Green housing in NYT, sorta

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Dwell editor Allison Arieff recently wrote on her “TimesSelect blog”:http://arieff.blogs.nytimes.com about sustainable homes, noting Sonoma Mountain Village (seeking LEED-Platinum for all 1800 DUs) at a former Agilent corporate campus in Rohnert Park, Calif.; prefab sustainable homes from three companies; and calling “even better” two green multifamily developments in Southern California.

She defines New Urbanism thusly:

bq. “founded in reaction to sprawl, is based on principles of planning and architecture that work together to create human-scale, walkable communities.”

My response:

The next big leap in new sustainable homes will come later this year, when the USGBC and its partners, the Congress for the New Urbanism and the Natural Resources Defense Council, plan on launching a new LEED rating system for Neighborhood Developments (LEED-ND). Currently, LEED doesn’t look far beyond a building’s exterior walls, even though a building’s neighborhood context vastly influences its occupants’ abilities to lead sustainable lifestyles.

The irony of LEED-certified suburban houses is that Americans consume a third more energy driving to and from their houses than they consume while inside their houses, according to the Energy Information Administration. Thus, a car-free, urban family living in a drafty old bungalow might still tread lighter on the earth than a family driving hybrid SUVs to an off-grid exurban home. Even better, as Allison says, would be a family living car-light in a townhouse or apartment, which offers inherent advantages over single-family houses in terms of insulation, walkability, and affordability. That’s exactly the kind of development choices that LEED is agnostic to but that LEED-ND will reward.

That dog won’t hunt

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Witold Rybczynski in Slate:

bq. Architecturally speaking, San Francisco has been like a beautiful, rich woman who has never developed an interest in cooking and serves TV dinners to her family, then occasionally—somewhat frantically—hires caterers whenever she has company for dinner.

Steamy side of town

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The Sun-Times has published a map (PDF) of the urban heat island (using infrared satellite data) that DPD and the Park District are apparently using to prioritize tree-planting efforts. The west side is indeed the hottest part of town; oddly, many areas along the river are pretty consistently warm.

NOTE: I’ve disabled comments, as this post gets an inordinate number of spam attempts (perhaps due to the suggestive title). If you really need to comment, please leave a comment at the CCC blog linked to below.

Complete streets

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The Chicagoland Bicycle Federation‘s “Healthy Streets Campaign”:http://www.healthystreets.org/ released a brief statement about a new policy that apparently goes beyond the current “must include” policies — but how? Well, sounds promising if vague:

bq. Chicago’s Complete Streets Policy envisions streets where “even the most vulnerable–children, elderly and persons with disabilities–can travel safely within the public right-of-way…” The Complete Streets Policy is part of the city’s Safe Streets for Chicago program, which calls for stepped-up traffic enforcement, crosswalk awareness campaigns for motorists, new crosswalk safety technologies, researching and identifying trouble spots to be rectified and reducing statutory speed limits on low-volume residential streets.

Mississippi

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For the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, _Governing_ sent Christopher Swope to the Mississippi coast to evaluate how far the region had come in the intervening year. “His assessment”:http://governing.com/articles/9miss.htm (not very far, largely due to continuing federal incompetence) is the fairest I’ve seen, and the fairest to CNU’s role. In an “interview”:http://www.governing.com/articles/9missqa.htm he says that he was initially skeptical that the charettes (sic) were more publicity stunt (although even if they were that, taking such substantive action early on did establish the appearance of momentum) than an actual commitment, but was glad to find otherwise.

For the most thorough coverage, of course, the Biloxi “Sun-Herald”:http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/special_packages/renewal/ and New Orleans “Times-Picayune”:http://www.nola.com/recovery/ continue their well-deserved Pulitzer-winning coverage of how plans are proceeding.

