Photo Diary: Touring the Construction Site of the Greenest Building in the World

Bullitt Foundation president and CEO Denis Hayes wasn't kidding when he said the Bullitt Center is "a bold attempt to do everything right." A group of us were fortunate to tour the six-story, 50,000 sq. ft. office space owned  by the Bullitt Foundation.  The building is only two and half months away from being occupied and is truly the world's most progressive, self-sufficient building.

Art, Farming and Sustainability: The Alaskan Way Hanging Gardens

Photo Credit: Sustainable Seattle

Sungold tomatoes, amaranth, salad burnet, broccoli and eggplant... did my tummy just grumble? No, this isn't a farmer’s market shopping list. These are just some of the vegetables found in plastic semitransparent milk jugs, attached together with twine, hanging five feet above a concrete sidewalk to a row of trees at the Seattle Waterfront, between Alaskan Way and Wall Street to be exact.

Last month, we posted on our Facebook page about this unexpected urban garden, named Alaskan Way Hanging Gardens. These sweet little plants, even equipped with a drip irrigation system, on a busy downtown street warmed our urban agriculture hearts. We just had to find out how this project came to be. Turns out, it took two city departments, one artist/urban gardener/chocolatier, and a couple sustainability minded concepts to build this garden that is actually, art.

O'Brien and Co. Celebrate 20 and Support S2!

Last week Sustainable Seattle was honored to be a part of O’Brien and Company’s 20 year celebration. O’Brien & Company is a nationally-recognized consulting company whose mission is to create a sustainable built environment that ensures a better quality of life for present and future generations.

The company’s founder Kathleen O’Brien is a nationally recognized leader in the field of sustainability, writer and author, educator, strategic planner, and project consultant for nearly 25 years. She has earned numerous awards including S2’s own Outstanding Leadership Award in 2006. Most recently King County Executive Dow Constantine declared September 13^th Kathleen O’Brien Day.

To be invited to speak about The Happiness Initiative and table at the event was again, truly an honor. Attendees generously donated to S2 and Kathleen agreed to match all the funds raised throughout the night. In total, Sustainable Seattle raised over $1000! We would like to extend our sincere gratitude and congratulations to O’Brien and Company and to Kathleen personally.

Sustainable Design - an oxymoron?

Sustainable Path filled Town Hall's downstairs meeting room September 14th with the Seeking Sustainable Systems speaker series. Ash Awad from McKinstry (a very very big design, build and operate company) and Daniel Friedman, PhD from the UW's College of Built Environment

McKinstry's revenues are upwards of $400 million, Sustainability services are a significant an growing portion of that revenues, and have been before and after the economy crashed. Ash tell us that at McKinstry: "Sustainability is about efficiency." Here is their approach:
1. Efficiency
2. Systems efficiency
3. Move the energy - efficient district energy
4. Renewable systems
Remember Natural Capital by Hawken and pa & da Lovins? Ash rolled off the numbers - the inefficient of buildings, homes, blocks, neighborhoods and cities. Aaargh!

So- why efficiency? Ash states:
"I don't think there is such a thing about sustainable design, sustainable build, sustainable operations- its about integrated outcomes." He listed the reasons:

• Fragmentation
  
• First Cost are the hurdles. In the IT field total cost of ownership is used. Not so in our built environment.
  

We need to Drive Demand - We need laws, regulations - check out Referendum 52 (a bill to authorize bonds to finance construction and repair projects increasing energy efficiency in public schools and higher education buildings, and continue the sales tax on bottled water) and the BETC in Oregon, the business energy tax credit, We need new Energy Codes - components are efficient, but they are not used efficiently. Check the box does not make for a sustainable building (sorry LEED -you took us far but we need to go further) or buying the tool does not mean it is used. Energy rates are too low. This is kind of like driving demand. We don't need to build new stuff, we need work on what we have. We need job creation on new technology for efficiency in our current built environment- from power plants to buildings, homes etc.

Daniel is the Dean of the College of Built Environment. He talked about traffic - keeping it real. Really- what is a better example of sustainability in our built environment than traffic? There you are in your car, burning up dinosaurs, emitting GHGs, and wishing like hell you could be on a bus or lightrail that would take you where you want to go in a reasonable amount of time. He talked about how committees are a form of passive aggression. I love this man! But really- Daniel explained the importance of the College of Built Environment: The UW got this one right: an educational institution that gets the interlinked nature of sustainability. $1.3 billion dollars of research comes out of the UW, and more and more of it is focusing on efficiency.

