Make your city Super Cool,
unlike Palo Alto 
• You
• 4 background slides, advice, pause (Irv, etc), more
– Smart land use is inconveniently complex
– Prod Sierra Club/ICLEI Cool Cities into smart land use
• EPA Grant: “Transforming Office Parks into Transit
Villages” ---- suburban Bay Area.
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You
•
•
•
•
•
Sierra Club 7
Berkeley 5, Livable Berkeley 3
Grad Students, Bike Advocates 3
Alameda, Albany 2
Bay Rail, Greenbelt, CCCTA, ACTIA, EPA,
MTC, Bay Localize (2), AIA
• Vallejo, Hayward, Petaluma, San Rafael,
Emeryville.
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Family Energy Consumption
“Free parking suburban”: much more than rest of world
250
Transportation Use
Household Use
200
125
150
Million BTU
per Year
83
28
100
20
50
115
115
81
20
69
42
0
Suburban
Avg
(240
MBTU)
Suburban Urban Avg
Urban Green
Green
(143 MBTU) (89 MBTU)
(164 MBTU)
Single Family Household Type
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© Jonathan Rose Companies, LLC
Urban
Multifamily
Green (62
MBTU)
Efficient Human Settlement Patterns
• For each person, minimize the distances in the
triangle below. Miles  feet
• Efficient: lower cost of living ($4,000 less auto
cost), more convenient, more lively/vibrant, less
time wasted in traffic, more family time, more
walking / healthier, stronger community, bump
into neighbors! Mobility for kids/seniors.
Job
Home
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Activities
3 stage path to sustainability
• Can’t go straight there
• 1) Populist: Consciousness raising, recycling,
sea bass, Prius, non-threatening to
government, current smart growth best
practices, light bulbs
• 2) Fundamental (2020 goals): efficient human
settlement patterns. Land-use conversant
population, government restructuring. Green
building. Smarter smart growth
• 3) Profound (2050 goals): 80% NRG &
resource reduction, 4B population, accurate
pricing, renewable NRG, diet restructuring,
anti-materialism, lower GNP, etc.
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Split: smart land use & warming
Superset: Handles population growth
Subset: Will miss 2020 & 2050
Who: James Hansen, Sierra,
Palo Alto Cool, ICLEI, “antigrowth” suburbanites, EPA,
Oak Ridge Natl Labs, Pew
Solutions: solar, high mpg,
lite bulbs, cap and trade,
green building, etc.
Who: CA State Climate
Action Team, Al Gore,
TALC, Greenbelt, Don
Weden, Calthorpe, SVLG,
Cervero, Bill McKibben,
Jared Diamond, Lester
Brown, Bill Fulton
Solutions: Do what TALC
tells you! Smart land use!
Reduce demand
• Empathy: PhDs, anti-growthers, Prius & VMT
• Palo Alto: ABAG RHNA 3,716 homes by 2014
– Irv and Steve: OpEds & agitation tactics.
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Improved Cool Cities Process
• Palo Alto committees: energy, transportation,
green building, education, waste reduction
– Form a “land use” committee!!!!
• Ensure that carbon measure includes in and
out-commuting. IE regional impacts, not
parochial
• Have Don Weden come speak about regional
population growth, smart land use, and carbon
• Ask for a professional cost/benefit carbon
study. (EDAW’s Irvine Park study.) Else,
random list of “solutions” from volunteers
– Cities, Sierra Club, TALC, and ICLEI should pool
resources on one study. Google.org is sympathetic.
Limit to planning firms, not climatologist PhDs.
cities21@cities21.org
Improved Cool Cities Process
• Add an innovation plank. Can’t meet 2020
carbon targets with current best practices
– MTC 2030 smart growth scenario: 50%
population growth, 40% VMT growth
– You could propose: cap VMT at 2007!
• Prod, collaborate with, compete with other
cool cities
– Consider offering a huge carbon reduction if 5
other local cool cities join
– Example: charge for parking at offices
(provided other cities do the same).
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Cool Cities smart land use (suburbs)
• Ask TALC and Greenbelt for help! Network with
other cool cities campaigns. You are not alone!
• Charge for parking. Stanford is low CO2
• Tactic: Be anguished about CO2 and growth
– Pro growth is unpopular, but you can educate
• Meet ABAG RHNA. Put homes near jobs (duh).
