9.09.2011

For the 3rd time, here is what you need to know about Oakland's Energy and Climate Action Plan


Credits: Image of ECAP Rally on March 30th, 2010 from Oakland Energy and Climate Action Plan photostream on Flickr.

During our first project, I have reached out to Colin Miller (CM), the new Coordinator of Oakland Climate Action Coalition at Ella Baker Center with some questions. And on the presentation day, I received a phone called followed by a nice email from Colin, who graciously answered all my questions. Unfortunately, we couldn't include his answers in our presentation. So I wish to share them with you here.



Question 1. You've mentioned that ECAP is the boldest and most equitable Energy and Climate Action Plan of any city in the country. Why do you think that is? What kind of action items are included that other cities' plans didn't include? What do you think sets Oakland's plan apart from other cities' plans?


CM: Language throughout Oakland's ECAP indicates the importance of addressing the existing and projected future disproportionate impacts of climate change on vulnerable and "disadvantaged" populations. The Oakland Climate Action Coalition (OCAC) is the only community-based coalition in the country that we know of focused exclusively on advancing climate justice & equity through a municipal Energy and Climate Action Plan. 2 years of organizing and targeted advocacy at Oakland's City Council, Planning Commission, Public Works Agency & Environmental Services department have made tremendous measurable gains in terms of the draft ECAPs that we have seen come out between 2009, when our Coalition was formed, and March of 2011, when the draft ECAP was passed.


Question 2. I understand that in Oakland, there is a huge Ecological Justice movement going on. Do you believe that ECAP reflects the movement's main goals?
CM: The Oakland Climate Action Coalition is the best example of bringing many diverse sectors including housing, food, transportation and energy together under the umbrella Ecological Justice. The OCAC gave these diverse sectors and organizations a platform to unite as one and achieve a common goal.

More than 50 of the total 150 policies came directly from the Oakland Climate Action Coalition. While the ECAP's primary objective is to reduce GHG's by 36% below 2005 levels (or 25% reduction from 1990 levels) by 2020, there are many corollary co-benefits, including advances in the areas listed above. The ECAP is a blueprint for the vital first steps towards ecological justice in Oakland.
Question 3. What kind of involvement did community members have? I understand that you organized meetings and workshops to get community members excited and involved. Do you think community members' input was valued and included in the plan?
CM: The Oakland Climate Action Coalition hosted 13 events in Oakland’s low-income neighborhoods that educated about 1,500 Oakland residents, majority people of color, who contributed to the development of Oakland’s ECAP. These events included workshops for high school students, labor union members and community leaders in multiple languages including Chinese and Spanish. In addition to these workshops, we hosted large-scale community events at Laney community college, rallies at City Hall and an Oakland Mayoral Forum.

In comparison, the City hosted four ECAP workshops (see http://www2.oaklandnet.com/Government/o/PWA/s/SO/OAK025294), two 1st-round and two 2nd-round workshops. The OCAC was the predominant civic group represented at the workshops, which were not widely publicized. Our input was included in the plan and the vast majority of our recommendations were adopted into final policy. There were several key areas adopted as OCAC priorities based on community input that were passed in the final version of the plan:
a. Strengthening the diversity and stability of our neighborhoods by preventing displacement through tenant protections and preserving affordable housing.
b. Petitioning the California Public Utilities Commission for local administration and control of $3-$9 million per year of energy efficiency funds from PG&E to create and maintain at least 30 local green-collar jobs.
c. Building community resilience by growing food on idle, underutilized or vacant lots.

The Plan will be revised every 3 years - during which time, the OCAC plans to advance our objectives, including those listed above.
Question 4. I've heard that historically Oakland's political characteristics have been described as being very top-down. Has there been some shift in this character? With the new mayor being a minority herself, do you believe more inclusive policies and processes are on the way?
Is there any indicator in ECAP or the process of drafting ECAP of such shift?
CM: The ECAP drafting process was fairly inclusive in that the Coalition had an open line of communication with the Public Works Agency writing the plan through Sustainability Coordinator Garrett Fitzgerald. Mayor Quan has committed to partnering with the OCAC to implement the ECAP. Given her history and legacy as a grassroots organizer in Oakland, we hope that more inclusive policies / processes are on the way.
Question 5. I saw on your article date March, 2011 that Oakland "passed" ECAP. What is the reason it is still called a "Draft" ECAP? What other procedural steps are left of it to shed the word "draft"? When will it start being implemented?
CM: Oakland's City Council approved and passed the content of Oakland's ECAP on March 1, 2011. It is still called a "Draft" because it remains to be cleared through CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, process, and receive either a "negative declaration" of significant environmental impact, or produce a document listing all feasible measures to mitigate those impacts. City staff are hopeful the plan will receive a negative declaration so the full plan can be approved by Council. The content itself will not need to be voted on again.

