Whither the Drought?

As December reaches its midpoint, Californians are looking with hope toward El Nino and the rainfall that it’s predicted to deliver.  The oft expressed hope is that El Nino “will end the drought.”

Perhaps it’s a Christmas Grinch mode, but I find that the hope misses the point.

It’s not that I doubt the El Nino predictions.  I don’t have enough meteorological knowledge to have a useful opinion either way.  But there seems to be a strong scientific consensus on the likelihood of strong precipitation from El Nino and I’m a believer in scientific consensus.

My concern is deeper.  As much as anyone, I hope for good rain this winter.  But my wish isn’t for drought-ending rain, but for rain that will position us better when the drought reasserts itself.  I suspect, and fear, that the drought is perpetual.

I’ll make two independent arguments for perpetual drought.

The first is climate change.   If there are readers who want to debate climate change, please go elsewhere.  This isn’t the forum for that debate.  As noted above, I’m a believer in scientific consensus and the consensus on this massively studied subject is strong.  I’d be pleased if we’re not sliding into a cataclysmic change to our planet, but believe that possibility is remote.

Within the climate change theory is an expectation that the weather will bounce more quickly between extremes.  The higher energy in a warming system will provide the motive force to change between more severe weather events.  At the same time, it’s likely that the overall rainfall on the planet will be greater, as the higher temperatures will increase evaporation, which will in turn result in more rainfall as the hydrological balance is maintained.

So a possible model for California in a changed climate world would be several years of severe drought followed by winters of heavy rain, some of which will fill depleted reservoirs and much of which will fall at such high rates that it’ll run off before it provides much benefit.  Sound familiar?

A data point supporting this climate change scenario is a study from the Woods Hole Oceanography Institution in which the researchers report that the current drought, when considering both the paucity of rainfall and the higher temperatures, is the worst within the 1,200 year study window.

Some argue that droughts are a periodic element of the California climate and that the current drought is no different.  But the Woods Hole report refutes that, finding that the current drought is worse than anything in our memories.  Regardless of the side one takes on the climate change debate, it should be unnerving that the ongoing drought is worse than any California drought since at least when Charlemagne ruled France.

Even worse, the Woods Hole report was issued in December 2014, with a note that the Pineapple Express was expected to shortly ease the drought.  From our vantage point in December 2015, we know that the Pineapple Express delivered a couple of strong storms, but the drought soon reestablished itself and has continued for another year.  So the Woods Hole report, as scary as it might have been, understated the situation.

My other perpetual drought argument is an idea put by Faith Kearns and Doug Parker of the University of California Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources.  Kearns and Parker propose that California, with its huge supply of arable land and natural shortage of precipitation, has always been in a state of drought, with every gallon of water that can be saved from other uses or made available by new water projects having a potential use in agriculture.

By their argument, California has been a state of drought or impending drought since John C. Fremont rode through the Central Valley in the 1840s and described it as a desert filled with otherwise arable land.

Kearns and Parker further argue that water is subject to induced demand, which each new water supply project encouraging growth that puts the state back on the edge of drought.  They draw a parallel to the theory of induced traffic.  (Oddly, they describe the theory of induced water demand as still gaining traction, while induced traffic is commonly accepted.  In my experience, I regularly interact with people who are far from accepting the concept of induced traffic.)

Based on the attitude sometimes taken toward the wine industry in the North Bay, I know that some feel no obligation to conserve water in order to expand agriculture.  But I’ll argue that perspective is wrong.

In the modern economies, cities, states, and nations thrive by having products that can be exported.  This article from the New York Times graphically depicts the extent to which California agriculture feeds the country and the world.

Perhaps I don’t personally benefit when another bottle of wine or pound of almonds is sold to New York or Japan, but California benefits and that will provide indirect benefits to me, for which I’m willing to conserve water.

And I agree with the argument of Kearns and Parker there will always be that connection between water conservation and agricultural production.

So there you have it, two independent but complementary arguments that we’ll never again be free from drought.

What are the implications for our way of life?  To begin, the movement toward low-water use landscaping and indoor water conservation must continue.  The current drought rules, although needing some tidying up, must remain in force.

But even more importantly is the understanding that our use of water goes far beyond the amount we pull from a faucet.  As just one example, many sources of energy require water, so driving to an out-sized home at the urban fringe costs us water both for the gasoline and the home heating.

Urbanism would address both.  Walkable urbanism is a rational response to perpetual drought.

Our frontyard fountain has now been dry for nearly two years.  I don’t expect to ever run it again.  I miss the quiet burble, but it may be time to convert the fountain into a planter.

I’ll be leaving shortly for a pre-holiday visit to in-laws living in a community in the extended South Bay.  It’s a town I’ve visited several times in my role as dutiful son-in-law, even having taking a number of photos of the urbanist aspects, both good and bad.  In my next post, I’ll share photos and my updated urbanist impressions of the town.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Looking at the Paris Negotiations from a City Perspective

Avenue de Bretueil in Paris

Over 190 nations are now in Paris negotiating protocols to stem the slide toward catastrophic climate change.  At the same time, entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates are in Paris pledging billions of dollars toward finding new technologies to limit the carbon emissions from energy production.

I wish both efforts success, a wish with which few would disagree.

But neither effort quite aligns with the perspective that cities bring to the climate change conversation.  And that’s because cities are looking at a different segment of the carbon reduction curve than countries and entrepreneurs.

