Tools to Fit the Task (Ecocities, Chapter 10)

Chapter 10 presents several action-oriented tools to begin envisioning and implementing the ecological city. To summarize, they are:

1. Ecocity Zoning (EZ) Map: In contrast to a traditional zoning map, the EZ map attempts to overlay a city’s ecological, historical, agricultural, nodal, and transit-oriented features in order to determine the most logical and desirable ways to guide development. When the base layer of the EZ map is complete, the urban centers are identified and concentric circles of declining density are drawn around them. The centers, or bullseyes, get upzoned (targeted for increased density), and the very outermost ring gets completely downzoned (targeted for eventual return to wilderness). In the next iteration, the rings begin to deform, either flattening or bulging in response to the incursion of nature—waterways, green zones, etc. The result is a map that shows the potential links between high-density centers and the desired discontinuities where nature can be reintroduced.

2. Transferral of Development Rights (TDR): A practice already activated in some communities, TDR allows real estate owners in areas where development is permitted but not desirable (according to an EZ map or some other planning tool) to sell their development rights to a developer who will use them to get a density bonus in a highly-desirable development location. An example would be a farmer in a designated greenbelt selling his or her rights to an apartment developer in the city center who would like to build eight stories instead of six. In this way, individuals are not stripped of their land rights or values, but can sell them at a profit and maintain or restore the natural integrity of their land.

3. Ecological General (EG) Plan: As opposed to the commonly seen, plain-vanilla comprehensive or general plan evinced by many cities today, the EG plan seeks to adopt the above policies (and other ecocity practices) into the city-planning rhetoric. Armed with the above tools and other ideas, citizens petition the government to formally espouse and adhere to a plan that is long-range and integrates city and nature.

My response: Richard Register does come off as a bit wacky at times (what was that about the roller-skate powered ambulance gurneys?), but this chapter was chock-full of solid ideas that actually stand a chance of getting implemented. The Leopold Bloom-like (a Ulysses ref for all you Joyce fans out there) mental wanderings described in the act of creating the EZ map seemed a little hokey, but the gist of it was to become super well-informed about the natural and economic forces that have shaped your town, and how they might be used to re-envision it. I dig it.

The most polemical idea was that in the outer rings, unfill development (as opposed to infill) would occur—meaning depaving, removing infrastructure, and razing buildings. This notion is of course all tied in with densifying the city, evil cars, peak oil, and the like—and I think most rural homeowners would reach for their shotguns if anyone propositioned them with the idea—but I personally found it very compelling. (And come to think of it, I am a rural homeowner.) Still, if peak oil occurs at a time before any viable alternatives have been implemented, it’s hard to say what people will be willing to do. I don’t see my out-of-shape neighbors embracing the idea of biking five hilly miles to town: they very well could be convinced to move their trailer within walking distance and–who knows?—in a few years rent an apartment in town.

Moving on, TDR is by far my favorite idea. I have only ever seen government-sponsored sale of development rights, where the state or municipality essentially pays a landowner to amend their deed in order to prohibit any future non-agricultural uses, but I really loved Register’s private-market conception of this. It is increasingly difficult for developers to build very dense projects in a city, due to zoning fights and the cost of construction. A taller building means more leasable area, ergo a more profitable project which can offer better amenities like green roofs, graywater recycling, non-VOC materials, etc. I thought it was a pretty damn good idea.

Finally, the need to codify these measures and set the parameters for change is essential, but perhaps the greatest challenge. Simply working on the Caroline project has opened my eyes to the deep-seated resistance to change felt by so many citizens. To wit, Caroline has a comprehensive plan that call for walkable communities, preservation of farmland, and so on, but if the town council started trying to adopt policies that were construed as freedom-limiting, the people would flip out; they can’t even get a noise ordinance passed. I can only imagine the hysterics that most ecocity recommendations would engender if they were raised in most towns and cities across the country.

One last thought: Register’s descriptions of progress are incredibly dynamic, filled with lots of goings on and hustle-bustle. But unless you are in a pretty large metropolitan area, growth is moderate to slow, which also means opportunities for change are moderate to slow. Unless there’s a lot of building activity and/or population growth, eight-story buildings are not going to be dotting the city skyline anytime soon. The City of Ithaca issued less than 60 building permits in 2004, and most of those were for renovation, not new construction. Register recognizes the challenges of effecting this sort of dramatic transformation in a short period, but nonetheless says we should pursue it aggressively. I wonder, what is truly a realistic timeframe for this sort of reimagining?