Author's Forum on Urbanism: The Urban Fix

All right. Good. Hello everyone and welcome to On the Park Bench, a public square conversation brought to you by the Congress for the new urbanism. On the park bench presents interactive conversations with thought leaders in new urbanism and allied industries providing an opportunity for the audience to engage in real time. Uh the webinar series is a platform for CNU members to engage, debate and collaborate on pressing issues of the day. The author's forum is a series within the on the park bench webinars that discusses recently published books by urbanists of or of interest to urbanists. The producer is Dro Tadani, architect and urbanist. Today's on the park bench webinar is an author's forum. It is the urban fix resilient cities in the war against climate change, heat islands and overpopulation. Uh we are joined by author Doug Kilba and we'll later be joined by uh CNU co-founder Peter Calfor. If you have thoughts on on the park bench, you can share those at www.tinyurl.compb feedback. And we also have some upcoming webinars. On Tuesday, March 1st, we have architecture and the edges of public space that will discuss the role of architecture in shaping public space and the lessons for policies and practice. And then on Tuesday, March 8th, we have new urban development in Oklahoma infill a new town with CU30 upcoming in Oklahoma City on March 23rd through March 26th. We take a sneak peek at two communities that are really worth seeing and for both of these at cu.org and also we have upcoming our annual congress CNU30 Oklahoma City. This will be CNU's first in-person congress since 2019. Uh, you can learn how a commitment, a clear commitment to urbanism, careful financing, and resident engagement can spark a city's renaissance. You can learn more and register at cnu.org/cnu30. And while you are there, you can also join or renew your membership. Uh, become a current member, and you can save up to $200 off your CNU30 registration. Check out your membership status today at members.cnu.org. org/memberships. So today we are joined by professor Doug Kilba. He is the author of the urban fix. Uh he received a BA magna cumlaude and a masterers of architecture from Princeton University and then led Calb and Lee from 1977 to 1985 an architecture firm that won 15 design awards and competitions. While architecture chair at the University of Washington, he was principal in Kelbal Caler and Associates. At the University of Michigan, Doug served as dean of Talman College of Architecture and Urban Planning between 1998 and 2008. Then as vice president of design and planning for a large development company in Dubai, working on major projects in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Europe, and Africa. Returning to full-time teaching in 2010, he was awarded the 2016 Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education. He authored or edited numerous books, most recently The Urban Fix. The interviewer today is Peter Calor. In 1983, Peter founded the award-winning firm of Calorp Associates devoted to sustainable urban design and planning globally. Throughout his career in urban designing and architecture, he has been a pioneer of innovative approaches to urban revitalization, community planning, and regional design for his contribution to redefining the models of urban and suburban growth. He was awarded Urban Land Institute's prestigious JC Nichols Prize for visionaries in urban development in 2006. He is one of the founders and the first board president of Congress for the new urbanism. His work has expanded to include major projects in urban, new town and suburban settings within the United States and abroad. And I am Lauren Mayor. I am the communications manager here at Congress for the new urbanism. This book is the urban fix. Cities are one of the motors to clim global climate change. The rapid speed at which urban centers use large amounts of resources adds to the global crisis and can lead to extreme local heat. Doug Kilba Kilbaw's book, The Urban Fix: Resilient Cities and the War Against Climate Change, Heat Islands, and Overpopulation, addresses how urban design, planning, and policies can counter the threats of climate change and urban heat islands. helping cities take full advantage of their inherent advantages and new technologies to catalyze social, cultural, and physical solutions to combat the epic he faces. This book is invaluable to anyone searching for a better understanding of the impact of resilient cities in the monumental and urgent fight against climate change and provides the tools to do so. Please note that Doug will be providing a discount code for this book at the end of his presentation. So now I'm going to turn it over to Doug who is going to give a brief presentation followed by a discussion with Peter and a Q&A from the audience. Uh please remember to use the Q&A function of Zoom to ask your questions as they occur to you. All right, Doug. And now I'm going to share your presentation. Okay, take it away. So, Lauren, can you get my I may be saying I may have to say forward. We'll see if I can forward it. Anyway, I Okay. Uh that's if you could go back about three slides, four slides right there. Okay. Well, that's the title of the lecture in the book. Forward next. So, human settlements are just as natural as a colony of prairie dogs or a bed of oysters or a hive of bees. People watching in cities is as much about nature as bird watching in the countryside. Unlike