The nations and philanthropists are looking for ways to continue generating energy to grow economies, but with fewer or no carbon emissions.  Conversely, cities are looking for ways to live with less energy.  Entrepreneurs are looking for ways to power cars with fewer emissions.  Cities are trying to have people live more of their lives on bicycles.

Some may argue that the two paths lead to the same destination, so why quibble about the route?  But there’s a downside to solving problems with cutting edge technology.  We often fail to foresee unfortunate side effects.  The rule of unintended consequences always bats last.

Refining crude oil into lamp oil to light more homes and to reduce the hunting pressure on whales seemed a good plan.  Surely it couldn’t be a problem to drain the unusable fraction, now known as gasoline, into the nearby Cuyahoga River?

Harnessing the power of the atom to replace dangerous and earth scarring coal mining in feeding energy grids seemed a good plan.  Surely we could agree on a safe way to store the spent fuel, right?

I’m not predicting that the clean energy concepts to be brought forth by Gates and friends will result in environmental harm such as burning rivers or mounds of spent uranium awaiting a final home.  But it might.  Because stuff happens.

To the extent we can, making do with less energy is the safer route, the route with less potential for distressing surprises.  Thus, it’s worth observing the attention being given to cities and their responses to climate change, most of which focus on reduced energy usage.

Writing in Next City, Feargus O’Sullivan describes the efforts by host city Paris to reduce carbon emissions by limiting the use of private cars while enhancing the transit, pedestrian, and bicycle opportunities. 

Writing in CityLab, Laura Bliss provides a broader overview of city initiatives around the world, with many of the same points of emphasis as Paris along with better electrical grid management, improved building energy performance, and energy efficient appliances.

Finally, Alex Morales in Bloomberg Business describes some of the specific goals set by cities.  Morales also notes that cities can more easily innovate than countries.   He quotes Shelley Poticha, Director of Urban Solutions at the Natural Resources Defense Council, who offers “Cities are centers of adaptation and innovation, and they don’t have to wait for international negotiations or congressional action.”

However, the Bloomberg article concludes with the note that not all municipal citizens may yet be on board.  From Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker, “The pushback comes when we make changes that disrupt people’s everyday lives.  There will always be people who will say, ‘We like the idea of adjusting to the impacts on the climate, but don’t change my world.”’

I’m not suggesting the city route of reduced energy usage is the only option.  Previous climate change negotiations have stumbled over the suggestion that less developed countries cut energy usage along with everyone else, which they perceived as forcing them to remain behind in the fight for better standards of living.  Less developed countries deserve the opportunity to join more developed countries, so the technological ideas put forth by Gates and other s are important. 

But as the Paris gathering moves toward a conclusion, we should be paying attention to what cities are saying about battling climate change.  They may have the more pertinent message.  And we should be willing to accept the logic they put forth.

We should also be looking to position all of our communities to follow the lead of the cutting edge cities in creating land use patterns that can benefit from better transit, bicycling routes, and pedestrian opportunities.

Which means we should all be urbanists.

A young planner with whom I chat regularly recently made a comment about the Petaluma street on which he grew up.  It was a commonsensical, but nonetheless insightful, point that many would have missed about the connection between street configuration and driving speed.  I’ll dig more deeply into his observation in my next post.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Getting Seconded with Authority

A few posts back, while poking fun at my habit of tallying the states I’ve visited, I suggested that counting cities was a more appropriate measure of travel because cities have been more important to civilization.

The heart of my argument was “The history of civilization begins with Babylon, Athens, Sparta, Rome, and Carthage before continuing onward to Venice, Vienna, London, Paris, Philadelphia, and Boston.  Cities are where learning, government, and culture all took root.”

Thus, it was with delight that I came across an article by another writer starting with this phrase, “Although history is not usually taught this way, one could argue that cities have played a more important role in shaping the world than empires. From Athens and Rome to Paris and Venice to Baghdad and Beijing, urban ideas and innovators have left indelible marks on human life.”

We must have been working from the same syllabus.

The other writer was Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City, writing in Foreign Affairs magazine.  Wow, my motion was seconded with authority.  (Yeah, that may have a bit too much hubris.)

The Foreign Affairs article can perhaps be found here.  However, the link, no matter how many times I copy it, doesn’t seem to work for me, for reasons I can’t discern.  Foreign Affairs must use some kind of cloaking device.   But a Google search on “foreign affairs city century” seems to work just fine.  Free registration is required to access the article.  Going through the multi-step registration is worthwhile.  The article is that good.

Building on his great start, Bloomberg goes on to make assertion after assertion with which I bobbed my head in enthusiastic concurrence, so many solid assertions that I had to restrain myself from copying the entire article and smashing the “Fair Use” standard.  So I’ll limit myself to just a few points.

Bloomberg argues that some authority will move back toward cities in the future.  In his words, “Influence will shift gradually away from national governments and toward cities.”

And that’s a good thing because cities like to experiment, “Mayors are turning their city halls into policy labs, conducting experiments on a grand scale and implementing large-scale ideas to address problems, such as climate change, that often divide and paralyze national governments.”

And cities are also better at experimentation than nations, “cities tend to be more nimble than national governments, which are more likely to be captured or neutralized by special interest groups and which tend to view problems through an ideological, rather than a pragmatic, lens.”