So what the heck is the college of the built environment? Architecture, construction management, landscape architecture, and urban design and planning.

Daniel's equations:
Architecture - Construction = Less than zero. Archi means chief, the first the order of authority & primitive: Command and commence. Tech means crafter, doer. Now the chicken and egg question, what comes first? Architecture, construction management, landscape architecture, or urban design & planning. The answer is none do: they are all interlinked, integrated.

What is missing from the built environment's system? Public health: Sprawl, obesity, hypertension and lifelong habits are linked. We need to look broadly. Our behavior: Only 20% of Americans are college educated. Marketing- advertising is changing how we behave. How do we drive less, consume less, become more self aware. We could eliminate air conditioning if we changed our attitudes towards perspiration. Work habits, expectations, how we use the time in our day, driving- what did we do before we had electricity, cars, refrigerator. Measurable integration of technologies: so architects, builders, designers & planners are forced to work together.

So what's it all about: Changing behavior.
What changes behavior: Education? sometimes. Positive feedback? sometimes, Negative feedback? sometimes. Real time information served up right? Money, Altruism, Logic, Laws ? yeah, sometimes....

What can you do?

Keep it real and keep it meaningful. You can turn off the light- changing the light bulb is not enough. Get engaged, get educated and spread the word, spread the action by taking action.

And let's not forget social justice. What happens if sustainability is the pleasure of the rich and those who never have gone without? It's too easy to focus on buildings, too easy to focus on design, too easy to check the box for a silver, gold or platinum star. You and I are part of the problem and part of the solution. The actions we need to take are not known, and we will only know them if we try.

Why individual action still matters

This is post 4 of a 5 part series. Previously:

Deepwater Horizon should surprise nobody

What you can do to use less oil

Only better policies can really save us

If you've been reading these posts in order, you may feel that the previous one about the paramount importance of better policy undermines the message from the day before about individual choices we can make to use less oil. There are several reasons why even though it can't be enough alone, individual action is still crucially important.

The first is simply that the status quo is so bad that we must do everything productive, and not allow the pursuit of one avenue to prevent others from being explored. I started this series writing about the direct consequences of oil extraction, but I have barely mentioned the larger problem: global climate change. Unfortunately, the world is almost certainly committed to some warming even if we somehow stop emitting greenhouse gases overnight. This means we have already passed the point where the real question is about whether we suffer serious, painful consequences; it's already a question of how bad it will be. This means that anything which reduces emissions now will have some benefit, and most of the individual actions can be done much quicker than the necessary policy changes.

A deeper reason is that the domains of individual action and policy are not entirely separate. When you choose to bike somewhere instead of driving, you are not only avoiding those miles of driving, but also shifting demand from car to bike infrastructure. This information is tracked and used to plan future investments, so each time you make a choice of how to get around (or where to buy things from, what food to eat, and so on), you are voting with your feet. And if you want to persuade your elected representative to do something, it's much easier if you can say "this will help me, because I'm already practicing what I preach", not to mention simply being more honest.

Finally, individual choices matter as much as anything else because they shift the Overton Window; they change what is considered politically possible. Each person who makes the kind of behavioural choices that contribute to weaning us off oil, makes it easier for the next to follow, and easier for politicians to pass the kind of laws that support them doing so. Changing social trends change what politicians feel they can or should do, and a changing social trend is nothing more than the aggregation of enough individuals changing their own behaviour. A movement is powerful because it leads to political change, but it starts with individuals opting to do the right thing.

So, individual action alone won't save us, but the system-wide changes we need won't happen without the support of many individuals' actions.

