vertical Campus, designed by architects Gail Peter Borden and Brian D. Andrews, is a tower that 'engages urbanity,' and seeks to energize and engage the community by re-orienting the landscape from the city’s horizontal sprawl to a vertical complex.

The tower is located over the Los Angeles River, using the building’s base to generate hydroelectricity, and is a mix of residential, commercial, garden and civic spaces.

Instead of just being a skyscraper, though, the Vertical Campus seeks to help re-envision how to unite people through design, how to house new growth in an already dense city, and how to blend complex building systems to unite an existing complex urban fabric. The building will, through its design and also programmatic elements, be a literal bridge that unites the people of different economic and social classes that currently reside on the opposite sides of the river.

Wind turbines join the hydroelectric to provide energy, as does photovoltaic film; horizontal farms breed algae for energy use while hanging gardens grow vegetables and flowers for residents; rainwater is collected and purified; and all of the city’s transportation paths – bike, pedestrian, car, subway, train – run across the building’s base, unifying the building in another way with its landscape." (Source: eVolo)

Using planning and architecture, through thoughtful and provocative design, to connect disparate and geographically isolated socio-economic groups is fundamental to the social sustainability of Los Angeles. At the same time, the tower's use of existing on-site ecological and infrastructural resources, made possible by its near perfect location adjacent the LA River and existing bike, pedestrian and rail connections, make it a model for vertical sustainability and performance-based design.

Solar Freeways

A Swedish architect, Mans Tham, proposes covering the nearly 500 miles of freeway in LA County with solar panels. Tham's "Solar Serpents in Paradise" leverage the enormity and urban geography of freeways to produce something positive: locally produced renewable energy that can be fed easily into the existing grid, thereby reducing the need for environmentally destructive solar farms in the desert.

Just covering the 10 freeway from downtown to Santa Monica would produce enough electricity to power all the households in Venice. There is also the potential to provide electric charging stations under freeway over passes and to use the carbon dioxide rich air from the freeway to grow algae on underutilized shoulder space.

Regardless of what one may think of freeways, they are likely to remain part of the built environment for many years to come. But simply denigrating freeways as hulking concrete structures that divide communities and degrade local air quality ignores their potential for becoming part of the sustainability solution. Taking sunken infrastructure investments and repurposing them to serve current needs saves time, money, land and is probably the most effective way for existing urban areas like Los Angeles to transition into a more sustainable future.

Decentralized Energy Infrastructure

As electric cars and plug-in hybrids continue to increase their market share in the United States, efforts to decentralize the energy infrastructure for these cars will undoubtedly help make places like Los Angeles more environmentally, economically and socially sustainable. I first introduced the idea of decentralized energy infrastructure in an earlier post, "Greener Cars and Fewer Gas Stations." To understand the point I'm trying make, consider that the fewer of these we need...

Gas station in Los Angeles

...means more land is available for developments like this:

Sierra Bonita affordable housing in West Hollywood

And with more housing and commercial development like Sierra Bonita in the heart of the city means there's less pressure to continue building at the urban fringe.

Sprawl in Santa Clarita

I applaud GM for partnering with Envision Solar to install their solar-powered charging trees at GM dealerships. Each "tree" can generate enough electricity to fully charge one Chevy Volt in a day. Making these charging trees available for private residences is the next logical step to improving the urban landscape in Los Angeles and making the region more sustainable.

Chevy Volt with Envision Solar-Powered Charing "Tree"

"Better Block" Project

The Oak Cliff neighborhood in Dallas transformed a tired stretch of street into a vibrant community center by gathering donations from local businesses and putting their DIY attitude to work. Their project is called "Better Blocks" and it's about greening the city and reclaiming streets for people, whether they be on foot, sitting outside a cafe or riding a bike. In 24 hours they were able to turn this:

Into this:

Making Los Angeles sustainable is about more than energy and resources; people and place matter. Reorienting streets for people, as demonstrated here and by the overwhelming success of CicLAvia last weekend, can help produce healthy, vibrant and safe communities that are socially sustainable.

