#4 Solar Greenhouses

Growing tomatoes in a hydroponic greenhouse on a rooftop in West Garfield Park. It was audacious—and caught the attention of the New York Times, resulting in CNT’s first national press story (NYT subscription required).

Christian Action Ministry (CAM) was a faith-based community development organization on Chicago’s West Side. CAM ran a range of programs, including preschool and job training. For the late 1970s, they were on the cutting edge. When Scott Bernstein proposed building a rooftop greenhouse on their building at West Madison between Homan and Pulaski to increase local access to fresh fruits and vegetables, they embraced the idea enthusiastically.

A skeptical Christian Science Monitor took note, as well, observing that “this kind of urban self-help agriculture is very new. There is much excitement about the possibilities, but little proof of how things will work out.”

The CAM greenhouse was one of several built in CNT’s first two years. The most advanced was a 1,000-square-foot greenhouse attached to the First Presbyterian Church in Woodlawn, which still is in operation—proof that “this kind” of thing did work out on a community scale, despite the Monitor’s uncertainty.

The goal of the greenhouse project was to give people in neighborhoods the right tools and techniques to meet some of their basic needs—food, energy, jobs, etc. CAM’s greenhouse employed forty skilled workers to build the structure. Local teens and senior citizens tended the gardens, which produced 6,500 pounds of fruits and vegetables.

Today, this once cutting-edge idea is taking hold throughout Chicago. A new greenhouse was constructed in Garfield Park in 2011, and the City of Chicago recently announced its first agricultural plan to cultivate vacant land on Chicago’s South Side and transform them into urban farms.

Maybe we should call it “the audacity of zucchini.”

We’re celebrating CNT’s 35 years of impact on sustainable urban development through 35 weeks of posts like this one. If you have a story or picture from our past, please share it with Anjuli@cnt.org. Thanks!

CNT’s work is made possible, in part, through generous support from individual donors. Please click here to make a gift in honor of our 35th anniversary.

Next week: #5 Chicago Recycling Coalition

The strike, lasting 35 days, provided an ideal natural experiment demonstrating what one of the countries busiest metro areas would look like without transit services. Anderson found that during peak periods, delays caused by traffic on L.A’s major freeways increased by 47 percent or 0.19 minutes per mile. The delays were more pronounced on freeways that parallel major transit lines reinforcing the idea that transit provides a real alternative to car travel for millions of commuters. The working paper estimates that the benefit of transit in terms of traffic reduction for Los Angeles ranges from $1.2 billion to $4.1 billion per year.

These findings should cause anyone who argues that transit receives a disproportionate amount of transportation funding to think again. Of course, congestion mitigation is just one of the reasons to invest in train and bus services. Transit offers and affordable alternative to families and individuals who can’t afford to own a car. It connects communities to job centers strengthening the economy. It reduces greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution. If we’re serious about setting the country back on the path of sustainable and broad based economic growth, building and expanding our transit infrastructure will have to play a central role.

One reason for this is because the multifamily market has unique challenges that must be addressed in order to deliver effective programs. The good news is, we have a roadmap and there are partners along the way to help utilities capitalize on the enormous opportunity for energy savings that exists in the multifamily housing sector.

A new report we released along with the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), Engaging as Partners: Introducing Utilities to the Energy Efficiency Needs of Multifamily Buildings and Their Owners, examines the factors that contribute to effective energy efficiency program design for multifamily buildings and recommends strategies that can help utilities design and implement energy efficiency programs.

Here are recommended strategies, from the report:

