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All Photos: Shanny Spraus for New Ecology, Inc.
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Session and Workshop Proceedings To go directly to your workshop of choice, click on the links below: Morning Keynote Address: ENRIQUE PEÑALOSA Workshop A: Sustainability 101 Workshop B: Using the Internet to Bridge Gaps and Bring People Together Workshop C: Suburban and Urban Systems: Sustainability Linkages Workshop D: Creating a Financing Climate that Values Sustainability Afternoon Keynote Address:ANDREW ALTMAN Workshop E: Relationships for Results: How to Build Effective Coalitions to Promote Sustainability Workshop F: Demystifying Green Design Standards: Commercial and Residential Workshop G: Advancing Sustainability Through Public Health Initiatives Workshop H: Communicating Sustainable Development to Different Audiences
ENRIQUE PEÑALOSA "Challenging the Public Sector to Push Sustainability Forward:
The Role of Empowered Leaders" Bogotá, Colombia is a city of approximately 7 million inhabitants. It was a city in chaos, a city with a total lack of self-esteem. Due to the actions that were taken in that city, within a short period of time the people began to feel a strong sense of pride. Gallop polls showed that people overwhelmingly thought that things in the city were getting better for the first time in a long time. How did they make this happen? They made the city for people, rather than cars. Big Picture: The world's population will increase by approximately two billion people in the next 25 years. Most of that growth will be in cities in developing countries. The battle for the environment will be won or lost in developing countries' cities. Therefore, we need a model for good cities. Who will provide this model? The US? Many Central/South Americans look to the United States as their model, but those are not sustainable cities! We need to find better models. Most of the growth in the city of Bogotá is illegal. The city is sprawling. How do we turn this city around? The most important thing is a vision. This vision, or dream, is also the most difficult thing. What about economic growth? We need to learn not to measure success by consumption or production. If we do we are doomed. Again, we need another model. A model based on citizen happiness. What is our vision for the developing world? This is the question that we need to answer. Transportation - We cannot design an urban transport system unless we know what kind of city we want. Transport tends to become a social ill as affluence increases. For example, compare cheap public transportation that serves many to expensive and inefficient personal automobiles. The friendlier a city is to cars, the less humane it becomes and the less resources are left to the needs of the poor. We need to choose a model for the city that restricts car use! Then, there will be resources left for social needs. Peñalosa led an initiative to make the city of Bogotá more humane through these ideas. They bought land (voluntarily or through eminent domain) and made a series of parks. They implemented a system where there is 100% water coverage in the city through use of subsidies by the wealthy. These subsidies also work for gas, telephone, and garbage collection. Within 4 years, there were 400 projects that were proposed, designed, and implemented by local communities. Their ultimate hope was to build capacity in impoverished communities and create community organizations and a sense of belonging. They also strongly emphasized the importance of children. They hired accomplished architects to design nurseries as symbols of this. They also increased public education coverage and built libraries to emphasize that education is important. This was all part of a vision of creating a different set of values in the city. Public pedestrian space is very important! You need to build a city for the most vulnerable. When people meet in public spaces they meet as equals; the social/economic hierarchy dissolves. In the past, cities were pedestrian. We need to get back to this idea. Perhaps half of the streets in a city should be pedestrian. In Bogotá, a 22 K pedestrian street network was created. Peñalosa was almost impeached because he forced the cars off sidewalks. He believes that sidewalks are relatives of parks and plazas, not streets. Sidewalks should be designed with the idea of art, not math, in mind. While roads are built for the use of the wealthiest 10% of the population, parks are an investment for everyone in the present and the future. To have a successful city, you need an infrastructure system that accommodates low cost, high efficiency transportation. Sound cities are places where as much human potential is realized as
possible! Workshop A: "Sustainability 101" Paul Lipke: Sustainable Step New England Paul Lipke spoke briefly of experience in green building/renewable energy and identified the interests of the workshop participants, which included: o City planning First 35 minutes of session was a 101 overview of core content on sustainability. Afterwards addressed above interests and particular problems/challenges that participants were facing in their work on sustainability. Looking at the big picture: In 18th/19th century resources were high relative to the population, this is not true any more. Human as a planetary force Ecological footprint: measure of human impact. For all the goods and services you consume there is a corresponding ecological footprint. This is expressed in terms of hectares per capita of world average productivity. The United States ecological footprint is higher than that of any other country in the world. "If everyone lived the way we [the United States] do, we would need two or three more planets" In half a lifetime, the situation has changed fundamentally, THE FUNNEL: Moving Toward Sustainability Where to focus our efforts Reduce Impact on living systems The issue of sustainability is not about guilt but about understanding a larger context. The current system was not created to intentionally harm but we created a system that is not sustainable and we can change it! How do we reduce/eliminate the use of persistent, toxic synthetics? What's our fair share? What does being sustainable mean? A straightforward process: People often confuse sustainability with sustainable development. Manage and reduce people's wants and needs, convince people to find value in less expensive things and still feel cool, valuable. Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) effort to create a transparent triple
bottom line in sustainability Changing the way we measure, the way we cost, if Capital and Operations are separate entities in an organization/company, Capital doesn't get anything by saving money for the Operations. It is important for Capital and Operations to work together for the benefit of the whole organization. Measure and reports on climates risks of the investments we make Innovest Strategic Value Advisors - perform retroactive market analysis.