Bloomberg goes on to offer a list of ways in which cities can tackle climate change, from bike sharing to better solar policies, that are beyond most national governments.

Seriously, it’s a great article.  Go through the hassle of the free registration and read with enthusiasm.  You’ll be rewarded.

Before closing, I should make a couple of observations about what the Bloomberg/Alden hypothesis about the coming power of cities (once again, too much hubris) means to the cities of the North Bay.

I foresee a future where San Francisco sets the tone for the Bay Area.  Sacramento would still have power; civilizations can’t function without nations and their subdivisions.  But here in the North Bay, we would be satellites of San Francisco, not Sacramento.  (Sorry, Oakland and San Jose.  Yes, you may have more people and land than San Francisco, but you lack the geographical authority of the city that guards the Golden Gate.)

But even though North Bay cities may look to San Francisco for guidance, we would also have our own urban power.  Much as Bloomberg write about the accumulation of intellectual power in large cities, North Bay cities would have their own local accumulations, committed to building vibrant local economies, to addressing local problems, and to formulating solutions that can be promulgated elsewhere.

And urbanism would be a key element of that power, both as a solution to local issues and as a way of creating intellectual ferment through daily interactions on the sidewalks that are the marketplace of ideas.

To illustrate the sea change, I predict that the mayor elected by Petaluma in 2052 will come not from a single-family neighborhood, but from a downtown mixed-use community, such as Haystack Landing.  And that will be a good thing.  (For the record, I’ll be 99 in 2052, so am not planning on running for mayor.  But I am planning on voting for the Haystack Landing candidate.)

Thanks again to Mayor Bloomberg for having my back.

A few posts back, in recounting some final moments of insight from the annual meeting of the Congress for the New Urbanism, I noted the creative tension between the structure required for the coherence of an urban plan and the anarchy in which creative fringe of urban concepts can be explored.  It’s a topic which I’ve long pondered.  I don’t have any grand conclusions to offer but, in my next post, I’ll expand on the question and on my evolving thoughts.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Wielding a Cudgel When a Scalpel Would Be the Better Choice

In my last post, I wrote that changing the direction of public policy takes persistent and dedicated effort.  In my words, “stating a perspective and wandering away is a recipe for irrelevance.”

When I wrote those words, I had several examples in mind, but none that were strong enough to insert into the flow of the post.  Little did I expect that when I opened the local newspaper later the same day, a perfect example would be looking back at me from the front page.

Here’s the backstory.  We’re in the midst of a drought that is already of historic levels and shows no signing of abating.  Last fall, a candidate for City Council suggested the possibility of a blanket moratorium on building permits until the drought eased.  Two other candidates concurred that a moratorium might be an appropriate step.

Although I didn’t have a problem with a short moratorium, I disagreed strongly with the possibility of an extended blanket moratorium and wrote about the reasons for my opposition.  Nor was I content to disagree only by written word.  I also appeared before the Council during the public comment portion of their next meeting and repeated my thinking.

Public comment during a public meeting is an odd exercise.  Sometimes there are alternative but cogent perspectives on issues of general interest.  Other times, there are rants of elusive logic on subjects of dubious relevance.  As a result of the latter, the attention of the public body is often elsewhere, perhaps looking about the room or perusing documents that are further down the agenda.

As a result, I wasn’t surprised when four of the Councilmembers didn’t once glance my direction as I spoke.  But the other three, including two who had expressed possible support for a moratorium, paid sharp attention and quickly nodded in apparent agreement with my logic.  By the standards of a public comment presentation, my words were a rousing success.

When the Councilmember who had initially raised the subject of a moratorium approached me at a meeting a week later and disavowed any interest in an extended moratorium, I thought that my perspective had carried the day.

My confidence was a mistake.  Admittedly, I had other worthy uses for my time, such as working on a plan for reuse of the Fairgrounds and writing this blog, but I still should have allocated time to ensure that the concept of an extended blanket moratorium remained truly dead and that my ideas for an alternative approach were gaining ground.

I know I should have made that effort because when I opened the local paper last week, I found an article on how the mayor, one of those who hadn’t made eye contact when I spoke to the Council, was again raising the possibility of a moratorium of up to two years.  I later learned that the Planning Department was already hard at work identifying a list of projects that might be impacted.

Having mistakenly let the initiative slip away, let me belatedly reenter the fray, trying to recapture the hearts and minds that I’d already thought swayed.

I consider a response to the drought absolutely essential.  Extensive reading and a belief in science convinces me that climate change is almost certainly real and that the changes we’re experiencing in North Bay weather are likely to continue far into the future.  It’s past time to change how we use water.  Building design is one of the best places to start.

But an extended blanket moratorium would miss the mark on several levels.

For one, an extended moratorium sends a message, inadvertent but still perceived, that the drought is a cyclical, not systemic, phenomenon, that if we just wait for a few years normal rainfall patterns will reassert themselves.  But the reality is that what we’re now experiencing is likely the new normal.

For another, an extended blanket moratorium sends a message that all development is equally culpable for increased water use, when the reality is that development has a wide range of water usages.  As an analogy, it’s as if we’re responding to a gasoline supply crisis by banning the manufacture of all cars, including Priuses and Teslas along with 15 mile-per-gallon monster pickups.