It would be nice to see the enthusiasm generated by CicLAvia translated into an effort, like Better Blocks, to repurpose some LA's widest boulevards into people-based places. Clearly it doesn't take much in the form of resources or time to make a big impact. Use the DIY-model provided by Better Blocks and test-run certain neighborhood streets. Inexpensive and temporary demonstration pilot projects are a great way to generate community and business support, and help justify more expensive and permanent infrastructure investments later on. This approach may not be successful everywhere but with so little capital and time needed to implement a pilot program, the City has little reason not support such an effort.

Which streets would you like to see LA turn into "Better Blocks"?

CicLAvia this Sunday - 10/10/10

Check out the street map here. The event is this Sunday, from 10am - 3pm. Enjoy a car-free Sunday in LA!

CicLAvia youtube video

WeHo Spur

Joel Garreau made the point in his book, Edge City, that “every American city that is growing is growing in the fashion of Los Angeles.” Studying the patterns of growth found within the Los Angeles region allow us to examine the principle dynamics of contemporary urbanization (de-centered growth, poly-nucleation and sprawl) and propose appropriate planning solutions. These dynamics have produced the unique urban form and scattered travel patterns (and congestion) that characterize Los Angeles today, which many planners are now working so hard to fix.

A tremendous amount of work is being done to correct the problems and negative externalities caused by decades of unchecked growth. Extending the "subway to the sea" is one such effort, which is clearly vital to the public health, economic strength and cultural vitality of the Westside and the region. Despite the overwhelming evidence demonstrating the need for extending the subway west under Wilshire Boulevard, which I support strongly, building a transportation network based on a hub and spoke model ignores the very nature of urban growth and travel patterns in Los Angeles. Not all roads lead to downtown, nor should they. Building a de-centered, poly-nucleated transportation network that relies on linkages and connections would mirror the urban system that it is purported to serve.

Sending a spur of the subway through West Hollywood to connect to the existing Red Line station at Hollywood and Highland is exactly the sort of linkage that I'm talking about. Providing transportation connections that don't require a ride through downtown increase options for riders and facilitate easy access to other parts of the region like West Hollywood, while making the rail system more robust and effective overall.

The public comment period for the Westside Subway extension ends October 18, 2010. Be sure to email your comments in support of a West Hollywood alignment by clicking on the link under "Contact Us." 

"Whiskey's for drinking; water's for fighting."

Los Angeles lives on the water it imports from Northern California and the Colorado River. California is expected to add millions of new residents over the next couple decades, many of which are likely to reside somewhere in Southern California. Constrained resources and rising demand make our reliance on imported water unsustainable. Also, transporting water is incredibly energy intensive. According to some estimates, 20% of California's carbon dioxide emissions result from pumping water throughout the state.

Some people are already thinking about to how reconcile the demand for growth and development with the environmental, economic and social imperative to build sustainably. A recent article by Metropolis Magazine discusses the nexus between water and sustainability. The article culminates in a call to action for those interested in designing a sustainable vision for our cities:

"The Living City Design Competition calls on the world’s most ambitious designers to create an inspiring but realistic vision for the future of civilization. Competition teams will conceptually retrofit existing cities, demonstrating how real communities might transform their relationship with the resources that sustain them. These re-imagined cities must achieve each Imperative of the Living Building Challenge, the built environment’s most rigorous performance standard.

To be certified under the Living Building Challenge, a project must capture and treat all of its own water onsite using ecologically sound processes. It must also ensure that 100% of storm water and building discharge feeds the project’s internal water demands or is released onto adjacent sites for management through gradual surface flow, groundwater recharge, agricultural use or adjacent building needs."

Los Angeles River

The challenge to have no net import and no net export of water within a given site is the ultimate metric for water sustainability and ought to be the goal for all buildings in the Los Angeles region. There is no reason why resources and money should be spent to send rainwater out to sea when it could be harnessed for more productive uses, thereby eliminating the need for the costly and damaging practice of importing water.

Getting Past Semantics

The term "sustainability" as a planning concept is vague and poorly defined. Understanding what it means and how best to harness its principles to craft a more positive urban experience have been undermined by our lazy use of language. Bill Barnes from the National League of Cities made a similar point recently, correctly pointing out that the term "sustainability" has been thrown around so freely that we don't really know what we're talking about any more. Discussions about green building, LEED, mass transit, TOD, etc. make it seem as though sustainability is everything. But if it is, then maybe it's nothing? Clearly that's not the case either but to better understand how sustainability impacts planning and our collective vision for the built environment, we need to do a better job defining the terms of the debate. That is the mission of this blog - to provide an open platform for discussing the sort thinking and development that embody and express the core principles of a sustainable built environment.

