it’s basically a mini mobile home that rents for about $2,000 a month. You park one in the backyard, hook it up to your water and electricity, and it becomes a free-standing spare room for Grandma and Grandpa….

The MEDCottage is homey on the outside, with taupe vinyl siding and white trim around French doors. Inside, it looks like a nice hotel suite, complete with kitchen and bathroom.

According to its creator, it’s designed to take care of the unique needs of older seniors.

The 12-by-24-foot MedCottage is loaded with technology and amenities for the health, comfort and safety of the elderly or those recovering from illness or injury…. The comfortable interior is equipped with the latest technology to monitor vital signs, filter the air for contaminants and communicate with the outside world via high-tech video and cell phone text technology. Sensors alert caregivers to an occupant’s fall, and a computer can remind the occupant to take medications. The technology also provides entertainment, offering a selection of music, reading material and movies. It also contains a family communication center that provides telemetry, environmental control and dynamic interaction to off-site caregivers through smart and robotic technology throughout the charming, comfortable modular home.

Right now, putting a MedCottage in your backyard is illegal in most states — it violates zoning laws. Virginia’s spearheaded the way, with an exemption that started a month ago. Should be interesting to see if the idea lives up to its potential.

Many suburbanites take free parking for granted, whether it’s in the lot of a big-box store or at home in the driveway. Yet the presence of so many parking spaces is an artifact of regulation and serves as a powerful subsidy to cars and car trips. Legally mandated parking lowers the market price of parking spaces, often to zero. Zoning and development restrictions often require a large number of parking spaces attached to a store or a smaller number of spaces attached to a house or apartment block.

If developers were allowed to face directly the high land costs of providing so much parking, the number of spaces would be a result of a careful economic calculation rather than a matter of satisfying a legal requirement. Parking would be scarcer, and more likely to have a price — or a higher one than it does now — and people would be more careful about when and where they drove.

The subsidies are largely invisible to drivers who park their cars — and thus free or cheap parking spaces feel like natural outcomes of the market, or perhaps even an entitlement….

if we’re going to wean ourselves away from excess use of fossil fuels, we need to remove current subsidies to energy-unfriendly ways of life.

The Economist’s Ryan Avent comments on the entertaining response to the piece by US libertarians, who like most Americans believe free/cheap parking is a God-given Right:

One of the results of the piece was a barrage of perplexing responses from people who normally agree with Tyler…

One thing that surprises me is that libertarian economists wouldn’t immediately adopt the default assumption that mandated parking minimums are bad. What does it mean to be a libertarian if that’s not your default position? Ditto for below-market pricing of scarce resources. You’d expect progressive writers to make a strong case that goods a, b, and c should be affordable to everyone and government subsidized as a matter of basic decency. It’s bizarre that libertarians leap to this position when driving-oriented policies are up for discussion.

The best part of the dustup is where libertarians try to argue that inexpensive parking is one of those rare places where the government needs to step in to provide a “public good.” There’s only one tiny problem:

You’d think that libertarians making the public good argument would have no problem defending government provision of and subsidy for [mass] transit, but of course they don’t. They get around this by arguing that people want to drive and they don’t want to ride transit. This is strange in that in few other cases would a libertarian claim to know what markets want.

Some of the strongest backing for the bill has come from AARP, which sent a letter to committee members on Monday pointing out that the country’s aging population will be poorly served if development patterns don’t evolve to make driving less necessary. “Nine out of ten of our members tell us they want to stay in their own homes as they age — most are living in suburban or rural areas and don’t have access to public transportation,” said Debra Alvarez, senior legislative representative for AARP. “There’s a lot of things that can be done in small towns: co-locating things like post offices, grocery stores, pharmacies, and putting housing there too.”

A few Smart Growth advocates have been making the connection between our aging population and the need for Smart Growth for a while now. It’s great to see that the ideas have gone from theory to senior boots on the ground.

In DC, I have friends here who bike to work every day. They tell me that so long as you’re aggressive enough with car drivers, you’re usually okay. That and watch out for folks in cars who open up the door right in front of you so you can avoid the delightful experience known as getting “doored .” Anybody surprised more of us don’t follow their path?

If we want more folks to “pony up” like Mykleby says they should, we’ve got to make it easier so those of us without a Mad Max approach to biking will do it. One interesting example of how is a pilot project San Francisco is trying out in Golden Gate Park.

