Green City

Posted by on . 5 comments.

Mary Cheh is looking for ideas to make the District greener. Things like:

[C]ongestion pricing, vertical farming, “expanded retro-commissioning”, requiring carbon neutrality for public buildings, or “cool cars” that reflect solar energy…

Matt notes that since the District is the greenest part of the metropolitan area, the greenest thing it can do is work to increase its share of metropolitan jobs and people. This may sound tricky, but since there’s actually plenty of unmet demand for District homes and office space, as indicated by land prices and rents, it’s pretty simple — just let folks build more. And it’s really worth noting that things like vertical farming are actually actively counterproductive to efforts to green the city, since they wind up displacing people to less green places.

Back when I was all involved in the effort to support the development plan for the Brookland metro area, I testified in front of the Council. Another person, a young guy who worked for Casey Trees, testified against the plan because it would involve building on lots near Metro that currently contain trees. Development on those lots would have housed one hundred people or more. Protecting those particular trees, in other words, would displace people to other places within the metropolitan area, most of which are less green. Some of this pressure generates new greenfield development, which of course results in the loss of a lot of trees.

It would be nice if city leaders started thinking in this way, at least a little bit. You see the city adopting policies like the one in which old, large rowhouses are prevented from being subdivided into smaller units, because such subdivisions “change the character of the neighborhood, and make it difficult for larger families to stay in the city.” But in reality, those subdivisions increase the stock of housing, which helps to hold prices down, and by allowing more people to live in the city, they reduce metropolitan emissions per capita. (And anyway, if you really want families to stay in the city, your first three priorities should be the schools, the schools, and the schools).

The point is this, those who heedlessly support the city’s height limit or fight a development near metro are basically on the same side as coal executives, and it isn’t the right one.

Comments

  1. Mike says:
    June 24, 2009 at 4:02 pm

    You make some totally awesome points here. Density density density.

  2. Dave Reid says:
    June 24, 2009 at 11:35 pm

    Yup… Mike said it well density density density that’s how you truly go green.

  3. BeyondDC says:
    June 25, 2009 at 12:11 am

    You totally had me… up until the height limit comment. “Dense” and “tall” just aren’t the synonyms you think they are. I wrote about it here.

  4. ryan says:
    June 25, 2009 at 7:17 am

    They aren’t synonyms but they’re absolutely connected. The bottom line is that most of DC is zoned in ways that are almost impossible to make denser. Large tracts are set aside for single-family homes, and there’s simply no way to make that acreage any denser. The District has primarily grown by developing densely in pockets where upzoning is possible, and in those places, the existence of the height limit is acting to directly reduce potential density.

    A height limit and a zoning limit are doing the same work. There’s really no getting around that.

  5. Linda says:
    June 25, 2009 at 8:11 am

    A lot of the people to whom you refer in your last sentence live in Cheh’s council district (I live nearby, on the western edge of Ward 4). In addition to the effects you describe, fighting density results in wasteland areas almost devoid of decent commercial outlets. The Tenley area residents that seem to fight any development proposal of any magnitude seem unhappy with their proliferation of mattress shops and bars for AU students, but they don’t seem reconciled to the fact that they chose to live in a city, and they can’t have only the upsides of both density and suburban-style living.

    I’d like to see more leadership on issues like this from the city’s elected officials rather than pie-in-the-sky proposals such as vertical farming and solar-reflective cars.