1. Segment the Multifamily Market: Segmenting the multifamily market into several common local building types, ages, and split incentive structures will increase program efficiency and improve service.
2. Design Programs that Overcome Split Incentive Barriers: Overcome split incentive barriers (when building owners are responsible for investing in energy efficiency improvements, while tenants reap the benefits via lower energy bills) by pro­viding sufficient incentives to building owners.
3. Coordinate Gas and Electric Programs: Coordinate administration across utilities to simplify and speed up the process for multifamily building owners.
4. Choose the Most Appropriate Delivery Mechanism for the Program: Programs that are conve­nient and use trusted partners help educate potential custom­ers and break down barriers.
5. Integrate Comprehensive and Direct Install Solutions: Combine the two activities into one project to achieve economies of scale, create a single point of communication, and decrease disruptions.
6. Make Rebates Accessible and Easy: Convenience is an impor­tant determinant of participation.
7. Partner with Sources of Attractive Multifamily Financing: Consider a trusted financing partner and an opportunity to educate multifamily clients about efficiency upgrades when they seek other financ­ing.
8. Provide Follow-Up and Aggregated Building Energy Use Data: Quality control is critical to success, reducing rework and improving customer satisfaction.
9. Engage with Key Multifamily Industry Players: Collaboration with other organizations can heighten the impact of a multifamily energy efficiency program.

The other good news is that while building owners in many areas historically have not made energy efficiency investments a high priority, utilities can and have designed effective programs for the multifamily sector. Read the full report for case studies on some of these programs.

This report is a follow-up to an earlier report that introduced building owners and housing advocates to the utility sector.

This post was originally published on the CNT Energy blog.

#3 Deep Tunnel

Maybe we were just ahead of our time. In the late 1970s, the early days of CNT, we had the radical notion that multiple, smaller investments in infrastructure were better than a gargantuan, one-size-fits-all approach. It’s a concept that’s certainly more in vogue now, in fields from planning to engineering to fundraising. (Heck, just ask a certain former CNT board member about the impact of thousands of small donations…)

Back then, though, we were attempting to advocate our position as relative Davids in the face of a Goliath called “Deep Tunnel.” This time, David didn’t fare as well.

Photo: Chicago Tribune (Oct. 9, 1980)

The Deep Tunnel Project, officially known as the Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (TARP), was commissioned in the mid-1970s and billed as a solution to reduce flooding in the Chicago region and curtail the flow of raw sewage into Lake Michigan. As civil engineering projects go, Deep Tunnel was in a league of its own: a megaproject.

CNT was part of a larger coalition of organizations and individuals called the TARP Impacts Project (TIP), which initially came together over the proposed price tag of Deep Tunnel relative to its projected impact. The $7.3 billion budget translated to $4,000 per Chicago-area household, or over $100 million per neighborhood in the region. TIP, and CNT, believed that smaller, more affordable, and more direct actions could work as well or better than the pricy Deep Tunnel.

Construction on Deep Tunnel continues today, more than 35 years later, and completion may not be achieved until 2029. That’s still a ways off, but even back in April of 1978, the authors of The Neighborhood Works were already thinking ahead:

“Futurologists gazing into Chicago’s crystal ball today might see two alternative futures: the gray one of a region made bankrupt by poor planning and the ‘rainstorm bottle’ which TARP represents, or the ‘green’ future of working neighborhoods which the TIP project hopes to facilitate.”

The reality of 2013 is that we are somewhere in between those two alternative futures. However, it’s safe to say that, collectively, we have learned many lessons about the benefits of smaller, place-based solutions, like catching raindrops where they fall and other neighborhood flood reduction strategies. It may even be safe to say that our once-fringe ideas are now part of mainstream thinking.

In fact, at the national, state, regional, and local levels, stormwater management experts now wholeheartedly embrace the concept of stormwater green infrastructure. Ben Grumbles, Assistant Administrator for Water at US EPA noted in 2011 that, “Green infrastructure can be both a cost effective and an environmentally preferable approach to reduce stormwater and other excess flows entering combined or separate sewer systems in combination with, or in lieu of, centralized hard infrastructure solutions.”

Somehow, that doesn’t seem so deep.

We’re celebrating CNT’s 35 years of impact on sustainable urban development through 35 weeks of posts like this one. If you have a story or picture from our past, please share it with Anjuli@cnt.org. Thanks!

CNT’s work is made possible, in part, through generous support from individual donors. Please click here to make a gift in honor of our 35th anniversary.

Next week: #4 Building Solar Greenhouses in Food Deserts

In Boston, transit-served areas (transit sheds) outperformed the region by a staggering 129 percent. In Chicago, home values in transit served areas performed 30 percent better than the region; in San Francisco, 37 percent; Minneapolis-St Paul, 48 percent; and in Phoenix 37 percent.