After a fashion

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Wow, I’ve inadvertedly written law for Daley. Gary Washburn in yesterday’s Trib on Daley’s latest inclusionary housing compromise:

bq. “In projects of 10 units or more, 10 percent would have to be moderately priced if any city land is acquired; if zoning is changed to permit residential use; or if residential zoning is changed to increase the number of apartment and condominium units that can be built.”

As a policy analyst for CRN in 2002, I was tasked with finding some quick and dirty ways of getting a precedent for mandatory inclusionary housing into city law. I thought of upzones — hundreds of times a year, the city showers windfall density upgrades on developers and gets nothing in return. I then spent most of a week in Harold Washington Library combing through council minutes, tracking every single upzone passed in 2001 to calculate the potential impact of exactly these proposals. Indeed, after I’d drafted these proposals in a memo, a copy of said memo was literally given to selected City Council members, who offered them up as floor amendments (a very rare move at council) to the Mayor’s ordinance on 9 April 2003. They were, of course, defeated after much procedural intruige — they’d almost forgotten how to deal with floor amendments. (Any substantive change to a bill almost always happens before it’s even voted on in committee.)

Much of that memo was reprinted on page four of “this testimony given to the council’s Housing Committee”:http://www.chicagorehab.org/policy/pdf/1stQuarter2003Report.PDF (which I wrote on behalf of CRN):

Next we would like to present a few points regarding Mayor Daley’s Affordable Housing Commitment Ordinance that passed on April 9. With minor revisions, the ordinance has the potential to create thousands, not just hundreds, of additional affordable housing units every single year. Our analysis of the impact of these amendments is provided in order to inform you before they are considered in Committee.

Four amendments to the ordinance were introduced during City Council floor discussion:

1. Extending the 10% commitment to all zoning map amendments which create 10 or more housing units. In 2001, the City Council approved 216 upzones which increased permissible residential density: 142 residential and 114 mixed-use. We estimate that this would have created commitments to build 1,500 affordable units in 2001 alone – which would triple the Department’s annual creation of homeowner units.

2. Extending the 10% commitment to all Planned Developments approved by the City Council. In 2001, the Plan Commission approved 36 Planned Developments that included residential units. This would have created commitments to build 1,248 units in 2001 (excluding Planned Developments which already committed to providing more than 10% affordable units). This amendment would more than double the Department’s annual creation of homeowner units.

3. Extending the 10% commitment to all sales of city land, not just those at below market prices. As of 2001, the city owned 8,568 vacant lots. At two units per lot, this is enough land for 17,136 units as lots are built out, of which 1,714 would be affordable. Attached is a map showing where the city currently owns vacant land – predominantly on the west and south sides of the City in areas struggling from years of disinvestment. Though we know those communities in fact need good quality affordable housing, it seems incongruous with other city policies that promote mixing incomes and de-concentrating poverty. If the city is serious about creating affordable housing opportunities throughout the city, it will have to focus on more than just subsidized city-owned land. At a minimum, this ordinance should apply to all city owned land, regardless of value.

4. Lowering the income targets so that households earning less than 80% or 50% of AMI can benefit, instead of the current 100% or 60%. As mentioned above, the city’s average income is approximately 80% of AMI; targeting resources above this level (as the ordinance does by setting a 100% of AMI target for homebuyer units) makes little sense. Also, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit already generates rental units at 60% of AMI, but few under 50% of AMI.

The Chicago Rehab Network estimates the above noted amendments could result in a net increase of 1,600 affordable units produced annually, over and above those created under the ordinance as
currently written.

Ostentatious

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The November issue of Dwell (and, it turns out, a NYT blog entry by Dwell editor Allison Arieff) gives a big ol’ wet kiss in a story by Frances Anderton about Steve Glenn and his LivingHome, a company selling prefab wooden boxes, er, houses designed by a SCI-Arc avant-gardiste that come designed to LEED Platinum standards — “Zero Energy, Zero Water, Zero Waste, Zero Carbon, Zero Emissions” is the mantra. And yet:

bq. Glenn has carefully targeted his customers: They are not back-to-the-earthers, but relatively affluent people who want to consume guiltlessly — people who, in his words, “drive Priuses, buy Bosch appliances and Design Within Reach furniture, shop at Whole Foods, and give money to the Natural Resources Defense Council.”