Zoning a Post-Modern Metropolis

The first major revision of Los Angeles’ zoning codes were introduced recently to the Planning Commission. The goal, according to an article by the Architect’s Newspaper, is to create consistent timelines for land-use approvals; make zoning review more flexible and consistent; allow for abbreviated review processes for minor deviations from the zoning code; create consistent procedures for modifying existing projects; and streamline zoning approval for projects that meet specific plan standards. A final vote is expected before Thanksgiving.

This project reaffirms planner’s modernist belief in the efficacy of zoning and its usefulness as a way of creating order from chaos; the primary tool for planners to rationalize complex urban problems and diagnose well-packaged solutions. The problem is that Los Angeles is continuing to use a decidedly modernist way of thinking in a post-modern world.

Concentric Zone Theory Model

Post-modernism breaks down the hegemony of modernist rationality, allowing for multiple and equally privileged ways of experiencing and understanding cities. The transition to postmodern thought has been accompanied by a similar shift in the production of cities; the Chicago School’s modernist view of urban structure with a central core organizing the hinterland, characterized by the concentric zone theory, has given way to a postmodern view that replaces modernism’s center city logic with multiple logics all happening at the urban periphery and a breakdown in the distinction between inter- and intra-urban structure.

The Los Angeles School introduced the idea that Los Angeles is the archetype of postmodern urbanism whose patterns of urban growth and change carry explanatory power for cities beyond the five county metropolitan region. Joel Garreau made the same point in Edge City, “every American city that is growing is growing in the fashion of Los Angeles.” The physical manifestations of postmodern urbanism are visible in LA and so the city is a useful lens for examining the principle dynamics of contemporary urbanization and their impact on planning practice. The multiple logics (re)produced by de-centered growth, poly-nucleation, and sprawl all come home to roost in Los Angeles.

The essential problem is that planners (and the current re-write of LA’s zoning code) are currently ill equipped to deal postmodern urbanism, regardless how well they may understand its principle dynamics. The cityLAB manifesto of founding director Dana Cuff and her colleagues captures the essence of the problem:

"Transformations of the city exceed our ability to control them … we arrive at results seemingly by fast-forward, without clear grasp of how we got there. Though not necessarily temporally fast, change occurs as a set of discontinuous jump cuts: urban development is not progressive, but it can never turn back; design is increasingly regulated without ever showing improvement."

The rational ordering of cities from core to hinterland no longer applies. Current planning practice with its emphasis on process, technocratic analysis of things like ridership projections for mass transit, and shift away from the state and toward civil society is overwhelmed by more than just the pace of development; the practice of planning itself appears incapable of articulating and implementing a vision for the future of postmodern cities.

Where's the center here?

Planning has always been about responding to contemporary urban trends, beginning with the challenges posed by late-nineteenth century industrial cities, and must now reclaim some of its progressive, reform tradition in order to remain relevant in a postmodern age. To begin, planning must be self-aware and realize that objective rational argument, critique, and morality are not possible in a postmodern world. It would be irresponsible for planning to assume that it could continue to appeal to a rational logic, like strict Euclidean zoning, for making the built environment a better place when the principle dynamics creating and changing cities today are unresponsive to such an approach.

Reading Place

Masdar in Abu Dhabi

I just came across an interesting piece from the blog myurbanist on "reading the evolution of place." The author articulates his message through a brief analysis of eleven pairs of images of various places throughout the world, mostly cities.

Some of his commentary is insightful and strikes at the core of what this blog is trying to accomplish: establishing a new contextually sensitive discourse, systemic and holistic in scope, about sustainability and what it means for the future of the Los Angeles region.

Barrios of Caracas, Venezuela

"Today, we are driven by a new sustainability ethic, necessarily systemic in scope. Carbon-neutrality is the rage, and location efficiency, clean energy and the return of neighborhood are the watchwords of change. Formulas and metrics, and new regulatory systems attempt results, and show the quest to measure how close we are to achieving ideal forms of location and development.

