By Daniel Lerch, Post Carbon Cities program manager

(16 November 2007, Toronto, Ontario) It's rather fitting to end the Post Carbon Cities book tour here in Toronto, home of the big urban windmill that graces the cover of the book. Throughout the tour people have been asking me if that photo is a montage, and I've always been pleased to say, No, the folks up in Toronto actually figured out how to get one built right there within the city! It was no small treat to drive right by the turbine on the bus coming in from the airport, and see it churning away in the November wind.

But first, let's rewind two weeks. I arrived in New York City on Monday November 5th for three days chock full of events: a morning meeting with a City Councilor's staff; private presentations at the Institute of Sustainable Cities, Columbia University and the Regional Plan Association; and public presentations at New York University and the historic John Street Church in Lower Manhattan.

The big topic on everyone's minds during my New York visit was PlaNYC 2030, Mayor Bloomberg's big urban/sustainability vision initiative (the six-month update report was released 22 October). I was somewhat surprised to hear people saying positive, even hopeful things about it -- surprised because these Big Plan efforts are all too often big on rhetoric but short on substance. Indicative of both the seriousness and quality of the PlaNYC effort was a presentation Tuesday night by famed Danish urbanist Jan Gehl. Gehl, who is now a consultant on PlaNYC, described how turning targeted streets partially or even entirely over to pedestrians, bicyclists and transit can --if done well and done seriously-- create enormous benefits for the local economy and quality of life.

Later that week I took a train to Philadelphia, arriving in one of the most beautiful train stations in the United States (Washington D.C. probably holds the top title). That Thursday was an event I'd been looking forward to a while: I did a presentation and a workshop for a "Planning at the Edge" event hosted by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, the MPO for much of southeastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey. The event drew over 40 elected officials and government staff from throughout the region, and also included a presentation by Katy Hatcher of US EPA's Energy Star program for buildings.

For the afternoon workshop I split participants into groups of seven and asked them to discuss these things:

• How will energy and climate uncertainty impact the role you, personally, play in your jurisdiction?
• Based on the experience of the people in your group, what do you think the most important short-term and long-term implications of energy and climate uncertainty will be for the Delaware Valley?
• Make three short-term recommendations and three long-term recommendations for what DVRPC and/or its member jurisdictions should do in response.

The discussions that followed in this room full of hands-on experts were, predictably, very interesting and quite valuable. Here's a quick look at some of the recommendations that the groups came up with made:

SHORT-TERM RECOMMENDATIONS

• Educate elected officials, businesses and households about the coming changes and needed solutions. Focus particularly on industrial areas and local/regional economies.
• Adopt methods of calculating lifecycle costs for new buildings, so that the economic argument for energy efficiency can be made directly to developers.
• Identify "baselines" so we can track how costs related to energy and climate uncertainty are changing over time.
• Immediately identify and examine policies that directly or indirectly promote sprawl and/or limit energy savings.
• Provide guidelines and step-by-step programs for both households and businesses. (As one group said, "Tell people what to do!")

LONG-TERM RECOMMENDATIONS

• Funding, funding, funding: Need much more for public transit, less for private automobile-oriented infrastructure.
• Assess the true carbon impact of big projects -- we need to do more than just Environmental Impact Statements.
• Encourage investment of existing decentralized energy technologies through both regulation and subsidy. "Use now what we have now."
• Encourage and pursue bottom-up approaches, not top-down approaches. e.g., Look at local ways to create an economy for local products.
• Adopt LEED / EnergyStar standards for all new buildings; develop incentives for retrofitting existing buildings to LEED / Energy Star standards.

And now we come to this past week. My first day in the Toronto region was actually spent in Hamilton, an industrial city about an hour's drive to the South, and focus of one of the three case studies in Post Carbon Cities. After a presentation to Hamilton's City Council (known there as the "Committee of the Whole") I had the pleasure of making my first presentation of this tour to a school group at Assumption Catholic High School in Burlington. That evening I was honored to be the guest speaker for Hamilton's annual "Spirit of Red Hill Valley" lecture, follwed by a response panel led by Hamilton Mayor Fred Eisenberger and including former Toronto City Councilor Richard Gilbert (author of the first major municipal study on the local ramifications of peak oil, as well as the forthcoming book Transport Revolutions). I've wrapped up the last few days with various meetings and presentations to small groups, including a presentation to Post Carbon Toronto, a member of our Relocalization Network.

That about wraps up my three-part summary of the Fall 2007 Post Carbon Cities tour. Unfortunatley I haven't had time to write about all the inspiring people and organizations I met with, let alone all the indivudals who gave much of their own time to organize and promote most of these events. A big Thank You! to everyone who helped make this tour happen!

Watch our website for news about our next set of tours in 2008. Already I have plans to tour in the Pacific Northwest in February, California in April, and possibly Ireland and the UK in April as well. We also have plans underway to sponsor or co-sponsor targeted seminars and conferences for local leaders in both the U.S. and Canada, including a gathering of local leaders in New England to follow up on all the peak oil interest I encountered there during the tour. Stay tuned, and be sure to subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay up to date on all the exciting developments here at Post Carbon!

[Previous blog posts on Daniel's Fall 2007 book tour:
Post Carbon Cities Fall 2007 Tour (1 of 3): Blog and Tour Launch,
Post Carbon Cities Fall 2007 Tour (2 of 3): New England readies for peak oil.]

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