So, what should we do instead?  To begin, I have little problem with a shorter moratorium of 45 or even 90 days.  We need new water conservation standards and we need them now.  (I remain frustrated with myself and with others that the discussion of a moratorium last fall didn’t trigger a meaningful discussion of new standards.)

But after the initial moratorium, we should be prepared to release projects that meet strict standards of water conservation.  I don’t know exactly what those that standards should be, but I’d be happy to join with folks willing to have that conversation.  Among the topics that I’d expect to be on the table are:

• ·         Possibilities for reduced water use through better plumbing.
• ·         Water bill surcharges to give the City funds to find and to repair watermain leaks.
• ·         Strict caps on water use, with meaningful penalties for excess use, based on self-reported counts of household residents and square feet of yard area.  (The self-reported data would need to be subject to random review.)
• ·         Requirements on developers to buy up existing water usage by paying homeowners to accept deed restrictions prohibiting grass and capping water use.

A prime reason that the initial moratorium should be of limited duration is that it’s often the smaller developers, with less financial backing, who have been proposing the more creative reduced water use projects.  An extended moratorium would have the perverse effect of driving from the business the developers who’ve been trying most diligently to address the water conservation concern.

After the initial moratorium, if we choose to put an extended moratorium, or even a permanent moratorium, on land use projects that would continue to use water profligately, I’m fine with that.

The Petalumans of a century hence are likely to look back at our time as particularly critical in the history of our town, much as we look back on the significant changes that occurred in Petaluma during the first decades of the 19th century.  And of the challenges in front of us, how we adjust to climate change is among the most important.

So the future will likely judge us by our ability to formulate effective, meaningful, and well-calibrated responses to climate change.

Picking up the big cudgel of an extended blanket moratorium, donning a blindfold, and swinging wildly in hopes of striking something useful isn’t what the future is expecting of us.  We can do better.

 (Acknowledgment: I’ve had a role in several projects that would be affected by the proposed moratorium.  I’m also talking with other developers about similar roles on future projects.  Most of these projects would benefit from the more calibrated approach to water conservation described above over an extended blanket moratorium.  However, I’ve chosen to work only with developers who have a responsible approach to water use, so it’s not surprising that my thoughts on the subject align with the interests of the developers for whom I work and may work.)

My next couple of posts will represent a major change-of-pace.  Given the seriousness of the subject of this post, I’m a little embarrassed by the change, but April Fools’ Day is upon us.

Up until about a year ago, I offered quarterly updates on the quirks and whimsy that can attach itself to urbanism.  But then I found that I always had other, more pressing topics on which I wanted to write, so I began skipping my quarterly updates.  My stockpile of whimsy and quirkiness accumulated.  The next two posts will dig into that stockpile, hopefully giving a few smiles and also triggering a few useful ideas about urbanism.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Ooh, Ooh, Ooh, Call on Me, Mr. Kotter, I Have an Answer

I recently sat in a North Bay City Council chambers and watched as the Regional Climate Protection Authority made a presentation on their Climate Action 2020 effort.  The experience left me feeling deflated.

To be clear, I’m happy to live in a part of the country where we can have an honest, fact-based discussion about climate change, unlike Florida where the very words are forbidden.   However, I was underwhelmed by the direction that the Climate Change 2020 initiative was going.

To illustrate my concern, there was a presentation graphic showing that greenhouse gas emissions from housing and transportation make up over 80 percent of all GHG emissions.  As an urbanist, that number gives me a sense of a hope and a sense of mission because it makes the climate change challenge more manageable.  A major thrust of urbanism is reducing transportation energy usage.  And the energy use of buildings could also be reduced through effective urbanism.

I don’t have a citation, but it has been often reported that urban dwellers use up to 70 percent less energy than suburban dwellers.  If we equate energy to fossil fuel use, which is a reasonable approximation, that would also be a 70 percent reduction in GHG emissions.

There may be other factors that currently reduce energy use in urban settings, such as the presence of poor whose lack of resources constrict their consumer behavior and the possibility that the first wave of urban converts had a bent for conservation that subsequent converts won’t, but a 70 percent energy use reduction can be whittled down and still represent a significant GHG reduction.

So, if sizable GHG emissions can be effected through urbanism, that would seemingly make urbanism a key element of the Climate Action 2020 program, right?  Not that I could tell.

I searched the December 2014 Climate Action 2020 on Climate Hazards and Vulnerabilities for the word urbanism.  Not a single mention.  Compact growth?  Nope.  Housing density?  Still nothing.   Mixed-use?  Nada.

Okay, perhaps one can argue that identifying hazards and vulnerabilities is different from identifying solutions.  And perhaps Climate Change 2020 will promote urbanism in an upcoming report on solutions.  But the only mention of urbanism I could find anywhere within the Climate Change 2020 website was deep in an opinion poll on transportation alternatives.  And even then it was buried on a list behind fuel alternatives.

Furthermore, the approach for the next step as described in the presentation was the solicitation of ideas from the public about GHG emission reduction.

I’m absolutely supportive of a public involvement component in any effort like this.  But public involvement must be paired with effective public education.  Without the public education, we’re reduced to something Warren Buffett recently said, “A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought."  Or, from a much earlier era, something that Henry Ford supposedly said about the beginning of the automotive age, "If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for faster horses."

If we don’t educate folks about the climate change benefits that urbanism can bring, we can’t expect them to be aware of the possibility that urbanism might be a good strategy.

