It is with great pleasure that I direct you dear readers to our new website hosted at the same address as before www.cunysustainablecities.org. We hope you find it more user friendly and full of information about what we do and upcoming events. But most importantly, we hope you find it inviting so that you get more involved with sustainability in the city!

Thanks very much to Dartmoth Design who worked with us to develop the web’s layout for some time. And a HUGE thank you to our Web Master/Media Coordinator, Andrew Lynch for making that vision actually become a reality.

Make sure to watch the video which was created by two wonderful Hunter College students: Patsy Chen and Jenni Jenkins. Their creative genius will help us spread the CISC gospel far and wide.

We will still be blogging a bit over here for now because as you will see, our blog software is not entirely ready for your comments and contributions. But soon enough, all of CISC on the web will be in one place.

Enjoy!

I haven’t had a chance to meander over to Times Square in the last few days, but I am looking forward to it. This is a change of heart for me, as well as for many other New Yorkers who generally try and avoid the place like the plague. But over the holiday weekend, a rather large swath of Broadway between Times Square and Herald Square became closed to automobile traffic. And this is no summer tourist trap, its a pilot project for permanent traffic interventions.

Named Green Light for Midtown, this endeavor is part of the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) plan to get people walking–in the streets–in Midtown Manhattan. According to the DOT, Broadway has consistently been a thorn in the side of any traffic mitigation and alleviation efforts in the city. So what do we do? Get rid of the street all together. To some it may seem counterintuitive. But I always remember a comment made in Contested Streets–a wonderful film produced by Transportation Alternatives a few years ago–that no matter how many bridges and roads we build, they will become full of traffic so long as we keep thinking within the lane. So, shutting down roads makes both a symbolic and design statement.

Whether Times Square will be transformed into an idyllic picnic destination or will remain simply as the leviathan energy sucker–mental and electric– remains to be seen. Maybe Tokyo and Las Vegas get matching Leviathan medals. But that really is beside the point. In places where pedestrians are squeezed onto sidewalks, traffic problems can’t be solved with the same thinking that created the mess in the first place. So this is a welcome experiment. As the Times reports, not everyone is happy. Cabbies are among the disgruntled. But change is never easy, especially for those who perceive the burden to be on them. Have you been there? Care to share your thoughts?

But Not Looking Like It Will Become A Reality

Most media sources that lean green covered the exciting emergence and development of China’s first eco-city, Dongtang. Actually, it would have been the world’s first start-from-scratch eco-city. Meant to be car free, renewable energy powered, and full of water recycling features, this city of 50,000 residents was supposed to be a showcase of sustainability. Advocates saw its promise, critics thought this distracted from retrofitting, but China was set to unveil this city in 2010 at the Shanghai Urban Expo.

Mum appears to be the word though. No houses have been built, which means no one lives there. And the expo site no longer features the visit to Dongtang as part of the conference. As reported in the Guardian, the design team from British company Arup, who created the master plan for the city, knows little. What they do know is not particularly good news though: the project office has been shut in Dongtang.

As is clear by the account of Fred Pearce at the Guardian, people who invested something in the project, be it hope, work time, or anything else, are disgruntled. Rightly so. What was meant to be a showcase of urban sustainability is now a model of waste. Wasted resources, time, and money. I assume the urban expo will go on, with another feature filling its void. And eventually what went wrong with the project will be unveiled. But it seems to be symptomatic of the larger economic paradigm shift. Dreaming up huge, elaborate, credit-intensive, excessive and overly ambitious projects is so 2005. 2009 seems to be the year of the flop. And 2010 will likely be the year of the clean up. Hopefully something can still be salvaged at Dongtang in the aftermath of excess and failure. After all, the Chinese character for crisis is danger + opportunity.

Or Something Like It

Living Cities, a collaboration between 21 large philanthropic organizations, private corporations, and the public sector recently released a report, “Green Cities: How Urban Sustainability Efforts Can and Must Drive America’s Climate Change Policies.”

In the opening letter from the CEO, the report is said to “showcase and support the innovative
ways in which cities are creating an equitable green economy.” The report is full of helpful visual information, like a chart that exhibits what working families spend on transportation and housing per year (see page 28), or an educational skyline that gives info on resource use from buildings in the city (page 14).

For a synopsis and some highlights, check out the write up on Greener Buildings. The blog will be back to more entries soon, but I was out sick for a few days, which means major catch up.

Image Courtesy of News Day

Or is the joke on us? The bill signed into place by Albany law makers last night, that will prevent huge fare hikes and service cuts from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), might already have some problems. As City Room reports, the plan will be raising less money than was initially thought (are numbers out of date already?), no one knows how the fifty cent surcharge from cabbies will be collected and NY schools are not too happy about the payroll tax increase and are not too certain that they will be reimbursed for them, as the bill “promises.”

What is practically a footnote in this piece is the subject of a piece in the Daily News. The MTA’s leadership is being changed in with these reforms. The unpaid part time position of Board Chair is being merged with that of the Executive Director (who is also the Chief Executive Operator). This could be something to work with if we want to think long term, internal organizational changes.

