Julia and Graham chart various innovative ways to use OZs that are already being pursued:

“The OZone program is a good fit for clean energy and sustainable development. First, the tax benefits — capital gain tax deferral, partial forgiveness of tax on capital gains and forgiveness of additional gains on investments in OZones — make it easier to include sustainability features because the projects can deliver higher returns and be structured with simpler capital stacks. The higher return on Opportunity Fund investments, for example, could allow sponsors of clean energy projects to add features to projects or partner with energy customers that are considered more risky, as proposed by Jon Bonanno, CXO of New Energy Nexus. New Energy Nexus provides assistance to global energy entrepreneurs.”

“Second, the program allows for more comprehensive and holistic projects. In fact, the lack of restrictions on investments in the Opportunity Zone program creates an opportunity for integrated, interdisciplinary development plans. With the clarifications in the federal rules for OZones making it clear that clean economy projects are eligible, every project can be a clean energy and a clean jobs-producing project.

“Third, the program allows for a deeper commitment to neighborhood success than many past economic development incentives. That’s why Bo Menkiti of the Menkiti Group has teamed up with Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) to pursue OZone funding for its Neighborhood Investment Model, which includes LEED buildings. Because OZone investors must keep their capital invested for a full decade to realize the maximum tax benefits, they have a stake in a neighborhood’s long-term success. In this way, the OZone program creates space to combine clean energy projects with initiatives to train local workers and nurture new local clean economy businesses.”

Full Parzen/Graham report

The post Putting Real Urban Opportunity–Carbon-Free and Equitable–into Opportunity Zones appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

Benjamin Barber, If Mayors Ruled the World 

Jonathan Barnett and Larry Beasley, Ecodesign for Cities and Suburbs

Timothy Beatley, Biophilic Cities: Integrating Nature into Urban Design and Planning

Daniel Brook, A History of Future Cities

Joan DeJean, How Paris Became Paris

Richard Florida, Who’s Your City? How the Creative Economy is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life

Joel Kotkin, The City: A Global History

Charles Montgomery, Happy City: Transforming Our Lives through Urban Design

Andreas Malm, Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming

 William McDonough and Michael Braungart, The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability–Designing for Abundance

Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects

Richard Register, Ecocities: Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature

Jeremy Rifkin, The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World

Eric Sanderson, Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City

Wade Shepard, Ghost Cities of China: The Story of Cities Without People in the World’s Most Populated Country

Ted Steinberg, Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History

Frank Trentmann, Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First

The post Urban Transformation Reader: A Holiday Book List appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

As climate innovations proliferate in cities, it has become common to hear urban innovators talk about the “transformation” of urban systems, neighborhoods, the economy, and the entire city. but what exactly about the city is being transformed, and how does transformation happen? the answers lie in our understanding of both cities and innovations.

Cities arrange their built and natural space in ways that establish the fundamental elements of urban life–the underlying economic activities, life-maintaining metabolism, use of natural systems, and inhabitants’ capacity to shape a shared future…

We explain that urban climate innovations change the design and use of urban space in ways that don’t just decarbonize the city; they change the fundamental elements of cities.

The cities are still cities, of course…. But as their underlying elements change, the cities will not be the same as they were before. They are being transformed. 

When a dozen or so cities began in the early 1990s, with an early version ICLEI, to develop strategies for reducing GHG emissions within their borders, decarbonization, not transformation was on their minds. The urban decarbonization effort gained has gained traction worldwide thanks to entities like C40 Cities, which periodically reports on the thousands of actions its city members are taking to reduce GHG emissions.

Gradually, cities realized that many of the decarbonization actions they were taking produced other, highly desirable benefits. C40 Cities identified these as increased healthiness, economic efficiency, innovation, productivity, growth in the technology sector, and quality of life. “A well-designed city can reduce congestion, improve air quality, reduce noise pollution, and decrease energy use,” state the China Development Bank guidelines. “It can create enjoyable spaces for everyone, from children to the elderly, and increases options for daily life. It makes neighborhoods more attractive and livable, and creates cities with more vitality and economic prosperity.”

With decarbonization underway and co-benefits being promoted, our book argues, the focus can also turn more to intentional transformation–replacing the ideas upon which the modern city was built in the 19th and 20th centuries, but which cannot solve cities’ 21st century problems. Fortunately, we show, a new set of transformational ideas are embedded in the many climate innovations of cities.

The post The 30-Year Evolution of Urban Climate Innovation: From Decarbonizing to Co-benefits to Transformation appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

The balance between population, human habitats, and the natural environment we depend on has turned into an escalating conflict. At the root of the conflict is our recklessness in taking carbon from the earth, burning it, and emitting its byproducts into the atmosphere where they don’t belong.   As we mindlessly stoke the engines of “urban development,” using old technologies with catastrophic consequences, the conflict continues to spin out of control.