I know that what I’m writing here can potentially be understood as “I’m smarter than you, so you must listen to me”, but that’s truly not the message I’m trying to impart.

However, it is true that many of us, whether through vocation or avocation, know more about a subject than those around us.  And that’s a fine thing.  The world needs folks with specialized knowledge.  I know that I’m always willing to learn from folks who know more about a subject than I do.

Let me pose the issue this way.  If I had a transmission that was shifting poorly, I’d go to well-recommended transmission shop for their advice.  If I had a plant on which the leaves were dying for no apparent reason, I’d visit a nursery.  And if I was mired in a sticky contractual situation, I’d talk with a business attorney.  On not one of the those subjects would I solicit public opinion, especially from members of the public who were likely to be as uneducated as me about transmission, plants, or contract law.

And that’s how I feel about climate change.  Some limited use of public opinion may be okay, if we restrict ourselves to the members of the public who have tried to educate themselves about climate change.  But what we really need to be doing is talking to the folks who have studied the subject long and hard, including the role of urbanism as one of the solutions.  And my role in this blog is to point out those people.

But instead, I spent my time in the City Council Chambers, sitting in the back row, listening to a presentation when urbanism wasn’t mentioned even once.

We need to do better.

In my last post, I wrote that assigning infinite value to any element in a decision-making process results in flawed judgments.  I applied the observation to a decision involving traffic versus youth sports in Petaluma, but an even better example can be found in the Mission District of San Francisco.  In my next post, I’ll explain.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

It’s Time to be Smart about Water, Not Politically Expedient

During recent candidate forums, several contenders for the Petaluma City Council suggested that the City consider a moratorium on building permits until the drought eases.  I’ll speculate that other North Bay cities are entertaining similar thoughts.

I support the need to respond to the drought.  The water shortfall is significant, may not slacken during the coming winter, and could be indicative of a systemic change.  But a blanket moratorium is the wrong tool for several reasons.

First, a moratorium without simultaneous regulatory adjustments is tantamount to considering the drought a normal and random element of the climate cycle, thereby supporting a position taken by climate change deniers.

I’m not saying that candidates who suggested a moratorium are climate change deniers.  I’m sure that few if any of them are within that camp.  But they’ve mistakenly offered a position that aligns with a key proposition put forth by deniers.

 (I won’t delve more deeply into a climate change discussion because I don’t want this post to be sidetracked into a discussion on the validity of the theory.  It’s a worthy topic, but not for today.)

Another problem with a blanket moratorium is that it doesn’t reposition our communities for when the drought may ease.  If we get enough rain to believe the drought is over and begin issuing new building permits without a change in the water use standards, we’d have wasted an opportunity to make our communities more resilient.

Lastly, we’re in a time when our communities should be evolving in responses to multiple challenges such as municipal finances and non-drought climate change issues.  A blanket moratorium, stopping all development, would impede our progress toward other goals.

Luckily, a better alternative can be conceived.  In place of the blanket moratorium suggested by the candidates, I propose a two-phase moratorium.  Initially, North Bay cities can impose a short-term moratorium on all building permits, but only for long enough to rework development standards to define water-smart standards for new or remodeled buildings.

Some will object that North Bay cities lack funds within current budgets, particularly if tax measures fail, to undertake code revisions.  The concern is legitimate, but Petaluma, and likely other cities, has a wealth of knowledgeable engineers and developers with water backgrounds, many of whom would probably be willing to offer their expertise toward writing new rules.  In fact, there may be an opportunity for regional code-revision cooperation.

Some effort by city staffs would still be required to incorporate the information into the zoning code, but it would be far less than if the staffs had to also develop the concepts without assistance.

Next, as the first moratorium expires and emergency revisions are made to the zoning code, a second moratorium would be imposed on projects that don’t meet the water-smart standards.  The duration on this latter moratorium would be indefinite, lasting until the city councils judge that the drought has ended.  If the more pessimistic projections on climate change are valid, the second moratorium may never be lifted.  Hopefully, that won’t be the case, but it’s a possibility.

The obvious direction in which these moratoriums would push residential development would be toward multi-family homes.  It’s easier to be water-smart without either a frontyard or a backyard.  And a move toward multi-family would likely include more housing in walkable urban settings, which I would applaud.

But single-family residential would still be possible.  I recently chatted with a North Bay single-family developer who is proposing use of a treatment system that would allow use of treated greywater from showers and washing machines for surface application.  (The greywater systems now used in a few locations around the North Bay only allow subsurface application.)

The developer estimated that he could save almost 20,000 gallons per home per year.  That would be 20,000 gallons of potable water that needn’t be treated and delivered and 20,000 gallons of greywater that needn’t be conveyed away for treatment at a municipal wastewater plant.

The system he proposes is in regular use in Europe and Australia, but unknown in the U.S.  It’s that kind of innovation and adoption that the proposed two-phase moratorium would foster.

Thanks to the Petaluma City Council candidates for raising the subject.  Now, let’s hone their idea and ensure that it best meet the needs of our communities.

Before closing, one other comment should be made.  The savings from requiring new or remodeled buildings to be more water-smart is worthwhile and, with the right technology, significant.  But those savings are dwarfed by the savings that could be achieved at existing homes and businesses.  Between retrofitted fixtures, changed landscaping patterns (my wife and I removed the last of our grass nearly ten years ago), and reduced consumption encouraged by more sharply tiered rates, water use at existing buildings can be sharply curtailed.

