SHIFTBoston Ideas Competition

On the frigid eve of January 14, 2010 the Institute of Contemporary Art was the setting for unveiling of the winners of the SHIFTBoston ideas competition. I was there. It was fun. Lots of folks who love the city, many of them unemployed architects, were enjoying the shared buzz of dreaming and creating a more lively and meaningful city. Check out the winners and significant contributions at the website below.

The brief for the competition, (from their website, Shiftboston.org) says this:


Let’s make Boston dynamic!

The SHIFTboston Ideas Competition 2009 called on all architects, artists, landscape architects, urban designers, engineers and anyone to submit their most provocative wild visions for the City of Boston: WHAT IF this could happen in Boston?

SHIFTboston seeks to collect visions that aim to enhance and electrify the urban experience in Boston. Innovative, radical ideas for new city elements such as public art, landscape, architecture, urban intervention and transportation. Competitors were encouraged to explore topics such as the future city, energy efficiency and ecological urbanism.

This competition is intended to collect and inspire. The goal is to attract greater public interest in future possibilities for the urban environment of Boston. We want to inspire and engage the city community while encouraging positive awareness and a hunger for change. We believe a collective desire to push boundaries and challenge the familiar are the necessary seeds with which to grow a more dynamic city!

THINK PLAY THINK NEW THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX
We seek to drive a SHIFT in thinking, perception, attitude, definition, process, method, planning, and organization in order to re-energize Boston’s urban environment. We are here to move Boston forward. Be part of the SHIFT!

Despite their plea for open endedness, the brief actually gave a lot of direction, which was not necessarily a bad thing, but it is easy to see in hind sight how the entrees fit within the topics. I actually think they did a good job of provoking a direction just enough to contain the range, while still encouraging creativity. Remember too that entries were visually rendered. The world as defined by trained architects. So while the competition was named an "Ideas" competition, the realm of possible ideas was clearly visual/spatial. Again, not a bad thing, but a niche nonetheless. A reshaping of the world achieved through building or using space in a different way. To be able to enter, a person needed to have a profound mastery over rendering software, so the universe of possible entrants was delineated.

Some clear themes emerged. 1) Active use of public space. Such as urban farming on the Greenway, floating temporary park barges, or the winner, which proposed turning the unused Tremont subway tunnel into a theater space. 2) Interactive environments, using technology in response to natural forces to heighten our awareness of our environment. Such as the wind and light responsive dynamic light display in Fort Point Channel, or the harbor cleaning floating responsive technological play/learn barge. 3) Responses to climate change, these ranged from the simply profound blue chalk "water line" marking the new water level after sea levels rise, to the adaptive response to flooded land that proposed an acceptance of change rather than resistance. The green underpass walls, wind and water technology collaborative learning center and shared use kayaks hinted at an acknowledgment of building a more "harmoniously integrated" environment. A profound reawakening of our relationship to the ocean seems destined for our future, and was on the minds of many entrants.

After introducing the judges,  presenting the runners up and discussing the "dominant entry themes" the event's MC Brian Healy yielded the floor to the political luminaries in the audience. There was a Boston City Council member, who liked what he say and spoke about the need for Boston to be attractive to young people, which meant creating more opportunities for active public life, and Kairos Shen, Boston's Chief Planner, who stressed realism perhaps more than anyone else there that night, all the while noting that if the mayor were here, he would be wildly happy. A representative of the State's Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development pleaded for help and ideas for solving the problem of matching building opportunities that he oversees with truly creative talent. A valuable identification of a solvable problem, and I am sure many in the audience were more than happy to learn about a new source for employment opportunities.

While those present clearly yearned for a loosening of the restrictions and negativity that so often meets new ideas, there was no shortage of inspiration. The temporary nature of many of the proposals held out the greatest hope for implementation. What many fear, (and rightly so in many cases), is the imposition of "of the moment" fads and fancies of architects that will not stand the test of time and are hopelessly out of scale and context to their surroundings. Loss of meaning through destruction of our built heritage is not necessarily the best route forward. But there is also the need to create and to respond to present needs and life styles. The ideas generated here, pose a third alternative with their innovative, and often temporary re-use and re-claiming of unused and unwanted spaces and places. This seems particularly appropriate in our short-attention span era and somehow suits the needs of a limited energy , finite space and financially constrained reality. The cry for more human contact, interaction and fun was palpable. While striving to be futuristic, the entries were, in reality, sublimely of the moment.

