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In addition to holding builders to higher standards, and making sure the inspectors are doing their job …

We could also question the very idea that steel-and-concrete towers are a sustainable mode of building, and living.

Considerable residential density can be achieved even with building heights of just 3-4 stories. (Jane Jacob talks about that in The Death and Life of Great American Cities.) And it’s a lot safer and probably overall nicer way to live.

Also, we could question the economic sustainability of “condos”. No one wants to pay those monthly condo fees as it is, and then on top of that you can get huge assessments anytime. There’s great incentives to postpone repairs, kick the can down the road.

Not trying to disparage the concept of cooperatively owned housing; I think that’s a great model actually. But maybe more sustainable for a 2- or 3- story multi-unit building, or a sprawling 9-bedroom mansion, than for a 20-storey concrete tower.

I usually have mixed feelings about sharing articles that are focused on glyph0s@te. Glyph0s@te is something we need to quit using … along with all other herbicides and pesticides.

Articles focused only on G might tempt people to think it’s the only bad ‘cide, and as long as we just ban that one we will be fine. No.

For a window in human history, ‘cides seemed like the ultimate “get out of jail free” card. But as we learn about the soil-food web, the importance of biodiversity, and the ripple effects of ‘cides on pollinators and birds and aquatic/marine life and all the way up the food chain back to us, it has become clear that the tradeoffs are not worth it.

This article focused on G but it also gives a good summary of the history of ‘cides in general.

“The EPA doesn’t always scrutinize studies or revisit the science that has been accepted for 10 or 20 years, and the federal agency is ‘often unable to stand up to the intense pressures from powerful agrochemical companies, which spend tens of millions of dollars on lobbying each year and employ many former EPA scientists once they leave the agency’ … “

This article “How Do I Tell My Neighbor To Stop Using R—d-p? is well worth reading and keeping as a reference for talking-points. Please share widely to anyone who might be receptive to the message. Send it to your local government if the government and its contractors in your area are still using ‘cides!

#StopTheSpray #NoMoreCides

Further Reading:

• “How You Treat Your Yard Affects the Indian River Lagoon” (and, I would add, every other body of water, wherever you are, as this is a nationwide and worldwide crisis) (Sally Scalera, FloridaToday.com, 7/13/2021). I particularly like the tips on building the soil’s capacity to hold water and nutrients. “If every yard, landscape and garden was growing in soil that had at least 5% organic matter, just think of how much rainfall and irrigation would be soaked up and held in the soil. So, not only does the IRL <and insert name of your lake, canal, lagoon, ocean, river, other local body of water> receive stormwater runoff from all the impervious surfaces within the watershed, but even the surrounding soil isn’t helping.”

• “7 Simple Secrets to a Great Lawn — Without Using Chemicals and Sprays” (OldWorldGardenFarms). Easiest tip: Mow high! No lower than 3.5 or 4 inches. A friend of mine even swapped out his mower wheels so he could keep his lawn mowed at 6″! It was a lush shag-carpet, gorgeous green and chemical-free. (Then he moved into a different house, where he turned his yard into a lush micro forest with little ponds and bridges and winding trails; it is paradise for wildlife and humans alike.)

Thoughts on Development … We have to find a better way!

People will always need places to live. And to buy groceries, fuel, prescriptions and so on.

Rather than oppose development outright, we need to integrate sustainability and ecosystem restoration into ALL new developments (and retrofit those attributes into existing developments).

“Making peace with nature will be the defining task of the twenty-first century.” Those were the words of U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, in the climate discussions held in December 2020.

And there’s no better place to start making peace with nature than in the realm of development. Human needs aren’t going away; we can’t NIMBY our own needs out of existence. Instead, we have to find ways to create our buildings and roads and utilities in a manner that doesn’t involve trashing every other species on the planet (right down to those all-important soil microbes).

In that spirit I offer my permaculture-inspired responses to a neighborhood’s concerns about a potential development. These concerns are in regard to a specific development, but they are very typical of the objections that just about every development tends to be met with from neighborhood groups, environmentalists, etc.

Below, I attempt to address each typical concern, in hopes of sparking a creative conversation about how we can do development that is both eco-friendly and people-friendly (because contrary to popular belief, we can’t have one without the other; the two must go hand in hand).