This is post 4 of a 5 part series. Coming up:

Escaping despair

Only better policies can really save us

This is post 3 of a 5 part series. Previously:

Deepwater Horizon should surprise nobody

What you can do to use less oil

In the previous posts in this series, I argued that we must reduce our oil consumption and outlined individual actions we can take to do so. Unfortunately, all manner of structural problems conspire to limit how much difference we can make as individuals. As a simple example, consider what happens to the supply and demand of parking if you stop driving: parking becomes easier or cheaper for someone else to find, leaving everyone else with less incentive to change their behaviour. Unfortunately, this is just one example of a much broader phenomenon. Oil is a fungible commodity, meaning that whatever is not used in one place can be trivially transferred to use elsewhere, and without wholesale economic systems change we are on a course to use the last drop we are capable of extracting from the ground, at ever higher costs. If we are really to escape the terrible consequences of oil use, we must change the way our economy is organised comprehensively enough that we can actually leave oil in the ground.

To achieve this sort of change, we have to build up from individual actions to local, national and ultimately international policy. The local part is the easiest to get a handle on. Local governments make decisions every year that have important impacts on the behaviour of, and opportunities open to, the people who live in their jurisdiction. Many of these are straightforward allocations of resources; investing in more, larger or faster roads increases driving while transferring those same resources over to improving public transport, bike infrastructure or the pedestrian environment encourages people to leave their cars behind by giving them better alternatives. Here in Seattle, we face a particularly extreme allocation of resources into oil-dependent infrastructure with the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement megaproject, which will plough $2 billion into a downtown highway bypass while almost certainly sucking away all the resources that might have been spent on improving travel within downtown.

Local government also exerts a lot of control over urban form by means of building codes and zoning laws, and these make a huge difference to resource use. Everything that encourages car-friendly infrastructure over pedestrian-friendly, and especially if it encourages sprawl over dense urban living, contributes to making us all use more oil as we travel past each others' houses to get to anything. Local examples include a set of townhouse design rules which both increase the amount of space one house needs and leads to hostile pedestrian environments, and the very limited area in which developers are allowed to build multifamily housing. Many cities in the US have similar issues, and if they were all fixed we would consume significantly less oil as a country, simply because we'd be travelling so much shorter distances going about our business.

Nationally, we need not only to introduce policies that deliberately reduce oil use (such as Cap and Trade in some form), but also to remove the huge number of subsidies that make enormously resource-wasteful activities economical; the most obvious being highway subsidies. We can and should take this further, and use a huge economic lever to reduce demand for oil by shifting taxes from income and goods to pollution. This is where we start to get multiplier effects that approach the scale of the problem.

Of course, the same argument about fungibility that applies between individuals applies between countries, so ultimately international treaties will be crucial. I won't go further into that here, because the international influence of the US is so huge that it's clear that no worthwhile international treaty can be passed until we are seen to be fixing our own problems, so we must focus on domestic policy first. And domestic policy is somewhere where you can make a difference by educating yourself about the issues, talking about them, and writing to elected representatives wherever you are.

If you take one thing from this whole series of posts, please let it be the importance of advocating for policies that wean us collectively off oil.

This is post 3 of a 5 part series. Coming up:

Why individual action still matters

Escaping despair

The Sliver by the River

As a part of Community Development at Sustainable Seattle, a large part of my job consists of attending Neighborhood Association meetings, District Council Meetings, Community Council Meetings, etc. Last night I had
the pleasure of attending the South Park Neighborhood Association meeting at the South Park Neighborhood Center, where the much talked about item of the South Park Bridge Replacement / Demolition was the main piece of discussion. I had only previously attended one of the meetings before, which around 10-15 residents of South Park attended; last night totaled over 100.

The room was packed full of business owners, workers, neighborhood advocates, surrounding Seattle residents, City of Seattle Council member aides, King County Department of Transportation, and other Seattle neighborhood representatives. The main event for the night was the much debated issue of the rapidly aging South Park Bridge. On hand to present, or rather update the caring residents was Linda Dougherty, Director of the King County Road Services Division. Dougherty was accompanied by a group of seven other KCDOT (King County Department of Transportation) workers, with Dougherty bravely answering the bulk of the concerns and questions of the residents. The session started at 7:20 pm, and was still going strong when I left at 8:45 PM (I am assuming it went over). The discussion was very informative on this pressing issue. Some highlights:

• South Park Bridge is 78 years old
• Estimated 20,000 vehicles travel on it per day
• Bridge received a 4 out of 100 points for safety from Federal Highway Administration.
  