organisms like animals, plants, or corporations that have to die, they don't live forever. Ecosystems don't have such a finite lifespan. Nor do cities. Think how old Cairo, Rome, and Jerusalem are next. Oh, I can do that maybe. All right. Um, they have huge footprints though. eco footprints, carbon footprints, um you name it. So, how can they be green in ecological terms? You're going to have to go next. I can't do it. Well, look at this important slide. If you look at the top 2010, 12 years ago, uh this is energy consumption. Urban is the green 66% rural 34%. By 2040 they're estimating that about 80% of all the world CO2 will be produced in cities versus the countryside which with about 20%. Uh they're projected to get worse next. So this is a term I coined the environmental paradox of cities. Next and uh this is it in a nutshell. This is uh seal carbon dioxide emissions per person. It happens to be Toronto. So red is the suburbs and rural hinterland, the low density areas. purple, I'm sorry, red. The upper bar is low density areas and the lower bar is high density areas. So red is transportation which is obviously much higher and low density areas. But building operations are also more expensive because freestanding buildings take more energy to heat, light, and cool. And then green is the materials. The energy goes into the materials to actually build those buildings. There's more in the bigger buildings in suburbia. Whereas highdensity area has a lot less transportation and because you share walls, floors and ceilings, you need less energy to heat and cool your unit. And lastly, more compact construction, higher density development means you there's less energy in the materials. Next. So, we're going to talk about the urban heat island, which results from the buildup of sensible heat. That's heat you can feel from hot tail pipes and from chimneys and from dark surfaces that get heated up by the sun. It's nothing to do with global climate change. It has nothing to do with the greenhouse effect. It's a local phenomenon. Next. Next. Okay. So, there's a double whammy living downtown. You have the greenhouse effect that's affecting the whole planet and then you have the heat island effect on top of it. Next. So these these impacts of heat are are mult multiple you have direct impacts but you have more vectorbor disease. It's tougher on children and pregnant mothers. Does affect mental health, lowers worker productivity and even affects nutrition. Next. Next. Look at the surface temperatures across this metro area. Downtown on the left, inner city neighborhoods, then outer city neighborhoods and suburbia in the countryside. dramatic difference here is here it is in terms of temperature urban being red shows how cities are getting hotter since 1960 here and uh how the countryside's getting hotter too but there's still a delta thanks next look at the Philadelphia street here uh Philly is getting hotter and wetter due to climate Some neighborhoods can be as much as 20 22 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than others for lack of trees and a lot of dark surfaces. If you look here on the far left, it's 84 under that tree and then in the middle it's 116 in or 17 in the street, 112 on the stoop, etc. Next. So, darker pavements on the left don't reflect much light. That's sunlight. Whereas lighter pavements do. That's a big difference. Four to one. Next. So, I'm going to go through four strategies to reduce and prevent heat islands. One is generally referred to as albido enhancement which simply means lighter color roofs, pavement and walls. Next, so one thing is we got to make roads less wide. This is a street in Ann Arbor I used to bike on regularly. And first of all, they could depave the parking strips and put gravel in. But this is a quiet little neighborhood. A lot of asphalt that's absorbing heat, plus using a lot of resources to build and maintain. Next, so white paint, you can't beat that. The simplest passive solar technology. Uh it reflects four times as much as a as a typical dark gray black roof. Um this is really good news. Next, now another way is to have less heat from tail pipes, jimmies, and air conditioners, as I mentioned. Um, and this has a lot to do with having better air conditioners because they're spreading like wildfire over the planet. Um, we have to get better at making air conditioners next, which is not easy. Uh, and then we need a lot more curve space for all sorts of ride hailing and ride sharing services to drop off, pick up passengers, a little bit like an airport. Uh, Peter's a real expert on this. Next, and less air conditioning, as I said, because air conditioning pumps actually hot, sensibly hot air into the street. Um so to deal with heat waves made more frequent by climate the number of AC units is expected to more than triple worldwide by 2050 as well as guzzling huge amounts of electricity. AC units contain refrigerants that are very potent greenhouse gases. There is refrigerants in fact are the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in every country on the planet. Next. I think this is Singapore we're looking at here. Next, Lauren. Next. Thirdly, we need to open up street and building canyons to ventilating winds next. So, here's a here's a urban section, might be called Street Canyon. You've obviously got the lower the pavement and sidewalk on the lower level, and then you got the vertical walls on either side and the rooftops of those buildings next. So, it's a heat