Growth by Ponzi Scheme

What follows, along with a link to the four other essays in the series, come to us from Strong Towns and should be provocative, to say the least! 

Read and tell me what you think!

The Growth Ponzi Scheme

 

We often forget that the American pattern of suburban development is an experiment, one that has never been tried anywhere before. We assume it is the natural order because it is what we see all around us. But our own history — let alone a tour of other parts of the world — reveals a different reality. Across cultures, over thousands of years, people have traditionally built places scaled to the individual. It is only the last two generations that we have scaled places to the automobile.

How is our experiment working?

At Strong Towns, the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization I cofounded in 2009, we are most interested in understanding the intersection between local finance and land use. How does the design of our places impact their financial success or failure?

What we have found is that the underlying financing mechanisms of the suburban era — our post-World War II pattern of development — operates like a classic Ponzi scheme, with ever-increasing rates of growth necessary to sustain long-term liabilities.

Since the end of World War II, our cities and towns have experienced growth using three primary mechanisms:

Read on here.

Opportunity "Green" Center!

What follows is a summation of the positive, sustainable impact of the new Opportunity Center on the community in which is resides. I love this stuff!  Just had to share! 

CitySquare Sustainable Talking Points

Site/Location

• The location of the building (south Dallas) and its operational activities; job training, food distribution, wellness center and community café, serve the community within which it is located, making great strides towards making the neighborhood a better place.

• Pollution from construction activities was reduced by controlling soil erosion, waterway sedimentation and airborne dust generation.

• The development was located on a site in an existing urban area in order to protect and preserve habitat and natural resources.

• Maximized open space on the site in order to maintain and promote bio-diversity within the natural habitat of the site, 30% of the site is vegetated open space.

• Helped to reduce the urban heat island effect by using solar reflecting materials on both the ground and the roofs of the buildings, helping to keep the building and surrounding areas cooler.


Water
 
 • Using low flow water fixtures increased the water efficiency within the buildings to use 23% less water than would normally be used in a building of this type and size. This reduces the burden on the municipal water supply and wastewater systems, saving approximately 44,000 gallons per year.

• Reduced potable water consumption for landscape irrigation by 59% by using low water landscaping and green irrigation practices. The project is expecting to save 394,000 gallons per year.
Energy & Atmosphere
• Through the use of a geothermal (ground source heat pump) energy system, and low energy use lighting and appliances a 18.6% reduction in energy usage is expected, or approximately 195,350 kWh/year. This is enough energy to power 17 houses in one year.

• The building monitors its energy use to make sure these planned energy reductions are consistently being achieved.

• Limited contribution of ozone depleting gases by not using CFC or HCFC (chlorofluorocarbon and hydrochlorofluorocarbon) based refrigerants in the HVAC systems of the building.

• Has encouraged the development, construction, and operation of new renewable energy resources in this state by purchasing 2 years of Renewable Energy Credits (REC) for the project.
Materials and Resources

• Has implemented a building-wide recycling program for paper, corrugated cardboard, glass, plastics and metals.

• Diverted 7.5 tons of metal, 26 tons of wood and 360 tons of concrete from the landfill during construction – recycling a total of 68% of all construction waste.

• Used materials throughout such as ceiling tile, solid surfacing and flooring with recycled content in them.

• Purchased materials locally when possible to cut down on transportation emissions and promote the local economy.

• Purchased Forest Stewardship Council certified wood to be used in the project, 45% of all wood used in the project (based on cost) was from sustainably managed forests.
Safe and Healthy Building
• Put in place a Indoor Air Quality Management Plan during construction in order to reduce the likelihood of indoor air quality problems.

• Used low-emitting materials to reduce the quantity of indoor air contaminants that are odorous, irritating and/or harmful to the comfort and well-being of installers and occupants. Materials included: adhesives and sealants, paints and other coatings, flooring systems and composite wood products.

• Tried to minimize building occupant exposure to potentially hazardous particulates and chemical pollutants by using walk off mats at all entry points and exhausting space where hazardous gases or chemicals may be present and using high efficiency filters that remove more contaminant particles from the air.

• Provided a high level of thermal comfort control for the individual occupants to promote productivity, comfort and well-being.

