Small-scale eco-solutions answering some big city problems

Green infrastructure growing

Matt Dietrichson, Feb 02, 12.

Many of the world’s largest cities are finding lots of little ways to tackle their toughest challenges, according to the Regional Plan Association:

Urban centers from New York to Sao Paulo to Singapore are grappling with big challenges, including climate change, population growth and fiscal constraints. Rather than addressing these issues solely with large, centralized strategies, some are turning to more diffuse approaches. So-called micro-solutions — which might mean relying on green infrastructure instead of a new water-treatment facility, or implementing car- and bicycle-sharing in place of a highway expansion — are generally much cheaper and faster to implement. They have the added benefit of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

One micro-scale innovation that has taken hold in places as diverse as Portland, Ore., Denver, Malmo, Sweden, and Brooklyn is the eco-district, a neighborhood or section of a city that attempts to use less energy and produce less waste of all kinds. The concept, which was devised by the Portland Sustainability Institute, emphasizes protecting the environment at the neighborhood level.

In eco-districts, property owners are encouraged to tap their joint purchasing and real estate power. In Washington, D.C., landowners have purchased solar panels to create local solar co-operatives. In New York, environmentalists are hoping to persuade clusters of buildings to band together to bring natural gas to their neighborhood, allowing them to replace polluting, hard-to-maintain boilers. Building owners lower their energy costs over the long term and decrease pollution in the process. One organization helping buildings and communities tap their joint purchasing and real estate power is Living City Block, which has active projects in Denver, Washington, D.C. and in the Gowanus Canal area in Brooklyn.

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