trap. heat these the heat builds up to the extent that they're actually tearing down some buildings in Beijing where I've been re not that long ago to get more air uh moving through. Now they're trying to get rid of air pollution which is pretty bad. But the truth of the matter is it's also helping on climate change and getting rid of hot air next tearing down buildings. And lastly, and maybe most relevant, cool microclimates. Basically, trees uh to shade, filter, cool the air, and doing lots of other wonderful things. Next, uh this is a list of things that trees do that are beneficial that I've developed over the years with my students. I'm not going to go through them, but you can see they do a lot more than sequester carbon dioxide. I mean, they and produce oxygen and provide shade. They do lots of other wonderful things. They're great assets, great allies, great multitaskers. Next, here's some trees from Savannah, Georgia on the right, taken at the CNU about 10 years down 10 years ago. Uh, and I believe that's uh Central Park on the right. Yeah, it is. James Lovelock. Earth may be alive, but alive like a tree. A tree that quietly exists, never moving except to sway in the wind, yet endless conversing with the sunlight and soil. Next, look at the difference between the city in Argentina and San Juan, Puerto Rico. You can imagine how much cooler the one is on the left. Next, here's some trees in um Saigon where Peter spends a lot of time. Really big trees on the left and that's uh in Buenus Aries on the right. Actually, that's the cover photo from my book. Uh, urban tro urban trees actually grow bigger than a forest because they have less competition. Um, and their shade does all sorts of things u mitigating climate change much more effectively in cities than non-urban trees in the countryside. Trees in metro Chicago provide an estimated $350 million of value in annual carbon storage. the estimated value of its street forest, its canopy is over 50 billion and a major insect infestation is a serious issue um on many levels. Next, these are real estate values in Portland, Oregon. It's a Columbia River on the upper on on the top. And it just shows that if you have a tree in front of your house, you add value to its sales price. Now, this is an old number. It's probably two or three times that. Now, the different if you have a tree and and if you're in a treeline street with lots of trees, you're the values goes up well over $50,000. Now, next, so we have to plant trees. And this is a search where if you actually plant trees uh you get some uh free searches on the web. Next, Eosia. So, here's a little review of why cities are so important. I mean, obviously, we have to deal with climate change. It's the greatest challenge ever to face humanity. And we all know about mixeduse walkable transit serve cities that CNU has championed. um they have lower carbon footprints per per capita and the bigger the city the denser the city the better cities also dampen birth rates which lowers human remains total carbon foot this we don't have time to talk about that today but people who move from the countryside to the city have fewer kids as urban eons get hotter they deter people from moving to or staying in cities this is a problem uh we want people in cities for the reasons stated above addressing this is good news addressing urban he simultaneously addresses car climate change and I argue in my book because urban heons are more immediate and a more manageable problem than climate change which is a 50 to 100year problem versus a 5 to 10 year problem they can be they can more compellingly motivate people to act on climate change so cities may be our last best hope I think I have another slide or too. Next. Yeah, if you uh when you go to Routage Press online, which is part of Taylor and Francis, if you use capital SOC19 at checkout, you'll get a 20% discount on the book. I am done, Peter. I don't see I'm here. I'm here. Well, um, I'd like to start off by trying to explain what you're talking about a little bit. The book is one of the most comprehensive looks at the um, you know, the ergonomics of cities in terms of the environment that I've ever looked through. It's a very comprehensive approach. And so actually the heat island component of it is just one small piece. So it's a great uh summation of a lot of what we think of as urban urbanism. I wanted to actually Thank you. What? Okay. I wanted to direct our disc uh our discussion a little more into a a broader range because I I think there's been some debate now about uh adaptation versus um conservation and renewables. uh and I think this is actually a third major uh issue but in the adaptation range uh there's no question in my mind that we have to do all of them. I've been doing a master plan for Ho Chi Men City. Uh, and you know about a third of the city is already underwater and as they plan forward looking they're they're inhabiting more and more lowland. So there's a sensibility about where development should happen which is another uh layer to what urbanism and new urbanism always talked about which is where not what but where should we grow and I think transitorient development began to think about that at a regional scale. We had endless debates about urban growth boundaries. Um so the wear of cities uh I think is an important discussion item. Um adaptation and what you're talking about in terms of heat island is is terribly important. Uh it you know the heat will kill people in the not