To fall into the trap of believing that we’ve imposed a moratorium and therefore solved the problem would be both wrong and harmful.  Instead, we must look into the mirror for the most important elements of water conservation.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Why Urbanism Matters

I just recently passed the 18-month anniversary of writing this blog.  I continue to enjoy the task and have no plans to stop.  But I must occasionally recharge my batteries by reminding myself why urbanism is important.

So, today’s post will be about the top five reasons why urbanism matters.  The reasons aren’t in any particular order.  Indeed, I don’t want to rank them.  Each is important.  None should be reduced by being last on a ranked list.

Nor are these the only reasons that could be listed.  There are undoubtedly more reasons that can be cited, including some about which I’ve written.  But these seem to be the most important reasons.  Feel free to quibble.

And so, here are my top five reasons why urbanism matters.

Market Preference: It may be puzzling to those who prefer their suburban lawns or their rural acreage, but there are people who prefer to live in urban settings.  And their numbers are increasing.

The demographic groups in which the trend is most evident are young adults and seniors.  But there are many across the economic spectrum who are seeing the wisdom, whether because of improved social networks, reduced transportation costs, or a concern for the environment, of living in walkable urban locations.  Recent polls show that more than half of all adults would prefer to live in walkable locations.

Some may to respond “So what?  We can’t afford to make everyone happy.”  The problem with that response is that urban living is often the less expensive housing option.  Not enough urban housing exists to meet the demand not because of its cost but because of unjustified institution impediments such as subsidized transportation and limited mortgage availability.

Having people who wish to live in a responsible fashion and denying them their wishes because of old and outdated habits is both absurd and contrary to a free market economy.

Financial Sustainability: Walkable urban neighborhoods often produce more property tax revenue than is needed to service the neighborhood and to maintain the neighborhood infrastructure.  Drivable suburban neighborhoods generally don’t meet that test.

If we want a smaller government that meets our needs and balances its book, we want urbanism.  As someone noted in a recent Smart Growth America panel, “A vote against urbanism is a vote for higher taxes.”

Wealth Creation: Civilization evolved in cities.  Nations were a later addition to the governmental structure, with states the last of all.  There was an inherent logic to that order.  Wealth is created in cities.  Rural land is absolutely essential to life, with food as the primary reason.  But it is in cities that economies are created which can pay for the food and allow the rural dwellers to live above a subsistence level.

Emily Badger of Atlantic Cities writes about how the scale of a city drives its creativity, which in turn creates wealth. 

One could read Badger’s article and argue that we should all move into San Francisco, Oakland, or San Jose.  But that misses the point.  Instead, our goal should be to facilitate urban cores, whether in San Rafael, Cloverdale, or Napa, where the creativity can address the local issues and work toward creating economically thriving communities.

Climate Change: The science on climate change is settled.  There are remaining pockets of resistance, but the scientific community is overwhelming in favor of the theory that increasing emissions of greenhouse gases will cause fundamental changes in our climate, many of which will be harmful to our civilization.

But for sake of argument, let’s say that someone doesn’t concur, that they believe the science to be unsettled.  Given the scientific consensus, they still must concede that there is at least a possibility of climate change.

Even if one assigns a low probability to the possibility, the vast dislocations that are predicted from climate change must still be acknowledged and responses made.  We have certainly made significant changes in our culture because of the risk of terrorism.

By any reasonable measure, the risks of terrorist attack are less that the risks of climate change and the possible impacts from terrorist attack are less that the impacts from climate change.  So a response to the possibility of climate change is reasonable and demanded.

And the best response is to reduce carbon emissions, which requires reduced energy usage.  Of the energy efficiencies that are possible from lifestyle changes, up to 70 percent can be achieved by living in walkable communities.  You can take all the compact fluorescent bulbs, reduced energy-use appliances, and smart grids and trump them with a walkable setting.  Once again, urbanism is the answer.

Peak Oil: At one point, it was commonly believed that peak oil, the highest year of petroleum extraction, had been reached.  Some put it in 2003, others in 2005, but the general agreement was that petroleum production was in decline.

That belief is no longer as clear.  Between fracking, improved drilling practices, oil shale, and tar sands, some believe that petroleum production can continue at peak rates for many more years, perhaps even centuries.

But there seems something missing in that belief.  Even if one sets aside the climate change issue, we’re using a resource that took more than 100,000,000 years to be stored in the earth’s crust.  And we’re arguing whether it’ll last us 200 or 400 years.  Doesn’t seem more than a bit greedy?  It’s like the first person in the buffet line taking all the shrimp and ignoring the hundreds of people in line behind him.

I don’t know if the people who will live on this planet in 2500 will need petroleum.  Perhaps they will have found all the fuel, lubricants, and raw materials they need elsewhere.  But I’d rather leave some petroleum in case they still have need for it.

Urbanism, through its energy efficiency, helps preserve petroleum.

And those are my top five reasons to support urbanism.  I find them fully convincing.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

A Day of Leftovers

Over the past couple of months, I’ve established a practice of including “Follow-Ups and Schedule Notes” into my midweek posts.  On the follow-ups, good commentary by others always seems to appear on my desk shortly after I thought I’d finished covering a subject.  And I feel obligated to share.

 My midweek additions will definitely continue.  And right now I seem to have a superfluity of follow-up material.  It seems fitting to share this cornucopia of links and tweets on a day when many of us remain in a turkey coma.