The $250,000 project will move parking spots away from the curb so bicyclists and cars no longer have to mingle on the roadway. The lanes are expected to protect bicyclists and encourage more cycling in The City.

“A painted buffer area between the parked cars and bikeway will provide space for passengers to enter and exit vehicles,” the SFMTA said. “In areas without parking, the bikeway will be separated from the travel lane by a painted buffer area only.”…

The lanes have been a success in Amsterdam, Copenhagen and New York City, said Andy Thornley, the Bicycle Coalition’s program manager.

But even less complicated or expensive changes can make a real difference. Cities have discovered that creating what are known as Bike Boulevards, or a network of streets where signs and lines painted on the road make it clear that on these roads, bikes have priority, can significantly increase bicyclist safety without making car drivers crazy. No matter what cities do, individuals still have to make the decision to bike. But we can make that decision a much more appealing — and sane — one.

1. Create more sustainable and resilient communities
2. Green the local economy
3. Engage the community in the climate change planning process
4. Approach climate change planning on a regional level
5. Address transportation through transit-oriented development and complete streets
6. Promote density through infill development and brownfield redevelopment
7. Adopt green building policies
8. Preserve and create green space
9. Plan for climate adaptation

One of the more interesting case studies was of Sarasota County, Florida, which has adopted the Architecture 2030 Challenge,

which is built around the goal of achieving carbon neutrality for county operations by 2030…

As staff members began examining what it would take to succeed on that challenge, they quickly realized that land use and community design were every bit as critical to carbon neutrality as energy use in public buildings. In just one example of how that realization translated into a different way of thinking about policy, county staff members looked at the amount of driving that residents were doing and saw that it was largely predetermined by the pattern of development. The task of reducing VMT became not just an issue of housing demand but also a matter of housing need: where does the county need to locate housing and what form does the housing need to take?

That insight, and the fact that folks in Sarasota care about “protecting the area’s natural systems, the county developed a 2050 plan that

proposes the development of “2050 Villages”–compact developments designed to preserve open space and reduce driving–as well as an initiative emphasizing strong transit connections and TOD.

to get a sense of what kind of carbon emission savings Smart Growth can offer, a few steps from the report:

Transportation accounts for one-third of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, more than any other single end-use sector. Between 1990 and 2006, GHG emissions from the transportation sector accounted for 47 percent of the increase in overall U.S. GHG emissions…

SMARTRAQ [Strategies for the Metro Atlanta Region’s Transportation and Air Quality] found that people living in neighborhoods that were rated as the least walkable drove about 30 percent more—and produced about 20 percent more GHG emissions—than those living in the areas rated most walkable….

The greater location efficiency offered by redeveloped brownfields can reduce VMT by 33 to 58 percent over greenfield developments….

Residential buildings account for 21 percent of all CO2 emissions. A detached single-family home uses 54 percent more energy for heating and 26 percent more for cooling than a multifamily home. Homes in compact developments use, on average, 20 percent less energy than homes in sprawling development.

Will all of this stop the climate crisis? No, because right now the efforts are too scattered and diffuse. But what if the environment movement and folks like Obama were doing everything they could to encourage and provide resources for these local experiments? We could make a hell of a lot more progress much more quickly than we can with all the energy being spent on a probably doomed effort to pass cap and trade.

Come to think of it, if Obama, the enviros, and Obama’s amazing social network of folks who organize to get him elected were focused on these kinds of climate crisis fights at the local level, it might create serious increase the odds of getting something serious done at the national level — corporations might decide he was worth cutting a serious national deal if only to slow down local efforts. These are the kinds of options we lose when we follow Krugman and other economists’ market-based framework.

1. Strives for full democratic participation.

2. Builds capacity for a truly sustainable infrastructure and green economy.

3. Creates and share “green” wealth.

The rest of the report shows how groups around the country are fighting for this vision.

Take Harlan County, Kentucky. You probably know about the environmental devastation caused by strip top mining. At the same time, most folks in Harlan County are in a no-win situation.

There are few employment alternatives to coal-related jobs, even as coal employment in Kentucky is a third of what it was 30 years ago, largely due to the increased mechanization of the industry. Large absentee landlords and local land-owners are unaccountable to new forms of economic development. The local elite maintain tight control over politics, commerce, and public life in this region.

But folks are fighting back, in part through a statewide organization called Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC).