Nothing short of a new global awareness will bring an end to this conflict, and it must be realized in time to preserve the life-support systems of our planet and our civilization. The awareness begins with a recognition that climate change is not an economic, political, or technological problem. It is a problem of ethics, ecology, and the city.

There are four fundamental notions that inform this awareness. The first is the preciousness of human life and respect for all forms of life — from the smallest, most vulnerable creatures to the subtle life-giving powers inherent in mother nature herself. The second notion is the interdependence of existence. The ability of Earth to sustain life depends on an infinite number of interactions in countless complex systems. The third is a commitment to contribute to the welfare of all humanity — economically, culturally, and spiritually. The fourth is an acknowledgement that concern for others and wisdom in our actions are more important than a reliance on technology to solve our problems.

Why do we not see these values in the places where we live and work? Put simply, we have been praying to the wrong gods, and our cities have become a reflection and a manifestation of our indifference, indulgence, and intolerance.

Our buildings are urban icons to the accumulation of money and power, the isolation and protection of the individual, and the attempt to overpower nature. They are erected at the expense of rain forests rather than built in harmony with them. Our cars are containers that celebrate our ego, speed, and dominance. They are manufactured at the expense of our atmosphere and the air we breathe. Safe and comfortable as we may feel, they continue to rely on carbon-based fuels, and our skies are polluted with their emissions.

But a cloud is being lifted.

Something exciting and encouraging is happening in our cities that you will not discover on Facebook or see on Netflix. A new ethic is emerging, a new urban ecology — call it the re-imagining and greening of the post-modern city.

The re-imagining comes from the realization that the idea of the modern city is not our own. It is an idea that we have been conditioned to accept by political institutions, multi-national corporations, and mainstream media. It is being rejected and replaced by wider and more inclusive ideas of place and citizenship.

The city is no longer accepted as an isolated place on a map, circled by artificial boundaries, and defined by political interests to be protected against the world out there. Rather the “world out there,” the larger environment, is being seen as intrinsic to the very life of the city. The two are appreciated as co-dependent and mutually sustaining.

On an individual level, this ethic is found in a deep-seated responsibility for one’s actions, beyond casting a vote or expressing an opinion. It is a personal responsibility exercised in everyday decisions about how we use resources, consume and dispose of products, live in personal spaces, and share the commons.

On a societal level, a growing network of change makers is advancing this new urban ethic from a deep concern about our dependence on old city paradigms and carbon-based economies that no longer work. They are worried about the destruction of climate change on their world and their chances for a future as prosperous and promising as previous generations.

The courage of their convictions is becoming increasingly evident. They are ending inertia, tearing down old walls that no longer have purpose, and protesting against obsolete engines of commerce powered by carbon.

For them, “life after carbon” is a goal and a destination. They innovate to find new ways to bring ethics, ecology, and the shape of city into harmony with nature. It is time for all of us to embrace this new ethic, support their efforts, and put their ideas into practice. Only then can we truly find economic security, resilience, and happiness in our cities and throughout our planet.

Here’s to success!

The post Ethics, Urban Ecology, and the Notion of City appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

Johnson mines historic materials to make his case–much as we found, in researching our forthcoming book, Life After Carbon, that examining the interconnected rise of the fossil-fuel economy and the modern city was driven by new ideas that became deeply embedded in urban development and global urbanization. And, as he points out toward the end of Carbon Nation, what became embedded in the  modern self–the ideas, feelings, symbols, art, and so on–can be hard to change.

“The urge to look sideways at our energy dependencies goes well beyond unhampered propaganda and lax political contribution laws. It also derives from the fact that most Americans–on the political right and left and in the center–have very strong short-term incentives to want to believe that the status quo can be maintained.” Certainly the same is true about the underlying model–the assumptions–for modern urban development. Johnson continues: “To imagine life without prehistoric carbons . . . means engaging ourselves in the very messy and uncomfortable work of finding out who we are and what we might be without combusting fuels.” This is precisely what cities that have been most aggressive about decarbonizing themselves are discovering: the work is not just about technical solutions that reduce GHG emissions; it’s about reimagining the city’s identity and future.

Johnson makes another point about carbon culture in the U.S. that seems fresh. The rise of the fossil-fuel economy in the early 18th century occurred before Americans had experienced the limits of exploiting natural ecosystems–and the pain of economic contraction–that Europeans had already been through. In the US there was still much more land, trees, minerals and the like to consume. Americans evaded “the logic of organic constraints felt so viscerally in more land-strapped early modern regions such as England, France, Germany, Japan, and China.” As a result, Johnson concludes, “Americans became subsequently vaccinated against talk of ecological constraints.”

Climate change presents a great challenge to this nation’s deeply held cultural aversion to ecological limits. No wonder Johnson says that “disentangling ourselves from prehistoric carbon implies, in other words, that we are willing to cleave off a part of ourselves.”