too distant future. Uh and benign solutions I always call them the passive solutions. trees, urbanism. These are the things that reduce the problem before it gets to the stage that it has to be mitigated. Um, but I I want to throw one other in here that maybe out out of left field for you and maybe the rest of this crowd, which is I'm now of the mind that at the same time that we reduce carbon emissions with urbanism in all the ways that we you've documented in your book, um, I think we're going to have we're in for geoengineering. uh and the same mentality of saying albido matters, reflectivity matters in cities, actually it matters at the scale of the planet. And I think only one the only one of the ways that we're going to see our way through this mess is by actually injecting aerosols uh into higher atmosphere environments and reflecting sunlight before it actually gets to the planet. So there's an interesting matrix of issues here. Um maybe you want to comment on any and all of this uh well you know geoengineering uh will play a role. I don't think we're quite ready for it for a couple reasons. A we have a lot more mitigation and adaptation we can do but it's going to happen and we will be seating the skies. The problem is geopolitical. You know, a country that puts up aerosols may heavily affect another country's climate that doesn't have a problem and vice versa. So, because it's hard to predict where these clouds will end up and how white they'll be and so on. It's geopolitically probably going to be a nightmare, but we'll probably have to do it anyway. You know what's fascinating about your thought there is that um one of its benefits and problems is that you know Elon Musk himself could just go and do it. I mean it doesn't even take a country. Uh it's actually an incredibly Yeah, that's right. You're absolutely right. I mean there was at one point they dumped some sulfide in the waters off southern Alaska or British Columbia and you know the local Indians Native Americans were upset that affected their fishing and it's whether it's in the ocean or the air it's it's geopolitically complex. Yes. and so is climate change. We're uncertain exactly what its manifestation is going to be in which climate zones and which uh ecologies, but we are certain that it's going to have an impact on every single one. Yep. No, climate change is pervasive as I described it. It's the greatest challenge ever to face humanity. much bigger than World War II because it's much more pervasive uh and much more interconnected to lots of other issues. Um it's going to be a a difficult ride for our children and frankly a horrible ride for our grandchildren. But let's go back to your or my roots which was passive solar uh in buildings and you know as urbanists we tend to maybe ignore look past the incredible strides that architects have made with energy efficiency in buildings and the degree to which that energy efficiency ends up not being about mechanics. It ends up being about daylight, natural ventilation, uh buildings with intelligent uh facades that shade in appropriate ways, uh a whole range of things that make the built environment better. I think the same can be said of of adaptation and mitigation in cities. Um actually, excuse me. I mean, Peter and I go back to the passive solar movement. We met in the mid70s because we were both doing some of the early pioneering work in that field as we later did for the new urbanist movement. Um been involved in the on the front edge of two very important movements. Um we were doing passive solar houses. I did a so-called traum wall in Princeton, New Jersey, the first one outside of Europe. and it was in a hundred books and magazines and it launched my career and passive solar launched Peter's career which is even more illustrious than mine. So I we owe a lot to those roots and we learned passive is an important word. It wasn't about putting solar collectors or PV collectors on the roof. It was about using, as Peter said, fenestration, dealing with glass that faces east, west, and and south in different ways and with overhangs and shade and with mass, thermal mass, whether it's in a greenhouse or a traum wall or direct gain building to store the heat because the big thing is the flywheel. You got to get the heat from the daytime into the night when you're asleep. So you need some thermal time lag and yeah, you know, you need thermal mass for that. Um anyway, it was a very interesting episode that ended for me when I moved to Seattle because climate was not such a big deal in Seattle as as in New Jersey. Um but the passive solar movement is well it's not a movement anymore but p I mean go to this American southwest it's just full of passive solar houses Colorado it's it's simply about passive solar buildings now with lead and uh you know for example title 24 in the state of California which sets energy performance standards all of a sudden architecture has gotten a lot more intelligent Um, and I think more urban potentially than ever before. And I I think this idea of passive versus active, even though passive is a bizarre word, you know, one approach seeks to reduce the problem before it emerges, i.e. red, you know, conserves energy before you have to build a collector. Um, by being more in tune with the environment. uh and and urbanism is in that same category. It just reduces VMT before you get to the question of is it electrical or not and where is the electricity coming from. Um you know so I think we've