Parking Lots as Solar Farms

There are ways to transform surface parking lots, which are altogether too numerous in Los Angeles, from an eyesore into a resource. Surface parking lots can be planted with "solar groves" - rows of solar panels - that generate electricity for immediate use (electric charging stations) or provide renewable energy for the grid. 

Retrofitting existing parking lots is not terribly difficult and parking capacity is unaffected. In fact, providing electric vehicle owners with a simple and affordable way to recharge their cars while in the office or while out running errands will reduce "range anxiety" and provide the infrastructure needed to make electric vehicles a viable alternative to gas cars. You can read more about "solar groves" here.

LA Bike Master Plan

The recently passed Los Angeles Bike Master Plan has been lauded by many as a great success. It certainly goes a long way, assuming it is actually implemented, towards making Los Angeles a more bike-friendly city. With miles of mass transit proposed for the region and a growing population, the need for transportation modes that support the transition away from a strict reliance on cars is essential. The fact that Los Angeles is warm and sunny nearly all year, and relatively flat in most areas makes an emphasis on biking all the more obvious.

My major criticism is that there are still not nearly enough class-1 bike lanes (green lines on the map), which are the hallmark of any world class biking city. Most people will remain reluctant to bike unless protected by some sort of physical barrier separating them from vehicular traffic. To understand the importance of physical barriers watch the video from Streetfilms below.

New CicLAvia Dates Announced

The 2011 CicLAvia dates are Sundays April 10th, July 10th and October 9th. April's route will be the same route as last October: 7.5 miles from Boyle Heights to East Hollywood. Later in the year, CicLAvia will extend the route in South L.A. and Chinatown, and further east into Boyle Heights.

Sustainable Communities Building Blocks

The US EPA developed the Sustainable Communities Blocks Program in an effort to help communities improve the quality of life for existing residents and manage future development while becoming more economically and environmentally sustainable.

The program "seeks to provide quick, targeted technical assistance to 20 communities using a variety of tools that have demonstrated results and widespread application. This technical assistance will help selected local and/or tribal governments to implement development approaches that protect the environment, improve public health, create jobs, expand economic opportunity, and improve overall quality of life."

The EPA's technical assistance will cover zoning code reviews, walkability assessments, parking policy analysis, climate action planning, commuter benefits, complete streets, and fiscal and economic tools.

A Request for Letters of Interest (RFLI) was released last week. Letters must be received by February 23, 2011. Use the link here to learn more and apply.

"Hedonistic Sustainability"

METROPOLIS published an article online recently on incorporating activity and pleasure into sustainable technologies. Drawing sustainability out of the realm of science and placing squarely into peoples' lives is essential for building public support and expanding our expectations for how sustainability ought to interact with the built environment.

Leave it to Bjarke Ingels to win a competition for his proposal for a new waste to energy plant by designing a 31.000 m2 ski slope. The competition, which yielded 36 proposals in fall 2010, was the largest environmental initiative in Denmark. With a budget of 3.5 Billion DKK, competing teams designed structures to replace a 40- year-old Amagerforbraending plant in Copenhagen with a more sustainable waste energy plant. 

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) decided to approach their design in a way that truly celebrates the idea of sustainability. What they call “hedonistic sustainability,” refers to design that improves the quality of life, both directly and indirectly- ecologically and socially.

Physical exercise and fresh air are rarely associated with waste treatment plants. But here the ski slope reaches out to citizens and gives them a new recreational facility, even as it creates a new relationship between waste plant and city. It shows a connection between shaping a healthy future and disposing waste. And it employs the latest technologies in waste treatment, while focusing on environmental performance. This is not a hidden, isolated, utility structure, but a celebration of health and well being. 

BIG really topped itself this time. While the firm’s buildings continue to be green, innovative, and never fail to surprise, here they propose the ultimate in sustainability. The ski slope, made from recycled materials, sits atop a building wrapped in a green facade formed by plant modules. Beneath this living skin are new waste management and energy management technologies. This building takes the idea of mixed use to a whole new level. Shouldn’t all our buildings strive to do the same?