Their work shows that environmentally conscious companies outperform
in the marketplace. Wampanoag Head Quarters, Martha's Vineyard - high performance building "If you've lived/worked in a high performance building you would never go back to living/working in one that is not." So we need to create that opportunity for people to experience this. Q: It is important to recognize that there is something valuable in
industries like mining, like the sense of community. Although this is
a harmful industry how do we create balance without just reducing it
just to the quantifiable harm/? If thinking short term, you'll be frustrated. We're talking about a long-term strategy. The laws of physics are not going to change no matter what the laws of congress may say. Q: How do you get a city to think in long term? Q: Since you say that one person can't change everything, how do we
start at home? All change progresses in this succession Electrolux - Swedish company, wasn't paying attention to environmental issues, then ozone became a huge problem and they lost tons of money. Once this happened they studied the problem for four years and went to premier of Sweden and asked for carbon taxes. The saw the economic advantage of placing themselves ahead of the market. http://www.electrolux.com/ "In some sense it doesn't matter where you start. Just start with something that you care about."
Scientifically, what is truly sustainable? If larger structures make living sustainably impossible then we need to look at changing that structure. Q: Is it really achievable to meet human need worldwide sustainability? PL: Who's got a nice juicy sustainability conflict? Q: What happens when you don't know enough and architect and isn't
going the way you're going? We wanted green roof but the seniors didn't
want to go on roof. PL: We keep getting attached to certain things. Right now it's green roofs, in a year it could be something else. PL: Where in your own life have you seen change and when did it happen
and how? Q: There a lot of things that we are accidentally doing right, or are
doing without having sustainability intentionally in mind. We're going
to put these practices into a book. Q: I think it's important to give architects incentives, awards for
sustainable design. Q: We have an obsession with specialization, which becomes synonymous
with expertise. For example the senior living the nursing home is the
expert on the window that they're looking out but architect chooses
the type of window. PL: Don't forget that building to code is the bare minimum. Anything less would be illegal. So if a builder says we always build to code you may want to consider another PUBLIC HEALTH QUARRY: CAREER: Q: What if you have skills and knowledge but have a day job and want
to moonlight? PL: Good movie: End of Suburbia, Canadian film. HISTORIC PRESERVATION Workshop B: "Using the Internet to Bridge
Gaps and Bring People Together" Started by going around the room and introducing ourselves. Richard O'Bryant is working with Northeastern to develop an urban studies school with a technology component. A debate about role that technology plays in community development. Does technology make us less social? They found that it was not the case. Theoretical context Community Tech centers, community networks, and community content. These overlap at the individual, family, and community level. Community tech models must meet goals of place and people that are engaging them. Went into Camfield Estates in Roxbury, low-income housing development.
Several things they wanted to happen: Gave residents a personal computer and high-speed Internet access.
Offered over a 2-year period. Each resident was given: Wanted residents to have a good experience so they gave them support and training not just the technology. Built an online community for them. Developed it with what designers thought was important. Had to redesign the website based on what residents thought was important. Wanted access to police department and to crime patterns in area. Wanted to document the history of the place. Had been through a transition. Was recently redeveloped and wanted to document it and have it available online. Some of key findings: During the project: Discussion questions: DAVID CAVALLO The strongest basis for sustainability is people's thinking: Using the affordances of new technologies Had been in Bogotá while keynote was mayor. How do people think and what do they do? What choices do people have and how do they decide to make them? Technology is not just for information delivery. All ad campaigns about smoking, it is on the rise again among teenagers. People are very aware of how bad this is for you. Not a fault of information. Something is missing as to what is driving behavior. How do you get people's thinking to change about these issues? First thing about technology has nothing to do with the Internet. Example: Guys built a fuel cell car that runs with computer control in Learn to Teach and Teach to Learn. South End tech center. Working with Boston high school students in a way that gets them used to creating with technology. People are not just consumers of information. Want them to make stuff using the technology. If you have to make something work, you are going to understand it. Needed to generate power, which was their first problem. That was hard problem. John in approach to doing this, he gets people to think about what's going on. Project that they've been running in Brazil. Education program to think about how to change education in schools. Not merely for writing email or browsing web, but getting people to use it. New technologies (any thing invented after you were born). Use computer like text. But some things on computer that you don't get with text. Take your community and think about what you like, don't like, dream about. Then build that (program is called A Cidade que nos queremos - the City that we want). Those who can, leave the public system because it's so underinvested. This becomes a vicious cycle. Working in public schools there, first thing that we saw happen was their attitude about what their voice was and capacity in making change. Wanted them to work on project and whatever it might be. Autonomous trash collection. The river is their livelihood, but river is becoming very polluted with trash and fertilizers. Wanted a way to autonomously clean the river. How do you tell the difference between trash and fish? Hard problem. Not just a matter to build a science fair project in 1 week. Want this to be a transition to their participation, but also their participation is more valuable the more important it is. Is this a believable model? Get diverse points of view. Have to discuss and argue which is better and why. This is where net came in for us. Documenting their work. How would you pump water? Now they have access to share info. This becomes a stepping point to community discourse. How do you make a good argument? How do you back it up with data? Looking at favella. Interviewing people and they like them. Flexible. Don't fix up the outside because when they do they get robbed. Making believable local choices based on what they can do. If local choices go the wrong way they aggravate really badly. Thailand where he started working in the mid-90s. Only go to get their certificate. Not serving people's needs. Make the basis of the curriculum what people care about. Livelihood, access to clean water, etc. This becomes organizing basis for what they do. They took it and did much better things than what MIT did. Now there's a village network. Kind of sporadic and this is how it's been spreading. Work of school and community center just merged. 