always been in this uh you know mutual world with that fundamental strategy. Um but you know the other thing your book does is which is why new urbanism Yeah. Um, the other thing your book does is it it's pretty metricheavy and I I know that there's a an endless debate about aesthetics versus and and the kind of so what you can measure and what you can't measure. Um, I've always, you know, I've always been a both and kind of person, which is that you need to do both. if you're advocating for urbanism or if you're advocating for uh climate change mitigation or even if you're advocating for adaptation strategies. So, um can you say a little more about the depth of research that you went to in this was kind of extraordinary. Yeah, I know. I I I had a a sbatical at Cambridge University and I spent six months researching the book and a year and a half writing it. It's a lot of work. I find the metrics are important. Um uh I think though the bigger issue is is as you describe it and what I like about new urbanism is that it is dealing with this bigger issue of urbanism and land use and and density. I mean, after all, dense places, as that chart showed in my slide presentation, it's less energy to heat, cool, and light, less energy to build, and then less energy to move around in vehicles. There's more walking, biking, and transit use. So, new urbanism is on the right side of the equation in many ways. Um, and I'm proud to be part of it. You know, it's fascinating to me. Sometimes metrics uh can be incredibly powerful. Uh I'm thinking of one example which is in China after a lot of work thinking about their you know shifting away from cars and towards transit walking and biking. Um there ended up to be a very simple policy which was each city has to designate its mode split and then plan its urban design to achieve it and um structure its investments to achieve it. So when a city a priority says we're going to have a 40% mode split to transit, we're going to have a 20% mode split to cars, that completely changes not only the form of the city but the nature of the investments that are made. Um you know and so I think that actually setting standards like that can be very very powerful. And likewise what you were talking about with trees um you know stipulating based on climate zone exactly what percent of the city needs to be in tree canopy is actually a standard that's being set in many places across the planet. Um, we all know standards are aspirational and goaloriented, but if we don't have those standards, we don't have those aspirations, I I don't think people really know what direction to move in. Yeah, you're absolutely right. We need standards. I'm not a big fan of lead. I prefer Ed Mazri's AIA 2030 when it comes to buildings. But you mentioned the other day when we were chatting, Peter, that motorbikes in uh Ho Chi Min City are now what the single biggest saver of carbon. No, no, no, no. Motorcycles are 90% of trips. Um and the West is trying to get the city to go into debt to build Metro as an alternative. And uh our strategy completely turned that on its head. Said, "Let's electrify those motorcycles." And by the way, if you don't if you dedicate a lane or a street, you actually have a higher capacity than BRT or light rail in one lane of of electric bikes than you do in one lane of light rail or BRT. Um that's amazing. Yeah. And you know I I've been to nobody really believed it and then we did you know HDR did all the engineering calcs and yes but this is you know intuitively so we all know bicycles are incredibly efficient in space and energy uh and they are you know an intrinsic part of great urban environments. So the fact that we now can electrify those bikes and more people can ride them and uh you know they can get farther more in a more comfortable manner means that it can play a much bigger role which then means that maybe bike lanes need to turn into ebike streets and we can just um grid our cities with autofree environments because there really is a viable alternative. You know, I have an ebike in Seattle and I love it. It's also quiet. I've been to the streets of Ho Chi Min City and and and um uh Hanoi and they were very noisy because of all those motor, you know. Oh, yeah. Air pollution. Get quieter. Yeah. But ch you know China actually converted from uh internal combustion engine motorcycles to electric in three years. Now this is the value of an authoritarian government I guess but uh it's very easy to do and quite frankly the technology is exploding uh you know so this is one of these pieces of technology that I think are going to really change the nature of our cities pretty dramatically. And so here I am, the guy who advocated for transit and transitoriented development, literally saying,"Well, maybe two wheels is better no matter how, you know, than some collective form of shared transit." I got into a lot of trouble for that, by the way, with the World Bank. They really got pissed off. Well, my ebike is great. It deals with the hills of Seattle very well. doesn't have a high top speed about 22 or three miles an hour coming downhill about 12 or 13 going up a steep hill but it's a pleasure uh to move through the city that way. It's a nice speed. I do a lot of biking on on a regular bicycle too but that's more for pleasure whereas the ebike I do shopping on and things you know. Do you realize that when you uh calculate in first mile, last mile, and uh stops that an a BRT system averages 18 miles an hour? So, you