By Raksha Vasudevan, Associate, Sustainability Programs, National League of Cities

I live in a region that is nationally known for its traffic congestion.  In virtually every poll, newspaper article, or blog on the topic (google “DC region traffic congestion” for proof), the DC metro area is up in the ranks.  Somewhat under the radar are the initiatives taking place throughout the region to provide viable alternatives to residents who are desperately trying to avoid driving (and road rage). Of course, Capital Bikeshare has quite a reputation these days; it’s been so popular that a network that was once only in Washington DC quickly expanded to Arlington and soon will be finding its way to Montgomery County. However, less known is that since the region’s Transportation Planning Board adopted a regional complete streets policy, a number of local jurisdictions and transportation agencies have adopted and started implementing their own versions of it.  And in my own hometown of Washington DC, where we’ve had a complete streets policy for a few years, the Department of Transportation also recently started a campaign, “Move DC,” to develop a multi-modal, long-range transportation plan.

I write all this to say that in any given city and region, transportation departments are embarking on countless such initiatives to increase efficiencies and enhance user experience of transit.  And while these systemic efforts to coordinate and collaborate on a large scale is critical (we’ve discussed the importance of partnerships many a time), I think that perhaps the devil is in the design details.

According to Smart Growth America, nearly 130 communities adopted complete streets policies in 2012.  As part of complete streets, cities are encouraged to think about integrated, holistic roadway design that not only accommodates all modes of travel, but also serves residents with varied needs.  From aging populations to those with physical disabilities, residents have different demands of a street and of transit.  And regardless of whether or not a city decides to implement a complete streets policy, it is critical that these groups and their interests are represented in roadway planning and implementation processes to ensure that the “small” details (think: sidewalk and curb design; crosswalk timings) actually work for everyone. [Design (and plan) with everyone in mind]

Apart from the nuts and bolts of roadway design, cities are also looking into technology as a means to enhance user experience.  As part of the “Move DC” efforts, the city has tagged intelligent transportation systems (ITS) in their list of options to explore further.  ITS applications use ‘smart’ technologies to improve the efficiency, coordination and delivery of services, including roadway and traffic management.  Applications such as transit signal priority in Tacoma, Wash. and Chicago, Ill.; emergency vehicle preemption in Plano, Texas and St. Paul, Minn.; and red light enforcement cameras in Scottsdale, Ariz. and Raleigh, N.C. are some examples of the ways that ITS technologies can not only contribute to more effective, efficient, and safe transit and roadway systems, but also save cities money, time, and resources (this report gives more details on the examples listed). While ITS is a large umbrella under which a range of technology applications fall, cities have an opportunity here to identify those specific technologies that would be most useful to not only meet current transit demands, but actually account for and enhance future ridership.  [Design intelligently]

ITS or no ITS, cities can (and do) plan transportation better when the end user experience is thought about early in the planning stages.  Complete streets and intelligent transportation systems are only two umbrella concepts in a whole menu of strategies that transportation departments can turn to when attempting to create an integrated, effective system that is actually based on user demand and user experience.  These are meant to serve as inspiration, and perhaps examples of a larger idea that is best captured by the title of one of my favorite books on the power of design to improve lives: [“Design like you give a damn”]

Here at NLC’s Sustainable Cities Institute, we’ve spent the last several months curating and adding to the wealth of transportation resources already on our site, www.sustainablecitiesinstitute.org.  We’ve included more reports, guides and model policies on complete streets, bike share, and carshare, to name a few. Check out our new resources and, as always, email us at sustainability@nlc.org with any questions, comments or suggestions!

By Elizabeth Willmott, Project Manager for New Energy Cities, a project of Climate Solutions. New Energy Cities works with small- to medium-sized communities in the Northwest to accelerate the transition to a clean, renewable, super-efficient energy system that integrates smart grid technology, green intelligent buildings, electric vehicles, and renewable power. 

As the 2013 Affordable Comfort Inc. National Home Performance Conference kicks off in Denver, CO, it is clear that U.S. communities are far from empty-handed when crafting energy efficiency retrofit programs.

Spurred in part by the Recovery Act, an army of small and large communities nationwide have worked hard to set up, operate, and sustain energy retrofit programs for both the residential and commercial building owners.