There are actions in the ECAP that have already begun to be implemented. See the "status" portion of the first section of the ECAP under, "3 year priority actions (funded)". Many actions in the ECAP do not require CEQA passage, and are thus already being carried out. The timeline for CEQA process clearing is unclear - optimistically 6 months, more realistically up to a year or more.
Question 6. Also, what kind of power/influence does ECAP have? Is it simply a guideline for current and future policies?
I understand that it's not a law or code that can be enforced. What sort of bearing does it have? How would the action items be implemented?
CM: The ECAP is a kind of blueprint for climate action in Oakland. While the specific actions are not currently mandatory or enforceable by law, AB 32 - the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, requires the state as a whole to reduce GHG's by 25% from 1990 levels by 2020 - roughly equivalent to the Oakland ECAP GHG target. In terms of AB 32 enforcement, Oakland's ECAP then falls into the category of "voluntary early actions", which starting on Jan 1 of 2012, will become enforceable by law.

Each individual Priority Action in the ECAP must be approved by City Council and/or the Planning Commission, and then implemented by the appropriate listed responsible city department / agency. Other actions in the ECAP list "the community" and a "social movement" as the entities responsible for implementation. Exact roles / responsibilities in these cases then becomes less clear.


Once this crazy schedule at [IN]City becomes a bit more manageable, I plan to get involved in climate justice movement in Oakland. And those of you who plan to stay in the Bay Area after the program, you can also get in touch with Colin to see what you can do. Ella Baker Center's website has his contact info.

Lastly, I'd like to thank Colin for taking time to answer all my questions. And here is a video clip of a speech by Emily Kirsch (Colin's predecessor) at the ECAP Rally in 2010.

8.11.2011

Goodbye from the Bay

For all y'all who haven't had the pleasure of staying in the Bay for an extended amount of time (I didn't grow up here but have come to love it) here is some music to remember it.



8.08.2011

Bill McKibben in Oakland

Oakland, CA: Bill McKibben at The Chabot Science Center
September 9, 2011 6:00 PM
10000 Skyline Boulevard Oakland, California

Bill McKibben, Middlebury’s Schumann Distinguished Scholar of Environmental Studies, will speak about global warming and alternative energy, as part of “Future Fridays,” a program hosted by the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland.
This event is open to the public.
Tickets: $23 ($29 at the door and subject to availability)
To purchase tickets for this event, visit http://www.chabotspace.org/calendar.htm?date=9-9-2011&p=534809

Bill McKibben is a really awesome guy and an important climate change advocate and author. Check out the organization he started http://www.350.org/. If you are still in the area in September go see him speak!

.Post goes here. Credits: Image of _____ from _____.

8.05.2011

The Air We Breathe

In the affordable housing lecture this week, I asked a question about how to remediate the health effects from particulate matter when transit oriented developments are built near freeways. The answer that we got was essentially that there wasn't a whole a lot of follow-up research on new developments and these harmful effects, however, I just came across this article on "Black Lung Lofts," in Los Angeles, which summarizes the some of the recent research quantifying the harm.

As planners, how can we bring together the architects, developers, and public health officials to ensure that there are design measures in place to reduce the harm of living near freeways.

8.04.2011

Oakland in Action!

Oakland is bustling these days. Community pride and solidarity are on the rise. The green scene is quickly evolving and has a very different look and feel than Berkeley's. This event is quintessential of early 2010s era eco-consciousness, homegrown in Oakland. The list of service projects below should give you a taste of the Town... Check out the map at

http://www.ellabakercenter.org/ under Events for details.

Throw Down for the Town: The Oakland Service Festival

Soul_of_the_city_throw_down_for_the_town

On August 13, the Ella Baker Center will lead Oakland in the first Oakland Service Festival and we hope that you will join us! We've confirmed over 20 service projects throughout Oakland that need your help to succeed.

Sign up for a project now

From urban gardens to beautifying Lake Merritt, sign up for a project to help our city thrive. Click on the map pins below for sign up links (or scroll down to the list).

Oakland Service Festival Schedule

  • Saturday, August 13, 2011
  • 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM, 20+ service projects throughout Oakland
  • 2:00 PM - 6:00 PM, Mosswood Park Celebration

After four hours of people-powered community service, join the celebration at Mosswood Park. There will be food for volunteers, dance, and a solar paneled hip-hop concert. This is a family-friendly event and an opportunity to build community after a hard day's work.