If you take a look at the leadership of the MTA, the Board side of things is largely populated with real estate moguls. The Chair and both Vice Chairmen all have extensive real estate ties. It is shocking to see how lightly peppered the board is with people who have transit experience or training. There certainly are some, but they are not the clear majority, or any majority for that matter. Transit people don’t operate real estate ventures. So, why do real estate people operate transit ventures? Of course it is important to have people in charge who have experience with budget management. It is not just transit, but that hasn’t been too, um, successful either. Could this be a good time to think about what type of people are fit to serve on the MTA board? Currently, a large source of revenue for the MTA is real estate tax, which perhaps explains the type of leadership needed. I’m no expert. And I’m not sure if it’s a chicken or egg situation. But bottom line, the MTA needs a less volatile source of funding and leadership based in transit. On the Management team, things look better. Elliot Sander, the Executive Director and CEO of the MTA actually does have an extensive transit background. In addition, he has experience in “organizational turn-arounds,” two things the MTA seems to desperately need.

Nobody expected the rescue plan to be flawless. The MTA is in crisis. But if this could be used as an opportunity to create some legitimate changes at the organization, where the crisis is stemming from, perhaps our commute suffering won’t be in vain. And in about five years, we will look back and say, remember when the MTA was a mess? Or we will be sinking further into transit oblivion, thinking how good we had it in 2009. Let’s hope for the former.

Its a Good Time to be In Science

As industries across America feel the pain of recession and companies continue to shrink their payrolls, there is a beacon in the smog.  And that beacon, is Long Island. Seriously, it is.

Photo Courtesy of Brookhaven National Lab

As was reported in the New York Times on Friday, Brookhaven National Lab is starting some impressively large projects that will bring about 150 more scientists onto their 5,300 acre research grounds. Earlier this year, Energy Secretary Steven Chu used this space to announce how the $1.2 billion in stimulus money for national labs would be spent. Brookhaven is receiving $184.3 million of those funds.

Earlier this year, Governor Paterson announced that Brookhaven would be the home of the Empire State’s largest solar energy project. Providing 37 megawatts of power, this project will produce enough solar energy to power 6,500 households. It will also triple the state’s solar energy output in about two years.

And of course, there are jobs. There will be space for about 150 new scientists and it is estimated that 1,000 construction jobs will be created with the lab upgrades. Oh and finally, there are those really important advancements in science. Those should probably count for something too.

Thanks to our old housing stock, hot summers, and cold winters, New York State will be the beneficiary of a nice chunk of money for home weatherization, specifically for low income residents. We are the recipients of more money than any other state, coming from the $5 billion that the federal government has allotted for such things. The state is poised to receive about $400 million. 

And as WNYC reported this morning, some state approved organizations will be seeing their budgets multiply by 4. And that has one very important implication today: jobs.

To read or hear the full interview with a few such organizations, visit WYNC’s newsroom. Its a great piece, highlighting the work of local action that has been enabled by a larger federal vision. Thankyou Mister President and thanks to all of us taxpayers who footed the bill. And of course the people working on the ground to make this happen.

My only concern is, the rich (and middle income Americans which is most of the country still) need energy efficiency as well. Programs that help low income families with weatherization are common sense as they help ease the financial burden on America’s poorest residents, while making important environmental strides. But people with money often live in big houses that are energy suckers. New York’s program for low income residents has building owners (in owner occupied housing) paying 30%, with the other 70% coming from the new funding. Perhaps we can switch the ratio there. But everyone needs efficiency.

A slight departure from stimulus talk today to discuss the President’s first 100 days in office, with regard to sustainability and the environment. Oh wait, actually the stimulus IS the first 100 days in office. And the money that went towards environmental initiatives from the stimulus (and the budget) will change the face of American progress for a long time. 

As reported in Grist:

“… the economic stimulus package, which contained $62.2 billion in direct spending on green initiatives and $20 billion in green tax incentives, including money for renewable energy, efficiency, improved energy transmission, smart-grid technology, low-income housing retrofits, rail transit, and green jobs training. The next big green moves came in the administration’s first budget, which included an additional $15 billion in investments in energy and efficiency projects, and increased funding for rail – on top of the $8 billion for Amtrak in the stimulus – in order to create a “world-class passenger rail system” across the country.”

And how are we as a nation feeling about this? Recently, I saw that a particular environmental skeptic used a Gallup poll that claims that Americans are less concerned with the environment over 19 other things as evidence of confusion over global warming. I was shocked that such a connection would be made by an established scholar. Just because people are less concerned about it, doesn’t necessarily imply confusion. Confusion about the severity of the problem, yes.

So I wonder what Professor Lomborn makes of the latest Gallup poll released on Earth Day that has Americans feeling good about Obama’s ability to protect the environment, which yes, includes cutting emissions. Eight in ten Americans believe that he will do a good job of protecting the environment. The poll has some interesting highlights. Approval ratings for Bush around this time during his first term were about the same as they are for Obama. But confidence in the ability of each leader to protect the environment varied drastically. As Gallup’s website states, “This suggests that the difference in public perceptions of the two presidents’ potential to protect the environment is not just an artifact of their overall standing in the public’s mind, but rather represent independent (and divergent) evaluations on the environmental issue.” Also, 65 percent of registered Republicans have faith in the president’s ability to protect the environment, as do 95 percent of Democrats and 75% of Independents.