But...context is key, and adaptation to a multi-environmental sense of place, associated imagery and sensation is an essential element of building design, urban development and innovation going forward. Creating beautiful buildings that are able to work for the environment, or crafting appropriate enabling regulations, should also be considered as part of a broader, holistic effort. There is no use in having architects, urban planners, developers and lawyers thinking in isolation about a better future."

Street in Valletta, Malta

His last point about a "broader, holistic effort" is usually directed at our understanding of the environment; a point mentioned to underscore the importance of thinking of the environment in its entirety, rather than as discrete systems. However, I think he's talking about something slightly different and less obvious - that in order for place to be legible in the "sustainable city," architects, urban planners, developers and lawyers need to think and work together. Sustainability is just as much about environmental outcomes as it is about process and collaboration. Without a sustainable practice for producing the sort of urbanism our cities and environment demand, we are never going to make progress toward carbon-neutrality, water independence or any other pressing environmental issue. This is true for Los Angeles just as much as it is for any other big city.

What will LA look like in 2030?

Rending: Michael Maltzan Architecture

Given constrained natural resources and accelerating ecological degradation, environmental sustainability is imperative but has yet to present itself on the urban landscape as a principle element affecting the de-centered growth of contemporary cities like Los Angeles. Nevertheless, in the absence of national leadership, cities are trailblazing new multi-scalar sustainability initiatives and greenhouse gas reduction strategies in order to stave off environmental disaster. The influence of these efforts on urban form is yet to be seen but some of ideas proposed by cityLAB-UCLA, Gensler and Michael Maltzan Architecture for what Los Angeles will look like in 2030 give us a glimpse of what a more socially and environmentally conscious urbanism may look like. Their proposals are part of Newsweek Magazine's series about the Future of Work.

Each of the three entrants framed their discussion of the future of LA around four parameters: home, work, commute and recreation. Each offering differing perspectives and intriguing renderings of a possible but as yet unrealized future. The dynamic interaction of natural systems, infrastructure, housing and people holds tremendous promise for the future of Los Angeles. Clearly there doesn't seem to be any shortage of good ideas. The key at this point is trying to figure out how we get from here to there.

CicLAvia - UPDATE - 10/10/10

The route is still basically the same, though a few changes through downtown are being made, but the date has been pushed back by nearly one month. The new date for Los Angeles' first ciclovia is October 10, 2010. Be sure to check for updates at CicLAvia's website.

LA River - The Spine of the City

There's been a lot of positive press about the LA River recently. GOOD and the LA Times ran stories recently discussing the EPA's decision to officially designate the LA River a "traditional navigable waterway," which apparently paves the way for federal money to be put toward restoring the river to a semi-natural condition. This is great news and a positive first step to undo the concrete channelization of the river and realize the potential of the waterway put forward by the LA River Master Plan.

And projects like the one on Elmer Avenue in Sun Valley (part of LA's Green Streets Initiative) will enable the naturalization of the LA River to occur by capturing and retaining stormwater on-site, reducing peak flow in the river channel during heavy storm events. Greening LA's streets also holds tremendous potential for reducing the city's reliance on distant sources of water. Local acquifers could be replenished through on-site stormwater retention techniques, making more water locally available for use. (note: about 19% of California's carbon dioxide emissions come from pumping and transporting water throughout the state).

Model of a proposal to redevelop an existing train yard into open space and housing.

A much bolder plan to naturalize a portion of the LA River was unveiled last month. Friends of the LA  River (FoLAR), together with a team of advisors, put together a proposal to turn 130 acres of industrial land into a verdant development with open space, housing, commercial and retail thoughtfully integrated into a lush riparian setting that reconnects the landscape with the existing fabric of the city. It's a bold proposal sure to draw fire and attention from all sides. At first glance, it appears to kiss the ring and pay homage to the easiest to achieve and least controversial principles of sustainability. A more critical assessment will have to wait until the details of the project become clearer but for now it's focus on water, neighborhood connectivity, transit, mixed-uses, recreation, open space and agriculture is comprehensive in scope and holistic in approach. A laudable project to be sure. There is plenty more to read here and I encourage you to do so. Become involved in the discussion by commenting on their site or this blog.