• Amount Estimated to replace and demolish is around $120 million.
• King County did not receive the much needed $99 million in TIGER stimulus funds (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery)
  
• King County will apply for a second - much smaller - edition of the TIGER funds.
  
• Bridge will close on June 30th

Most importantly though was the reception of the crowd, which varied from business owners concerned over the imminent threat to their daily traffic, to residents who are mystified and shocked by the disregard the bridge, and invariably the neighborhood, has received on this matter. Among the several who voiced their opinions, an older gentleman who has owned a business in South Park since 1952 and has been a resident since the early 1940's, was very candid in his view for saving the bridge, predicting that as soon as the bridge closes in June the businesses along 14th ave S. will follow suit. His extremely passionate and motivating speech lasted around 5 minutes, serving almost as rally cry for the concerned population. Voices from other meeting attendees were also heard but no one's resonated as loudly as this man's.

(14th Ave S, Seattle Wa, looking south)

Everyone in that room cared about the bridge but it may be too little too late. Unfortunately the State of Washington received no TIGER funds during this issuance (link to see the awardees), with the majority going to rail related projects. There will hopefully be a second TIGER stimulus issued, however it is poised to be a much smaller pot of money. With the desired amount of money highly unlikely to come from the TIGER funds, Dougherty urged the citizens to project their voices so the the South Park "story" can be heard in the Washington State Government. This situation presents a chance for the neighborhood to come together and make a huge influence at the state and federal levels. The South Park Bridge "Story" is truly an interesting one and can only get richer and more passionate from here on out.

Smart Growth Conference: First Day

The 9th annual Smart Growth Conference kicked off on Thursday February 4th on the sixth floor of the Washington Convention Center in downtown Seattle.




Kick-off Plenary

After a Dow Constantine, King County Executive, Michelle Pirzadeth, Acting Regional Administrator our region’s EPA and a few other gave speeches, Ron Sims, longtime supporter of Sustainable Seattle and currently the Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Deputy Secretary was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award. A standing ovation came from the crowd. Ron Sims spoke in celebration of the synchronization of HUD, DOT and EPA and in tribute of his family and his boss, the Secretary of HUD. A second standing ovation was given. Two in one night!

This was followed by Shaun Donovan, HUD Secretary, Ray LaHood, DOT Transportation and a video presentation by speeches by Lisa Jackson, the EPA Administrator. Ray LaHood spoke about access to jobs, quality schools and safe streets, a clean energy economy that enhances the competitiveness of our nation. He talked about what Sustainability means: choice and quality of life- walk able accessible job centers where people can walk to work; building inclusive neighborhoods of opportunities so community members share problems and opportunities, economic vitality being smaller but stronger and smarter and survival itself.

Mr. LaHood spoke to the truth that all communities define sustainability differently based on their circumstances while all seeking to meet the needs of today without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Families are spending far too much on commutes and high rent or mortgage payments. In the last generation, transportation costs have increased by 1000%. He spoke about the Sustainability Partnership between EPA, DOT and HUD. He announced the creation of a new office focused sustainability with a $200M budget.



Regional Leadership in Smart Growth and Sustainability: Lessons from across the Country

“Smart growth” or “Sustainability” can sometimes be alarming terms. Synonyms are: Blue print Planning, Vision 2050, Quality of Life Planning….a rose is still a rose by any other name. It does not matter what you call it. Knowing the goals can allow the community to find the right terms to use is a best practice.

Do not start from square one: build on what is out there. Survey and do scenario workshops to understand what is out there, and to understand the big movements and concerns.

Identify priorities and organize them in how they work together and are interconnected: sustainability, accessibility, prosperity and livability. Set targets – stretch goals, longer and shorter-term goals. This leads to a compact or agreement that identifies and binds individuals and organizations towards working together.

Get public comment, go online, get ideas and make sure you have a way to measure how you are going to get there. Get support and be there for the long haul.

Local food independence is a challenge for regions. Farmers need to develop new and creative markets and models. We are loosing farmland, and it is harder to establish new farms. Farmers are competing for crops and moving to biofuel over food. The local economic impact is often difficult to determine (check out Viki Sonntag’s work on the local food system multiplier).

Talking about Race and Smart Growth: What are the next steps

The panelists identified needs for communities of color to get the leadership support to affect the ideas and move them forward, to link academic research to implementing research findings on the ground, and the need to talk about race in an effective manner to move people and arm people of color to create multiracial alliances to influence policy and action.