So, I guess we have had a pretty good hundred days after all…

New York City is greening homes that have been foreclosed on. GlobeSt.com reports on the new initiative by the City to weatherize and update homes in neighborhoods that have been hit badly by the subprime mortgage bust. I’m a bit confused though. Less Americans are moving right now than they have in decades. Greening these homes is great. But might some ask if it would have been better to use this stimulus funding to keep people in their homes first?    

From GlobeSt:

Thursday, April 09, 2009- The Bloomberg administration is launching a pilot program to retrofit foreclosed one to four-family homes to green standards. The announcement was made Friday by Sean Donovan, US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, at a conference sponsored by the US Green Building Council’s New York chapter.

Initially, five homes will be retrofitted in a partnership between the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development–where Donovan was commissioner before being tapped by the Obama administration–Restored Homes Housing Development Fund Corp. and Enterprise Community Partners. An HPD spokesman did not respond by deadline to GlobeSt.com’s inquiries regarding the locations of the properties, the cost of the pilot program or the number of foreclosed homes that could eventually be retrofitted to green standards.

The green pilot program is an offshoot of the Real Estate Owned Program that HPD and Restored Homes created, and which itself a component of the Bloomberg administration’s $7.5-billion New Housing Marketplace Plan to create and preserve affordable housing for 500,000 New Yorkers. HPD’s REO program uses a $24-million HUD grant awarded in January, and will acquire, rehabilitate and sell bank-foreclosed one to four-family homes in New York City to qualified low and moderate-income families, according to a release.

Enterprise’s Green Communities initiative is the basis for the HPD/Restored Homes pilot program. This initiative, according to a release, is intended to create safe and healthy living environments. It goes about achieving this goal by using “non-toxic construction materials, [reducing] the amount of construction debris going into landfills by employing highly efficient waste management and recycling techniques for construction and demolition waste, and significantly increase the energy efficiency of homes, which will, in turn, reduce energy and maintenance costs, thereby making homeownership more financially sustainable for homeowners,” the release states.

Donovan announced the pilot program as part of the keynote address at USGBC-NY’s “Green and Affordable: Sustainable Strategies for the New Housing Marketplace” conference on strategies for expanding the nation’s stock of green and affordable housing. “New York City and its partners have shown real leadership and innovation in developing green and affordable homes for low and moderate-income families,” Donovan said in prepared remarks. He added that the green retrofit program “will provide affordable, energy-efficient homes while also strengthening neighborhoods hit by foreclosures. HUD is competitively awarding another $2 billion in neighborhood stabilization funds through the Recovery Act and we hope that sustainable homes will be a feature of that investment in many neighborhoods across the country.”

The conference brought together more than 200 housing professionals representing government, development, finance, nonprofits and academia, according to a release. Individual panels focused on strategies for financing projects, techniques to promote healthy indoor environments, green maintenance practices and the role of city government in green affordable building. The conference was held at the Durst Organization’s soon-to-open Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park. The building was designed to achieve LEED Platinum certification.

NYC On Its Way to Upgrading Relics of the Past

For all the talk, research and white noise about sustainable cities, some seriously low hanging–yet extremely important–fruit, are often not addressed: Old buildings and their energy consumption. New buildings are more likely than not to have some type of efficiency features. Not all, but it’s more likely that they do compared to the oldest buildings that hold the history of our city. 

Well, count that assumption out as of 2013. Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg and City Council speaker Christine Quinn, announced plans for a few pieces of legislation that will regulate energy consumption, drastically reducing use by some of the city’s oldest and largest buildings. Nationally, buildings account for about 30 percent of green house gas emissions and locally, here in the Big Apple, it is more like 80 percent. And considering that the majority of New York City’s land that will ever be developed is already developed, it seems appropriate to think about existing structures.

New York City will get its first energy code, requiring all of the city’s one million built structures to meet energy efficiency standards of the time. Buildings that are 50,000 square feet or more will be required to run energy audits every ten years, to make sure they are in compliance and make adjustments accordingly if they are not. This has some property owners not so happy. Essentially, they feel that the city is trying to bring in their own auditors to make decisions for them on how best to run their buildings. And for good reason. They are.

I was shocked to see that the city has included a five year pay back period clause, which states that if any retrofit will take longer than five years to repay, it is not a required upgrade.

The city plans to put $16 million of federal stimulus money into a revolving loan fund to help building owners with their upgrades. This is a mere fraction of the $2.9 billion of private investment that will go into these upgrades, which might be at the heart of the property owners’ gripes. And considering credit is a bit tight right now, there are legitimate questions to ask about where the financing might come from. So the $750 million in savings from energy related costs for home owners seems distant. But that is not a one time savings. It’s annual.

Onward goes the greening of New York? Recession or not.