Kent Portney's "Our Green Cities" Blog

Recent book on local water policies and sustainability

Issues of potable water increasingly present major challenges to cities all around the country and the world.  A recent book, entitled Governing the Tap, by Megan Mullin, a political scientist at Temple University, is worth looking at. Directly comparing specific conservation, land use, and contracting policies enacted by different forms of local government, Mullin investigates the capacity of special districts to engage in responsive and collaborative decision making that promotes sustainable use of water resources. She concludes that the effect of specialization is conditional on the structure of institutions and the severity of the policy problem, with specialization offering the most benefit on policy problems that are least severe.  Taking a closer and more critical look at local, especially city, water policies is long overdue.  Hopefully, this book will usher in a period where we stop taking water policies for granted, and re-examine the use of special water districts to see how effectively they contribute to the overall sustainability of our cities and metropolitan areas.  I'm not making any judgments about this issue, but Mullin's book certainly raises a lot of important questions.  Since I expect that water issues will become the next wave of serious environmental problems to be confronted world-wide, such analysis is badly needed. 

New Book on Urban Open Space

Since issues of open space are so important to the idea of a sustainable city, you might be interested in a book written by one of the nation's experts on open space and published by the Trust for Public Lands.  Peter Harnik's book Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities, looks at ways that "built-out" cities can make commitments to adding green space.

The book's description says:

"Urban Green explores new and innovative ways for 'built out' cities to add much-needed parks. Peter Harnik first explores the question of why urban parkland is needed and then looks at ways to determine how much is possible and where park investment should go. When presenting the ideas and examples for parkland, he also recommends political practices that help create parks.The book offers many practical solutions, from reusing the land under defunct factories to sharing schoolyards, from building trails on abandoned tracks to planting community gardens, from decking parks over highways to allowing more activities in cemeteries, from eliminating parking lots to uncovering buried streams, and more. No strategy alone is perfect, and each has its own set of realities. But collectively they suggest a path toward making modern cities more beautiful, more sociable, more fun, more ecologically sound, and more successful."

I have always found Harnik's work to be very useful and insightful. 

Slate article on Nimble Cities and Car Parking

You might be interested in reading the recent posting by Tom Vanderbilt on his "Nimble Cities" blog and web site at Slate.  The central issue in this particular article involves the long-standing local policy of requiring a relatively large number of parking spaces to be set aside by developers whenever new development is being done.  The article does a nice job of tracing the origins and practices of this policy, and of highlighting some of unfortunate consequences.  Perhaps most important among these, from a sustainability point of view, is that the parking space requirement subsidizes the use of the automobile, and has the effect of influencing more people to drive than might otherwise be the case.  It cites some preeminent transportation scholars' work that documents the myth of "free parking." 

Of course, the transportation issues raised in this piece are really about the connection between local public policies and the ability of cities to try to become more sustainable.  It is yet another example of a set of policies that cities pursue that undermine any chance of trying to encourage people out of their cars. 

Vanderbilt's article didn't really get too deeply into the root causes of these policies, but it is clear that there are two political motivations for cities to enact and implement policies requiring large numbers of parking spaces.  The first is pretty obvious -- people want what they perceive of as free or low cost parking.  But the second is not so obvious.  Adding the parking space requirements to development ultimately increases the cost of development, and probably ensures that there will be less development.  And that, of course, is what the "no-growth, slow growth" sentiment that exists in every city really wants -- less growth of any kind.  Whether local policies can be changed in favor of more "smart growth" options in the face of such sentiment is a key political question.

Sustainability and the Green Economy in Dubuque Iowa

If you are looking for an example of what a smallish city (a little under 60,000 people) can do to develop a green economy and to pursue sustainability, take a look at Dubuque, Iowa.  Dubuque, like many other US cities, has struggeled with the loss of employment that has come with this nation's decision to de-industrialize its economy. With the firm guidance of Mayor Roy Buel and a very supportive city council, Dubuque has decided to invest heavily in building a green and sustainable economy. This has included attracting IBM into the city, both to provide jobs and to make major contributions to the city's effort to manage energy resources.  Check the city's sustainability web site for more information.

There was a recent story on PBS' Newshour, a story presented by Miles O'Brien, that highlighted these efforts.  Of course, O'Brien isn't particularly well versed in the broader issues of sustainable cities, but the report does a nice job of presenting the facts.  It also discussed some of the potential downside to this particular kind of sustainable development where a city tries to attract a high profile "anchor" employer -- in this case IBM -- with significant financial incentives.  The essential issue, not framed very well in this story, is whether the city might have been better off job-wise if it had decided to invest the SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY in existing local and locally-owned green businesses.  To view the PBS story, go to the Newshour web site.