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?