November 1, 2007

Panel says thinking needs to change for Seattle green to grow

A panel of green experts said many things must change if Seattle hopes to meet its climate goals.

Bert Gregory, president and CEO of Mithun, Peg Staeheli, principal of SvR Design Co., and Darryl Smith, a Windermere Realtor and community activist, spoke at the first “What it Takes” forum, presented this week by the Seattle Great City Initiative. They were asked to examine whether Seattle will meet its climate goals, and what obstacles and opportunities lie in its path.

Seattle has a number of environmental goals in its Climate Action Plan. They include meeting the Kyoto protocols of reducing climate-changing pollution, decreasing dependence on cars, increasing fuel efficiency, increasing energy efficiency for homes and businesses and inspiring others to act.

This week, Mayor Greg Nickels released an update on Seattle's achievements, which show greenhouse gas emissions were down in 2005 but emissions from transportation are growing.

The panelists said everyone needs to rethink how they plan for new projects, neighborhoods and regional growth.

In new development, design teams need to work in an integrated, innovative way. Staeheli said, “We often work parallel and we can't do that anymore.” Teams need to come up with integrated approaches to making buildings efficient enough to meet the 2030 Challenge, which calls for buildings to be carbon-neutral by 2030.

Being innovative means taking risks. Gregory said “risk is a scary word,” but it gets less frightening if a company can decide how to mitigate it. At Mithun, risk and innovation are combined in the research and development section of the firm. “That's how we create new knowledge and without that, we can't move ahead.”

Integration also needs to be considered in planning city projects. One example is the public right of way. The city has removed tall trees along streets and highways because they are considered a danger, but trees absorb carbon dioxide, soak up stormwater and slow traffic on long stretches of road.

If street planners considered the system in an integrated way, instead of giving priority only to cars, the result would be a street with multiple benefits, even for buildings. “If we can change the right of way, we can have an effect on air conditioners,” Gregory said, “by creating a cooler microsystem.”

Streets also need to be rearranged so the right of way is shared by bicycles, pedestrians, cars and transit. Seattle's Complete Streets policy is only a beginning, they said.

Another major component in how Seattle will meet climate goals is in planning for growth.

Michael McGinn, director of the Seattle Great City Initiative, said the Seattle Department of Planning and Development expects between 2,500 and 5,000 new units of housing per year for the next few years. Current estimates predict another one million people in the region by 2020.

McGinn said design can help accommodate that growth in a way that also reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

Smith, a Realtor for Windermere, said his mission is to convince people they don't need a 5,000-square-foot lot. People like space so it can be hard to convince them of the benefits of density. The trick, he said, is showing them that dense areas can be “urban, green and exciting.”

One model is the North Beach area in San Francisco. McGinn said similar density could occur in South Lake Union.

Education should be another focus. Staeheli said younger people need to be taught in school to work in groups to develop innovative solutions. And designers need to talk to “the 75-and-up crowd. They value things a little bit differently.”