• Traffic concerns – increased number of vehicles:
— Promote development that adds little or no traffic, such as car-free townhome complex or urban ecovillage, or residential complex with car-share station on premises.

• Water and sewer lines increased demands:
— Well yes, but cities have been dealing with that since time immemorial. If we need to boost our technical expertise in this area, we could look at the public-works departments in Boston or NYC, who have been dealing with dense water & sewer requirements for centuries.

• Roadways in need of improvements to handle traffic:
— Minimize additional traffic by adding only non-car-dependent housing. Many people are seeking to live car-lite or car-free. I have even heard of townhouse or apartment complexes with car-share stations (Zipcar etc) built in or alongside.

• School overcrowding:
— If schools get overcrowded, we build new schools! Or build an additional storey onto the existing school. Better than the alternative, schools having to close for lack of students because no young families feel able to live in the area (whether because not enough jobs or what have you) — a sad thing that happened in my neighborhood, we no longer have a middle school.

• Safety of streets and children, especially those walking to school:
— We don’t make streets and children safer by keeping out new residents; we make them safer by reducing speed limits on roads, by making sure all roads have sidewalks and bike lanes, and by stationing crossing-guards during before-school and after-school hours.

• Property tax increases:
— Maybe, but that will probably happen regardless anyway. Might as well get something good out of it.

• Property value decrease:
— Doubtful! New residential development, as well as useful commercial development such as grocery stores, tends to increase property values.

• Crime increase:
— Maybe (and only maybe). But, for sure: more residents equals more customers for nearby merchants; more citizens to add life and civic engagement to a place; more people to offer yardwork, housecleaning, accounting, child care, elder-care, and other services the local residents might need. Also: New people mean more “eyes on the street” (thereby possibly REDUCING crime).

• 50 feet of green space:
— Easier to achieve if we allow developers to build multi-storey.

• Save the oaks:
— Easier to achieve if we allow developers to build multi-storey.

• One-story units only:
— Makes it harder to save trees and greenspace; promotes car-dependent sprawl and traffic.

• No zone change:
— Oftentimes, incremental zoning changes can be the best thing to happen to a place. Not talking skyscrapers or a delivery warehouse in a residential neighborhood. But duplexes; 2-story or 3-story multifamily dwellings, small neighborhood stores, yes! For more about gentle incremental zoning changes and the benefits they bring, see StrongTowns . org

• High density traffic flow that this area will not accommodate:
— Design ALL new development to minimize car trips. Make sure major goods & services are accessible by bicycle, foot, bus, wheelchair. Look into adding a ZipCar station or other car-share node at residential complexes.

• Infrastructure costs in current residents for lines to the property and hookup:
— Developer and new residents should pay infrastructure costs of new development.

• More police services:
— Maybe, but outweighed by benefits of new residents — see above. Also, density can bring down the cost of service per capita. “Economies of density.”

• More fire services:
— Maybe, but outweighed by benefits of new residents — see above. Also, density can bring down the cost of service per capita. “Economies of density.”

• Rise in crime inevitable:
— No it’s not – see above.

• Homeless camps continue at <nearby intersection>
— We won’t solve homelessness by keeping out new residents. That is a separate issue. Also, an influx of new people and more foot traffic might induce campers to move on to a more secluded area. Or better yet, the boost in population from the new residential development might provide a critical mass of citizen sentiment to come up with a real solution so people have an alternative to camping.

• Transients and renters:
— Renters can be every bit as good, contributing citizens as anyone else. Some of the worst “transients” I’ve known are what I call “rich transients”: People who buy second or third homes and only occupy them a week or two out of the year; people who buy houses just to flip them; etc. In contrast, fulltime residents — be they owners or renters — contribute to the life of a community. ARE the life of a community.

• Traffic study:
— No. We don’t need to pay for yet another traffic study; we already know that traffic sucks. And that asphalt creates a hot miserable climate. Not to mention, roads and parking lots are expensive to build and maintain. We need, rather, to start insisting that all future developments (be they residential or commercial) have reducing car-dependency as a primary aim.

• Mandatory Sidewalks:
— Yes! Good! And while we’re at it let’s make bike lanes mandatory too!