Ugh. Someone has not been thinking outside the wooden box lately, and it shows; if going green just becomes another luxury lifestyle choice for consumers to define themselves by, then the entire project will deservedly fail. Put simply: “We can’t shop our way to sustainability.”:http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//004343.html

FSC certified hardwoods everywhere may be certified, but still consume vastly more resources than wood alternatives. The Prius has highly toxic heavy metals in its batteries and achieves a tiny fraction of the fuel economy that the driver within could achieve if he just walked away from the car. Bosch, DWR, and Whole Foods are all overpriced, marginally greenwashed (if at all), and shipped from thousands of miles away. And the house, as with all of the dozen-odd modern prefab options presented in the magazine’s 300 glossy pages, has no visual relationship with the street; heck, none of them even have a visual relationship with the _ground_.

Unfortunately for America, the rise of green building in the Aughts has coincided with both a growing national obsession with overinflated housing prices and with a government controlled by ideologues who want to kill all remaining federal housing aid to the poor; hence, almost all of the flagship attempts at green building have been not only “market rate” but obnoxiously expensive. Contrast that experience with the UK, where the Labour government has focused national attention on green building at the same time that it has advocated a muscular growth-management and housing policy.

Greenspan leaves DC, backs “elegant” gas tax

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Daniel Gross reported in the Times recently that Alan Greenspan, freed from having to tell his Washington masters what they wanted to hear (whoever thought that he was the supreme overlord?) has shown the true colors of a good economist and come out as a geo-green:

Mr. Greenspan was hardly a proponent of raising taxes on energy to encourage conservation, a policy prescription generally associated with the politicians and economists of the left.

Until now. In late September, as he spoke to a group of business executives in Massachusetts, a question was posed as to whether he’d like to see an increase in the federal gasoline tax, which has stood at 18.4 cents a gallon since 1993. “Yes, I would,” Mr. Greenspan responded with atypical clarity. “That’s the way to get consumption down. It’s a national security issue.”

Gross also mentions that N. Gregory Mankiw, the guy who as a Bush economics advisor squirmed while Bush ads attacked Kerry for wanting to raise gas taxes, keeps a Pigou Club list of economists who’ve come out in favor of Pigouvian taxes. Of course, no sitting politicians in a position to do such a thing are on that list. Oh well.

Of course, the Pigouvian tax that’s perhaps even more elegant (when combined, perhaps, with a vehicle weight tax, payable at annual registration or emissions check) is a property tax on parking spaces, or effectively a tax on car trips. Such a tax does a better job at discouraging short car trips (the most environmentally destructive and the easiest to divert to other modes) than even a straight VMT tax, and since the evidence is rather hard to hide, it can be levied with some ease.

Such a tax (the first I’ve heard of) was recently implemented, in fact, by Vancouver’s comprehensive transportation authority [manages both roads and transit] over fierce opposition from some businesses. (A nice policy summary of the tax. Note: “strata” is a B.C. legal term comparable to “condominium.”) Apparently, upon further research, such taxes were proposed but not implemented in Montgomery County (sec. II-3) in 1990 and for metropolitan DC in 2002 — although making it as far as the County Executive (i.e., mayor) in Montgomery.

The Vancouver opponents charge that it’s more properly “a pavement tax”, which might make even more sense: a clear nexus emerges with regard to stormwater, and the tax levy could be calculated just by plugging aerial photos into a computer.

