News for January, 2006
Thursday, January 26th, 2006
Today, the Brookings Institution released a brief authored by CNT and the Center for Transit Oriented Development CTOD that presents a unique framework for understanding housing affordability. The framework is based on a new measurement tool developed jointly by CNT and CTOD, the Housing and Transportation Affordability Index, which prices the trade-offs that households make between housing and transportation. Put another way, it puts a price tag on the savings derived from living in transit-rich communities that are near shops, schools and jobs.
The brief follows a well-attended and engaging session on KnowledgePlex last week. The audio for the session can still be accessed if you are a registered KnowledgePlex user.
Read the brief, The Affordability Index: A New Tool for Measuring the True Affordability of a Housing Choice. And then, reconsider what “affordable” housing really is.
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Monday, January 23rd, 2006
In a report released today, CNT and the Center for Clean Air Policy show the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions likely to result if current plans for high speed rail development in the federally designated high speed rail corridors come to fruition. On a corridor by corridor basis, the authors calculated the net carbon dioxide CO2 emissions savings from passengers switching to high speed rail from other modes, based on corridor-specific passenger projections and diversion rates and typical emissions rates for each mode of travel.
The authors estimated a total emissions savings of 6 billion pounds of CO2 per year nationally, largely from cancelled automobile and airplane trips. Between corridors, however, total emissions savings and the source of those savings varied greatly by corridor. In some regions, such as the Midwest, the authors estimated that total emissions savings was likely to be modest, while in California it was likely to be significant.
Read the full report, High Speed Rail and Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the U.S.
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Thursday, January 19th, 2006
The organization that certifies green buildings, the U.S. Green Building Council USGBC, has officially granted CNT “Platinum” certification. Platinum is the highest certification USGBC grants under its LEED Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green building rating system. CNT’s building is only the thirteenth in the country to have received it.
Improving the efficiencies of buildings, especially those that are already built, is one important strategy for improving the sustainability of our cities. Presently, the building sector is a massive end-user of energy and raw materials. Through this retrofit, we wanted to show that creating a high performance green building does not require bottomless pockets and it does not require a new building. Old buildings like ours, on small sites in dense urban neighborhoods, offer great potential.
Thus far we are happy with our results. We achieved our renovation at a cost on par with a conventional renovation, about $82 per square foot. On top of that, the building is about 52 percent more energy-efficient than a typical building designed to Chicago energy code ASHRAE standards, which should yield CNT some economic benefits, especially if energy prices continue to rise. Green is not just good for the environment. It also pays.
Read the story of the building and the press release. View our LEED scorecard.
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Friday, January 13th, 2006
On Thursday January 19 @ 2:00 EST, CNT and Reconnecting America unveil a new tool that shines a different light on housing affordability.
The traditional measure of whether or not housing is “affordable” is if it accounts for 30 percent or less of a household’s monthly budget. But how relevant is that measure today, when the second largest budget expense for the average household, after housing, is transportation?
We set out to develop a tool, the Housing and Transportation Affordability Index, which would uncover the hidden cost of transportation embedded in our housing. After all, it’s the cost of housing and transportation that is a more meaningful measure of how much we can afford than housing alone, and, as we found out, the kind of community in which we live and where it’s located often determines how much we need to drive and how many cars we need to own–and therefore how much we need to spend on transportation.
Join CNT and Reconnecting America for an online discussion sponsored by the
Urban Markets Initiative of the Brookings Institution to learn more about this tool. Log in to KnowledgePlex on January 19 @ 2:00 EST.
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