“The U.S. National Wildlife Federation reports that on average, suburban lawns receive 10 times as much chemical pesticide per acre as farmland. That’s right, 10 times as much!

“That works out to 70 million tons of fertilizers and pesticides applied annually to residential lawns and gardens. But the reality is, you simply don’t need them to have an incredible, healthy lawn! Here is a look at 7 simple secrets to a great, chemical-free lawn,” report the authors of this article at oldworldgardenfarms.com .

Many people nowadays are “re-wilding” their yards by eliminating chemicals, planting native trees and other native plants, and reducing the area of their turfgrass lawns (or doing away with the lawn entirely). However, a lawn too can be eco-friendly, while being safe for humans, pets, and wildlife.

Yes, it is possible to have a lush green lawn that is nontoxic! The #1 secret to a chemical-free lawn is … MOW HIGH. Raise those mower blades!

The authors point out, “Mowing a yard too low causes a whole host of issues. For one, weed seeds have a much easier time finding their way to the soil base to take hold. It also allows the soil to dry out more rapidly on hot, sunny days.

“What is a good height? Anywhere between 3.5 and 4″ high will work best. This allows enough shade to help keep moisture in the soil, and help keep the grass from turning brown.”

(One fellow nature-lover I know even bought taller wheels for his mower, so he could keep his grass mowed at 6″! It was fat, lush, and green.)

The other tips from Old World Garden Farms are simple as well — please read their article and share with people you know who don’t want to give up their lawns! People can have lawns without murdering pollinators, polluting waterways, harming aquatic and marine life, killing the soil biology, or promoting desertification.

And finally, a tip for people who use lawn services, or are trying to get their local government to stop using lawn chemicals on public property:

Make sure the contractors are not being paid in a manner that incentivizes excess mowing. Excess mowing by tractor-mowers is a huge problem. It results in short brown grass with patches of bare earth, not to mention causing soil compaction. (Plus those giant mowers, and the loud edgers and leafblowers that inevitably accompany them, assault neighborhoods with noise pollution and gas fumes.)

Make sure your lawn service, or city grasscutting contractors, get paid by the week or the month or something, as opposed to only getting paid per time that they actually mow. (I don’t know which is the case in my city; I need to research this. But the grass on City-owned lots in my area gets so scalped, I suspect the latter is the case.)

Insist that they mow high — 3.5 or 4 — and reasure them they will be paid the same even if they don’t end up mowing as often. Basically, pay them for their care, not just their labor.

#StopTheSpray

As I have repeatedly witnessed (and been part of) citizen oppositions to new development, I have come to realize that opposing development is often shooting ourselves in the foot. People will always need places to live. And to buy groceries, gas, prescriptions.

Rather, we need to look at how to integrate sustainability and ecosystem restoration into all new developments, and retrofit those attributes into existing developments.

“Making peace with nature will be the defining task of the twenty-first century.” Those were the words of U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, in the climate discussions held in December 2020.

And there’s no better place to start making peace with nature than in the realm of development. Human needs aren’t going away; we can’t NIMBY our own needs out of existence. Instead, we have to find ways to create our buildings and roads and utilities in a manner that doesn’t involve trashing every other species on the planet (right down to those all-important soil microbes).

This post started out as a couple of comments I made in response to a post in one of my local eco groups on Facebook, listing residents’ concerns about an upcoming residential development.

Comment 1) I sympathize with the residents who are worried about extreme change in their neighborhood.

That said … Asking for “one-story units only” is self-defeating. It creates sprawl, and actually makes it harder for the developer to preserve the oaks and other greenspace. If the buildings are two- or three- story, it’s more efficient from a nature-preservation standpoint (keep the “footprint per human” to a smaller area; leave more space for nature).

Density also makes public transportation more feasible.

If I were a developer, I would aspire to build a 3-story townhome complex, using low-impact-development (LID) principles to preserve all the oaks, and add NATURAL stormwater features onsite. Mini wetland areas etc, no shaved sprayed ponds.

Walking trails would wind around the ponds and buildings and the oak groves, and out to the sidewalk so residents could easily get to the bus stop etc.