We hope you will join us for this exciting event as we Throw Down for the Town.

Oakland Service Festival Projects - Mapped:

Oakland Service Festival Projects - Listed


7.28.2011

Greywater and Garden Parties


Saturday, 7/30 10 AM to 1 PM
Greywater, Rainwater Catchment, Earthworks Tour: Adapting to Climate Change
EcoHouse (front door), 1305 Hopkins Street, Berkeley.
Half way between San Pablo & Sacramento.

Turn your house and yard into a water saving site with greywater systems, rainwater catchment, earthworks, and appropriate landscaping choices. You'll learn about the greywater system at the EcoHouse, the first permitted residential constructed wetland/greywater system in the State of California and the first greywater system in Berkeley to be permitted. We will discuss the principles and process of safely irrigating with shower, bathroom sink, and laundry waste water and include a presentation of greywater design and the application process. We'll cover the basics of how to collect rainwater from your house and store it in cisterns or directly in your garden. Earthworks such as berms, basins, french drains, swales and diversion drains can also help offset your need for irrigation and minimize your water use in the summer as well as build soil fertility and stabilize soils. Return home with ideas and plans of your own! EcoHouse co-founder Babak Tondre leads the tour. Tondre coordinated the design and build of the projects on this tour. Please specify when registering if ASL interpretation is requested, (at least 10 working days in advance). This workshop is not wheelchair accessible. Space is limited. Pre-registration by 5pm on Friday, July 29 ensures a spot.

GARDEN WORK PARTY
Sunday, 7/31, 1 to 5 PM
953 Stannage Ave, Albany
2 blocks east of San Pablo, between Solano & Marin

We'll be clearing/tilling the yard and installing raised beds for edibles. There will also be plenty of drinks and a large
pot of homemade vegetarian chili. (Additional veggie items welcome.) Bring work gloves if you've got 'em, and if you
have any gardening tools we can borrow, please let us know! You can reach us at roger.studley@gmail.com or 510-604-2607.

7.22.2011

Bikes 4 Life! Community Ride this Saturday!


A fun way to get to know Oakland's 'greening the ghetto' movement... by bike! This ride never fails to impress...

Check out more about Bikes 4 Life, a non-profit bike shop in West Oakland, at www.bikes4life.com

The Green Tax Shift


Enjoy Stuart McMillen's popular communiqué of the green tax shift. Does this paradigm have potential as one of a smart planner's strategies to realize new urban outcomes within current structures?

Through popular advocacy, working with movers and shakers, and more than a little strategic thinking, perhaps a new paradigm may emerge that harnesses market forces to internalize costs of production and to respond to climate change.

Credits: Image of Green Tax Shift from www.recombinantrecords.net.

What is Sustainability? A Reindeer Story


Harking back to the earlier discussion of sustainability, I thought of an illustrated reindeer story I came across a couple of months ago. This narrative captures what we, perhaps most brutally, mean by sustainability.

Click on the above picture to follow the link to the Stuart's blog, and then click on the picture again to read the story.

With the complexity and fragmentation of planning, financing, and development, what are the implications for our role in communicating and helping to realize the need to manage our and future generations' ecological footprint? For now, we too are on our own little island.


Credits: Image of St. Matthew Island from www.recombinantrecords.net.

7.19.2011

Intersection of problems

This story should be about a tragedy that became a rallying cry for a community to start correcting their problems of poor urban design and building themselves more people-friendly spaces. Instead, they literally prosecuted the victim.

An Atlanta pedestrian trying to get to her home across a very wide street from the bus stop with her three small children and her grocery shopping decided to cross with several other transit riders at the intersection near the bus stop instead of walking half a mile out of their way to use the nearest crosswalk. A drunk driver hit them, killing her son and injuring herself and one of her daughters. He was convicted of hit-and-run (a 6-month sentence), she with vehicular homicide (a sentence of up to 36 months).

Tell me, [IN]City, how many things can you see that are wrong with this picture? Even better, how can we solve them?


Graffiti in Cities: A Symbol of Economic Downturn??


I think this article could stir an interesting conversation about what graffiti can tell us about a city. I have a feeling people there will be a diverse range of perspectives on this issue.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/us/19graffiti.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=graffiti&st=cse

Post goes here. Credits: Image of _____ from _____.

7.18.2011

Better Work, Better Pay

While at [IN]City, I’ve been wondering why public city planners exist at all.