In Los Angeles, like most cities, sustainable practices are integrated into things like building design or streetscape improvements but rarely is the sustainable technology itself the focus of the design exercise. Ingels' design forces us to rethink our understanding of "sustainability" and conceive of new ways in which Los Angeles could leverage sustainable technologies (like waste to energy plants) as cultural and social resources. Creating a symbiotic relationship among these concepts can advance the sustainability of the region while also adding to its vitality and livability.

Metro Retires Last Diesel Bus

There's nice article from Steve Hymon at The Source on Metro's retirement of its last diesel powered bus (article link here). With this milestone, Metro becomes the only major transit agency in the country to have a bus fleet equipped entirely with alternative-fuel technologies. As the LA Times notes, the regional impact on pollution is significant:

In an urban area where diesel buses began operating in 1940, the MTA now has 2,221 buses powered by compressed natural gas, as well as one electric bus and six gasoline-electric hybrids.

Transit officials estimate that the elimination of diesel engines has reduced the release of cancer-causing particulates from the bus fleet by 80% and greenhouse gases by about 300,000 pounds a day in one of the smoggiest areas of the country.

Increasing mass transit ridership is undoubtedly one of the keys to making transportation and land use more sustainable for everyone in the Los Angeles region, but the way in which riders are transported is also important; a cleaner bus fleet is critical for improving for the public and environmental health of the region.

Design for Broad Museum Unveiled

Diller Scofidio + Renfro/January 6, 2011. Source: LA Times

The Los Angeles Times wrote this morning:

The architectural design that Eli Broad is scheduled to reveal Thursday in a news conference at Walt Disney Concert Hall wraps the museum housing his contemporary art collection in a porous honeycomb. The billionaire collector and philanthropist hopes the $130-million building will help bring about his vision of downtown L.A. as a bustling urban hive of culture and street life.

The three-story museum will be known simply as the Broad, although the Broad Art Foundation is its formal name. The wraparound bonnet of interconnecting concrete trapezoids is courtesy of New York architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

Lead architect Elizabeth Diller's term for it is "the veil," because it enables the museum to relate to its surroundings by providing slots through which visitors can look out on Grand Avenue, and passersby outside the museum can get glimpses of what's inside. Visitors will enter the museum at ground level, take an escalator bathed in natural light to the top-floor galleries, and return via a staircase from which they'll have views into what she has dubbed "the vault" — the storage facility on the first and second floor that will house all the art from the 2,000-work collection that's not on display or on loan to other museums.

Coverage of the unveiling has been extensive thus far. You can read additional coverage from Curbed LA, blogdowntown, LA Downtown News, and The Architect's Newspaper by clicking on the links and a review by LA Times architecture critic, Christopher Hawthorne, here.

Leaving an evaluation of the museum's green credentials for another time, the most significant planning and sustainability issue facing The Broad involves the transportation of the more than 500,000 visitors that Eli Broad anticipates will visit his museum and MOCA each year. Finding ways to ensure that these half million people do not all arrive by car is important for reducing congestion and pollution in Los Angeles. Of particular importance is the street widening of Grand Avenue from 2nd to 4th streets and the new public plaza proposed for the southern and western edges of the site. These two proposed improvements hold tremendous potential for enhancing the public realm downtown and making Grand Avenue more pedestrian friendly.

Source: Metro

With the regional connector planning to add a stop on the backside of the museum, it is doubly important that the City leverage the proposed public plaza and streetscape improvements as a way to create a strong connection with the proposed station, inviting museum patrons from throughout the Los Angeles basin to arrive via mass transit instead of by car. See the regional transportation map below for the variety of different locations that one could take the train to Grand Avenue. The regional connector is poised for completion in 2019, six years after the The Broad opens.

Source: Metro

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.