1 project - found that 1 out of every 30 families in village was in debt. Did financial system and figured out how to deal with cash flow problem that they have. Now kids are studying whether it is better to burn the forest or not. As they are burning they get soil erosion, other problems. Have a reservoir that pipes water to fields. Public awareness and knowledge are key, but at some point at local level you need believable steps. Web as means of construction and collaboration, not merely information delivery. Biggest thing they don't have access to in rural areas is expertise. This knowledge of working with engines translated into working with technology. People had hacking spirit, where they just would make it happen. AMI DAR Big non-profit portal allows non-profits all over the world - 50,000 of them and then post anything they want to share with others. About 40 or 50,000 every day come to engage in something or find things they want to do. I don't know anything about sustainable development and told them that when they invited me here. Share what is keeping him awake. Interesting time in Chinese and other sense of word. World has changed in deep way. 15-25 years ago we looked pretty much the same as we look now. Granted we have more communication now, but it's not like getting a car, light in your house for the 1st time. 2 massive differences: 1) Technology thing. Look at business card; they had 2 lines postal
address and phone. In 20 years, we've added 4 lines - website, email,
cell phone, and fax. Sometimes IM. 1 billion online. 2-3 billion on
cell phones. Had a meeting 2-3 weeks ago with a guy who wanted to photograph
him and did it with his cell phone. Leaves the office and he's taking
a cab. 2 min later he's sending an email with the link to his flicker
site and personal diary. Each of these pieces was literally impossible
10 years ago. Can do other things that are more meaningful. This morning he did simply amazing stuff. Why isn't this happening in many more cities? It's so much easier to share. Why isn't it going other places? How much more powerful individual has become. Can share ideas. If you have good idea, there is no one left between you and the people who might be able to read it. Remember the Unabomber. 92 or 93 he faced an amazing conundrum. He wanted to share an idea. Had a manifesto. Today he would be a blogger. Only way to share a 50-page document. Started terrorist campaign because he wanted Washington Post and New York times to share his manifesto. There was literally an incredible frustration with sharing things. If your idea is worth anything, then people will find it. If you have an idea for how to dig wells better. You can put it up there, and reach villager in India who is out there reading this stuff. Astonishing who writes you. Single mother in hills of province of Uganda. Social worker in poor neighborhood in Calcutta, can speak to social worker in Lima. Things keeping him awake at night: Questions we can ask today are so different. Think about any apartment building and someone living on 13th floor and 5th floor. Both looking out window. Both seeing something they don't like. The problem is we are not telepathic. How do you know that other person in building is thinking the same thing? Some people have the capacity to change things and personality to change things all by themselves. But very few people. If one person knocks on your door, he seems crazy. Two people together don't seem so crazy. If every building and every street in the world could, imagine power to connect. Some have mechanism to connect, others do not. Two people would both like to build a garden, they don't know about each other. Non-profit wants to build community gardens. They don't know of each other. People in another country that did what they wanted to do yesterday. If the three knew that story, then they would feel empowered to do more. 20 years ago every big city built an airport. These things are flying, if we want them to land in our city, then we need to build one. Was no airport authority to get everyone to do it. They found the resources. London got the Olympics, now they will find the resources to do it themselves. Stories have power to drive people. Series of disasters. Every time these things hit, series of behaviors as if it's the first disaster in history. Ten years obsessed with this. Why the moment that it hits, they know and knew how bad it was. Why isn't an airplane taking off half an hour later with disaster experts? If American ambassador got kidnapped tomorrow, an airplane would take off half an hour later. Why isn't there a website that I can go to and enter a disaster and figure out what will happen if the disaster happens? Opera companies plan in advance for every single performance. If there is a tragedy in Latin America then why can't a doctor in Spain be on call to go? Human nature optimism/pessimism. When people see a need and see possibility, we can be amazing. 8 million people together and water comes out. Astonishing achievement. European train system - hundreds of trains hurtling through the dark and going somewhere. People get a computer and use it as a better typewriter, but it's more than that. How do we do much more with all this stuff now? Fundamentally changing questions were asking and then answering them. Q: Been around renewable energy for many years. It's a cultural thing. Sometimes the devil is in the details of what is community. Trying to now, at NESEA, no minorities are at these affairs. Don't know what's going on at this level. If I get something on their program it will be the first time they consider who are they talking to. When I get into it and see at our program this summer, how diversity manifests itself when there is a problem. Cultural exchanges are all there focusing on a particular problem. Gets deeper and deeper and deeper. Richard reformatting question: When people engage in efforts, they are not inclusive. They forget a whole bunch of people. Asker takes back over - have someone of color at meetings where they are making decisions about energy of future. Q: Why? How do you help people understand how to use a computer not just as a better typewriter? Now people who are buying huge machines to do word-processing and email. Could accomplish almost as effectively with a pen. Work in community design and development. How to do that, etc. What are good guidelines or bringing people in a participatory way? What is it that holds us back from this cultural shift? RICHARD: Biggest challenge is that it's difficult for people to make a paradigm shift, and generations that are coming up behind us so it won't be an issue for them, where people that have to make a shift to operate in another way. As organizers if we understand the tools that are available to present them in a way and context that makes the most sense to them. Spent 6 or 7 months understanding culture, understanding community to just get what was important. Important to make tools valuable. DAVID: If there are things that should be changed and they are not, there is a reason. Paradigms set how you see the world. They are important because they are stable. If we were constantly reassessing how to evaluate the world, we couldn't walk out