And, I would market it as a “car-free living, nature park” complex. There’d be a few parking spaces for guests, but all residents would sign a no-car covenant. Enough people are embracing car-free living these days; I suspect it would not be hard to fill the units.

There would be dedicated parking areas for bicycles.

I’d also, as a developer, never want to build any residences without at least a grocery store and a drugstore in walking distance. If those stores were not there already, I’d team up with other developers to build them.

Restricting development to one-story just creates more of the very sprawl and traffic we are trying to avoid. I think the key to making a development palatable to existing residents is to make a top priority of preserving trees, and minimizing added car-traffic.

And I would also add new ones — including maybe fruit trees, grapevines, passion fruit vines, etc.

And creating or preserving beautiful, restful, natural water features.

If I wanted to get really fancy I might even add a natural swimming-pool for residents. Natural swimming-pools, which are chlorine-free (instead using plants for filtration and cleaning), are getting to be a hot item. That would be yet another selling point for the residential complex.

Comment 2) Also: Renters are not automatically undesirable residents! Many renters, if they find a good location with a good landlord, will stay in the same place for 10, 15 years or more. They contribute every bit as much to the safety and social fabric of a neighborhood as owners do.

More thoughts:

Below is the list of concerns raised by neighborhood residents opposing a development in a city near me. This is in regard to a specific development. But the following list is very typical of the objections that residents of just about any place tend to voice in opposition to just about any new development:

Traffic concerns – increased number of vehicles
Water and sewer lines increased demands
Roadways in need of improvements to handle traffic
School overcrowding
Safety of streets and children, especially those walking to school
Property tax increases
Property value decrease
Crime increase
50 feet of green space
Save the oaks
One story units only
No zone change
High density traffic flow that this area will not accommodate
Infrastructure costs in current residents for lines to the property and hookup
More police services
More fire services
Rise in crime inevitable
Homeless camps continue at <nearby intersection>
Transients and renters
Traffic study
Mandatory Sidewalks

Now I’ll attempt to address each of those objections with a permaculture-inspired approach. My hope is to spark a broader creative conversation about how we can create development that is both eco-friendly and people-friendly (because contrary to popular belief, we can’t have one without the other; the two go hand in hand).