The post “Carbon Nation” Examines How Fossil-Fuel Culture Stands in Way of Change appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

As Arup seeks to carve out a new market to serve–arid urban climate adaptation–it has identified dozens of strategies for cities to pursue at the scales of buildings, public spaces, and citywide. Arup’s most important framing message: Arid cities must set aside old ideas about urban design, planning, and development and invent,

“Cities in these regions face complex challenges such as water scarcity, inadequate infrastructure, rapidly growing populations, and impacts on public health from the effects of urban heat islands. Yet most cities in arid environments are still planned and designed based on a global city making paradigm established during the middle parts of the 20th century. This one-size-fits-all approach, characterised by private car ownership and separate land uses connected by highway networks, fails to respond to specific climatic contexts and needs.

“Planners, engineers and decision makers working in arid environments require climate appropriate design solutions to create sustainable and liveable cities. Future responses must be tailored to specific social, economic, environmental and political conditions, combining the best of new technology with locally adapted solutions.”

This is precisely the theme of our forthcoming book, Life After Carbon: cities must–and are–replacing the modern-city paradigm with a new set of ideas accounting for climate change, energy system transformation, urban greening, and other sustainability models–and these ideas are transformational.

The post Hot and Bothered: What’s the Future of Arid Cities? appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

The first thing to notice in the report is the economic sectors that are growing: green buildings and clean tech. The green building sector has developed deep expertise in building envelope performance, while the city and the province of British Columbia have adopted some of the toughest green building standards in the world. The clean tech sector covers clean-energy production, management and storage; water treatment and management; material efficiency and circular economy; advanced materials development; green agritech; and clean transportation. Province-wide, clean tech companies raised $6 billion in equity investment between 2011 and 2017.

The report notes that “green job growth includes both new and transitional jobs. New jobs come from market expansion and growth, while transitional jobs are existing jobs in traditional sectors that have become green due to changed norms and practices (e.g. construction changes due to greener building codes). On average, 40 percent of growth in green jobs each year may be attributed to new jobs, while 60 percent of growth is due to transitional jobs.”

It also points to some of the fundamentals for urban success in the emerging economy:

• Branding–“Vancouver has a global reputation as a leading clean and green economy”
• Talent — Large numbers of highly educated people who become green-business entrepreneurs and employees and want to live in a sustainable city.

The report has much more information that other cities may find useful for developing strategies and indicators of their standing and progress in the economy that is coming.

The post Going Carbon Free: Vancouver Builds a Green Economy appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

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The announcement arrived as I was researching and writing about the global spread of urban greening at multiple city scales, from building sites and streets to neighborhoods/districts and citywide, the urban ecology. The Liuzhou forest city, which is supposed to be ready for living by 2020, is more the size, by population, of a large, compact urban neighborhood, akin to some of the “low carbon” districts in a few cities. Stockholm’s Royal Seaport district, under development for several years, is designed for 50,000 housing and office units.

Few, if any, new district designs have pushed so far toward incorporating greenery into the newly built environment. To get a sense of how much of a stretch this might be, I compared the Liuzhou statistics to those of Central Park in New York City. The forest city will contain twice as many trees as Central Park, but will only use 40 percent of the park’s size–on which it will host buildings, people, roads, a railroad, an entire city neighborhood. Many more trees on much less land; that’s what going vertical can get you.

Highly engineered urban green space is not new. Central Park was precisely that 160 years ago when it was designed, 1,600 residents were cleared off the land, steam-powered equipment and masses of unskilled laborers moved 10 million cartloads of material out of the park, and 4 million trees were moved in. But greened settlement at this scale–green and large enough, perhaps, to form a dynamic ecosystem–is an evolution of modern urban design. And it may be a life saver for China’s future as a nation with 1-billion people living in cities. Project architect Stefano Boeri says the forest city offers China a new model for accommodating its rapidly growing urban population: build “a system of small, green cities” instead of just expanding and extending existing urban centers.

The post A Chinese City Growing in New York’s Central Park? appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

Now, with a grant from the Urban Sustainability Directors Network and contributions from Baltimore, Flagstaff, Fort Collins, San Jose, Tacoma, and Washington D.C., USDN has released “Marketing for Action: A Guide to Marketing Fundamentals for Urban Sustainability Offices.”

“Marketing for Action” lays out the marketing fundamentals for  creating and shaping strong environmental behavior-change campaigns using best practices in marketing. It offers a practical how-to, with or without big budgets, for cultivating voluntary action by city residents. It provides real-world examples from U.S. cities leading this practice.

Roya, who headed GreeNYC, the marketing arm of PlaNYC, for five years,has started her own business, Vision Flourish, to work with cities and NGOs to develop successful behavior change strategies.

(Access to USDN’s set of innovation projects)

The post City Marketing Campaigns Can Change Behavior. Here’s How. appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.