Transit type had an effect on the stability of average residential sales prices, which benefited more from transit that was well connected and had a higher frequency of service. Stations with higher levels of transit access saw the most price resilience within and across regions. In addition to having higher frequency service and better transit connectivity, these stations also tend to be located in areas that are more walkable, have higher residential density, and better access to jobs.

In addition to more stable residential sales prices, data from CNT’s Housing + Transportation (H+T®) Affordability Index showed that households living in transit sheds had better access to jobs and lower average transportation costs than the region as a whole.

“This study reinforces the body of research indicating the benefits of robust, convenient, and affordable transit systems,” said CNT President Scott Bernstein. “What we see here is that residential proximity to transit not only reduces costs of living and lowers environmental impacts, it also translates to stronger household, municipal and regional economies.”

“Stable property values in areas with public transit access have a number of policy implications,” said APTA President and CEO Michael Melaniphy. “As Congress and state and local governments look for ways to accelerate economic growth, this study shows that investing in public transportation is a boon to revitalizing our economy.”

“We are excited to be able to present this initial research, and look forward to expanding it with further analysis using more datasets in more places,” said Bernstein. “This research has the potential to uncover the full value of transit on commercial and mixed use properties, as well.”

The New Real Estate Mantra: Location Near Public Transportation builds off of CNT’s groundbreaking research and publications on issues related to Transportation & Community Development, and Transit-Oriented Development.

Full report: The New Real Estate Mantra: Location Near Public Transportation

Appendix A

Appendix B

A few notes on the method:

• Transit station zones may be overlapping, due to proximity of transit stations. Transit sheds are the aggregate area covered by all transit zones. As a result, transit sheds are not an average of all transit station zones.
• While individual zones may overlap, properties are not double-counted in the transit shed.
• The Employment Access Index provides a measure of the quantity and proximity of jobs to a given place, not a simple measure of jobs per square mile.
• This examination of sales prices of all residential property types in aggregate provides an overall picture of how all residential sales activity contributes to the economy. This is a valuable reference for understanding the potential for value capture, tax revenue, and local investment.
• Averages sales prices, where available, are also broken out in the report for single-family, town homes, condos, and apartments.

#2 The Neighborhood Works

They were the days of disco. Saturday Night Fever was #1 at the box office. The BeeGees had two of Billboard’s Top 10 singles. Jimmy Carter, while not so “disco,” was president. Inflation was on the rise, and the U.S. was creeping towards the precipice of an unprecedented energy crisis. It was January, 1978.

In Chicago, a team of community activists led by Scott Bernstein, Jesse Auerbach, and Kathy Tholin launched an information service, in print form. It was designed to help neighborhood organizations, economic development groups, and individuals take action to improve the viability and health of communities. They called it The Neighborhood Works, and its spirit and influence are felt yet today.

The founding editors (Scott, Jesse, and Kathy) opened the inaugural issue with a welcome, a bit of a mission statement, and a definition of what “neighborhood technology” meant at the time and how it could be developed. In a way, it was the Google Reader or news aggregator of its time, compiling news stories, scientific research and DIY tips on topics from food to energy to housing to jobs.

Over the years, several committed individuals served as volunteers, artists, advisors, and editors. Their efforts were widely appreciated and remembered fondly. Mary Fran Riley, Vice President of Development & Communications at Accion Chicago, described how, “In days before the Internet, The Neighborhood Works was an invaluable source of information for those of us working in community development.”

Just as printed newsletters like The Neighborhood Works evolved into modern tools like listservs, user-groups, blogs, and tweets, CNT has evolved from clearinghouse and connector to researcher and innovator. Our work is as important as ever, and we can’t help but think about what we will be in another 35 years!

We’re celebrating CNT’s 35 years of impact on sustainable urban development through 35 weeks of posts like this one. If you have a story or picture from our past, please share it with Anjuli@cnt.org. Thanks!

CNT’s work is made possible, in part, through generous support from individual donors. Please click here to make a gift in honor of our 35th anniversary.