Race and ethnicity can be a major challenge and are one of the most significant barriers to collaboration. Social class and gender inequality is another major barrier. Challenges regarding integrating social justice and environmental movements and goals include the local nature of social justice groups and the global nature of the environmental movement. Another challenge is time frames. The wealthier one is, the longer the time frame. If you are struggling to meet your basic needs, your time frame is likely quite short – a rising tide lifts all boats but can’t lift you if you do not have a boat.

Yet another challenge is the language around race: this is a hard topic to discuss. We lack a common language for social justice and race, unlike with environmentalism. Moreover, with only 2% of our brains dedicated to cognitive processes, we tend to use the other 98% - a more reactive process-when dealing with social justice. Communication strategies: think about the cognitive framing- we need to be careful that we do not reinforce assumptions deep in our brain (that 98%) in how and what is messaged. We need to resent the framing – our mindsets and our values. Community needs to be valued at least as much as economics. We need to include all in the process of setting strategies or agendas wherever we are in that process.

Tools for going forward

Professor John Powell, ED of Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity: Tool for Talking about Race

Integrate Social Justice into your strategy

Portland underwent a process to form relationships across race and social class in the city that directly addressed power dynamics and privilege and how that shows up in a daily basis and found ways for people of privilege to be better allies.

Meet people, organizations and institutions “where they are” provide next steps.

Go to communities of color, communities that are under served – listen. Even if you don’t have an answer, a solution or the resources to work together. Building relationships can be a first step to getting to the end goal of social justice and sustainability.

Newest Research on Built Environment and Health


The amount of research in the field of health and environment is steadily increasing as evidence grows with the relationship between health and the buildings and communities in which we live. The Active Living Research organization is leading the way with a sponsorship from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Physical inactivity is the leading cause of death in the United States. The data shows the number one cause of death is heart failure which is caused in the majority of cases because of an inactive lifestyle and unhealthy eating habits. Tobacco use is another major cause of death that is in congruent with an active lifestyle since tobacco use lowers one's lung capacity decreasing the efficiency during physical activities.

The panelists shared some of their research and their results including the walkability of neighborhoods, childhood obesity, adult bicycling behavior, and the overall effect of transportation on the health of the populace.

Childhood obesity rates are the highest they have ever been in the country's history. The major factor is environment as that is the only major source of change that is broad enough and large enough to account for most of the nearly tripling amount of childhood obesity cases since the late sixties.

Children over the age of five are not meeting their bare minimum levels of activities, nearly 85% are getting less than the recommended amounts. The built environment has lead many parents to simply not allow their children outside as crowded streets, unwalkable paths, and the threat of crime have made the choices for activity restricted to indoor pursuits. With a focus on built environment the city has an opportunity to reverse that trend by building playable parks within ten minute walks of major residential areas, rebuilding and updating crosswalks and bike paths, and building safety features such as working street lights.

Public transportation included light rail and buses and a significant early finding of the research shows that the public is more likely to walk further for the use of light rail than buses. In fact, the public would walk twice as far if they could use light rail as opposed to buses.

The research is still in its early stages, but looks to bring concrete evidence to influence policy makers to rethink neighborhoods, transportation and the health of its citizens.

Enough about the decline in financial capital- let's talk about "Social Capital"

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In partnership with Seattle City Club, Communities Count and Sustainable Seattle have been hosting community dialogues to raise awareness of the importance of social capital, and to identify opportunities for us to increase our social capital, as well as identify barriers to doing so- and ways to address those barriers.

So what is social capital? In his book Community: The Structure of Belonging, Peter Block says this. "A community's well-being simply has to do with the quality of the relationships, the cohesion that exists among its citizens...Social capital is about acting on and valuing our interdependence and sense of belonging. It is the extent to which we extend hospitality and affection to one another." Block goes on to say that to improve any of our community measures of community health- education, economy, health, safety, the environment- we need to INVEST IN SOCIAL CAPITAL.