• Traffic concerns – increased number of vehicles: Promote development that adds little or no traffic, such as car-free townhome complex or urban ecovillage; apartment complex with car-share station on premises.
• Water and sewer lines increased demands: Well yes, but cities have been dealing with that since time immemorial. If we need to boost our technical expertise in this area, we could look at the public-works departments in Boston or NYC, who have been dealing with dense water & sewer requirements for centuries.
• Roadways in need of improvements to handle traffic: Minimize additional traffic by adding only non-car-dependent housing. Many people are seeking to live car-lite or car-free. I have even heard of townhouse or apartment complexes with car-share stations (Zipcar etc) built in or alongside.
• School overcrowding: If schools get overcrowded, we build new schools! Or build a new storey onto the existing school. Better than the alternative, schools having to close for lack of students because no young families feel able to live in the area (whether because not enough jobs or what have you) — a sad thing that happened in my neighborhood, we no longer have a middle school.
• Safety of streets and children, especially those walking to school: We don’t make streets and children safer by keeping out new residents; we make them safer by reducing speed limits on roads, by making sure all roads have sidewalks and bike lanes, and by stationing crossing-guards during before-school and after-school hours.
• Property tax increases: Maybe, but that will probably happen regardless anyway. Might as well get something good out of it.
• Property value decrease: Doubtful! New residential development, as well as useful commercial development such as grocery stores, tends to increase property values.
• Crime increase: Maybe (and only maybe). But, for sure: more residents means more customers for nearby merchants; more citizens to add life and civic engagement to a place; more people to offer yardwork, housecleaning, accounting, child care, elder-care, and other services the local residents might need. Also: New people mean more “eyes on the street” (thereby possibly REDUCING crime).
• 50 feet of green space: Easier to achieve if we allow developers to build multi-storey.
• Save the oaks: Easier to achieve if we allow developers to build multi-storey.
• One story units only: Makes it harder to save trees and greenspace; promotes car-dependent sprawl and traffic.
• No zone change: Oftentimes, incremental zoning changes can be the best thing to happen to a place. Not talking skyscrapers or a delivery warehouse in a residential neighborhood. But duplexes; 2-story or 3-story multifamily dwellings, small neighborhood stores, yes! For more about gentle incremental zoning changes and the benefits they bring, see StrongTowns.org
• High density traffic flow that this area will not accommodate: Design ALL new development to minimize car trips. Make sure major goods & services are accessible by bicycle, foot, bus, wheelchair. Look into adding a ZipCar station or other car-share node.
• Infrastructure costs in current residents for lines to the property and hookup: Developer and new residents should pay infrastructure costs of new development.
• More police services: Maybe, but outweighed by benefits of new residents — see above. Also, density can bring down the cost per capita. “Economies of density.”
• More fire services: Maybe, but outweighed by benefits of new residents — see above. Also, density can bring down the cost per capita. “Economies of density.”
• Rise in crime inevitable: No it’s not – see above.
• Homeless camps continue at <nearby intersection>: We won’t solve homelessness by keeping out new residents. That is a separate issue. Also, an influx of new people and more foot traffic might induce campers to move on to a more secluded area. Or better yet, the boost in population from the new residential development might provide a critical mass of citizen sentiment to come up with a real solution so people have an alternative to camping.
• Transients and renters: Renters can be every bit as good, contributing citizens as anyone else. Some of the worst “transients” I’ve known are what I call “rich transients”: People who buy second or third homes and only occupy them a week or two out of the year; people who buy houses just to flip them; etc. In contrast, fulltime residents — be they owners or renters — contribute to the life of a community. ARE the life of a community.
• Traffic study: No. We don’t need to pay for yet another traffic study; we already know that traffic sucks. And that asphalt creates a hot miserable climate. Not to mention, roads and parking lots are expensive to build and maintain. We need, rather, to start insisting that all future developments (be they residential or commercial) have reducing car-dependency as a primary aim.
• Mandatory Sidewalks: Yes! Good! And while we’re at it let’s make bike lanes mandatory too!

More thoughts in closing …

• Lately, I’ve stopped automatically opposing new developments. (Of course, I always prefer infill development of existing urban lots and buildings, as opposed to new construction on forest or wetland.) Rather, I tend to support new multi-family complexes more than I support new single-family homes each with its own big yard. And, for any type of residential development, I always want to know if there are grocery stores, drugstores, banks, laundromats in walking distance. If there aren’t, I encourage the developer to add them into the development plans. Sometimes the most eco-friendly thing a developer can do (besides protecting oak trees and other existing nature) is add a grocery store right there.

• In related news, the brand-new Wawa gas station/convenience store in my city features a dozen or more newly planted oak trees and sabal palm trees. Adding oak trees, and protecting existing ones, is one of the best ways to boost the quality of life for all residents — human and nonhuman!

• In a neighborhood not far from me, a segment of a sidewalk was rebuilt to accommodate a stand of oak trees that otherwise would have been taken down. The new segment of sidewalk curves gracefully around the majestic old trees.

• One of the main reasons why so many efforts to fight development ultimately fail, is that fighting development is fighting human nature. Instead of fighting against development, we need to push for development that is truly eco-friendly. It needs to be a top priority.

I wish I had the guts to tell the driver of the fat shiny pickup truck that’s been idling in front of my house for 30 minutes: “Look, you are welcome to park here, you can even use my parking pass so you won’t get a ticket — but will you PLEASE shut off your engine???!”

Something tells me gas money is no
object to this fancy lad. I always want to ask these engine-idlers, “Are you Jeff Bezos or Donald Trump or what???”

Sadly, many of the engine-idlers I see in front of my house are obviously NOT wealthy. Yet somehow don’t mind burning gas to sit still. They make the air around them hotter for the rest of us, while they sit inside their A/C bubble.

Possible constructive responses:

• Knock on the person’s window and offer them a cookie (I didn’t have any cookies to offer or might’ve tried this). Doesn’t necessarily get the person to turn off their engine, but it might! And either way, a human connection is made.