Next week: #3 Deep Tunnel

The invite-only conference, held at a former monastery on the Hudson River in New York, dug into the concept of resilience as it relates to cities in an era of changing climate and superstorms. Through panels, case studies, and workshops, the group looked at ways that local governments and civic organizations can strengthen neighborhood assets and connectivity.

Eric Klinenberg described how during both the Chicago Heat Wave of 1995 and Hurricane Sandy, neighborhood institutions, even informal ones, were a critical factor in the varying responses neighborhood-to-neighborhood.

Mindy Fullilove and the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance’s Eddie Bautista discussed the importance of considering the full historical context in neighborhoods of inequality, poverty, and the legacy of urban redevelopment when partnering to address climate change.

Chicago’s own Jennifer Hirsch highlighted the Chicago Community Climate Action Toolkit, which engages neighbors in developing climate solutions that meet the goals of the Chicago Climate Action plan along with the specific needs of their communities.

The group grappled with the role of local government in catalyzing behavior change, as well as how to support and enable individual climate actions while also providing systematic infrastructure improvements to enable more sustainable cities. The discussion underlined the importance of CNT’s work in creating and implementing place-based solutions on critical climate mitigation and adaptation issues in cities, including energy upgrades, sustainable stormwater management, and access to transportation alternatives.

In 2012, we conducted a study with the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) which shows that energy efficiency upgrades in multifamily buildings could save building owners and residents up to $3.4 billion annually. These upgrades help maintain affordable housing, decrease financial risk for lenders, and improve tenant comfort. But, building owners often have problems finding technical assistance, financing, or qualified contractors to upgrade their buildings.

The report finds that better coordination is the key to unlocking energy efficiency savings, and utilities and multifamily housing industry need to work together more closely to develop effective policies for that underserved building sector. For example, some states cap the investments that utilities can make in cost-effective energy efficiency, or limit programs to favor short-term savings over longer-term improvements like insulation and improved HVAC. The multifamily housing industry and utilities should work together to remove these limits and change policies to favor higher total savings.

This month, ACEEE released an assessment of the current landscape of multifamily energy efficiency programs in the metropolitan areas with the largest multifamily housing markets. (Click on the image below to see where your city stacks up.) The study found a total of 50 multifamily energy efficiency programs (some metro areas had multiple programs), but significant opportunities for improvement and growth.

The evidence all points to the need to expand utility customer-funded energy efficiency programs for multifamily housing. A new report out in late March also supports this argument – we’re partnering up again with ACEEE to release a study that gets at how the multifamily housing sector is different than commercial, industrial, or single-family energy efficiency programs and why utilities may get more bang for their buck if they focus on this important, largely untapped sector. Look for our report the week of March 25th.

This post was originally published on the CNT Energy blog.

#1 Scott Bernstein – Champion of Cities

Scott Bernstein started working in Chicago’s West Garfield Park neighborhood in the ‘70s and envisioned innovative strategies that could turn around this community. In 1978, he, along with Stan Hallett, co-founded the organization that would become CNT to stimulate creative solutions to neighborhood problems. CNT began with three projects: community greenhouses, opposition to the Deep Tunnel and the publication of The Neighborhood Works.

Scott has been a true champion of cities. His vision that “place matters” has made change happen, from the formation of the city of Chicago’s energy code, to piloting Location Efficient Mortgages, to putting forth an urban agenda that stresses housing and transportation affordability as the key to developing sustainable and livable cities. From his early days as an organizer on Chicago’s west side to testifying in front of Congressional committees, Scott has worked to improve the quality of life for all urban dwellers. For over 35 years, Scott has led the charge in demonstrating that cities and their people are assets in addressing economic and environmental challenges. Scott has been called a “Wizard” and was recognized as one of the 100 Urban Thinkers by Planetizen as a person who has made a difference in urban planning.

Read more about Scott’s leadership here.

We’re celebrating CNT’s 35 years of impact on sustainable urban development through 35 weeks of posts like this one. If you have a story or picture from our past, please share it with Anjuli@cnt.org. Thanks!

CNT’s work is made possible, in part, through generous support from individual donors. Please click here to make a gift in honor of our 35th anniversary.

Next week: #2 The Neighborhood Works