This is a critical time to be discussing this. As uncertainty builds around the economy and financial markets, our environmental challenges grow greater- step one to addressing those is building social capital. The time also provides us an opportunity to re-assess what is important in life- in fact, researcher Robert Putnam suggest that during another dire economic time, the Great Depression, many Americans were the happiest they remember being- and remember time spent with family, friends and neighbors, working together and supporting one another.

So how is King county doing? Measures such as our Involvement in Community Organizations, and Level of Neighborhood Social Cohesion, and Level of Social Support- suggest there are some assets to build on, and some challenges to address. (From Communities Count- new report coming in December).
Nationally, Robert Putnam (famous for his book "Bowling Alone" and his work through the Saguaro Seminar) suggest that our social connectedness is on the decline, as is our level of civic engagement. DO YOU THINK THIS IS TRUE?

This has been a hot topic at the community dialogues. King County residents have a lot of thoughts on this. Some blame "The Seattle Freeze," Ipods and cell phones, negative media, and bickering politicians for what some see as low levels of social capital. Others think our car-dominated culture, unwalkable neighborhoods (in short, the Built Environment) and the norm of "work, work, work" play big roles. Another major topic of concern is what one man terms our "nickle and diming" form of government and "messed-up tax policy" which he says gives power to lobbyists and makes individual action an exhausting process. According to these challenges, building social capital will take changes to the Built Environment, including enhancing the walkability of our neighborhoods, reform tax policy, and a transformation of some of our modern cultural tendencies.

Pioneer Square is a walkable neighborhood- Do you think it has higher levels of social capital? (right)

But there are positives. Everyone seems to love our King County library system and the roles they play in building community. Lots of people are involved in neighborhoods groups, from District Councils to SCALLOPS groups to others. One woman living in downtown says she knows everyone in her condo- and credits the common area at ground floor for this. Another couple, who live on the east side, took the effort to put gift baskets on their neighbor's porches- and now have friends for life. And overwhelmingly- everyone seems to think this upcoming election has people more excited to engage than we have seen in awhile.

How can WE ALL build social capital? Is it important, especially at this time? What do you think?

-submitted by Megan Horst, Action Agenda Coordinator, Communities Count.

Seattle Parks for All- Vote Yes On Proposition 2-

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Great urban parks and open spaces serve important functions at the neighborhood level, as well as at city and regional scales. They provide places for all residents to relax, play, exercise, explore, congregate, and build community. They provide needed "lungs" in a city with lots of concrete, tall buildings and cars. Our parks are some of the best things about Seattle- think about a walk around Greenlake on a sunny day, or playing soccer at Cal Anderson, riding your bike on the Burke-Gilman trail, watching the sunset at Alki beach or taking your kids to pay at Georgetown playfield. They have been a major part of our history, too- check out the photo of Greenlake in the 1930s, to the left (courtesy of City of Seattle Parks and Rec).

As the population living in Seattle continues to grow, and some parts of the city increase in density, parks serve a critical function building community and making NEIGHBORHOODS LIVABLE.

This November, VOTE YES ON PROPOSITION TWO, and VOTE FOR SEATTLE PARKS FOR ALL. The results will include more open spaces, new parks, trails and playfields, and 32 major improvements at neighborhood parks. Visit the Seattle Parks for All webpage to find out how to get involved in the campaign.

Certainly, parks are a major part of a Sustainable Seattle and a better quality of life for all of us. Parks directly enhance the community-determined sustainability goals of livable neighborhoods.

Visit www.b-sustainable.org to see how many acres of parks and open space we already have, and how parks contribute to our community sustainability.

And ponder this question- do parks contribute to neighborhood social cohesion? Visit Communities Count to see how King County residents currently evaluate their neighborhood social cohesion- and ask yourself, can we improve those levels?

Community Questions #1 - Do you think the financial meltdown will affect your neighborhood?

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Hello everyone! Welcome to our first community question. We hope that you will come back soon and often to participate in the conversation these questions start. We'll post new questions weekly so come back soon and often. As you can tell by the title of our first blog entry in 'Community Questions', we'd like to know your thoughts on if and how you think the financial meltdown might affect your neighborhood. Thanks in advance for your thoughts and participation.

How is Seattle doing? Want some numbers? You can find relevant indicators on our B-Sustainable site. Here are just a few to get you started:
>> Housing & Transportation Costs as a % of Income
>> Living Wage
>> Neighborhood Social Cohesion