I'm definitely being a little naive here, but honestly one of the things I really hope to learn through the program is one great reason why cities need planners. For one, what do they do on a day-to-day basis? If they aren’t working on a development project, what could they be doing? Collecting data? Doing Research? Even if this is true, any kind of research probably needs at least 5 years before it becomes valuable or actionable upon. So I ask again, what do planners do on a day-to-day basis that makes them valuable to a city? It seems to me that when states and cities need to tighten their belts, the planning department would be an easy decision to cut.

Instead, what if all city planners graduated and took jobs in the private sector at engineering/design firms, or started firms themselves? The way I think about it, any planner that works for a city that has funds to develop a project probably needs to contract out to a firm like AECOM or Parsons anyway to get the site actually built. These firms easily attract design talent and thus have the expertise to probably take care of any prior research and surveying that the city planner does anyway. So why the need for a standing city planner within the city budget?

Cities should look to hire private firms and either keep them on a retainer to carry out all research, design, and implementation of zoning laws, development, and other duties planners are responsible for, or hire them on and off when needed. Not only will the private sector be more efficient in both quality, cost management, and time, but they will be able to provide end-user solutions that cities could only dream about.

For example, suppose New York wanted to map out pedestrian traffic volume flows to build a new pedestrian mall for the summer streets program. It could hire IBM to carry out all studies and oversee the installation of any infrastructure sensors and monitors. IBM could set up a web portal for the city to utilize and see real time data, something the city would never be able to achieve within any budget or timeline. IBM could then work with a private engineering/design firm that shares the same technological advantage to actual build the pedestrian mall. All the city has to worry about is cutting a check (or two in this case). In case there were privacy issues about either company having access to information, the city could purchase the entire system and hire these companies on retainer.

Think about the SFPark system we heard about today. That kind of system, while funded by a Federal Grant for $20 million, could have easily been funded by a VC in the Valley, Austin, or NY and formed as a "city planning startup" or something like that. In the VC industry, $20 million is change at this point (although some would argue that we are in a VC bubble at the moment). In any case, although the number of VCs has decreased, the overall funds being raised by funds around the country by unnamed millionaires and billionaires has increased by 70% since last year. Startups are not only good for the economy, but I think that a new batch of startups focused on public goods like city planning, but with the efficiency and profit motivation of private firms would be extremely beneficial to our industry. With investment money, any type of "city planning startup" would be able to attract the necessary talent and build systems like SFPark rapidly. And as we are learning quite quickly, being a good city planner means having knowledge of law, politics, design, geography, and a host of other subjects.

For those of you who follow the space industry, we are about to see a similar market environment evolve over the next few years.NASA, with its final launch of Atlantis, is pursuing a strategy of disbursing funds to private companies for space projects. All it has to worry about is the final dollar amount, not all the costs associated with it. Private Firms will surely fare better.

Some probably have a view that in the public sector, planners are more aware of low income and public good projects. But even these projects cannot be realized unless the city has funds to pursue them. Therefore, if the city has funds it is willing to spend, why not use a more efficient, better organized private firm to carry out all research and implementation. As long as there are funds for the project, any private firm would be interested. With the US about to lose it's perfect Triple AAA credit rating, and many states struggling to pay their debts, the big projects we've been talking and learning about are great, but at the end of the day there needs to be some kind of return generated for us to remain competitive. Another century of losses on highways and railways won't work. With a private dependence, projects would be sure to produce a suitable return for cities, states, and the country to get back on track to fund other projects depending on the profit split.

And with many boutique design firms out there competing with larger ones, and hopefully with the addition of some startups, the market will be saturated enough so that there will be reasonably competitive prices so cities don't spend more than they have to. It's becoming quite clear that you'll need to devote a good portion of your time to only a few projects at the public level, and there's a good chance a majority of them might not come to fruition. Is it worth it?

The private option seems like a win-win-win situation for cities, planners, and residents.

Taking advantage of congestion ?

Hey, another post.

Answering Karen's question about congestion ... This a commercial about Bogotá's congestion problems and how Coca-Cola took advantage of it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJE0wj63AC0

Here's the storyline in English ...

Traffic jams are headaches for Colombians.
"Bogotano's loose almost 2 hours per day in traffic jams, equal to almost 42 days a year"
How could Coca-Cola change those sad faces ... into happy faces ?
Turning a traffic jam into the biggest autocinema ever.
We only needed a movie screen, lots of oneminute films, one radio station ... Popcorn and Coca-Cola.



Image of Coca-Cola campaing from Gabatek.