know, that's about the same as an ebike average. Yeah. So, there there's not a lot of difference there. I don't know about the danger element. I mean, of course, I wear a helmet, recreational biking and ebiking. Uh, but I think it'll get safer as they start to have dedicated lanes more and more and they're more two- wheeled vehicles. It'll get better. There's still quite a few bicycle deaths in America. That's because we don't have dedicated space for them. I mean, when you look to the Dutch, uh, you know, those cities that are really invested in in bike transit, um, you know, that the accident rates are way down, right? And they don't even wear helmets in in Amsterdam. Yeah. And they still have very low accident rates. So, do we want to let in uh some of the uh the audience and and get a a bigger dialogue going? Because otherwise, we're just going to talk about the old days. Who's orchestrating that? Hi again. I am here to help out with the Q&A session. This is just a reminder for any audience participants to uh submit your questions to the Q&A and we'll be answering them live. So the first question we have is from Stephanie Bothwell. She says, "Doug and Peter, tell us how you have seen or experienced the environmental message changing over time. What is the carrot in the US versus China for instance?" And then she says, "Thank you both for doing this presentation. Hello Stephanie. Um well I think we've seen a shift from mitigation to adaptation and now as Peter says to geoengineering which is coming in the future. Um what else did Stephanie want to know the shift and uh uh how the environmental message has changed over time? Well, I'll say that. Uh, you can handle that one. Yeah, it's a pretty uh diverse. You can't actually say the environmental movement anymore. There there are many different layers. There's all the specialists, the people that care about a certain habitat or certain uh ecology. Um, there's the Sierra Club, which is really just smokeokesc screen for nimbies. Um there's NRDC that looks at things in a deep systemic way. So uh it's pretty diverse. Um you know at the at the positive end you have groups that are deeply aligned with urbanism and understand that urbanism is the lightest footprint that we could end up with both in terms of its land and and energy and uh environmental impact. Um, you know, but I also realize that we urbanists tend to think about everything in terms of urbanism and we forget well you know one of the biggest impacts on the planet is the way we eat and the way we farm and the percentage of uh global habitat that's dispa displaced by our eating habits i.e. mainly beef and u non-vegetarian uh food, you know, and that there there is a whole crisis around um ecologies and habitat and and the rest of it. And God bless them for shining a light on that issue. And quite frankly, also in terms of climate change, it's the same kind of thing as with cities. You can solve for a more sustainable agricultural systems. uh at the same time that you're absorbing carbon uh into the soil. So rather than prochemical fertilizers, more natural systems. So the environmentalists go farther than us in some areas. They become specialists which tragically um many in the built environment become specialists. So uh same flaws, same same dangers. uh you know now you have uh a counteryclical movement I think at least in the United States that because of this co we we have everybody wants to go back to the suburbs. Um but then again you know it's amazing to me that the everybody is always framed as upper middle class um households incomes e economic capabilities. There are just too many people in this country that don't even have those kinds of choices. Um, but they can have great choices. So, the environmental movement is re really too diverse uh to see to say, you know, friend or foe. Interesting. Interesting. You know, I you're right about agriculture and American diets. Um, I've I don't eat beef anymore. Zero beef and no lamb. I have chicken and turkey and and pork, which is onetenth the amount of energy and water per calorie as beef. Beef is really bad news. Uh, you should all swear off beef. Peter, have you sworn off beef? Long time ago. Oh, good. Forget I had heart disease, so I had Yeah, beef is bad news. Um, you know, it's interesting that those things that are bad for the planet could also be bad for your body. Yeah, that's a good point. A good point. I try I sometimes buy that meatless I mean what is it? Uh, you know that vegetarian meat. I sometimes eat that which is quite tasty. I find meat burgers and all that. What are they called? Veggie burgers. Um, and we of course eat a lot of veggies. Anyway, next. Wonderful. So, we have a question from Carllin Vasan and they are asking, "What are your thoughts on how changes in zoning can make our urban environments more sustainable as we develop and redevelop our cities and suburbs? What changes should have the biggest impact as we adapt to climate change?" There's a softball if I ever saw one. Well, I I'll take the first swing. I mean, this movement to allow more accessory dwelling units, whether they're attached or detached, whatever, is big all over the country. Uh, I'm happy to say I got the first law passed in Washington state, I don't know, back in the late 80s. we see more and more um uh a you know ADUs are are big help and you know they're also allowing two or three on a lot in many cities in America Portland Minneapolis and some others and that's a way to increase