Greening Brookline: One Condominium Building at a Time

I live in a three story brick U-shaped courtyard condominium building. Built in 1940, there are aspects of old world construction that give the place its character like the hard wood floors, solid wood panel doors and archways between the rooms. There are also many "art deco" flourishes, such as pink and black bathroom tiles in many of the units, that owners have dealt with in a number of ways over the years. But there is a solidity and thickness to the walls, with their settling cracks and impenetrability that makes hanging art require a masonry drill bit, that you just wouldn't find in newer construction. All in all, for a 68 year old building, its doing pretty well.

For better or worse, 50 unit owners have made an investment in this place. We are stuck with the building and all its foibles and we are stuck with each other! For those of you who also live in a condominium, I know you are shaking your head in a knowing way. For nothing focuses the forces of democracy, nor reveals the depths of petty differences, quite like the joint ownership of ones' home!

Into this setting, comes the realities of climate change, peak oil, environmental concerns in general, and the need to rethink just about everything about how we operate. A similar scenario is being replayed at just about every other condo building large and small across town I am sure. In response, a small group of us have formed an ad hoc committee to tackle the "Greening" of our building. One or two trustees are members. Each of us has our pet issue. Natural lawn care, more recycling, energy efficiency, etc. The number one problem of course are the two extremely thirsty industrial-sized oil-fed boilers rumbling away in the basement. Since we all had to shell out a painfully large extra amount of cash just to keep the things fed this winter, we are in no position to hire "experts" or buy our way to any amazing solutions. No, this is a DIY operation, but we are gung-ho! Motivated and hoping to motivate others. Plus, we happen to know someone who is an "expert" who is equally gung-ho who offered to come take a look at our building gratis and to offer us an initial evaluation and suggestions (Thank-you Jim!).

First on Jim's list, of course, was the "low hanging fruit" of insulation. Our back doors need replacing or at least weather stripping and the single pane glass windows could be covered. Same goes for the bare water pipes in the basement and the skylights in the stairwells. We are planning an "Eco-day" fun work day, with refreshments to get this work done. A bit of camaraderie and elbow grease will be empowering, ultimately saving a bit of energy. Then of course there's the issue of windows. Some of the units purchased new windows as a group a few decades ago. Problem was, it was optional, so not all the units have them. It's unclear whether or not the Trust can mandate new windows, but at a minimum we are hoping for storm windows for everyone. The irony here is that our heating system is so uneven that some people freeze while others boil. So what you get are people opening their windows! even after they shut off their radiators. So, how do you justify sweating (no pun intended) the energy loss of the windows when you have this going on? Ultimately, we would be better off with individual heat/cool/hot water units, running on natural gas in each condo. These would be much more efficient and comfortable, but the conversion cost too high and the energy source not renewable.

We are looking into converting to natural gas, as an interim solution. It is at least cleaner, cheaper and domestic. The National Grid commercial sales rep and installation contractor have been positive and encouraging, as they run around like the energizer bunny trying to service the demand from all those beleaguered oil customers. Indeed, the entire Northeast's greatest and most pressing sustainability challenge is the need to transition from oil heat dependence. We are pushing hard to make this happen before the cold months return.

What about the roof? No one can agree about whether or not it lacks insulation. Should we get an official energy audit? But what really got us excited was Jim's vision of the future. Up on that big flat roof of ours, he saw solar panels that could capture the sun's energy to heat our hot water, (currently heated from those same oil-guzzling beasts). I'm hoping that next year is the year for solar here, as the State legislature has just passed its new energy bill. Included therein are provisions for both rebates, the ability to rent solar panels to own (minimizing capital outlay) and if we are lucky enough to generate extra electricity we can sell it to NStar! Solar panels proliferated across Germany once the government set the buy back price of energy high enough to make investment in the panels worthwhile. Jim told us that with the help of an electrician we could do some of the installation ourselves. We are eager to get started!

On the long-term horizon the vision gets interesting. Jim's idea? Geothermal, zoned for each unit, with solar augmentation. We have the unique advantage here of having a large courtyard where we could sink many wells. How feasible is this? We don't really know. There is one house in Brookline on Winchester Street that derives all its heating/cooling energy needs from geothermal, but it is essentially a newly constructed building.