Early adopters include the US Department of Energy (DOE) Retrofit Ramp-Up grantees, as well as self-funded programs such as Long Island Green Homes and the Sonoma County Energy Independence Program. Northwest retrofit programs include Clean Energy Works Oregon, Seattle’s Community Power Works, RePower Kitsap, and Whatcom County’s Community Energy Challenge. Insights from these early experiences help to guide the way for communities that are getting started.

Resources for Getting Started

Nationally, DOE’s Better Buildings program has taken pains to help interested communities unpack the complexities of launching and maintaining retrofit efforts as permanent utility, nonprofit, or city-led programs. The local features vary but several ingredients are common:

• Solid partnership involving existing service providers, such as utilities and community weatherization agencies, and a strong workforce of trained and certified professionals
• Keen understanding of local building stock features and potential customer needs
• Capacity within partner organizations to deliver effective marketing and strong customer service
• Funding and staff commitment to sustain the program beyond initial seed funding

The Better Buildings program offers a great suite of online materials and peer exchange calls. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) and the National Housing Trust also recently released an action guide on how to work with utilities to set up multifamily building retrofit programs.

Communities are looking to states to step up their involvement, too, especially in the critical area of funding. The Washington State Legislature directed $15 million to community energy efficiency providers in 2009, and local programs have asked for $30 million split evenly between the 2013 and 2014 capital budgets. Clean Energy Works Oregon is similarly seeking $10 million from Oregon State lottery funds in 2013.

Finding Permanent Funding

At New Energy Cities, we continue to watch communities and states beyond the Northwest find permanent funding for energy efficiency programs. Massachusetts and Maine, among other Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) participants, invest the majority of their carbon pricing revenue in utility and local government energy efficiency programs.

In 2012, Boulder, CO voters renewed a citywide carbon tax that has partially funded that community’s popular retrofit program. (See this 2010 case study on Boulder from the Home Performance Resource Center.)

Long Island Green Homes and Sonoma County Energy Independence Program were among the first to break ground with local property assessment clean energy (PACE) models. Although the residential PACE prospects are mixed, commercial PACE appears ready to take off like wildfire in 2013. (See the New Energy Cities April 12, 2013 Weekly Wrap.)

St. Louis County, MO used federal low-interest Qualified Energy Conservation Bonds (QECBs) to finance its residential energy efficiency program. Yes, QECBs are notoriously mind-bending, but don’t write them off completely: the Washington State Housing Finance Commission recently partnered with King County, WA to help small and medium-sized cities access the bonds through the King County Green Community Initiative. The Washington model is attracting national attention.

New developments in energy efficiency finance emerge regularly:

On March 8, the Pennsylvania State Treasurer announced that Pennsylvania’s Keystone Home Energy Loan Program (Keystone HELP) recently sold nearly 4,700 home energy efficiency loans to private banks in a “secondary market” transaction. This development is a long-sought-after milestone for the retrofit industry, as access to low-cost private capital is considered to be an important piece of the puzzle for scaling up community energy efficiency investments.

On March 18, Bloomberg reported that California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom proposed a green infrastructure bank to be funded with carbon pricing revenue. Depending on how the bank is designed, this could also theoretically support local government-led retrofit programs.

On March 29, the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund (CLF) noted that the New Hampshire House of Representatives voted to allocate at least 20 percent of that state’s RGGI proceeds to help low-income homes become more energy efficient. Community development financial institutions like CLF are also potential financial partners for retrofit programs, as Craft 3 has been for both Clean Energy Works Oregon and Community Power Works.

On May 16, Applied Solutions will hold a webinar about two on-bill financing models for energy efficiency, Clean Energy Works Oregon and Midwest Energy How$mart.

Policies to Drive Energy Efficiency

Funding is just one driver of a successful retrofit program. Policies and technological advances also support participation in retrofit programs, and drive down energy consumption, as energy benchmarking, disclosure, and behavioral efficiency programs are showing in communities like Austin, San Francisco, New York City, and Seattle. ACEEE recently released a helpful review of a handful of existing state and local home energy disclosure policies.

Nonprofit organizations such as  Earth Advantage and the Institute for Market Transformation are thought leaders in this area, while “energy intelligence” businesses  such as Opower, Honest Buildings, and others are working to move the needle on community energy consumption through easy-to-use energy analysis tools and software applications.