the door. One of key things, why don't they spread? Program would take people doing community work and bring them here for a year. Now Caesar McDowell runs it where they are trying to put together tools to see how they would do this. Most of us who are really in to community organizing don't sit down and write. But even when we do, you've got to sit down and understand what people are thinking. Want people to make their own models. He publishes in an academic journal because he has to: applied epistemological anthropology, so no one will care. Did a project for doctors in hospitals, doctor patient relationship was important. When people were given more authority to deal with their own health, the results were better. When we first put health info on web, doctors resisted. Because it eroded their power. Q: Looking at Internet as tool. Cell phones are burgeoning across the world. Is access point to Internet cell phones or something else? DAVID: prediction is really hard and it's even harder to predict the future. One of things we're really pushing on is a ubiquitous network that doesn't run in top down way. Spread connectivity and bandwidth. Extend connectivity by changing the protocol. Cell phones are interesting because they are small, always on network. There are things you can't do with them. But tech is changing. You can now find out market prices anywhere you want. AMI: Cell phones are a huge access tool. United States is really behind on social use of cell phones. Europe, Asia, Africa cell phones are huge way of accessing Internet. Can get SMS message from Google to tell you where closest Starbucks is from any where in the world. Every woman in rural village in S. Africa has cell phone. Calls her miner husband at night. Tickets were raffled by text message to see a concert in London. Very much behind in United States. Q: Relationship between electronic network at Camfield and people meeting face to face. View cell phones as really intrusive in public space, inhibiting face-to-face interaction. Denial of equality in public space. Did people say that they needed to have a crime watch meeting? RICHARD: Technology forces us to change our norms and values. Sometimes in a way that we don't intend or anticipate. Guys who designed cell phones likely didn't think about impact they'd have on public spaces. Exploded faster than putting norm or value on top of it. At Camfield, residents started visiting each other more, going to meetings more, got involved more. Voted more. Involved with local orgs more. Q: Tools to promote community Organizing and other things on local level are they better served with local system or international system or something in between? AMI: Both. Use an online system to inspire someone that can help with local communication. Global piece where your drop will fill the bucket. If you clean your sidewalk and we all clean our sidewalk then we have a clean city. By me cleaning my sidewalk, I am cleaning the city. RICHARD: Concept of think globally, act locally applies. From a context standpoint, people want to know what's happening locally. One of interesting things that we found at Camfield, agreed to let us monitor the web logs. Some of most common pages were MSNBC and CNN. Clearly showed an interest on national and international news. People like to have info that they can be very closely connected to and touch. Q: Often times working with low-income communities, almost always a time constraint to Internet access. Often ends up taking a long time. Any suggestions for public space use or trying to access hits from low-income communities, etc? RICHARD: Depends what you are looking for at contextualizing info for what you are looking for. Other CTCs and find out what some of them are doing to get people access to info, especially if you touch into CTCnet. Also a project called the Beehive. DAVID: Arbitrarily high cost. Just a rip-off. Philly. Provide wireless access, period. That's a matter of public pressure. What counts as infrastructure that should be counted for everyone? As you move towards an economy for economic inclusion, that should be for everyone. Q: What are necessary ingredients for a good idea to spread? AMI: You said it has to be a good idea. Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to door. Things can spread quickly. A year later, Europe was very different place. RICHARD: If someone is interested in your idea, someone will find it. Q: Diffusion of Innovation theory. I'd urge anyone to explore it. As
an example characterize innovations that diffuse rapidly - can be tried,
observable, relative advantage. Innovation is compatible with values
and lifestyle. Matters how complicated it is. Workshop C: "Suburban and Urban Systems: Sustainability Linkages" Moderator: PETER LOWITT, Director, Devens Enterprise Commission Peter Lowitt provided and introduction and explained this session would be an interactive process of exploring the connections between cities, suburbs and exurbs. The group wanted to examine the definition of sustainability in suburban, rural and urban areas and what sustainability looks like in each system. JC: Growing food is energy intensive. The net goal is to get more energy out of it than what you put in. Our culture has replaced muscle power with oil power: if we continue to do that as oil reserves run low, we will end up paying a lot more for food. Your food is cheaper to buy than it is to produce because of government subsidies. Can we support large numbers of people with no easy access to food sources? For example, the Middle East used to support large cultures, and Easter Island used to be a rainforest. We have the opportunity to direct how we change the environment. There are high rates of asthma on the east coast related to air pollution, which is in part a result of the fossil fuels we use to bring food from the west to the east. This results in higher hospital costs, road wear, etc. The impact of urban and suburban planning on food supply is great. For example, a housing development moves to Sutton, which has a 2 acre land parcel policy. What is the total impact of moving an apartment building to a suburb? You have to consider more police, fire, municipal services, all the family needs - which results in a quality of life loss. The average tax bill is $5,000 for each new house, and $7,000 for each new child introduced to the Sutton school system. We have an unsustainable growth policy. For farmers, sustainability is related to economics - can we put food on the table and continue to do what we do. Most farmers improve the conditions of the neighborhoods they work in. They are not draining civic services for the benefits they bring. On the flip side, farming thrives on displacing people - how do we deal with this displacement? Q: What counts as a farmer's market? Q: Why did farmers' markets grow in popularity? Q: Do you lobby for subsidies? Q: How many low income consumers are there? Q: Are there systems related to composting and waste disposal that
help farmers? Q: What are the most current trends in organic farming? Amy Cotter then explained the MAPC's use of keypad technology to find out the opinions of people in the audience, and a few demographics were tested. Gender Race Education Shopping at Farmers' Markets Concerns Definition of Sustainability Amy Cotter then distributed a yellow sheet describing the preliminary community typologies for Eastern Massachusetts, and had participants vote on which type they considered their community. 13 lived in Metropolitan Core Communities Q: How can municipal boundaries be useful, or are they not? I consider