Measure R and TOD

Rendering for Expo Line's Vermont Station near Exposition Park and USC.

The NY Times wrote recently about the under construction Expo Line, scheduled to open as soon as next summer, and how it is already spurring transit-oriented development.

Los Angeles consistently earns the dubious award for worst traffic congestion in the US. The reasons for congestion in Los Angeles are complex, but the salient point is that most of the city’s residential, commercial, and retail districts were built for people coming and going by car. Few areas of the city are capable of supporting non-auto dependent lifestyles. To rectify this situation, and fight congestion and air pollution at the same time, the city is investing heavily in new transit lines like Expo via Measure R, a voter approved sales tax increase that will raise $30 billion for eleven new rail lines and extensions over the next thirty years.

Los Angeles’ existing transit network of 71 stations and 100 miles of track, coupled with the additional infrastructure investments provided by Measure R, represent the city’s best chance for creating dense, affordable and non-auto dependent communities. There is tremendous potential for Los Angeles to leverage its existing transit network, Measure R and demand for transit-oriented development as the starting point for improving mobility, building community and achieving regional sustainability. Simply building more roads and more parking to accommodate ever more cars is unsustainable and unhealthy. And without much remaining empty land (besides remote desert valleys) the City has little choice (if it wants to grow sensibly) to concentrate growth and vitality around transit stations.

Revisioning the San Fernando Valley

I came acroos two interesting news stories this past week. The first is from The Planning Report online, which discusses the recent formation of the San Fernando Valley Council of Governments, and the other is a video from TED.com by Ellen Dunham-Jones about retrofitting suburbs into more vibrant and sustainable communities.

Bringing together elected officials and planners in the SFV under one umbrella is sure to benefit the region as it plans for continued economic and demographic growth in the coming years. The SFV not only functions as its own region, but it is also part of the larger LA-metro region covering five counties and roughly 15 million people; this reality must be taken into consideration for any planning efforts to be successful. The formation of a SFV COG is a positive first step. Just look at how coordinated lobbying, planning and political pressure worked in the San Gabriel Valley - Metro broke ground just last month on a 12 mile "foothill extension" of the the Gold Line, scheduled to open for revenue service in 2014.

Numerous SFV-regional issues come to mind that deserve attention and coordinated planning: the headwaters of the LA River begin in the western SFV, the Orange Line (which many want converted to light rail) traverses the basin and is being extended north to the Chatsworth Metrolink Station and at least one California High Speed Rail station has been promised for the Valley. The SFV COG will prove its worth if it can manage to leverage these resources effectively to reorient growth and development away from the automobile and toward a more just and sustainable future. We need not reinvent the wheel to make this happen, for really good plans, like the LA River Master Plan, already exist; we just need the political and financial support to make it happen.

For additional ideas about how to reinvent suburbia, which is an apt characterization of much of the SFV, watch Ellen's 20 minute video (link above). Land in LA is at a premium and taking advantage of all the underutilized parcels and parking lots in the SFV represent an enormous untapped resource for capturing growth within the city's existing urban envelope. Some may fight any increase in density but few attractive alternatives remain in our increasingly resource constrained world.

Planning Vacancy Opens Door for Innovation

City of Los Angeles Planning Director Gail Goldberg announced her retirement recently, which has been covered by numerous sources. Here are two good articles that talk about her impact on planning, the city and opportunities for future innovation now that she's leaving: LA Times and more from The Architect's Newspaper.

The LA River Master Plan and construction of dozens of miles of rail via Measure R are two of the most obvious opportunities for LA to remake itself in the coming years. Time will tell how the City's new planning director will manage these opportunities while integrating principles of sustainability. In many ways, without any clear direction about how LA ought to grow sustainably over the coming decades, there is a real chance for the new director to put their imprint on the issue and begin to frame the debate.

What would you like to see LA's new planning chief do? What advice would you offer to the incoming planning director? How do you think they should define "sustainability" for the city?

Looking to China for Inspiration?

China is moving toward a carbon-neutral future through heavy investment in mass-transit, high-speed rail and renewable energy sources. Read the article from World Changing. Los Angeles is pursuing similar carbon reduction strategies but a singular focus on carbon based emissions dilutes the meaning of sustainability. The two are not synonymous and should not be treated that way. "Green buildings" are not "sustainable" unless they address the full menu of priorities that define sustainability.