density in a very subtle benign way and then of course there are more and more condos being built and more and more rental units that's all good okay so maybe we can get some controversy going here. We just passed a law in California for um forplex on single family. I'm not a supporter. Uh I think it just enrages the nimbies and does it will not produce affordable housing in any quantity. Um you know, in its worst form, it means that developers will move into lowincome neighborhoods and buy up cheap lots, consolidate them, and develop them. um its best outcome is trivial, which is upper middle class people adding unit. They continue to expand their um their advantage and the the workingclass people are completely left out of that picture. They really they don't have houses that are big enough uh lots big enough to do anything with. And furthermore, it's kind of ad hoc. There was a study in California that said that this new law maybe there's 7 million single family lots in California. Only 5% are probable for this kind of redevelopment. We've had ADU on the law on the books for about five years. Produced very minimal amount of housing. We have a profound housing crisis that I think the new urbanists ought to get serious about headon because I think we do have the solution. Um, and it's about workforce housing. It's not about upper middle class people who can go to a bank and get financing to do a big renovation uh enhancing their property value. It's about building highdensity housing close to job centers. And there is a big solution which is strip commercial which is now more bund land actually has the capacity. We did a study for for five county Bay Area and LA County alone. Three million units could enhance and reshape these uh arterial wastelands into livable places that uh actually supply housing in a distributed manner through our region's um crosscut through communities so the wealthy communities don't say no and the poor communities have to take the burden. I mean, there's big solutions here. Um, and I actually think that this missing middle thing. Uh, it tragically is kind of a a sidebar that's really not going to accomplish much other than, well, what do we have right now in California? We have a ballot initiative to not only um roll back that law but also uh eviscerate the capacity of the state to set housing policy and uh overcome local nimiism. Um so this is a big big topic. I'm pretty passionate about it now. No I think I think you're right. I mean, ADUs are not that big numerically, but you know, we had one in our house in Seattle before we moved, and there there a lot of them. Now, the real conundrum for me, and maybe Peter can help, there's housing being built everywhere, multif family housing in Seattle, everywhere I drive, and I drive a lot delivering flowers for my daughter. And uh it's just amazing how much construction there is. I am sure supply is exceeding demand for for some reason the supply demand curve isn't working. And I've lo asked a lot of people including some very connected people in in Seattle, why isn't supply and demand working? Peter, do you know why it isn't working? because the supply is immense, but prices keep going up. Well, you're wrong about the supply. The supply is completely inadequate. Ever since Seattle, yes, it is. And I have the data, Doug. I mean, driving around and having anecdotal impressions is one thing, but actually doing counts of permits is another. I'm sorry. What's going on is since 2008 um you know which was a good hard stop to suburban sprawl because really what happened there was that financing behind remote single family dwellings imploded uh and you know which was tragically entrylevel affordable housing remember drive till you qualify kind of stuff. Um so work the workforce was driving farther and farther uh from their jobs in order to afford cheaper and cheaper subdivisions and it went to a breaking point. Since that time there's really been no housing policy or methodology of scale. Now um you may see multif family here or there but to do it at a systemic level uh you need to get past the nimbies uh you need to be able to insert and we did a study for one arterial in Silicon Valley called El Camino that the land on fronting El Camino could could take care of a quarter million households. I mean this is at the scale that we can we can be advocates for. You know we were advocates for infill and mixed use but unfortunately that kind of incrementalism in the face of local entitlement processes that take decades now and litigation to get through means that anything that actually makes it through those saves is so expensive it's not particularly helpful. So we need as of right legis and uh and it's got to be across the board. So cities like Palo Alto, the wealthy cities have to do it as well as the poor cities. Um and then once you've done that, lo and behold, you've put density into a ribbon that can be easily served by transit. So there's a pretty clean fit. It's a different kind of urbanism. It's not nodal. Um it's it's not neighborhood focused. It's not uh to focused. Um it's more more like a a set of ribbons, urban ribbons that would uh reinhabit what is really wasted land at this point. Now, Peter, your study for El Camino Rial from um San Francisco down through Palo Alto to San Jose is amazing. I I hope it's actually being realized. Are you starting to see some action? No. No. I mean, the problem is the wind is out of the sail. Well, let's go back because, you know, we're