everything to be very segmented in terms of municipal boundaries. How
are your distinctions useful in talking about sustainability? Audience comment: It would be useful to frame one piece of the sustainability issue - for example, transportation, and index this information by issue so you can tackle one piece at a time. Audience comment: It may be a static versus kinetic problem, since these typologies are constantly changing. Audience comment: One of the biggest challenges to sustainability is that every town thinks of itself as an island. AC: We're trying to unify towns around these categories. Audience comment: So much of sustainability is about connecting different types of communities. Audience comment: This map allows communities to see commonalities. How can these categories contribute to regional initiatives? Audience comment: We need to talk more about the kinds of inputs and outputs that each community contributes. Audience comment: You might want to take away the municipal boundaries and look at the various tracts and colors without boundaries. Audience comment: These maps don't factor in the social and economic factors related to sustainability. Audience comment: Since government subsidies contribute to sprawl, we need to look at where the money is going and try to change that. Massachusetts has progressive policies in curbing sprawl. The political pressure to bring subsidies back is enormous. Look at Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance's critique of the planning process. Audience comment: People would rather live closer to work and have good schools and enough space. Part of sustainability is creating economic incentives to make all three of these things affordable. Audience comment: If you look at historical models, we like to have work and play in the same area. Why do people go to Disney World? Because it's safe. You have to look at the qualities of how to make downtowns more livable. Chicago is a great example. PL: Happiness is measured in different ways by different people. Perhaps
these typologies are one way to get at that. Workshop D: "Creating a Financing Climate that Values Sustainability" Moderator: ROBERT PRATT, Director, Massachusetts Renewable Energy
Trust http://www.mtpc.org/renewableenergy/index.htm Robert Pratt welcomed the group and introduced the session as one that would talk about the challenges for organizations that are pursuing sustainable investment projects. The audience interests included: Robert Pratt introduced David Feinberg. DAVID FEINBERG Equity capital markets are pretty efficient - if they have and idea, a sound business plan and make an attempt to find money, they can find it - have to face rejection a lot before getting money - even for double-bottom line - one example: focused their pitch to many different forums - have the right vision, lots of ways to finance business - venture capital these days is much more friendly to early stage companies than a of couple years ago Triple bottom line company he started in 1999 - not environmental but education - all of energy about vision was done at early stage - once funds secure, then focused on business Still businesses that are too early to attract funds - no management, no plans - example, new product for black/Hispanic skin products -problems at early stage - brings him to Investor's Circle, which is an organization of entrepreneurs and investors that are looking for early stage social entrepreneurs in which to invest - annual conference this November, also at venture fairs - over past 15 years, group supported about 160 different companies, about $100 million in investment capital - about $150,000 to $200,000 per investment Prove something to for-profit venture capitalists, that you can make similar returns on double bottom line investments - not much data but not as strong in financial performance as some other venture capital Community of folks that share ideas on social investment - Investor's Circle is a movement of people that want to see philanthropy in businesses that support themselves - investments in solar energy - early supporters of ZipCar - education companies - sustainable living - minority and women-owned businesses Hope that you could make money and tilt investments into this sector For-profit to non-profit - movement in philanthropy in last 15 years towards helping non-profit find growth capital - money for CFO, CEO - not just one year 50K but multi-year million investment with consulting tied - melding of VC and philanthropists Robert Pratt introduced Dewitt Jones. DEWITT JONES Sustainability financing for affordable housing initiative to show that projects are high impact and lower cost than traditional developments 1) meets state goals why green affordable housing - problems in getting developers to think about sustainability - silos of lenders - extremely tight budgets - environmental benefits seen as luxury good - issues that are difficult in communities are hard to see, like impact of shopping mall outside of community huge number of decisions people think they've made them - citing decisions - save money by making good decisions early - get good information - modeling is complex and expensive - who to trust and what's appropriate for specific project? - is it economical? - money constrained by first costs, not long-term costs, which often haunt city and state - who is paying for R&D and externalities, is it fair for low-income communities to shoulder these burdens Innovated design processes - integrate stuff early Themes ROBERT PRATT Themes Q: Describe different perspective and criteria of investors circle
and new profit groups. New profit Q: How does new group with idea market itself to orgs that can finance
growth? Lots of other groups that support non-profits - revolving loan funds - attract money market type of investments - e-co - they do incubation Focus on whether or not a non-profit or for-profit - especially internationally because it is hard to make money - some places only do non-profits - if for profits, returns are important as well as exit strategy - show returns or no additional investments - focus on for- or non-profit impacts who gives you money Q: When funding pre-regulatory costs, integrated designs, etc., is
it outright grants? RP: Lots of demos in green building, green schools - maverick gardens was success story because developer who had never done green was so excited, he did non-subsidized units green - new money for partnerships - rebate programs for small-scale installations Q: Live in small community north of Boston that used to be industrial
- work for town - lots of local banks - leveraged lots of resources
for projects - How does a small town without a CDC develop pool of resources
for green projects and green businesses without lots of infrastructure
of big city? Q: How to make decisions about what sources are best? Q: About green schools - runs non-profit that is school garden program
- no building, but provide service - green schools must have designs
for internal and external environment - are there places that I can
go for this? Q: How do we get regulatory agencies to pay attention to first-cost/life-cycle
cost issue? This is a key limiting factors for making sustainable design
feasible Q: $300,000 per unit cap at DHCD - no recognition of first-cost vs.