I’ve previous quoted Vancouver urbanism consultant Brent Toderian on other subjects, including the complexity of cities and the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.  This time, he weighs in with a tweet about bicycling.  “In Copenhagen, people cycle because it’s convenient, not because it's green, healthy, or cheap.”

What a vision!  Rather than arguing that more people should be on bicycles, just make it the most convenient option and let people make their own decisions.  We’re a long ways from achieving that vision, but it’s an inspirational destination to target.

Also on bicycling, the tumult in Toronto over the removal of the Jarvis bicycle lane continues.  As the scraping of the painted bicycle lane markings commenced, local bicycle advocates took to sitting in the street to obstruct the city operation.  There are more photos here.  At least one protester was arrested. 

To further muddy the waters, the City of Toronto began to install parking meters on what was supposed to be a fifth lane for car travel, resulting in this humorous piece by SpacingToronto.

Still on bicycling, Sarah Goodyear of Atlantic Cities writes about a new book on how to help your friends become more comfortable with bicycling.  To note the extent of hurdles to be overcome, New York City resident Goodyear writes about how she offered the use of a bicycle to her friends in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, when bicycling was the only way around town for many.  No friends accepted her offer.

Also on bicycling, many new apartment buildings in Denver are including bicycle repair rooms.  And the amenities aren’t limited to benches and tools.  Also offered are energy bars and bicycling maps.  One project is even offering a free bicycle to anyone who signs a one-year lease.

Here in the North Bay, a rash of road rage incidents directed against bicyclists, including an almost incomprehensible incident of an elderly driver chasing a bicyclist onto a golf course before finally striking him, has prompted the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors to consider stronger ordinances to protect bicyclists.  Coverage is provided by both the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat and the Petaluma Patch.

Meanwhile, Sebastopol began their own process to adopt an ordinance protecting all “vulnerable road users”, including bicyclists, pedestrians, and  joggers.

Finishing with bicycles, you may enjoy this newest entry from New Zealand in the weird bicycle category.  I absolutely appreciate the creativity, but the Yike Bike just seems to offers too little protection to the bicyclist in real traffic situations.  Of course, I once thought the same about driving Smart Cars at freeway speeds.  I’ve now grown accustomed to seeing them in the next lane.

Another thing the electric Yike Bike does is further blur the line between bicycles and motorcycles.  The day is coming when we’ll need a complete update to how we allocate our roadways.  And it’s likely that cars will lose some of their current prerogatives.

Changing subjects, on several occasions I wrote about the dearth of comments about cities and urbanism during the presidential campaign.  It now seems that vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan wanted to speak in urban cores.  His intended topic was poverty.  I think that urbanism would have been a better subject.  But the question was moot because the Romney campaign overruled Ryan’s request.

It’s uncertain that Ryan’s message would have found resonance in the urban centers, but it’s a shame that he wasn’t given a chance to try.  Especially because it might have forced the Obama campaign to respond, pushing urbanism closer to the spotlight.

I’ll close with Venice.  I spent two weeks there in 2007 and fervently hope to return.  Even setting aside its history, beauty, and uniqueness, it is absolutely the most walkable city in the world.  Not because it’s easy to walk there, but because there are few alternatives.

With that said, it’s hard to look at the photos of Venice during the recent extreme “acqua alta”.  During my stay there, I saw a small acqua alta late in my visit, around which a wedding couple had to stage their picture taking in the photo above.  But it was nowhere near as high as the recent event.

I mention this not because my affection for Venice, although I do someday intend to recount my Venetian stay in this blog, but because of the debate over the cause of the increasingly high acqua altas.  There is little doubt that Venice is subsiding.  Indeed, the entire region around Venice is sinking at about one millimeter per year.  There is also little doubt that higher water levels in the Adriatic are also part of the increased incursion of the sea into Venice.

And yet some argue that as long as one cause, the subsidence, can be identified, then no other cause, such as climate change, is valid.  It’s an absurd argument, one that is contradicted by the most casual observation of many natural, political, and economic phenomena.  Many occurrences in the real world have multiple contributing and often mutually-reinforcing causes.  And yet the idea of a solitary cause is often passed off as logical on the internet.  Just like urbanism, reality is complex.  We must embrace complexity, not pretend it doesn’t exist.

Closing Note: My first blog post was published on the Monday after Thanksgiving 2011.  So, today concludes my first year.  After fifty-two weeks of three posts per week, I still have a long list of topics about which to ruminate, to share, and to listen to your thoughts.  It’s been a great start, but it’s only been a start.  There are many more miles to cover before I sleep.

It sometimes seems as if progress on urbanism in the U.S. is a Sisyphean task.  But inspired by the readership of this blog that has been slowly but steadily increasing, I intend to keep pushing on the boulder.  Besides, in the words of anthropologist Margaret Meade, “Can a small group of people make a difference?  It's the only thing that ever has.”

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Openness to New and Different Ideas

An advantage of being my own boss is that I can set my own blogging schedule.  And change it when I wish.  I had intended to write today about rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy.  And then to return to bicycling for some concluding thoughts.  But thinking about my last post on climate change brought to mind an old family anecdote that seemed pertinent.  The story was also pertinent to urbanism.  And so this post muscled its way onto my calendar.