• Implemented an Organic Landscape Maintenance plan that outlines best practices in selecting, planting and maintaining the property landscaping. Including organic pest control and fertilization.

• Established and maintains a toxic material source reduction program to reduce the amount of toxic mercury brought onto the building site through purchasing of lamps.

Cut loose imagination. . .

CitySquare Online Store Opens!

At long last! 

The CitySquare Online Store is officially open for business!

Visit us here!

Share this good news with your network!

Join the fight against urban poverty in Dallas and beyond! 

Farmin' in the hood. . .sustainable, urban communities

Detroit: Model for urban redesign?

The work that urban designer Toni Griffin engages in these days is very interesting, challenging and nothing short of huge and amazing!  Thinking, working and organizing at this level is what it will take to renew the urban core of most American cities today.  After you've read the interview, let me know your reactions.  In my view, this is fascinating stuff.

Can This Planner Save Detroit?

Toni L. Griffin has just accepted a unique—and daunting—job: the reshaping of Detroit. She talks to ARCHITECT about population decline, urban ag, downtown’s revival, and more.
By: Fred A. Bernstein

Time magazine called Toni L. Griffin a “star urban planner,” which doesn’t have quite the same ring as “starchitect,” but properly describes the 46-year-old. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, where she still teaches, Griffin began her career in the private sector, working first for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) in her native Chicago. While at SOM, she helped turn the Renaissance Center, John Portman’s office and hotel complex in downtown Detroit, into General Motors Co.’s world headquarters.

From SOM, she went to work for the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation, focusing on planning and heritage tourism initiatives, and then to the Washington, D.C., planning office, where she oversaw redevelopment projects. From Washington, she moved to Newark, N.J., where, within three years, the planning office she rebuilt was winning awards—among them, an award from the New Jersey chapter of the American Planning Association for its work on sustainable infill housing guidelines.

This spring, Griffin signed on for what may be America’s toughest urban planning challenge: helping to remake Detroit, a city that has seen its population decline by half over 60 years. In September, Griffin helped Mayor Dave Bing’s administration launch the Detroit Works Project, a 12- to 18-month effort to map the city’s future. It began with a series of widely attended public forums.

A Manhattan resident, Griffin spends most of the week in an office in Detroit City Hall. In an arrangement that reflects the strong interest of philanthropists in Detroit’s future, her salary is paid by the Kresge Foundation (which has an endowment of over $3 billion). Rip Rapson, Kresge’s president and son of architect Ralph Rapson, is also giving the city funds for Griffin to hire a team of local, national, and international consultants, from the private sector and four Michigan universities. Several other foundations are expected to provide funding to support both the technical and civic engagement components of the project.

Author Fred A. Bernstein first met Griffin in 2004, when they were both participants in the Mayors’ Institute on City Design in Charleston, S.C. She spoke to him on a recent weekend from her apartment in Harlem.

How did the Detroit job come about?

When Mayor Bing began his first full term in January, leaders of the private sector were determined to help him tackle the extraordinary challenges facing Detroit. At the same time, Kresge and other foundations wanted to make sure their investments aligned with the city’s needs, both programmatically and spatially.

This leadership saw now as the opportunity create a shared vision for the city, across sectors and inclusive of broad civic engagement. I was asked to join the mayor’s team to assemble and manage a team to create this vision with members of his staff.

To read the entire interview click here.

Futuristic Housing New Orleans Style

Back in the November 2009 issue of The Atlantic, Wayne Curtis offered a great report on housing renewal in New Orleans since Katrina.  Worth taking a look.  Could be lessons for the entire country. 

Reactions invited!

Houses of the Future


Four years after the levee failures, New Orleans is seeing an unexpected boom in architectural experimentation. Small, independent developers are succeeding in getting houses built where the government has failed. And the city's unique challenges—among them environmental impediments, an entrenched culture of leisure, and a casual acquaintance with regulation—are spurring design innovations that may redefine American architecture for a generation.

To read the entire essay click here.

Small house: study in sustainability

Americans generally prefer large when it comes to their housing options. Our CityWalk @Akard project here in Downtown Dallas challenges some of those community assumptions and expectations with our very efficient studio apartments.

But here is a real stretch toward downsizing life in the pursuit of sustainability and economy, while at the same time maintaining a sense of excellence and beauty.

Would you live in such a house--96 square feet?