lifecycle. How do you see transfer of this issue in to regulation? Q: Energy efficiency is good but what other energy innovations are
feasible? Q: Getting nowhere without a vision - what is early experience with
40R initiative around smart growth planning? Q: How do you get beyond Cabrini-Green mentally of density? Comment: Need to revisit idea of public-private partnerships for mixed-income communities - how to use public and private resources in a new way for more integration Q: Obstacles to co-generation is utilities - is there any progress
to relaxing Nstar's policies? Q: How do you measure changing behavior for environmental benefits
and economic savings? ANDREW ALTMAN "Applying Lessons Learned: How Sustainability Can Be a Part
of Major City Initiatives" The Anacostia Waterfront Development project began six years ago, and a large part of the consistency of effort is due to Mayor Anthony Williams. The mayor was elected on a platform of planning and sustainability. At the time of his election seven years ago, the Washington D.C. planning office was very small: six people. Without the mayor's leadership, planning would not have had such a significant impact. The goal of the Anacostia Waterfront project was to put the Anacostia River back on the map. Looking at maps of D.C., only the districts with federal buildings and monuments were shown. The river and neighborhoods to the east were completely ignored, as if not part of D.C. at all. The neighborhoods ignored are largely 98% African-American. Putting the Anacostia River and its neighborhoods back on the map would be a legacy for the mayor to leave behind for the city and future. The planners made an argument that D.C. must have sustainable growth in order to be competitive. The waterfront had 900 acres to redevelop and repair the city by the river. Challenges included obsolete infrastructure that was incompatible with an urban community (e.g., railroads, overpasses, etc.), the length and breadth of the river (i.e., wanted to look comprehensively), extreme levels of pollution. Looked back at historical plans for D.C., including L'Enfant's (which didn't address the east side of the Anacostia River at all) and McMillen's (which wasn't completed). The federal issue: About 70% of the land in question was owned by the Federal government. There is no Federal representation for D.C.-no senator, no house representative, which makes D.C. almost like a colony. The lack of representation makes lobbying for its own needs very difficult. A long-term community planning and visioning effort targeted neighborhoods
along the river. Through this process, a framework of 5 themes was created
to guide development: Examples of issues in achieving each theme: An example of site selection: Decided that all 790 public housing units needed to be improved through replacement and 800 market rate units should be added. Had to deal with a Federal desire to put office on the waterfront. Had to focus conversation on development that allowed access to the waterfront. Three bus parking lots will become the Washington Canal Park. Forest City was selected as the developer for the housing, etc. The most important thing you can do in planning for development is to put back in the public realm. In addition to having the framework, having a "big idea" that knits together social, economic, political, and environmental goals is critical. Currently, there is a bill in Congress to transfer park service land to the District. The Federal government has never transferred federal land back to D.C. Due to the land's current (bad) state and the (well-thought, convincing) plans for development, D.C. expects to get the land. Take Home Message: You need a big idea, a framework that integrates environmental, social, and economic ideas in a vision.
Q: How is new technology integrated, or is it? Particularly renewable
energy. Q: How do you move from participatory planning to participatory development? Q: How do you measure performance? Q: What plan is there for schools? Q: What are you doing about water quality? Q: Most cities don't have so much federal land along water, so how
does this translate to other cities' opportunities? Q: You are also displacing a huge amount of industrial space. How do
you deal with the loss of jobs? Q: Dividing up development parcels, anything unexpected? Q: Freight traffic on the river? Q: What past lessons did you apply in your effort? Q: Flooding? Workshop E: "Relationships for Results: How to Build Effective Coalitions to Promote Sustainability" Moderator: LISA CLAUSON, Director, Community Labor United Each of the 3 presenters discussed their own organization's experience with building coalitions and offered general advice, then took questions from the audience. The focus of the workshop was how to organize around policy change to achieve social justice. PL: Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE) is an environmental
justice organization in Boston that's been going for 10 plus years.