This is all good news for the New Energy Cities team as we are hard at work helping the City of Issaquah, WA develop an aggressive energy efficiency strategy for its commercial and residential buildings. A quick look at the 2012 Energy Map we created for the Issaquah community shows why: residential and commercial buildings combined represent almost two-thirds of Issaquah’s energy consumption and GHG emissions.

A successful building retrofit program could help the Issaquah community significantly reduce energy demand and in turn begin to chip away at its bold GHG reduction goal. Fortunately, cities like Issaquah that are just starting out on the community retrofit path have a lot of retrofit models to copy and adapt.

By Kathy Blaha. Originally published on City Parks Blog on March 14, 2013, as part of a series on public-private partnerships and parks. City Park Blog is a joint effort of the Center for City Park Excellence at the Trust for Public Land and the City Parks Alliance to chronicle the news and issues of the urban park movement. 

Since January I’ve spoken with leaders at city parks and their partners from Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston all the way to Caras Park in Missoula, Montana, studying park conservancies, BIDs and downtown associations in partnership with city and state agencies to manage, maintain, program and fund public parks – mostly downtown parks.  I’ve been thinking about those interviews and the research that I’ve done and trying to pull out the lessons and commonalities about these partnerships.  So far, I think lessons fall into three groups:

• Governance and the art of partnering
• Programs and usership
• Community engagement, access and transparency

The Art of Partnering

Let’s start with the art of partnering.  When I talked about Central Park Conservancy in New York I referenced Chris Walker’s good framework for talking about governance:

Structure: How is the partnership organized and responsive to the park’s constituency? 

Control: Who makes the decisions?

Assets and Liabilities: How are assets and liabilities shared?

Risks:  What are the strategies for mitigating risk?  

In looking at Central Park, Pittsburgh Parks, and Prospect Park I was surprised to find that these organizations operated without formal agreements with their cities for years.  They worked collaboratively and built a joint team leadership that later made determining roles and responsibilities, and contracting, much easier.  “A lot of change comes from gradual improvements,” explained Paul Levy, the Executive Director of Center City District – the BID managing Sister Cities Park in Philadelphia.

Just working together on a day-to-day basis with a set of simple goals – clean up, refurbish, make safe, create fun programs and raise visitation numbers – demonstrated a common commitment to the parks that aligned their teams and created a dedicated management effort.

All of those I interviewed also made clear the difference between owning the park and setting the goals – and carrying out that vision and set of goals.  In almost all park partnership cases, a public agency owns the land and sets the rules, and the private partner contracts to support them.

Who makes the decisions becomes far less contentious when the vision for the park is a shared one and the goals for getting there are clear.  In each case, driving these successful partnerships is a plan – a business plan or a master plan or both – that each partner contributed to.  In each case the private partner is walking their talk bringing people, money, talent, and innovation to realize that plan.  They share their assets and help to reduce the public agency’s enormous task.  The public agency, in turn, continues to represent the public’s interest with assuring access, public funding and a long-term commitment to making that public space successful.

Programs and Usership

Success is best measured in visitation – a high level of use by a diverse set of park users that matches a neighborhood or city’s demographics and culture.  If the park is attractive, people will come.  Downtown parks, especially, become meeting places.  Getting people to the park may take food, a beautiful landscape, programs and WiFi – all initiatives that are being carried out by the partnerships.  Out to Lunch in Missoula, food trucks at Rose Kennedy Greenway, successful cafes at the Philadelphia parks and vending carts in Central Park reinforce the idea that a park can be a wonderful place for lunch, a cup of coffee on your way to work or a meal to enjoy as the sun sets.

In addition to food, we’ve seen schedules for these parks that include, in some cases, over 200 events annually – plenty of concerts, carousels, ice skating, environmental education programs, water features in the form of ponds, fountains, and rivers, kite-flying, running and bicycling.

These park partners are trying to find ways to enliven and activate their parks, trying new things in different spaces in the park.  As Jesse Brackenbury from Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston says, “We’re investing in the park and we want to know whether we are getting results from the investments we are making.”  What they really want to know is – are people coming?

