I'm Just a Regular Person--What Can I Do?

Green Urbanism at its peak will need the understanding and participation of a majority of everyday citizens. Everyone has the ability to understand both the parts of green urbanism, and to participate in parts of it.

First and foremost, everyone can make decisions on where to live. This alone has major impacts on other components of green urbanism. For example, if I choose to live in a 3000 square foot house in a court or cul-de-sac in the middle of a suburban neighborhood, I've already sealed my fate as an automobile-driving, energy intensive American. The house itself is terribly inefficient, and not meant to allow for natural air circulation from open windows. My kids, should I choose to have some, would grow up in the same environment. With no park within an walkable distance, my kids would either play in the backyard, which is truly an unimaginative, dull environment, or sit inside and play video games all day. The neighborhood would probably govern any additions or changes to the house, such as the addition of a green roof. They might not allow it.

A second opportunity for every person to participate in the push towards green urbanism is to ride transit more, or ride your bicycle. Not only is it more healthy for every person to ride a bicycle more, or walk to transit stops, it is also intelligent. Everyday, people that live near you drive in the same direction, possibly to the same general office park or complex. You each drive separately, spending twice (or more) the fuel and money necessary. Instead, you could each ride the bus, along with 15-20 (or more) other individuals. On the bus you could read a book, something that you never have time to do normally with the 30 minutes (minimum) that you spend driving each day. Even better, your choice to ride the bus has influence on the types of land uses or business and retail types that occur throughout the urban environment. More people riding the bus equals more small shops and jobs and density around transit stops, and a more walkable environment.

Third, everyone that currently lives in a suburban home with a yard can easily plant vegetables (and some fruits) in their yard. They can create an urban agricultural base. By growing your own veggies and fruits, you have control over what you eat--and whether or not it contains diseases. By choosing to grow a garden, you also remove lawn space, meaning you no longer go through the ridiculous process of "water grass-mow grass-fertilize grass with synthetic fertilizers-water-mow grass again." You also no longer use fuel to do this. You also discourage the terribly inhumane and unsustainably industrial agricultural systems that have been in place for years. Did you know that illegal immigrants (Mexican) in California's famed fruit agriculture zone get paid vastly under minimum wage (off the books, of course), to farm a region that is supported entirely by irrigation systems, rather than natural precipitation patterns. So, in one fell swoop, you have created a more healthy lifestyle for you and for others, while also helping the environment.

There are plenty of other things you can do directly related to being "green." Retrofit windows to be uber-energy efficient (called passive solar). Put solar panels on your house to reduce your energy consumption from coal power plants. Better yet, look into new windows that may soon have floppy solar sheets installed between the panes. Install rain gardens around your yard below your roof downspouts. Plenty of cool opportunities!

Artful Rainwater Design

Water. We all drink it, everyday. Some drink out of a plastic bottle, some out of Nalgenes, Kleen Kanteens, or SIGGS. The water we drink though comes from the sky, from rain. The first post of this blog discusses the hydrologic cycle in the context of watersheds. Stormwater is the human term for rainwater that falls on urban surfaces. Stormwater is often removed via pipes, as quickly and efficiently as possible. This approach has consistently resulted in downstream flooding, stream habitat destruction, and other substantial environmental and social issues. Though over the years attempts have been made to correct the problems with this approach, it still continues to be a problem to this day.

There are alternatives though. Green infrastructure is starting to be more widely used to compensate for the negative aspects of the prototypical engineered stormwater management approach. Green roofs, bioretention swales and structures, rain gardens, and other such elements utilize natural systems to remove rainwater. Penn State Landscape Architecture professors Stuart Echols and Eliza Pennypacker recently called some of these green infrastructure techniques "Artful Rainwater Design (ARD)." These designs are named for their intent and ability to act as art in the urbanized landscape, and function as stormwater management mechanisms. In many instances, these designs are also used to convey information to the public, sometimes via signage, and other times simply through informative design.