In Benham, a coalition made up of KFTC and the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED) is exploring a range of “green,” renewable energy sources. In addition to wind power, potential exists for micro-hydro power, utilizing the creeks that run through the towns, and small-scale solar energy. The coalition’s efforts are informed by two reports from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: one on models for developing locally owned wind power and a second on viable strategies for local renewable energy and energy efficiency improvements. As the mines “write people off,” with job elimination that trigger growing desperation and anxiety, Harlan County KFTC leader, Carl Shoupe, a retired, disabled third generation miner, realizes that this moment is a “critical time” to take action.

In San Diego, the Environmental Health Coalition is also fighting to create a just, green economy for all. Last year, it

successfully blocked the expansion of a fossil fuel power plant in Chula Vista, California, where over 80% of residents are people of color and 16% of all residents fall below the poverty line. This proposed plant expansion would have more than doubled the size of the existing plant…. It would have been sited 1,300 feet from a local elementary school and only 350 feet from the nearest home in that community.

In fighting against the plant expansion, which blatantly violated the town’s general plan that EHC spent two years working to pass, EHC didn’t just argue against the plant. They won in part because they proposed an alternative vision of the future.

They drafted a detailed energy plan that described the rationale and benefits for alternatives such as solar arrays on rooftops and parking lots, repair of transmission lines, and improvement of residential energy efficiency. EHC also provided expert testimony and analysis showing that these options were not only feasible and cost effective, but could provide three to four times the energy that the proposed plant would provide.

Similarly, in New York City, WE ACT has been fighting for years to take on pollution in their neighborhood.

Five out of six public transit bus depots on Manhattan are located in the brown and black, low-income communities of Northern Manhattan. For the most part, these bus depots are situated close to apartments, schools, playgrounds, and senior centers. Inundated by toxic diesel pollution, residents suffer some of the highest rates of childhood asthma hospitalizations in the nation, and disproportionately high levels of other respiratory illnesses and heart disease. Northern Manhattan’s cancer and child-asthma rates exceed area, state, and national averages….

Years of advocacy by WE ACT for Environmental Justice (WE ACT)2 and other partners have certainly helped lessen the toxic burden of these transit depots. Their coalition work has resulted, for example, in the conversions of 400 diesel buses into compressed natural gas buses, and another 900 into hybrid electric buses. But WE ACT’s environmental justice efforts go well beyond these near term mitigations.

For example, after many years of community pressure, NYC’s MTA decided they would rebuild a Lower Manhattan bus depot that handles 120 buses a day. WE ACT trained folks in the community “in the principles of green building and the science of sustainability,” and now they are working with the MTA to create a truly green depot, including features such as “a green roof, air pollution controls, energy efficiency, and gray water reclamation.”

The report also highlights how some groups who began by fighting for economic justice have broadened their vision to for a just, sustainable economy. In Miami, in 2001 “the Miami Workers Center (MWC) sought to prevent the demolition of low-income housing developments in Liberty City,” eventually forcing developers to build units that were affordable for everyone who lived in the development. As part of their experience in that fight, now one of their main goals is “to deepen community involvement in the redevelopment and green design process.”

In early 2008, MWC collaborated with US Green Builders to host a community design competition, called a charette, of the Scott-Carver site. These charettes have served as a popular education piece for residents, and MWC members and have helped the wider community understand the connection between environmental and racial justice….

Poinciana Industrial Park, a mostly vacant industrial site that for three decades was supposed to have brought economic development and opportunities to the black community. MWC is helping policy makers and developers understand the value of turning that Park into a “green enterprise zone” that will host small to medium scale green businesses. In its attempt to reframe conventional “green” discourse, MWC uses the term “Community Driven Green Industry” to describe the public, non-profit, and private sector ventures that create environmentally friendly products and services that also generate long-term living-wage jobs at all skill levels. As Benford explained, MWC “really need[s] to drive consciousness of what kind of development we need to be focused on,” given Miami’s track record of pursuing “shallow” development versus wealth-generating development.

And in LA, home of the highway car chase, last year the Labor/Community Strategy Center helped create Transit Riders for Public Transportation, a network of 11 groups across the country fighting to “bring environmental justice and civil rights priorities to the upcoming federal surface ransportation act—whose budget is estimated to be at least $500 billion.” Eric Mann, the Labor/Community Strategy Center’s Director, argues that

a strong investment in public transportation can create real green jobs (defined as jobs that reduce fuel emissions, and provide sustainable, long term employment with promotions potential for minority populations).