Community Engagement

Prospect Park’s ComCom – its Community Committee –includes representatives from more than 50 local organizations, as well as all of the elected officials (federal, state, and city) and community boards that represent the park and the surrounding districts.   The Caras Park master plan in Missoula was developed by a group of 57 different businesses, residents and organizations that contributed time and money to the effort.

Melissa Brock, Acting Director for the Missoula Downtown Association says, “People recognize this park as a pretty dynamically run place.  We (all of the downtown stakeholders) work together on almost everything.  There is complete synergy in our downtown.  We have something unique in Missoula – how everyone works together.  We’re pretty fortunate to have such a compatible team,” says Brock.

Maybe not every partnership is as copacetic as Missoula’s but the idea is that community engagement and transparency about a park’s management reassures residents and users that the partnership is resulting in efficiencies and becoming a better place.  John Crompton reminds us that frustration with the inflexibility and relatively high costs of government providing direct services is one of the reasons behind the rise of park partnerships.  There is wide recognition of the inefficiencies of delivering services via a monopoly.  The goal of partnerships is about opening up the management process to both competition and collaboration to meet the demand of services that goes beyond what government is providing.

The public’s demand, their engagement – and accountability to them – are especially important in guiding governance and these issues play a vital role in ensuring continued support for public parks and their private partners.   Governance determines who has the power, who makes decisions, how other players make their voice heard and what methods there are for accountability.

As Tupper Thomas, former President of the Prospect Park Alliance and Administrator of Prospect Park in Brooklyn reminded us, “Cities are so strapped, there has to be a give and take.  As the parks department budget gets cut, the conservancies have filled the gap.  Cities without them would pour money only into the popular parks.  The conservancies leverage their ability to raise private money to keep all the parks open.”

The success of conservancies continues to outshine their challenges and it’s likely we’ll see many more of them being created across the country.  The City Parks Alliance is committed to understanding and supporting park partnerships; their website is filled with best practices from around the country.  The future of parks appears to be wrapped up in these new forms of leadership – both for the resources and the innovation they offer.

By Christina DeConcini, Director of Legislative Affairs, World Resources Institute (WRI). Originally published on WRI blog, WRI Insights  on December 11, 2012

“Think globally, act locally” is a slogan that aptly describes what I witnessed last week at the 4th Annual Southeast Florida Climate Leadership Summit. At the event, local government officials from four counties gathered to discuss how to mitigate and adapt to climate change’s impacts.

Yep, you heard that correctly – government officials in the United States—in a “purple” state, no less—came together in a bipartisan manner to address climate change mitigation and adaptation. In fact, mayors, members of Congress, county commissioners, and officials in charge of water issues in the state discussed how to move forward with action plans in response to sea-level rise – a climate change impact which is not theoretical, but happening now.

Putting Aside Partisanship for Action
Unlike Congress, these public officials aren’t debating the facts of climate change and its impacts or whether we should act. They see current effects and understand that in the face of streets flooding more regularly, drinking water supplies threatened by salinization, and models showing that some neighborhoods could become uninhabitable, what political party you support is irrelevant. Climate change impacts like sea level rise don’t discriminate between Democrats and Republicans.

As Congress continues to fail to address climate change at the national level, local officials from Florida’s Broward, Miami-Dade, Monroe, and Palm Beach counties—representing a combined population of 5.6 million—established the four-county Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact and recently completed a 110-point regional action plan. They have developed mitigation and adaptation strategies through joint efforts, which can inform policy-making and government funding at the state and federal levels.

Other Communities and Lawmakers Can Learn from South Florida
Panelists at the summit discussed the tens of millions of dollars already spent on new wells to replace those that have had saltwater seep into them and the hundreds of millions of dollars needed for new drainage systems in Miami. Meanwhile, people having side conversations talked of the Florida Keys eventually becoming a reef and parts of the state’s valuable beachfront property no longer being inhabitable. The fact that Florida is built on porous limestone makes the adaptation challenges even more daunting, as sea water will seep under any barriers that could be constructed.

Significantly, South Florida’s officials understand that they must also address the causes of climate change. They’ve included mitigation strategies as part of the action plan, including transitioning to cleaner energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions through adoption of forward-thinking policies, such as a renewable energy standard. A lot of work remains to implement the action plan, but there is no disagreement on the need to act now.