Kevin Jensen, a graduate student at Penn State, has developed a survey to gauge just exactly what the public does comprehend from such designs. Regardless of whether you, the reader, may be interested in ARD, it would be extremely helpful for Kevin, and educational for yourself, if you took the time to complete the survey. If you are interested in learning more about ARD, have a gander at this site.

Transit vs Food Production

A common component of advocates for sustainability is the use efficient public transit, rather than automobiles, to transport people through urban environments. It could be said that a "green city" is one that does have diverse and efficient transit options. For public transit to be efficient though, the urban environment needs to be sufficiently dense. The density provides enough people to ride the transit, and pay for its construction and operating costs over the long-term. Research suggests that sufficient density for street cars would be at least 4-5 story mixed-use and multi-unit urban structures. For light rail, it roughly doubles that of street cars.

Opposite transit in the equation of sustainability is that of food production. It has become quite popular to buy "locally grown, fresh" products. Research (and common sense) shows this is substantially more sustainabile than the industrial farming process for several reasons. First, the transportation costs (both environmental and economic) are reduced because food does not have to be shipped from South America or China to reach the consumer in America. Second, locally grown food is often (though not always) produced on a smaller scale, with less harmful inputs, and less land-intensive production processes. Inudstrial farming processes put harmful pollutants into the water system, and deplete the soil of its natural ability to produce. Third, locally grown food provides a much greater ability for the seller to keep track of where the food came from. This is particularly important with the food problems we have had recently, and will continue to have in the future.

Now, why are these two elements opposite each other in the equation?

Well, lets take New York City, for example. The Big Apple has monstrous skyscrapers, and is one of the most dense places on earth. It consistently has 10-story or taller buildings throughout much of the city. It has a great subway system, though no street cars. Taxis and buses are often used as well. However, New York City because of its extreme density, and lack of urban spaces to produce food, necessitates food imports from extreme distances, and necessitates industrial agriculture to provide those food imports. It is, in effect, a completely unsustainable city with regards to food production.

Then, you have on the opposite end of the spectrum a low-density, proto-typical American city, like Louisville, Kentucky. Louisville has a metropolitan population of just over 1 million. It has no street car or rail transit, and the bus system is like many others in the U.S., barely getting by. It is very suburban, and thus low-density, with strip malls, shopping malls, business parks, industrial parks, and other features that fail to create a more sustainable urban form. This city, like most others across the country (except for rust-belt cities like Detroit, Akron, etc that are losing population) takes every available piece of land on the suburban fringe and fills it in with automobile-oriented urban form. It too fails to provide urban spaces for a food production.

If both of these are wrong, what is right?

Well, during the later 19th/early 20th century, a fellow named Ebenezar Howard developed a concept called the "Garden City." His idea was create a central city hub, and then create sub-cities or towns placed radially out from the central city. In between the central city and the towns were to be farming, parks, and other green spaces that helped sustain the all the city and towns. These agricultural and green spaces would be kept as such for eternity, so as to keep the system in balance.

Howard's design and planning ideas were partially attempted in many places across the globe. Some towns were built to mimick the Garden City, but were never fully implemented as such due to a variety of reasons, including politics, technology, and even the general thought that it was not a good idea. Because many of these attempts were never implemented effectively, they failed to actually do what Howard had intended: be self-sustaining.

Current society faces far different land planning issues than Howard faced 100 years ago. But his general concepts are still relevant. We must realize that while it is important to have a dense urban core for both transit efficiency and mixed uses, and consistent density throughout our towns, villages, and cities, it is equally important to keep the density from crossing a point of unsustainable impacts on agricultural production. Furthermore, to counter-balance such density issues, we also need to create more permanent land trusts for food production within cities. Rather than continue to expand outwards without thinking, lands need to be planned, and growth patterns need to be planned. Just because America is a democratic society does not mean that we should abandon better land use practices for the rights of an individual to do with his land whatever he chooses. This is worse for all of us.