PORTLAND, Ore. — A package of amendments that includes many "green" items has been adopted by Portland City Council, along with changes to fees charged for some small housing units. The new "green" rules will make it easier to install solar panels, wind turbines, eco-roofs, rain or grey water cisterns and mechanisms that produce energy from compost and other sustainable sources.


The package of amendments prepared by the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability is part of a regulatory improvement project, an ongoing program to improve the City's regulations and procedures. Other areas addressed in this package, called Regulatory Improvement Code Amendment Package 5 (RICAP 5), include easing limitations on family-oriented housing built around courtyards in multi-dwelling zones, updating loading space requirements, increasing the amount of bicycle parking for multi-dwelling development and a number of technical changes that will ease implementation of the Zoning Code.

A little more than a dozen years ago, a collection of three adjacent suburban towns in the sprawling Sun Belt region of Charlotte revamped their town codes. They aimed to discourage conventional suburbia and encourage traditional neighborhood development, transit-oriented projects and farmland preservation. It drew national attention and awards and, after a couple of New Urbanist neighborhoods were built, busloads of visiting Smart Growth disciples.

But as Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys sang decades before, “Time changes everything.” “It faded away in Cornelius first,” says David Walters, an urban design professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who has worked as a consultant for all three towns starting in the mid-1990s.

An Atlanta-based study has found that walkable neighborhoods with multiple housing options and good transit access to jobs can help reduce oil dependency and climate-harming emissions while increasing healthful levels of exercise. "Carbonless Footprints: Promoting health and climate stabilization through active transportation," has just been published in the journal Preventive Medicine. Dr. Lawrence Frank of the University of British Columbia, the study's lead author, will host an advanced seminar on methods of assessing health impacts of development and transportation investments at CNU 18.

Resilience science has typically been applied to ecosystems. But now, scientists are starting to look at how it relates to cities.

The theory goes that ecosystems (or places) don't respond to changes in a linear fashion, but rather they are in a constant state of flux.

"The concept of resilience upends old ideas about 'sustainability': Instead of embracing stasis, resilience emphasizes volatility, flexibility, and de-centralization. Change, from a resilience perspective, has the potential to create opportunity for development, novelty, and innovation. As Holling himself once put it, there is 'no sacred balance' in nature. 'That is a very dangerous idea.'

ICLEI is preparing local governments for the upcoming $100M in funding for HUD’s new Sustainable Communities Planning Grants Program. HUD is currently gathering information by seeking comments on the structure of this program.

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Our latest policy brief provides the following information to local governments and regional planning entities:
1. An overview of the new Sustainable Communities Initiative
2. Information surrounding the associated grant opportunity with key questions
3. Links for more detailed information

EPA's State and Local Climate and Energy Program provides technical assistance, analytical tools, and outreach support to state, local, and tribal governments. Specific assistance includes:

* Identifying and documenting cost-effective policies and initiatives that address climate change, including those that promote renewable energy, energy efficiency, and related clean technologies.
* Measuring and evaluating the environmental, economic, and public health benefits of climate change and clean energy initiatives.
* Offering tools, guidance, and outreach support for assessing the options and benefits of actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
* Fostering peer exchange opportunities for state and local officials to share information on best practices and lessons learned about innovative policies and programs.

A new biological pest control laboratory at Kwantlen Polytechnic University will place B.C. at the forefront of a global revolution in urban food production.

The lab -- the first of its kind in North America -- will develop insect-and microbe-based pest control systems for use on small-scale farms and in areas where farming and housing share space.

Cities all over the world and here in B.C. are integrating farming into the urban environment, from small-acreage market gardens to green-roof food production and community gardens in parks and sustainable housing developments.

Norman Anderson, President and CEO of CG/LA Infrastructure (a Washington, D.C. based consulting group) — in an extended interview from Blueprint America: Beyond the Motor City (Feb. 8 at 10 pm) — explains how Spain has been able to finance its infrastructure build out, and what America has to learn.