talking to a pretty sophisticated crowd here who actually knows what happens when you try to get something built or you change an urban environment in a significant way. And we're locked into decades of controversy, financing problems, um, and then ultimately litigation. Uh so we need state level um as of right legislation for housing at the same scale that used to be produced in the suburbs. Um you know the suburbs were underwritten, financed, and zoned by the feds. Uh and we need to do the same now if we're going to deal with the crisis of workforce housing. And once you deal with workforce housing, all of a sudden the price pressure goes off the existing fa single family stock and the older multifamily stock and you begin to solve in a a really profound way the affordable housing crisis. Um, but until we get supply demand balance, until we deal with not you and me and people wealthy enough to have a single family lot and play around with it, but people who are barely are struggling to get through uh and make ends meet. Uh, until we deal with housing for that cohort, um, we're just nail gazing as far as I'm concerned. So we actually have a question from R. Philip Lockwood that dovetales nicely with that and it is what advice would you give in regards to balancing affordability with sustainability in economically distressed cities such as Detroit? Eco-friendly measures are often seen as reserved for the wealthy. I'm not kid. I think in many ways um sustainability and affordability are synonymous. I mean, we've all done the numbers, you know, I've done the numbers a hundred times and uh God bless him, Scott at the Center for Neighborhood Technology made it clear and actually got his nose in the door at HUD uh some time ago with the idea of the cost of transportation and housing being, you know, fused at the hip. Um, and that's what really killed people. 2008. You know, it's it's ironic that we let that event happen without articulating the fact that it wasn't just about Wall Street and subprime mortgages. It was about building too much of the wrong stuff in the wrong place. And when you have too much of the wrong inventory, what do you do? You discount it. you you've you you you give all sorts of absurd financing techniques to move the inventory that no longer really functions for the household's incomes or lifestyles. So we missed that moment but I you know I still would like to go back and harp on it. Uh but sustainability is about infill and the big question has always been because we all know infill is right. The question is where? Exactly where. And we can be very, very precise. We've overzone commercial land. We've overzone strip commercial, especially now that um Amazon and the rest of it, we're all online anyway. Uh shopping. Uh this is a huge inventory. Just like the cow pastures used to be at the periphery of our regions where it was an inventory of land for sprawl and subdivisions. This is a huge inventory for urbanism. Um, and if you actually do the numbers, you discover that it's not anecdotal. It's actually systemic. Listen, I've got to go in about three minutes. Unfortunately, we're supposed to wrap this up, right? Uh, yes. We are ending here in two minutes and we actually just have one question left. It is from Andreas Dwani. Um and it basically is the 15minute or five minute ebike shed that encompass that may encompass more than a million people. So what discipline do they then employ to ens measure the integrated diversity that would be lost with the elimination of the tod shed? The requisite diversity of income and activity of new urbanism practice could easily replicate that of suburban sprawl. What do we do about that? I'm not sure I you know first of all urban form I know Andreas understands this is not just a subject of one topic like mobility or 15minute um uh mobility on by whatever means uh you know we were just talking about the affordability crisis this is the biggest crisis we have you know congestion is there quality carbon emissions but right alongside of it is the fact that the working poor in this country have been neglected. We don't have an American dream that works for them. Quite frankly, it's one of the reasons that you see the populist right moving up in its political might. There's a level of frustration and anger that's extraordinary. We keep thinking about things that work for us. Uh and that's the wrong mindset. Um, does does a a 15minute ebike uh modality mean that we're going to have sprawl? No. Because sprawl is also dependent on the economics of low low density development, which is not great. Um, once you take into account services and infrastructure, low density before you even get to construction, low density doesn't really fit the bill for the the everyday economics of the working class in this country. So, uh, those days are over and, uh, there are many forces at work that blend together to create what I think would be pretty extraordinary, uh, phase of urbanism that has more to do with infill than anything else. Wonderful. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Uh, looks like we're just after one o'clock, so I will go ahead and wrap this up. Uh thank you to Doug and Peter and Dro for being a part of this author's forum. We will have a recording of this on the park bench webinar available tomorrow and thank you so much for joining us. Thank you Doug. Thank you Peter and uh thanks everybody Rob and everybody at CNU. See you in Oklahoma City. All right. Goodbye y'all.