The Labor/Community Strategy Center estimates, for instance, that 7,000 green jobs could be created for every 1,000 buses built. For every 100 buses, they estimate that 300 drivers could be hired to enable buses to run round the clock. Jobs in clerical work, cleaning and maintenance, bus mechanics, and bus construction would also be created…

“a mass transit system that prioritizes the needs of the most transit-dependent communities can serve the needs of all. The process of getting people out of their cars can begin now, not after manufacturing 200 million electric cars or after constructing a multi-billion or trillion dollar new rail project, or after transitioning to a clean electricity grid 20 years from now.”

You can read more about these organization’s struggles and their vision of a better future for all in the Environmental Justice and the Green Economy report. If you or your organization wants to endorse their Vision Statement, check out http://ejstimulus.wordpress.com/selected-list-of-endorsers/

Luckily, the Center for Neighborhood Technology has done it for you. With the latest version of their Housing and Transportation Affordability Web site, if you live near just about any major metropolitan area, they’ve got your number(s).

Normally when we talk about housing affordability, we don’t take into account the cost of transportation. When you factor it in,CNT says, the story is pretty sobering:

only two in five American communities—or 39 percent—are affordable for typical households when their transportation costs are considered along with housing costs

But as their new report, Penny Wise, Pound Fuelish, points out, it doesn’t have to be this way. There’s a striking difference in how much most folks spend on transportation in sprawling versus smart growth communities:

Household savings from residing in a representative compact neighborhood rather than a dispersed community can range from $1,580 per year in Little Rock and $1,830 in Minneapolis to $3,110 in Chicago, $3,610 in Phoenix and as high as $3,850 in Boston—numbers that resonate with families seeking to tighten their belts during difficult economic times.

Regional savings have also been calculated for 12 metro areas using the same representative communities to highlight the aggregate impact if 50% of projected population growth through 2030 could live in more location efficient places. Such cost savings can total $239.8 million in a small region like
Charlotte which is expected to almost double its population while San Francisco could register savings
of $1.1 billion and Phoenix, $2.1 billion, by changing the way they grow.

One more example of how going Green can save us $$$.

According to their press release,

Overall, the income needed to purchase a median-priced home dropped in 93 percent of the homeownership markets studied between 2008 and 2009, yet many workers still do not earn enough to own a home. In addition, the typical rent for a two-bedroom home rose in 89 percent of the markets studied…

police officers cannot afford to purchase the median-priced home in 86, elementary school teachers in 83, and licensed practical nurses in 146 of the 208 homeownership markets studied. Janitors cannot afford to purchase a home in 202, and retail salespeople in 207 of the markets studied.

And renting hasn’t gotten much easier either:

in the vast majority of metropolitan markets, fair market rents have held steady or increased – occasionally surpassing monthly mortgage payments for a median-priced home. Specifically, retail salespeople continue to be priced out of renting a two-bedroom apartment in every market studied. Janitors fare almost the same, being able to afford a two-bedroom apartment in only one of the 210 rental markets studied. Licensed practical nurses are unable to rent a two-bedroom apartment in 55, police officers in 12, and elementary school teachers in 11 of the markets studied.

In short, we are in a lose-lose situation — housing prices have dropped enough to cause widespread pain for folks who own a home, but not far enough to help most folks who don’t. And getting out of this mess is going to be really hard.

Taking on corporations around the globe may sound insanely ambitious, but boring it’s not. But using local/state government? It’s more Kumbaya than Mortal Kombat. Sure, there’s evil here — just ask the environmental justice groups who fight against toxic dumps and pollution-induced childhood asthma in inner-city neighborhoods. But if mayors like Bloomberg are on your side, we’re not talking social justice-style bloodsport. And that makes it a lot harder to get massive numbers of folks fired up enough to mobilize big-time. So how do we add some sizzle?

Here’s one way to do it: turn it into a sport. Cities around the globe could compete against each other to see who could make the biggest drops in CO2 emissions — like the Solar Decathlon only with a lot more smack talk.

And like real sports, we could tweak the rules to make it a more exciting contest — one where Dallas or Seoul might stand a chance of wiping the smug off San Francisco’s face.

The key to making this work is to make it as fun and as head-bangingly competitive as possible to really get folks bloodlust up. To take very geeky discussions about, say, the right kinds of solar panels or filtration systems and tie them back to a bigger picture of who’s the bigger badass. To take the stats and serve them up with style. In other words, to actually treat it like a sport and try to use the same kind of tricks that help rev up cadres of obsessed sports fans. Call it ESPNization.