Will Federal Lawmakers Take a Page from South Florida’s Book?
The action plan by these local governments is a model for others to follow. However, we know that climate change is a global problem that will ultimately require national leadership. It’s admirable that local leaders in Southeast Florida are not waiting for that missing leadership before taking action, but it does raise real questions about Congress’s failure to act on climate change and its responsibility to protect American people and their property.

Two newly elected members of Congress spoke at the recent summit, providing some glimmers of hope at the federal level. Representative-elect Patrick Murphy (D-FL) said he would support climate change legislation and chastised politicians for “burying their heads in the sand.” Congresswoman Lois Frankel (D-FL) also committed to support federal action, saying “I will deal with it in a scientific way.” She noted that climate change is “not a partisan issue,” and “we cannot hide from it.”

Perhaps as more people at the local level respond to climate change, national policymakers will wake up and take action to protect our citizens and valuable resources from dangerous impacts. While local action is desperately needed and should be applauded, we ultimately need national leaders to lead on climate change.

By David DeVaughn, National Urban Fellow, National League of Cities

The 1969 fire on the Cuyahoga River has gone down in history for causing a nationwide outcry that compelled the federal government to clean up and ensure the safety of our waterways. This, amongst other efforts, resulted in the Clean Water Act (CWA) and the creation of the Federal Government’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  Through rulemaking and enforcement, the CWA established a force in America that would protect our waterways, no longer allowing immediate economic gratification to trump environmental costs.

A similar outcry surrounding local food systems is currently being heard across the country. Frustrations about food access inequality and the impacts of unhealthy foods are some of the commonly raised challenges at the community level. Mounting problems exist throughout all stages of the food system: independent farmers and agricultural corporations are facing record droughts, sending food prices skyrocketing; the vast majority of food production practices are causing a deleterious effect on water, air and soils; and our country wastes food in record numbers, impacting food costs, access and hunger.

Could this potentially mean that food systems are veering towards the course of other resource issues that eventually required federal intervention?

Picture this scenario: A group of mayors and USDA administrators are meeting about the rigidity of Healthy Food Act requirements, mandated by the federal government. A mayor is recounting her ten-year legal fight over being unable to provide healthy food in a community food desert.  A superintendent is faced with removing sugar-sweetened beverages from her schools, not because of local pressure, but because of a federal law.

In actuality, communities have taken steps to build sustainable food systems in their communities, such as policies to source food locally, create farm-to-school programs and incentivize local farmers to adopt organic practices. Currently these activities are developed and implemented for and by local communities, not as a result of federal intervention or a response to the threat of enforcement.  I am willing to bet that should our national food challenges eventually require federal involvement, mayors would feel frustrated about enforcing federal regulations in their communities on the inherently local issues of food access or production.

In many cases, an absence of federal enforcement or legislation provides an opportunity for communities to be entrepreneurially nimble. City leaders make and implement decisions affecting food production, access and disposal based on local contexts, conditions and needs. Cities work together with partners including concerned citizens, private industry, universities, small businesses and the non-profit community.

Cities have a critical role to play in strengthening local and national food systems. Currently these systems are strained and fragmented, but can be restored through local leadership rather than requiring federal intervention.  Local leaders have already accomplished much in the area of food systems support and it’s time that we share effective practices, model policies, and successful requests for proposals. Let’s foster a competitive spirit from town to town, identify which cities have figured out practical, innovative ways to make healthy food available to all of its residents, and celebrate local leadership on this issue!

NLC is tackling Local Food Systems as a priority issue for 2013 and looking forward to supporting cities through a newly launched section on the Sustainable Cities Institute website.

As we continue to develop these resources we want to hear from you: what resources, tools or topics would be most helpful to assist your efforts in developing a strong, sustainable and healthy food system in your community?

Send feedback, ideas, successful practices or questions to David DeVaughn, NLC National Urban Fellow, at devaughn@nlc.org.

The buzz around the topic of ‘resilience’ is difficult to ignore. While the term has been employed in various fields (such as ecology, engineering and psychology) for several years now, it’s increasingly gaining popularity within city and regional planning. This blog post explores what exactly this notion of ‘resilience’ is; what about the topic is making it so popular with urban planners, city leaders and academics; and what connections ‘resilience’ might have to cities’ sustainability priorities.