Megamansions in Lincoln Park

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Today’s Trib has a cover package about the megamansions sprouting in Lincoln Park, roughly in the area between Old Town Triangle and Armitage & Halsted. I first noticed them this spring, when I detoured off Willow (a very pleasant east-west alternative to North) to check out a zoning variance sign. Rows of monster houses shoehorned onto standard city lots, many with hideous snout-house front-loaded garages, hiding in plain sight of two key historic districts. Why? Susan Chandler has the lowdown:

At first glance, it’s hard to see why Chicago’s most wealthy people have chosen this formerly nondescript area as their new enclave. It doesn’t have a lake view. It isn’t even that close to the lake. The houses were rundown. Many on Burling and Orchard were basically storefronts. But these drawbacks actually are what made the area a magnet for new development.

“Burling and Orchard had a bunch of stuff that was knock-down ready,” says Jay Metzler, a co-founder of Metzler/Hull Development Corp., a high-end builder that started building $1 million houses in Lincoln Park in the early 1990s.

Metzler/Hull built its first urban mansion home on Burling about 10 years ago. The widespread absence of alleys in the area was a positive, from the firm’s point of view.

“You could get these deep lots. You didn’t fill up the back of our lot with a 21-ft. garage. Your back yards became 40 to 50 feet deep. For Metzler/Hull, it was a business decision to offer something very unique: a house in the city with a nice big yard.”

Chicago’s arcane and archaic zoning system aided this kind of development. Burling and Orchard were zoned R5 under the old zoning code formulated in the 1950s. The “R” stands for residential and the 5 means that developers and builders could erect 2.2 square feet of structure for every 1 square foot of land, more than double what was allowed under the R3 rating of most of Chicago’s bungalow belt.

The R5 rating allowed a mix of three-flats and small apartment houses to grow up alongside single-family houses, generating more concentrated pockets of residents. It also was an invitation to teardowns, explains Joseph Schwieterman, a zoning expert at DePaul University and co-author of “The Politics of Place.” “The R5 districts were ravaged by new construction in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. In areas dominated by mansions and stately apartment buildings, you saw enormous demolition for much denser forms of development. Along the lakefront, the ambience was really lost,” says Schwieterman.

Unlike many suburbs, where teardowns are regulated, Chicago allows owners to combine lots and raze houses without zoning approval. The serial teardowns that hit Orchard and Burling also were helped by the fact that the homes weren’t protected by landmark designations and were cheaper than those a few streets over.

So, to review: it’s an overzoned little slice of “nice neighborhood, bad houses” right between two landmark districts. I repeat: this new Billionaires’ Row exists solely due to zoning. Gotcha.

Blair Kamin, in the sidebar, goes on the offensive:

I have no problem going after the mega-mansions that have invaded Burling, Orchard and Howe Streets south of Armitage Avenue. They’re not purely personal matters, like most houses. They’re turning what was a vibrant urban neighborhood into a collection of bloated, physically isolated, suburban-style manses…

[S]ome of the worst offenders on these streets are single-lot houses whose owners have draped them in all manner of frou-frou-columns, pilasters, balusters, even fake flickering gaslights-only to destroy their attempt at elegance with sunken garages reached via a curb cut and a steeply-sloped front driveway.

Yet warped style is just the beginning of what’s wrong here. The real damage these buildings do is to the public realm of the sidewalk and street. That’s where neighbor meets neighbor and neighborhoods really form, a fast-disappearing attitude… those sloping driveways, which, unlike the effect at Condron’s place, rid the street of the civilized buffer zones between the house and the sidewalk and substitute the equivalent of concrete moats. Not only are the driveways eyesores, they cut off the house from its surroundings. If you want to come over to borrow a cup of sugar, be sure to have the guard lower the drawbridge….

Many of these homeowners, it appears, contemplated living in Lake Forest, but couldn’t stand the hour-long commute. So they stuffed a suburban manse into the city.

As a result, the neighborhood feels crammed to the gills instead of offering true luxury, which is about the luxury of space as well as the luxury of size. How strange-and sad-that so many could spend so much and in doing so, still cheapen the public realm.