It was perhaps the summer of 1972.  I was doing Saturday errands with my father and sister, probably in a 1965 Mustang.  My sister repeated something that that one of her teachers had said.  That the world might be pumping the last oil by the year 2000.  And that a new energy source then would be required.

As we now know, improved drilling technology has pushed back that date substantially.  But we also now know that oil is a finite resource.  For 1972, the teacher’s comments, even if somewhat inaccurate, were remarkably foresighted.

My father was an engineer.  He gave great weight to data and to proven ways of doing things.  But he was also willing to consider new realities.  To the end of his life, he was looking at alternative operating schemes for rail transit that would allow greater speeds.  And he was suggesting that seismic codes were flawed because they gave insufficient weight to the greater amplitude, slower arriving waves.

Despite the openness of his mind, he immediately dismissed the suggestion by my sister’s teacher about the end of oil.  So did I.

Neither of us had a background in the oil industry nor any other reason to reject the possible end of oil.  Instead, our rejection was based solely on the unthinkability of the idea that oil might someday be exhausted.

After all, we were out for a Saturday drive in a car that was filled with 29 cent per gallon gas and was getting 15 miles to the gallon.  And we were accustomed to the freedom of that way of life, to which oil was essential.  The end of oil was unfathomable.  Heck, the idea that gas might someday cost more than a dollar per gallon was perhaps equally beyond our conception.

But we were wrong.  We had joined legions of our predecessors in rejecting what we couldn’t conceive.  The problem is that nature doesn’t give a whit about what our minds find to be beyond the realm of comprehension.  It cares only about its own innate logic.

To get past the failures of our imagination, we look to science.  Science can help decipher the logic of nature, including secrets which will startle and amaze us.  It’s likely that my sister’s teacher had been reading about scientists who were beginning to ponder the future of oil.

Science doesn’t always get it right, at least at first.  It took thousands of years of increasingly convoluted rationalizations about the earth being at the center of the solar system before Copernicus and Galileo began to convince the world otherwise.  (The photo above is of the university where Galileo worked on his theory.)  Nor are new theories always accepted gladly.  Galileo paid dearly for challenging the accepted wisdom.  But science and the truth it revealed eventually triumphed.

And now the world of science is telling us that our climate may be changing, likely because of our own fossil fuel consumption.  It isn’t certain that climate change will ultimately be proven correct.  It’s possible that it’ll be found completely wrong.  It’s more possible, even probable, that it’ll be found mostly right, but with adjustments needed.  Regardless of the outcome, science is working toward a better understanding of our world.

And yet many are choosing to reject that theory.  Some of those probably because they can’t conceive of making the lifestyle changes that climate change would require.  I understand.  I was there in 1972.  But that makes the attitude neither right nor beneficial.

Urbanism, although not a science, also runs into the question of whether a new reality can be conceived.  Many of us were raised in suburbia, perhaps hearing tales from grandparents who were thrilled to have moved from the city to a small bungalow near a trolley line.  Accordingly, we grew up with a definition of success that included ever larger homes on ever larger lots.  And that’s okay.  As long as you’re willing to pay the price, your dream can be whatever you want it to be.

But the suburban dreams of many have come to include an unwillingness to remove the market obstacles to the urban lifestyle that is now attractive to others.  And that not’s okay.  A willingness to acknowledge the possibility of new and different realities is a good thing for science.  And a good thing for land use.

Incidental observation: It’s fascinating to note that the initial rejection of Galileo’s model of the solar system was based on an unwillingness to conceive that mankind wasn’t at the center of all things.  Conversely, much of the opposition to climate change is based on an unwillingness to believe that mankind is powerful enough to affect the earth’s climate.  Our estimation of our place in the universe has changed dramatically in a few centuries.

Follow-Ups and Scheduling Notes

Petaluma Urban Chat: As a reminder, the next Petaluma Urban Chat will be Tuesday, November 13 at the Aqus Café.  We gather at 5:30.  Feel free to join us for an unstructured discussion of urbanism, local politics, and whatever other vaguely related topics may arise.

Urban Chat has selected “Curbside Chat” by StrongTowns.org for a shared reading.  Discussion will likely begin in December.  The booklet is available as a free download on the StrongTowns website.  But if anyone would prefer a hard copy and doesn't like buying ink for a home printer, we can coordinate the printing of multiple copies at a local print shop.  Let me know if you’re interested.

Nate Silver: A few posts ago, I repeated a tweet by New York Times columnist Nate Silver about the rebound of New York City after Hurricane Sandy.  At the time, Silver was being disparaged for his computer model of the presidential election.  His critics were arguing that he was biased and that his accurate prediction of 49 of 50 states in 2008 was one-time fluke.   I defended Silver, whose work on baseball and politics I’d always found to be fair and objective.

Despite the sniping, Silver did well in the now-completed 2012 election.  If Florida continues to go the way that it’s leaning as of this writing, Silver will have gotten all fifty states correct, improving on his already fine results from 2008.

I’m not arguing that accurate election prognostication has great social value.  It’s far more important to pick the right candidate than to correctly divine which candidate will win several weeks in advance.  But the partisan and unfounded brickbats thrown at Silver are another illustration of the unwillingness of some to grasp new ways of viewing the world.  And that is never a good thing.

Plus, Silver’s new book, “The Signal and the Noise” offers valuable insights about building consensus on subjects such as urbanism in the 21st century.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)