We build power within communities of color to achieve environmental
justice. Right now, we're focusing on three initiatives: There are no gimmicks related to coalition building, although it's hard to do well. Relationships are key. ACE is concerned with developing long term relationships, not just courting the buddy of the hour. Recommends getting to know people and organizations around you. Visit them. Bring something of value to the table when you're negotiating with them and take the time to understand where they're coming from and what their motivations are. Don't go in initially with a joint fundraising venture, and don't ask for help unless you're going to reciprocate. It's easy to understand how to build coalitions, but hard to do because of competing resources. These are things that can come between good relationships. An example of a successful coalition. The On the Move Coalition began officially in 2001, although the program started before that. In Roxbury, asthma and air pollution were high areas of concern. ACE's youth brought the issue to light, and wanted to clean up diesel transit busses to help reduce air pollution. In 1997, the youth organized Clean Busses for Boston. They found out by talking to people that they were really concerned about many things related to transit issues, not just air pollution. Busses were crowed, people had to wait in the snow to board them, and they felt they were being treated like second-class citizens. Seven to eight groups joined as part of a coalition. We realized we weren't going to be successful unless we addressed all the community's concerns, so we defined a broader transportation justice agenda. At the same time, MBTA raised their fares on busses across the board - many people thought, "If we're going to pay more, we want better service." The coalition expanded to include other neighborhood groups, many of whom had been organizing to deal with the replacement of the Orange Line. They realized they didn't have the leadership or political will to serve their issues, and we knew we needed to work on state level policy. Since many groups were all working on transportation issues, we merged over six months during Transportation Justice Summits. We went through a deep agenda-setting process and came up with unified goals, which included better, cleaner transportation for the people who currently lived in the community (rather than better service contributing to gentrification and pushing people out). Now, On the Move meets monthly and we've succeeded in expanding MBTA service by 100 busses. Now an example of a coalition that ACE decided not to join. The Smart Growth Alliance was a group ACE became involved with, which also included architects and environmentalists. We engaged in intensive retreats and planning alliances, and there was opportunity for serious funding if we stayed with the Alliance. However, they did not frame their agenda using ACE's approach. Their objectives were smart growth, ours was using smart growth as one tool to achieve environmental justice. Because of this different approach, we decided to stay true to our mission and focus and not participate in the Smart Growth Alliance. Overall, I would say that relationships matter the most, and understanding other organizations' needs and what their perspectives are makes all the difference. MARVIN MARTIN Advice on building coalitions: Be prepared that some people won't join. Don't let that discourage you. But you do need to make it worthwhile for them to join. One of our projects is Action for Regional Equity. We were alarmed about smart growth because the conversation about stopping urban and suburban growth was going on in the mainstream environmental movement without talking to urban organizations. We were concerned because we knew that halting growth in the suburbs would create a problem for us in the urban areas later on (by gentrification). We saw what happened in the South End. So, we had to cross racial and cultural lines and find common interests to build this coalition. We knew that other communities had success in keeping housing affordable. We held a regional conference in May that was attended by 1,200 people. It's becoming a movement - large groups of people from all over are talking about how to make this happen. A lot of people came who we were trying to convince. Many people feel that this is the next civil rights movement. We have to deal with poor transportation, housing and schools just like in the 60's. If we create policies that work for all of us, then those issues get fixed. We believe we can have it all - for example, adequate teachers everywhere. We learned some lessons during integration - now our schools are just as segregated as they were before, because people just left the cities when integration occurred. So we had to figure out how to get other people at the table. We explored some relationships we created in other avenues. We found out what the benefit would be to other people and explained our situation in a way that didn't scare them away. For sustainable development, there's enough common interest to figure out what that common tie is. Our coalition is great - we get to have good conversations and learn from each other. We do regional equity work - not "smart growth" - and we've matched urban and suburban folks together to open more doors. LISA CLAUSON I would suggest that your coalitions have built in people who have the power to sway decision-makers. You have to look at who can help you do this, either by political influence or by people mobilization. You have to understand each group's motivation and self-interest, and have a clear parameter of work - how the demands will be determined, and how you will go about compromising. I have three examples of other coalitions from the web: http://www.laane.org http://www.fresc.org http://www.onlinecpi.org Labor organizations are working to change the perception that labor only cares about labor and building things. Q: Who do you choose to be in the coalition? Q: There are two elephants in the room: post- 9-11 fascism and the
military budget. Q: What about feedback loops? Q: Do you ever bring in someone from the outside to facilitate? Workshop F: "Demystifying Green Design Standards: Commercial and Residental" Moderator: JOHN DALZELL, Senior Architect, Boston Redevelopment
Authority JOHN DALZELL: ELLEN TOHN: There are many arenas in building where these ideals overlap. One example is moisture. There are also other areas in which building can affect occupant health. Some examples are respiratory problems (i.e. asthma) from indoor air quality issues, cancers from toxic material usage, as well as many others. These are some national green standards: Considering all of these standards, none of them really do a good job
on occupant safety! Ellen is very concerned with moisture problems and the health effects that they have. She recommends good overhangs to keep things dry, windows with flash features, and bath fans that work and are on timers. She also recommends Stuff It, which is a pest repellent sealer that promotes better energy efficiency. BARBRA BATSHALOM: What is very important is for you to define the scope of "greening"
that you are interested in and then use the standards that help you
achieve them. It is also important to critically think about how your
analysis of these issues is really informing your design. Q: So what rating system should we use? Green Roundtable is starting a community outreach program where people can come for information related to green building. There will be resources and people available to help you with your project. ROBERT MURRAY: Currently, thalates are a big issue in building. There were six studies in 2004 that implicated thalates off gassing in asthma occurrences. Almost all products that off-gas thalates have substitutes (except for sheath around wiring). For a list of substitutes see the Healthy Building Network at http://www.healthybuilding.net/ There is a building boom happening nationally in the health care industry. The health care industry is the largest employer in the state of Massachusetts. This is a great opportunity for promoting the linkages between health and green building. Shocking Fact: hospitals are built with materials that cause cancer! Green Guide for Health Care - Standard created for greening health care facilities http://www.gghc.org/ JOHN DALZELL: What are some other standards? GROUP QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION: Q: In what areas do you see conflicts between standards and codes? Q: How do you involve tenants as players in the green development process?