More effective than mixed use TOD (Cervero,
JAPA ‘06)
• Extended TOD (more, bigger. Circulator
transit).
cities21@cities21.org
Cool Cities smart land use (suburbs)
• 3 story 50 DU/acre supports retail, degenerating auto trips. Pearl District is low CO2
• Prioritize new housing for short/green
commuters
• TDM (commute trip reduction, etc) is good
• EIRs: add climate / sustainability impact
• Engage on all “big projects:” 100 DU, 50K sf
office, 25K sf retail
– Local politics is 50% about real-estate, that’s where
you can make a difference.
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PAUSE
• Coming up: Advanced topics
– 6 slides.
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3,716 ABAG homes in Palo Alto
Housing – Global Warming “Anguish”
• ABAG is the good guy
• Palo Alto has too many jobs. Jobs/housing
imbalance
– 59,000 population, 87,000 jobs
– Need 90,000 additional residents
• CO2 impact: 15 tons per year per “avoided home”
– Assumes homes are built beyond the first ring of foothills in
Tracy, Gilroy, & in the Central Valley
– Check Sunday real-estate section in Merc or Chron
• Chief planner, Ira Ruskin, 3 councilmembers,
planning commissioner on record as opposed
– Had e-mail discussions with two councilmembers.
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Fake solutions
• Hydrogen economy (A better battery, so nice
increment. Entrenched interests)
– ADM corn fuel
• AHS (auto-pilot cars) – “low friction” long
distance transportation  ultra sprawl
• Outer ring solar roof McMansion
• “Socially responsible” companies
– w/ bad settlement patterns.
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Paid Parking / Tragedy of Commons
• Paid parking (at suburban offices) reduces commute
trips (and CO2) by 23%
• Tragedy of the Commons – no office wants to be the
first to charge  less competitive.
• Need to all “jump in together”
– Example: smoking ban in bars: Bloomington, St. Paul,
Minneapolis
• From Cool Cities web: Mountain View, Santa Clara, Cupertino,
Sunnyvale, San Jose, Menlo Park, Redwood City, Palo Alto
• Complicated to implement
– Redevelop parking spaces & distribute “found” wealth
– Start with $1 per day & increase each year.
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Quantum Innovation / Public Policy
• Innovations produce winners & losers
• Political subsystems favor incremental change
– ag, defense, energy, transit, healthcare, edu, etc.
– “analysis is politics by other means”
– Auto/highway subsystem trumps transit
• Public sector: huge penalty for failure
• Media stifles innovation, accentuates conflict
• Macropolitical system can impose quantum
change – earmarks, etc
– ’79+: mature democracy, entrenched interests
• Billionaires & tech foundations: quantum
• Strong govt: Dubai, China.
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More: Human Settlement Patterns
• Big required change: demand/behavior side. There’s
no quick transportation or energy supply fix. (dilithium)
– Frustration: environment  smart growth links are weak
• For each person, minimize the distances in the
triangle below. Miles  feet
– 4 story urbanist mixed use TV  50% of trips w/o car,
mostly walk, not transit (GB Arrington, TCRP 102) – “walk to quart of milk”
• πr2 :: pipes, wires, streets, distribution. Infrastructure
cost savings in the billions for Envision Utah. (25% -TCRP74)
Job
Home
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Activities
Regional Visioning
• 30 big U.S. metro regions are “visioning”
–
CA @ 50M, CNU/RV, CA’s Future in the Balance, Compass, MTC, Frego/Calthorpe 80% share
• In 25 years, 50% population growth. w/ smart
scenario, only 40% VMT increase
– Scenario implementation not guaranteed
– Things get worse. Only slows the acceleration of
degradation. Calthorpe: “We should be doing more to
reduce ecological footprint” (www.ecofoot.org)
– Current TOD/SG isn’t a fix. Only 200 small transit villages
• Need more, bigger, smarter SG faster, dang it!
– Toolbox doesn’t work. Have to go outside of the box
• Frego/Calthorpe held back by clients. Unchecked,
Calthorpe would have:
– Carbon tax, new transit circulator (not “90 year old transit
technology”), strong office park Rx..
cities21@cities21.org
THE END
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Steve Raney Resume
• Cities21 (next generation smart growth) founder
– Palo Alto, CA. Bay Area
• EPA grant: Transform Office Parks to Transit Villages
• Columbia MBA, RPI Computer Science Masters,
Berkeley Transportation Planning Masters
• Project Mgr: BART Group Rapid Transit Study
• MS Technology Evangelist, Silicon Valley
• GPS / cellular carpool assistant patent
• 6 Transportation Research Board, 3 TRR papers
• Habitat for Humanity Training Coordinator.
cities21@cities21.org