So, what is ‘resilience’ and who cares?
In a world where we are quick to label anything and everything- concepts, ideas and actions- the term ‘resilience’ is being used to describe a range of things, from the way that city leaders respond to short- and long-term city issues to how cities recover from unforeseen natural disasters.  At quick glance these applications seem unrelated and arbitrary, however, certain patterns implicitly emerge with closer examination.

To describe this pattern, perhaps the most useful model I’ve found thus far (and one that I believe could prove useful for city leaders) is represented by the series of diagrams above. If we acknowledge resilience as a framework, we begin to understand that the various systems that exist within a city (think: education, jobs, infrastructure) are not only cyclical within themselves (diagram 1) with periods of ups and downs, but are also intrinsically linked to each other (diagram 2).

Using this model, it seems that the resilience discussion is useful for local elected officials insofar as it provides a framework to understand the relationship of (seemingly) isolated city issues. For example, in “Resilience and regions: building understanding of the metaphor,” the authors provide a strong argument that resilience is not simply about bouncing back from a crisis; rather, systems are much more layered and interwoven. Essentially, a resilience framework accommodates the fact that cities are complex systems, ones where the ‘ideal’ state is consistently shifting given the nature of the place and time. This, to me, is the critical potential of such a framework- it emphasizes the inter-relatedness of issues, bringing to surface the consequences of weaknesses in one system on the vulnerability of others.

For example, is it accurate to describe a city or town as ‘resilient’ because it was able to build back after a natural disaster, even though other factors, such as poverty or income inequality might remain the same or even worsen during the same period?

In other words, the resilience framework reframes the decision-making process to account for certain critical pieces: time and place.  Local elected officials are charged with making critical decisions every day-- and because they are usually working with limited staff capacity, funds, and resources, these leaders are often forced to evaluate and prioritize individual issue areas in their cities. However, such decisions tend to affect not one, but many ‘systems’ at the same time. A resiliency framework challenges us to (re)examine decisions holistically, recognizing that there is no one answer when it comes to where and how we allocate resources within a community; how we respond to acute and chronic urban issues; or how we prepare for a future that is, for the most part, unpredictable. Thus, such a framework acknowledges that the ‘right’ decisions for one city (or region) at any given time may look very different than the ‘right’ decisions for another.

And why is the resilience framework relevant to city sustainability efforts?
City leaders that choose to prioritize sustainability as a guiding principle are already using a dynamic framework by evaluating programs and policies through the lens of their potential social, environmental, and economic impacts. Within this context, a resilience framework offers an opportunity to continue doing the same valuable work, while being responsive to the fact that all ‘systems’- however large or small- go through cycles, over time, that are  inevitable. This awareness of time and the notion that decisions made now collectively affect our situation in the future is stated in many definitions of sustainability. For example, “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” from the Brundtland Commission’s Report is one of the field's most popular definitions.

A resilience framework is a natural and useful complement to sustainability in that it emphasizes interconnections across issues while actively highlighting the uncertainty with which these relationships exist in a local context. Through this lens, resiliency recognizes that long-term solutions to a (acute or chronic) city issue may not exist in isolating and fixing just that issue; rather the ‘answer’ might lie in better understanding systemic relationships within the city and working to strengthen ostensibly disparate issues at the same time.  While further exploration is needed on how to translate this framework into tangible implementation steps, resilience dialogues offer an opportunity to be reflective of the type of localized action that’s needed to address regional and global sustainability issues.

Over the next year NLC’s Sustainability Program will be exploring the topic of resilience in the context of climate adaptation. I’d love to hear your thoughts about ‘resilience’ and welcome your comments below or invite you to contact me directly at Vasudevan@nlc.org.  We also encourage you to complete this feedback form about Climate Adaptation and Resilience activities, needs and interests in your city!

1These diagrams were borrowed from the following article, with permission from the author:
Pendall, Rolf, Kathryn A. Foster, and Margaret Cowell.  “Resilience and regions: building understanding of the metaphor.” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, no. 3 (2010): 71–84. doi: doi:10.1093/cjres/rsp028