Walking Cities

What would city life be like if we could actually walk to most of the places we needed to visit during the day?  What if urban design moved in a direction that minimized the need for automobiles?  What if we actually found new and effective ways to really know each other again, all due to the manner in which our lived environments were designed and built?  What if renewed communities were built with this sort of human intentionality? 

Working downtown forces these questions on me.  How can I take the rail more often?  How about my bike?  Who are my neighbors out there on the street? 

Pursue these ideas visually with a simple click here. 

Cool and hope-filled visions! 

Billions of Drops in Millions of Buckets

Recently, I received a copy of a most provocative book by Steven H. Goldberg, Billions of Drops in Millions of Buckets:  Why Philanthropy Doesn't Advance Social Progress (John Wiley & Sons, 2009).  Clearly, this book is worth the attention of anyone involved in non-profit management, fund development and the delivery of high-impact approaches to addressing vexing social challenges. 

Goldberg, trained as an attorney, assembles the thinking of a wide variety of folks working to change the equity equations of our economy and our culture to benefit those who suffer in marginalized positions. 

For example, I love the definitions he digs up for the term "social entrepreneurship" (page xxv).

"Social entrepreneurs play the role of change agents in the social sector, by:  adopting a mission to create and sustain social value (not just private value), recognizing and relentlessly pursuing new opportunities to serve that mission, engaging in a process of continuous innovation, adaptation, and learning, acting boldly without being limited by resources currently in hand, and exhibiting heightened accountability to the constituencies served and for the outcomes created."  (J. Gregory Dees, "The Meaning of Social Entrepreneurship")

"A social entrepreneur is any person, in any sector, who uses earned income strategies to pursue a social objective, and a social entrepreneur differs from a traditional entrepreneur in two important ways: . . . their earned income strategies are tied directly to their mission. . . [and] social entrepreneurs are driven by a double bottom line, a virtual blend of financial and social returns." (Jerr Boschee and Jim McClurg, "Toward a Better Understanding of Social Entrepreneurship:  Some Important Distinctions")

"We define social entrepreneurship as having the following three components:  (1) identifying a stable but inherently unjust equilibrium that causes the exclusion, marginalization, or suffering of a segment of humanity that lacks the financial means or political clout to achieve any transformative benefit on its own; (2) identifying an opportunity in this unjust equilibrium, developing a social value proposition, and bringing to bear inspiration, creativity, direct action, courage, and fortitude, thereby challenging the stable states hegemony; and (3) forging a new, stable equilibrium that releases trapped potential or alleviates the suffering of the targeted group, and through imitation and the creation of a stable ecosystem around the new equilibrium ensuring a better future for the targeted group and even society at large."  (Roger L. Martin and Sally Osberg, "Social Entrepreneurship:  The Case for Definition")

What is your take away here?  I'd love to read your reactions.

Into the future. . .with impact

Thanks to the fact that we host a large AmeriCorps team (350 members), I was invited to attend the 32nd Annual Governor's Nonprofit Leadership Conference rolled out here in Dallas last week. 

I was particularly intrigued by the presentation made by Andrew Wolk, founder of Root Cause and noted social innovator and social entrepreneur. Wolk has a blog that's work checking out, as well.

As I say, Wolk's speech was important and provocative.  In it he outlines the characteristics of those innovative non-profit organizations that will be able to survive and achieve high level, social impact.  Here they are for your consideration:

• High impact organizaitons measure for continuous improvement.  Not for funders, not for data collection alone, not to justify their existence. . .but to improve and constantly.
• High impact organizaitons relinguish control.  Turning over power, sharing ideas, not worrying about credit or even funding, and staying true to mission and people--these commitments will characterize such groups.
• High impact organizations build bridges with government and the private sector.  Diversification and a willingness to cooperate across traditional dividing lines will be standard operating procedure for these organizations.
• High impact organizations focus on just that, impact, and always over ego. 

Helpful words from a leader worth heeding. 

Friday afternoon on Congo Street. . .

Just ended my week with a walk down Congo Street and the home rebuilding/refurbishing project that links Central Dallas Ministries' AmeriCorps team with Brent Brown's bcworkshop to literally rebuild an urban city block the way the residents decide it should be done.

Great success at the near completion of yet another house.