Here is where our seven member group got into trouble. Suddenly, there were rumors running wild through the building that this group of eco-freaks were going to be assessing everyone immediately for a $1,000,000 geothermal energy system! Our manager declared he wanted nothing to do with us. The shrill emails flew and no one was being rational. Obviously we had a communications problem. Not too surprising. We only have one annual unit owners meeting a year, at the end of the year. No one knows what's going on. It's natural that fear and concern about such major decisions would cause anxiety and fear. So added on to our to-day list was getting every unit owners email and doing a newsletter. The newsletter can share all the research information we turn up, like our rate of recycling, or energy use statistics. We can educate and encourage. We talked about maybe needed a big meeting.

Many owners thought "going green" meant more expensive. Our objectives are focused on both short and long term cost control and adopting practices that will generate less waste, etc. To me, this lack of foresight and denial of reality is the most frustrating part of this. Doing nothing is not a neutral option, it is a recipe for continued waste, inefficiency, escalating costs and increased environmental damage. Any well thought out investment we make at this point to reduce our energy use or shift to renewable energy sources or remove harmful chemicals from our environment will have paybacks that far outweigh the cost. Even if you are not planning on living in your unit for long, which condo is more attractive to the potential buyer, the one that has got its energy needs secured for the future or the one at the complex that has buried its head in the (Middle Eastern) sand? Being able to market our building as a "green" building and have that actually mean something, will be extremely valuable to a great many people for a multitude of reasons.

Changing our cleaning or landscaping company to ones that use earth friendly practices and products could be challenging. We are just now researching our options. A significant obstacle in this regard will be the discounts given for multi-building contracts. Our management company manages many buildings. Being a lone wolf building with a new company could be difficult or costly or both, we shall see.

While we are trying to do as much as we can for ourselves, we are also hoping that as governments respond to the needs for energy evaluation and improvements there will be some assistance coming our way, both technical and financial. Until then, we will carry on, hopefully communicating and exchanging ideas to bring some positive changes. A clearing house of information between condo associations would be a useful thing, so we all don't have to re-invent the wheel!

Lessons from London

I had the great good fortune of attending a lecture given by Nicky Gavron, former deputy mayor of London at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge yesterday. Her topic? London's comprehensive climate action plan. There were many valuable lessons here, most notably, the importance of leadership. Several of us from Brookline were there, David Lowe, Cynthia Snow and Bruce Wolff that I recognized, perhaps there were others.

She began her talk with some sobering statistics. The climate change we are experiencing now in the form of climate disruptions, etc. is from emissions released in the 1950's! The persistence of greenhouse gases are impossible to mitigate. Next, she told us that what was 1 year's worth of emissions in the 1950's are now released in 6 weeks. In sum, we have less than one decade to stabilize our emissions to avoid catastrophic consequences.

This was the extent of the doom and gloom however, because Nicky is a doer. In fact I think she thrives on the challenge of it all and is, with her former mayor and the rest of her staff and constituency, succeeding in remarkable ways. Like all successful strategies theirs is a top down and bottom up strategy. Multi-faceted and interlocking. Complex and chaotic. Marshalling the forces of the law, persuasion, co-operation, education, experimentation, data-gathering, pricing and procurement, all in the service of reducing carbon emissions, their climate change plan has improved the quality of life for London's 7.5 million citizens and spurred a new economic prosperity. London has the fastest growing economy of all the G7 cities.

This didn't happen overnight of course. It began with the 1992 Rio summit. In 2000, London directly elected their mayor who came in with the mission and mandate to respond in a substantive way to climate change. The mayor is overseen by a council of 25 elected representatives. 14 of these are from geographical districts. 11 are at-large. Two points seem important about this. A strong mayor is essential to keeping everyone on point and councils should have a good number of at-large members. This later one is so because there needs to be a strong non-parochial voice speaking for the overarching goal of carbon reduction and the livability of the city as a whole. I won't go into the implications for Brookline of these two points here, other than to say they are both ideas that have relevance and are worth considering as we face the daunting challenges of the 21st century.

Nicky believes that with their plan they can achieve a 30% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2025. Their goal is a 60% reduction, which would be made achievable in their estimation if national policies included, carbon pricing, renewable energy investment and the removal of barriers (regulatory and practical) to local energy production. All this within the context of a population
increase of 1 million people.

Each listener had their own area of interest I am sure, and there was much food for thought. For me, I was eager to hear about their transportation and land use policies and practices. London has a strict green belt surrounding it, "hemming in" any future growth, (past foresight!) and has also adopted a policy of not building on any remaining open space within the core area either. Theirs is a strategy focused on co-locating transit access and development, "densifying" existing growth areas where transportation is available. Substantial investment in transit both from a "hard ware" point of view and on the customer service end of things preceded a highly successful congestion pricing plan. Now in its fifth year, the congestion pricing plan reduced the number of cars entering the center city by 36%. Congestion itself was reduced by 25% and an expansion of the program to the west is being considered. Significant reductions in accidents and pollution were realized almost immediately and retail sales figures have in fact grown in the core at twice the rate of the remaining area's average. I believe this must be because a less congested core is once again an attractive shopping destination.