It's probably not controversial for me to say that carbon-neutrality is not sufficient for a sustainable Los Angeles. Water, transportation (mobility), housing, etc. are all issues intimately tied to the sustainability of the region. Engaging in a narrow discussion about sustainability will mean that too many other vitally important issues will be ignored. It will serve Los Angeles well to have a more comprehensive discussion about sustainability, rather than an overly circumscribed discussion about only carbon emissions. What aspects of sustainability, beyond carbon emissions, do you think policy makers should be considering for Los Angeles?

Greener Cars and Fewer Gas Stations

Not long ago I took a quick mental tally of intersections near my house in the northwest San Fernando Valley. I was hard pressed to find a single intersection that wasn't occupied by at least two gas stations on the corners. This sad reality seems to be true throughout much of LA. Not only have we dedicated enormous tracts of land to cars in the form of freeways and 6 lane roads, but auto-related infrastructure like gas stations also consume valuable real estate that would be much more productive as housing or neighborhood commercial/retail.

A recent LA Times article discusses the possibilities for refueling your hydrogen powered car at home with a "residential hydrogen refueler." Honda has developed a unit (seen in the above picture) that is powered entirely by solar panels and can supply enough hydrogen for 10k miles of driving per year. There are many co-benefits to deploying such units throughout LA, namely fewer gas stations and emissions-free cars. With less reliance on oil and powered by renewable energy sources, the only limitation to the sustainability of such a system is the availability of water. It will be interesting to see how public policy makers in Los Angeles and auto manufacturers nurture the market for hydrogen cars and home refueling stations over the next several years.

CicLAvia - September 12, 2010

A route has been selected for LA's first ciclovía, modeled after the ciclovías started in Bogotá, Colombia over thirty years ago in response to congestion and pollution on city streets. The event is scheduled for September 12, 2010 from 10 am to 3pm. Check out CicLAvia's website for more details about route, safety and other related activities.

This marks a real turning point in the way LA thinks about streets and who they are designed to serve. The proposed route links smartly with metro stations and public parks, increasing access for participants and reinforcing the importance and viability of auto-free living. The route also links together communities torn apart by freeways - it traverses four freeways from East LA to East Hollywood. Freeway construction displaced families and tore apart communities in real and profound ways. Hopefully, CicLAvia can help repair the broken fabric of our city, while promoting transportation sustainability through pedestrian/bicycle mobility.

Zero Energy Development

Reducing energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions is an indispensable part of any sustainability strategy. The City of Los Angeles is doing its part by trying to obtain 20% of its electricity from renewable sources by this year (looks like it won't happen). There is an interesting example of a zero energy development in London, called BedZED (Beddington Zero Energy Development). This is what inhabitat had to say:

"The BedZED Development design meets very high environmental standards, with a strong emphasis on roof gardens, sunlight, solar energy, reduction of energy consumption, and waste water recycling. In terms of materials, BedZED is built from natural, recycled, or reclaimed materials. All the wood used is approved by the Forest Stewardship Council or comparable internationally recognized environmental organizations.

Using passive solar techniques, houses arranged in south facing terraces to maximize heat gain from the sun. Each terrace is backed by north facing offices, where minimal solar gain reduces the tendency to overheat and the need for energy-hungry air conditioning. A centralized heat and power plant (CHP) provides hot water, which is distributed around the site via a district heating system of super-insulated pipes. Should residents or workers require a heating boost, each home or office has a domestic hot water tank that doubles as a radiator. The CHP plant at BedZED is powered by off-cuts from tree surgery waste that would otherwise go to landfill.

One of BedZED’s unique community considerations is its take on transportation. The entire development has been designed to encourage alternatives to car use. A green transport plan promotes walking, cycling, and use of public transport. A car pool for residents has been established, and all these initiatives have helped to provide a strategic and integrated approach to transport issues. BedZED’s target is a 50% reduction in fossil-fuel consumption by private car use over the next 10 years compared with a conventional development. BedZED was the first low-car development in the UK to incorporate a car club, “ZEDcars.” A “pedestrian first” policy with good lighting, drop curbs for prams (strollers) and wheelchairs, and a road layout that keeps vehicles to walking speed.