Wish you could have seen it.

To see an earlier experience on the street, use the Search tool above to the left. Just type in "Congo Street."

Amazing. Simple. Sustainable. Community directed.

Re:Vision Dallas Update

Take a moment to check out the video update on the Central Dallas Community Development Corporation's (CDCDC) Re: Vision Dallas project that would entail the sustainable redevelopment of the entire city block immediately behind Dallas City Hall.



Then, while you are at it, check out Charlie Gibson's report on housing in America on a recent edition of the ABC Evening News. Toward the end of the report you'll hear a mention of our project, as well as a quick image of it.



Love your reactions.

Re: Vision Dallas Reprise. . .

I'm so proud of the Central Dallas Community Development Corporation and of John Greenan that I've got to give you two more links to our big Downtown development design competition.

For more fun and inspiration click here and then, click here!

Clearly, the Central Dallas CDC has sufficient capacity to continue to make a real, measurable impact on the rational, sustainable and inclusive development of our Downtown area.

One more time, "Way to go, John!"

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Update on Re:Vision Dallas

You may recall my earlier report here (December 8, 2008) on the efforts of John Greenan, Brent Brown and our team at the Central Dallas Community Development Corporation to see an entire city block behind the Dallas City Hall redeveloped in a totally green, mixed-use and sustainable manner.

Working with Re:Vision, we created an architectural competition to come up with a winning design for the development.

Well, get this. One hundred seventy-five (175) architectural firms registered for the Re:Vision Dallas competition, and one hundred (100) firms from fourteen countries submitted entries. I find that to be an amazing outcome!

Here's the link to the winning designs.

You can find more detailed information here.

And, then, check out the video below that gets at the basic concept in community re-design and development.

Exciting stuff!

And, for one more report on the effort, take a quick look here.

Justice in community planning and development

Majora Carter is an amazing young woman.

People who have a hard time understanding what we mean when we talk and write about "systemic justice" need to spend some time with this brilliant community leader.

Most of us have no clue what the residents of low-income communities go through on a regular basis. As a result, we don't give the negative forces their due and we write off and past the reality facing poor friends who are made and kept poor by bad, unjust, at times evil public policy.

Give Ms. Carter a listen. You'll learn something very important if you do.

Pay special attention to what she calls "triple bottom line."

Will look forward to your reactions.

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Responsible investing

Al Gore just won the coveted Nobel Peace Prize.

I am aware that Mr. Gore is a fairly controversial fellow. He did win the popular vote in the 2000 election for President before losing the Electoral College count. No reason to go down that path any further! This is not about politics or personalities.

Last week I opened my on-line McKinsey Quarterly to find an interview with Gore and his business partner, David Blood. I found this conversation most interesting and commend it to you.

Is there a way to do business with an eye and a heart for the social good?

In other words, can a person do well while paying attention to doing good?

Here's the McKinsey introduction to the interesting interview:

As McKinsey research indicates, executives around the world increasingly recognize that the creation of long-term shareholder value depends on a corporation’s ability to understand and respond to increasingly intense demands from society. No surprise, then, that the topic of socially responsible investing has been gaining ground as investors seek to incorporate concepts like sustainability and responsible corporate behavior into their assessments of a company’s long-term value.

Yet socially responsible investing has always been an awkward science. Early approaches simplistically screened out “sin sectors” such as tobacco. Subsequent evolutions tilted toward rewarding good performers, largely in the extraction industries, on the basis of often fuzzy criteria promulgated by the corporate social-responsibility movement. These early approaches tended to force an unacceptable trade-off between social criteria and investment returns.

Three years ago, former US Vice President Al Gore and David Blood, previously the head of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, set out to put sustainability investing firmly in the mainstream of equity analysis. Their firm, Generation Investment Management, engages in primary research that integrates sustainability with fundamental equity analysis. Based in London and Washington, DC, Generation has 23 employees, 12 of them investment professionals, and a single portfolio invested, at any given time, in 30 to 50 publicly listed global companies.

For the entire interview, check out the link below. You'll have to go through a simple registration process, but, in my opinion, it will be worth your time.

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Strategy/Strategic_
Thinking/Investing_in_sustainability_
An_interview_with_Al_Gore_and_David_Blood_2005

I'd love your feedback on this one!

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