Of those who previously drove 55-60% switched to buses or transit. There was no significant shift to off-pricing hours. There are many details that have made the program successful. A few key points are: 1) Draconian enforcement of the bus lanes, (no one parks in them, thus assuring decent service), 2) TDM is practiced at major employers, including personalized travel coaching , 3) All new revenues generated from the fees goes towards improving public transportation.

Ah, we here in the land of un-coordinated overlapping agencies, unplanned development and independent fiefdoms can, in many ways, simply look upon such logical and systematic action with longing and envy. But, hope does spring eternal. At the Q & A I had the opportunity to ask her if their transport strategies included any kind of co-ordinated parking measures. Here is what she said: 1) Well, it is incredibly expensive to park in London, I don't even know how much it is, because I haven't even tried it for so long. (Just the other night, our presenter, Jason Schrieber spent a great deal of time talking to us about parking as commodity, set the price right and travel mode choice will be altered, I would have liked to ask her if these were primarily private or public spaces), 2) Parking enforcement is a big issue in the boroughs (suburbs) out side of the charging border) where it must be strictly applied, (sound familiar?), 3) There are vast amounts of subterranean parking underneath London, (didn't get to ask her, but wondered if this was a result of the bomb shelters built in WWII?) so they could not really do much to limit parking, and 4) They are reviewing their parking requirements because they think they are too high especially for residential development in the boroughs where they are dismayed by the loss of yards to parking and have instituted a requirement for 10 sq. meters of open space per unit.

21% of CO2 are from surface transport in a city. Nicky then went on to tell us about the remaining 71% of emissions that come from buildings in cities and ways that they are tackling that. It almost all comes down to energy, mostly for heating and cooling. When I was putting together my talk about sustainable Brookline neighborhoods, I had the idea that the scale of our neighborhoods might lend themselves to small-scale energy production and distribution. Surprisingly, this is a keystone of the London Plan. The benefits to decentralism are multitudinous, including redundancy on the grid, ability to adapt technologies to specific environmental conditions, the potential of combined heat and power generation (where "waste" heat in the form of hot water is used locally), and energy savings from less loss in transmission, etc.

What was really exciting about their whole outlook on the energy technology front was that they took up the mantel of being the driver of innovation. By that I mean that they understood that because of the size of their city, they could, through requiring certain energy innovations such as levels of efficiency and on-site renewable energy generation etc. they could actually stimulate the market to innovate in order to meet that demand. She called it "leap-frogging". I think we would call it jump-starting. And she mentioned several times how we, in the Boston area are sitting in the hot bed of innovation and could surely benefit from just such an approach. Here, her faith in, at least the ingenuity end of things, is, I believe well put. By creating the market for the products, the government has secured the risk! Brilliant. Why wait for the 20 years the companies tell us it will take to make these things work, deploying the infrastructure for recharging, or refining endless prototypes, etc., etc. Here she has truly grasped the importance of the large cities, which , especially if they work in consort with one another, can play a huge role in combating climate change.

She mentioned too, the role for smaller cities, stressing that it is up to us. All the types of decisions that truly have an effect on CO2 emissions occur largely on the local level, such as: How energy efficient are our buildings being built and renovated? How well-coordinated are land-use and transportation decisions? What behaviors can individual households change to reduce emissions and how can we support those?

Most convincing was her belief in the fact that aggressively addressing climate change and thereby securing her cities energy security, mobility and prosperity, she was securing its long-term viability and livability.

For anyone wishing to learn more about London's Climate Action Plan here are some useful links:
The London Plan (the over-arching policy document)
http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/strategies/sds/index/jsp

The London Climate Change Action Plan:
http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/environment/climate-change/ccap/index.jsp

Congestion Charge Impacts Monitoring Fifth Annual Report (warning for data junkies only)
http://www.tfl.gov.uk.assets/downloads/fifth-annual-impacts-monitoring-report-2007-07-07.pdf

UN Climate Action Programme piece: (Excellent essay by Nicky about role of cities)
http://www.climateactionprogramme.org/features/article/the_role_of_cities_in_tackling_climate_change/

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