Additionally, designers took great consideration of the development’s embodied energy, a measure of the energy required to manufacture a product. To reduce the embodied energy of BedZED, construction materials were selected for their low-embodied energy and sourced within a 35-mile radius of the site when possible. The energy expended in transporting materials to the site was therefore minimized."

Los Angeles could certainly do more to integrate some of these principles into its design standards and development requirements. Carbon neutral housing addresses the issues of pollution and global warming but we must also ensure that renewable energy is sourced the right way. Covering sensitive habitat in the mojave desert seems to be trading one problem (i.e. coal fired power plants) for another. Also, it's hard to imagine that "sustainable" housing in LA wouldn't also incorporate water harvesting/reuse/reduction features as well, for sustainability is contextually sensitive and always about much more than just energy.

What do you think "sustainable" housing in Los Angeles ought to look like? What features should be included in these houses? How do we ensure that top-notch sustainable living is not just a luxury for the the well-off? USGBC standards got rid of the worst of current building practice but seem to have gotten rid of not much more than the low hanging fruit, while BedZED seems to have taken things a bit further. Given the previous post about biomimicry, how far is far enough? How do you expect buildings to perform environmentally/socially over the next 50 years?

Biomimicry and the Built Environment

The first post about definitions of sustainable all touch upon the importance of time. Sustainability requires that things be able to endure indefinitely; that our actions or behavior be sustained in perpetuity. But what does this mean when thinking about the built environment? How can these concepts be applied to places like LA and current discussions about green building and urban sustainability?

The article "It's Alive! How Closely Can a Building Emulate Nature?" from the Boston Globe presents some interesting ideas that help expand upon current thinking about sustainability and what it means for cities.

The author raises "the prospect of a future where the built environment works in a radically different way - not as a foil for nature, but as seamlessly integrated with it as possible." With biomimicry or biomimetic design there is the potential for "buildings as closed-loop ecosystems that, like a forest or savanna, draw their energy from the elements and produce no net waste - and perhaps even improve the surrounding environment."

One of the leaders of biomimicry mentioned in the above article, Janine Beynus, spoke at UC Berkeley last spring as part of the College of Environmental Design's 50th anniversary. I attended her lecture and at one point she showed an image of several tall skyscrapers from the street level looking up and posed the question, “what if this,” referring to the buildings, “performed like this?” and then transitioned to a photograph of towering redwood trees taken from the same point of view. (For more information about her work, link to Ask Nature on the right side of this page.)

With the built environment working like the natural environment it replaces, issues of time and scale become less important. It seems that if Los Angeles can design buildings that replicate the natural functions of the environment they occupy, then the closer we are to constructing truly sustainable buildings that rely less on water from the Sacramento Delta or electricity from remote power plants.

Defining "sustainable"

Far too many discussions of sustainability fail to provide any sort of context or definition of the term. Instead, most jump straight to more interesting topics like innovative ways to reduce energy consumption, strategies for cities reclaim streets for people instead of cars, or easy and cheap ways to install green roofs. These are worthy discussions to be sure; however, without engaging critically with what it means to be sustainable, it is difficult to determine just how sustainable things like LEED certified buildings really are. If sustainability is the goal, then we need a solid definition that allows us to benchmark our success.

This is more than just an academic exercise in semantics. According to the United Nations Population Fund, for the first time in human history more than half the world’s population now lives in urban areas. With the world population projected to add 2.5 billion people by 2050, the way in which we design, build, and manage cities will have a tremendous impact on our environment and quality of life. To accommodate growth in a world with limited resources and a threatened environment, we have no other option than to live sustainably. Getting there requires an unpacking of the word sustainable, followed by a careful application of its definition to cities and the built environment. Only then does it makes sense to discuss policy and best practices.

Below are definitions of sustainable culled from a few online sources.

• Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary: "able to continue over a long period of time; causing little or no damage to the environment and therefore able to continue for a long time."
• Merriam-Webster Online: "capable of being sustained; of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged."
• Wikipedia: "the capacity to endure."
• Apple Dictionary: "able to be maintained at a certain rate or level." 

How do you define sustainable? What would you add or subtract from these definitions?