• Knock on the person’s window and ask if they need to park, reassure them they can park and won’t get in trouble because “Here, you can use my parking pass.” I’ve actually done this before, and although it didn’t result in the person turning off their engine and they said no thanks to borrowing the parking pass, it did result in an atmosphere of kindness and connection, which the world needs even more than it needs people to shut off their engines when parked.

• The shiny new pickup’s windows were tinted super super dark; impossible to see who or what was inside other than a male driver. I could have generated a state of inner peace by telling myself, “There might be a dog or other pet in there who is sick; the guy is keeping the AC on for his furbaby while he calls around to try to make a vet appointment,” or “The poor guy was dehydrated, feeling sick and faint, so he pulled off the road to recover,” or any number of other possibilities other than “This person doesn’t care.” Because really I just had no information; only my own attitudes.

Oh! And if when this happens again, I could always knock on the person’s window and offer them a glass of water, ask if they are OK, etc.

Further Reading:

• “Attention Drivers! Turn off your idling engines” (Environmental Defense Fund).

• Car Talk: Idling Doesn’t Hurt Engine But Has No Point (dispatch.com)

• I assumed this was only a problem in my resource-hogging country, but apparently it’s an issue in other places too, including even my favorite resource-conscious island countries Japan and the U.K.

Starting a digest of articles; will be adding to this over time.

• “The 100-year capitalist experiment that keeps America poor, sick, and stuck on coal” (Gwynn Guilford, qz.com, 12/30/2017). A particularly harrowing overview of the socioeconomics of coal mining in Central Appalachia. Prime example of extractive culture. The author also makes an astute observation about the fundamental flaw of the “forever growth economy” mind-set: “At a national level, US politicians, corporate chieftains and other civic leaders continue to ignore the flaws riddling their own growth model. Like the coal-backed politicians counting on boom to follow bust, the nation’s leaders continue to expect the business cycle to buoy growth, failing to grasp how years of increasing inequality in wealth, income, opportunity, and health have cannibalized the very demand needed to sustain it. While they dither on investing in infrastructure, technology, education and health care, the country’s reliance on welfare continues to climb as labor force participation slides. Taxpayers are subsidizing companies to underpay retail workers, just as they’re paying for coal companies to lop off mountaintops.”

• Also noteworthy are countercultures that have emerged in reaction to materialistic, hypercompetitive modern culture. A recent example is the “lying flat” movement led by Chinese millennials. (“These Chinese Millennials Are ‘Chilling,’ and Beijing Isn’t Happy“; Elsie Chen, New York Times, 7/3/2021.) “Five years ago, Luo Huazhong discovered that he enjoyed doing nothing. He quit his job as a factory worker in China, biked 1,300 miles from Sichuan Province to Tibet and decided he could get by on odd jobs and $60 a month from his savings. He called his new lifestyle ‘lying flat.’ ‘I have been chilling,’ Mr. Luo, 31, wrote in a blog post in April, describing his way of life. ‘I don’t feel like there’s anything wrong.’ He titled his post ‘Lying Flat Is Justice,’ attaching a photo of himself lying on his bed in a dark room with the curtains drawn. Before long, the post was being celebrated by Chinese millennials as an anti-consumerist manifesto. ‘Lying flat’ went viral and has since become a broader statement about Chinese society. … ‘Young people feel a kind of pressure that they cannot explain and they feel that promises were broken … People realize that material betterment is no longer the single most important source of meaning in life.'”

• What we think of as human nature may actually be more attributable to human culture. For example, not all cultures are characterized by hoarding and excess as ours is; some are characterized by sharing, and not wanting to take more than you need. Check out “Why Do We Work So Damn Much? Hunter-gatherers worked 15-hour weeks. Why don’t we?” (Interview of anthropologist James Suzman by Ezra Klein; transcript in New York Times.) Writes Klein: “Humanity solved the problem of scarcity and achieved a 15-hour workweek long before modernity. But as we’ve gotten richer and built more technology, we’ve developed a machine not for ending our wants, not for fulfilling them, but for generating new ones, new needs, new desires, new forms of status competition. You can’t solve the problem of scarcity with our current system because our current system is designed to generate endlessly the feeling of more scarcity within us. It needs that. And so we keep working harder and harder and feeling like we have less and less, even amidst quite a bit of plenty, at least, for many of us.”