The best way to pull this off? Bring the “obsessive entertainment behavioral economics” experts — sportscasters and sportswriters from around the globe — into the mix from the beginning. You’d end up with a much better result than if enviros just did it on their own (not to mention better media coverage).

There are plenty of ways to play off the idea. Cities could pull in their actual sports teams to help rally folks. And for cities that already have sports rivalries, it’s another great way to go at each other.

Mind you, it’d take some effort to work out the details of the contest. For example, does it make sense to have different leagues so cities in undeveloped countries that don’t have the kind of resources a San Francisco has could still have a chance of winning? Or maybe teams of cities could go head-to-head — take the usually bland “sister city” concept and juice it up, giving cities with more money and incentives to really help out cities with less?

We might also want rules to promote sharing ideas across cities. Maybe you’d win points for new innovations — even more points if other cities used your innovations.

And we’d certainly want to think about how we incorporate social justice/equity. Maybe you’d win points for a Green for All-style approach – or lose them if all the benefits skipped inner cities and slums.

Yes, working out the rules – and dealing with attempts to game the rules or cheat – would take a lot of work. But we’ve got that problem right now. The difference is that today nobody except for a handful of Enviro nerds pay attention to the details that tell you cities are really reducing their CO2 emissions. With the games, we’d have obsessed fans around the globe watching the details like a hawk. In fact, if we do it right, fights over scoring, over refs, over all of the nitty gritty details would actually strengthen the drive to stop global warming.

How would we know it’s working? My “metric” would be when Lou Dobbs started ranting that Koreatowns across the US were acting as a fifth column for Seoul.

I don’t know enough about global politics to know if this idea would work, or if it would create more problems than it’s worth it. And no, I’m not crazy enough to think that creating bike paths will have more drama than a mid-court three point basket. My point in spinning this out is just to show that with a little creativity, there are plenty of ways to play on the Local Board that would get folks fired up.

Up Next: Ready, Fire, Aim!

1) Use Base Formula Funds to Maintain the System

Base formula funds should be the primary funding source for system maintenance and preservation. Accounting for approximately 75 percent of total federal transportation funding, the base formula funds should be distributed to states, metropolitan regions, and localities on a mode-neutral basis (that is, all eligible projects should receive the same federal match)…. The formula used to distribute the funds should be shifted away from the current metrics used in the federal funding formulas, which are based on population and vehicle miles traveled. Instead, they should be modified to reward reduced driving per capita, promote the effective use of transit, and achieve other economic and environmental goals.

2) Provide a Bonus Pool to Create Incentives for Sustainable Investment

A new bonus funds program should be created to turn policy goals into workable projects on the ground. Accounting for a significant portion of total funding for new transportation—25 percent—the program should distribute grant funds on a competitive basis. Major new capacity additions for road and transit should flow through this program. The bonus pool should also support planning, regulatory, and land development innovations that advance federal goals.

3) Create an Independent American Infrastructure Bank to Invest in Infrastructure

A new American Infrastructure Bank (AIB) should be created as an independent public institution to fund infrastructure projects—for transport, water, energy, and more—in pursuit of the nation’s economic, environmental, and social goals. Structured as a public, independent nonprofit financial institution, the AIB’s broad goals and lending criteria should be established by its mandate and board of governors, with lending decisions made by professional bank staff using sound financial underwriting standards. By defining project criteria and creati into report ng loan packages with a variety of length and interest rate terms, the bank will help foster an investmentoriented approach to U.S. infrastructure.

Lending to public or private entities for investments in U.S. infrastructure, the bank will be an important source of long-term capital for projects whose returns are realized over many years, such as airports, ports, high-speed rail, major bridges, and new roads and highways. The AIB could be funded and capitalized with a stream of revenue from fuel taxes, general revenue funds, bonds, or some combination of these and other sources. The AIB should prioritize projects that have substantial commitments from other parties, including the private sector, and are leveraged by user revenues.

The bank will also be a vehicle for leveraging the investment of private capital into our nation’s public infrastructure—a potentially significant source of capital for infrastructure that currently has few good channels.

This is exactly the kind of approach to shaping the economy we ought to be using more often. It’s a nice mix of nudging folks in the right direction, priming the pump, and nudging/reshaping Finance in a more sane direction.