Thursday, the switch was flipped on a generator that will serve the heating needs of 16,000 residents of the Olympic Village in Vancouver. The generator transforms sewage into heat.

Gerry Billet writes, "The system is widely used in Europe especially in Denmark where such centres can be found throughout Copenhagen, said Robertson.

Project manager Chris Baber said sewage is pumped into the facility, strained, then passed through heat pumps which produces heat which in turn heats water used to provide heating for buildings and hot water."

While in Copenhagen for climate talks in December, U.S. officials got a taste of Danish-style bicycle planning. Some of them liked what they saw, but translating that infrastructure here in the States is no easy task.

This post from Miller-McCune looks at the prospects and challenges of recasting American street infrastructure as a multi-modal platform.

"'Unfortunately, the existing built environment isn't helping us,' California Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols said, 'and it makes it much more difficult and expensive to meet those goals.'

This isn't just a matter of engineering lithium-ion electric car batteries, but re-engineering whole communities. If you live in certain urban areas, you may have seen a prototype: the trendy mixed-use development arisen out of an abandoned industrial complex complete with condos, restaurants and metro access

For possibly the first time, the EPA has issued a report the directly links climate change mitigation with local land use strategies, says Patty Salkin. The EPA's new report is called "An Assessment of Decision-Making Processes: The Feasibility of Incorporating Climate Change Information into Land Protection Planning."

Says Prof. Salkin, "Although this report focuses only on land preservation programs, it may signal the beginning of some thoughtful and needed discussions in (the) area of federalism and climate change."

Unfortunately, it doesn't take much time for San Anselmo/Corte Madera Creek (watershed in brown above) to back up from San Francisco Bay and rise in the Marin communities lining its flood plain, since it is surrounded by steep canyons that channel rainfall off nearby hills. Asphalt parking lots, impermeable pavement and poorly planned development have also increased the speed by which rainwater runs off into the creek. For instance, when I checked creek levels online Sunday the 17th, the creek was 2.9 feet, but after heavy rains Sunday night and Monday morning the creek was already over 6 feet. Flood stage is 11 feet.



The irony of California's winter storms is that they bring needed water to reservoirs and mountain snowpack, promising to reduce or temporarily end the region's ongoing drought, which has been costing the agriculture industry and some cities hundreds of millions in lost revenue and in water purchases.

A team of University of Washington researchers is finishing the most detailed yet report what is likely to happen to Pacific Northwest rivers as the climate warms.

The Columbia Basin Climate Change Scenarios Project predicts a shift in the landscape so great that engineers and planners are going to have to fundamentally change their methods of predicting what rivers are likely to do.

The state of California has adopted the nation's first green building codes, including a provision that allows local jurisdictions to keep or approve even stricter environmental building rules.

They are being called the most environmentally friendly building codes in the U.S.

"The new code, dubbed Calgreen, will take effect next January and requires builders to install plumbing that cuts indoor water use, divert 50 percent of construction waste from landfills to recycling, use low-pollutant paints, carpets and floorings and, in nonresidential buildings, install separate water meters for different uses. It mandates the inspection of energy systems by local officials to ensure that heaters, air conditioners and other mechanical equipment in nonresidential buildings are working efficiently. And it will allow local jurisdictions, such as San Francisco, to retain their stricter existing green building standards, or adopt more stringent versions of the state code if they choose."

Chicago's western suburbs face decline...

An energy efficiency plan inspired by a Portland lawmaker and the city of Portland’s new Clean Energy Works program could go national in a second-round economic stimulus bill being fashioned in the Senate.

In 2005, the Tulane/Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research began the UrbanEco Initiative in partnership with the Tulane School of Architecture’s City Center and several local, national and international academic partners. Their goal is to create communities with sustainable environmental, social and economic conditions.

Kaid Benfield of the NRDC reviews The Smart Growth Manual by Andres Duany, Jeff Speck and Mike Lydon. Benfield gives it high marks for style and substance, and for the way it incorporates environmental issues.