Is there a standard process for this? Q: Are Green Building Tax Credits on the horizon? Q: Could you explain a little about what green standards actually are? Q: What cities are role models for green building? Q: How do you get registered as a LEED building? Q: What about neighborhood analysis? Q: Are there standards for green products? Other things to think about: Workshop G: "Advancing Sustainability Through Public Health Initiatives" Moderator: ANNE MCHUGH, Boston Public Health Commission ANNE MCHUGH WENDY LANDMAN, WALK BOSTON DR. MEGAN SANDEL, BOSTON MEDICAL CENTER Attendees introduced themselves and explained what they're working on/interested in that is related to Public Health. Included: two MIT planning students, two Tufts planning students, one Tufts planning graduate, one Harvard public health student, Citysprouts staff, Tellus Institute staff, Mass Department of Public Health staff.
Anne started with a PowerPoint on the basics of the public health framework. Content of the presentation: WHAT IS PUBLIC HEALTH? THREE CORE FUNCTIONS OF PUBLIC HEALTH TEN ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS OF PUBLIC HEALTH HEALTHY PEOPLE 2010 - "underlying premise is that the health of the individual is almost inseparable from the health of the larger community and that the health of every community in every State and territory determines the overall health status of the nation" SOCIAL ECOLOGICAL MODEL: DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH PUBLIC HEALTH SYSTEM ACTORS We are still learning how to make effective connections with some of these stakeholders. BOSTON STEPS OVERVIEW BRFSS, Map of obesity trends among UA adults from CDC. Since 1985 more states are collecting the data and more states are reporting the information. Massachusetts has third lowest proportion of adults with obesity. A historical look: by 2000 added category of greater than 20% of population is obese. By 2001 more than 25% were obese. In past 20 years the prevalence of obesity has grown enormously, to call it an epidemic is not an overstatement. Data is from random sample of telephone survey, every state does it according to weighted sample. It is getting harder to get data because of the cell phones. Q: Do people report real height and weight? WENDY LANDMAN, WALKBOSTON Walking is a key component of sustainability and health. SOME FACTS: 24% of people in MA are under 18 Walking promotes equity along age, gender, economics, and race. THINGS TO THINK ABOUT: How can we use walking to build coalitions in the sustainability world? Safe Routes to School: only 10-15% of kids walk to school. Getting kids to walk to school again, need to educate the kids, people in schools, parents, have adults walk places, work with local police department to enforce speed limits, over time it becomes a piece of the community again, having a "walk pool", walking school bus. It is now seen as higher social status to arrive at school in a car We need to overcome the idea that you can't walk when it's really cold or snowy.
TAKE HOME MESSAGES Megan talked about Breathe Easy at Home which is a collaborative of organizations including Boston Inspection Services Department, medical groups, etc. Cases are tracked using a web-based system for a more holistic approach to problem-solving. Rebuilding bridges between housing and health. Ionizers are bad for your health because they create ozone. INTERVENTIONS: Problem pests - 64% of Healthy Homes sites report a pest problem (although we always hear about cockroaches mice were the biggest problem) ICAS: Study Population Boston Urban Asthma Coalition Web-based referral, Breathe Easy at home -- people receive free home inspection, if doctor finds asthma issues then she can use Breathe Easy program, if a housing code violations is found then the City will cite landlord and doctor stays in the loop to follow up. Megan also working on Boston Medical Center Health Net Pilot Study. It is important to ensure that funding doesn't disappear when the study is over. Developing household kits that could be covered by health insurance.
Q: What about off-gassing? You haven't mentioned it. In many neighborhoods 20-30% of kids have asthma. The focus is to help these people. We don't know yet what to prevent them from getting asthma. Healthy Homes is what every kid should have whether they have asthma or not. Q: Any indicators to show that the health of a broad community was
improving based on walking? Active Living & Social Equity article, publication E43306 ICMA, http://activelivingbydesign.org. Don't know how much of this is filtering back into schools, planners, public health and hopefully civil engineers-- it's who we're often in negotiations with. Child Health Impact Assessment, like environmental impact assessment Visioning Boston in 50 years, Tellus Institute (participant) |
