A New York City Council vote today brings us to a new milestone:  40 Green Codes Task Force proposals are now incorporated into laws and practices.

The particular proposal that brought us to this milestone was UE1 – Increasing Biodiversity in Public Landscapes.  In UE1, the Green Codes Task Force was concerned about the impact of public landscaping practices on urban ecology.  Foreign species and monocultures widely used in landscaping tend to displace native plant species, and deprive native birds and other animals of the habitat to which they had been accustomed.  Many of these species also tend to run amok, spreading far beyond the original planting sites.  In addition, many monocultures require intensive irrigation and fertilization, wasting water and polluting the environment.

The law passed today requires the Parks Department to maximize the use of plant species that are native to New York City, where appropriate, and to prohibit the planting of invasive species.  Native species tend to require less water and fertilization, and are more likely to survive drought and disease.  The use of native species also helps preserve our natural ecosystems, which help clean the air we breathe and the water we drink.

The Council also passed a related law requiring that Parks Department plantings help in stormwater control.  The Parks Department is to develop a manual providing information about what plant species and planting materials (i.e., soils) best facilitate stormwater retention, and guidelines for planning and structuring plantings for stormwater management.   This law encourages innovative stormwater management practices, as the GCTF called for in its proposal SW5.

Both the stormwater rules and the native species rules are to be followed in Parks Department plantings starting on May 1, 2014.   The manuals the department develops will also be available on the city’s website for public use.

For many years folks in green building and sustainable development circles have questioned the logic of developing in coastal areas and flood plains.  As the New York City region now knows firsthand, coastal areas are susceptible to harm and when development is pursued a loss of habitat (like wetlands) inevitably follows, directly or indirectly.  LEED, for instance, provides credit to projects that avoid areas like wetlands, water bodies and habitat of endangered species.  Notably, this is not a prerequisite to achieve LEED, but a voluntary credit (though making this a pre-req has been proposed in LEED v4, slated for 2013 rollout.)

Typically this issue is raised only when new developments are under consideration.  Very few people in the mainstream conversation have advocated for retrenchment from established communities, no matter how vulnerable.  Exceptions that come to mind include regions like the Mississippi River flood plain, where recurring floods have required an almost annual outlay of significant funds to reconstruct devastated communities, and post Katrina New Orleans- when many questioned whether there should be a city in that location at all (though presumably those people have never been to Mardi Gras.)  After Katrina and the BP spill in the gulf there were spikes in conversation about the impacts of human development and how we had managed to remove 34 square miles of wetland habitat from Southern Louisiana EACH YEAR for five decades- habitat that might have softened the blow of Katrina and helped clean crude oil and other toxins out of the ecosystem.   A similar discussion point has been heard after Sandy, with people pointing out that wetlands and oyster habitat used to be extensive in New York Harbor (and around Staten Island and the Rockaways) with lots of speculation about how the presence of these ecosystems might have mitigated the impact of the storm.

Credit: ARO, dLand Studio

Among the most reproduced images post-Sandy was this rendering, by the design firms Architectural Research Office and dLand Studio, of New York Harbor redesigned to withstand dramatic sea level rise, for the Rising Currents exhibit at MoMA- a prescient examination of the impacts of sea level rise on the NYC waterfront in 2010.

But for the most part, no one questions the right of cities and towns to exist much as they are- mostly folks wonder what can be done to make our communities more resilient in the face of dramatic events, whether it be storm surges or heat waves.

But we may be witnessing a turn in this conversation.

Last week it was reported that City Councilman Brad Lander of Brooklyn asked Lightstone Development to withdraw their application to build a 700-unit housing complex alongside the Gowanus canal.  For those not familiar, the Gowanus canal penetrates almost two miles into Brooklyn from New York Harbor and it suffered severe flooding during Sandy.  Exacerbating the situation, the canal is a Superfund site–laden with myriad toxins and other nasties left over from its industrial past. The Gowanus is also an active outfall for our combined sewer system (in New York City, and most northeast cities of the same age, the sewer and stormwater systems are combined and when it rains the system can be quickly overwhelmed, resulting in raw sewage being diverted to surrounding waterways.)  All of which makes the Gowanus quite a noxious body of water (sarcastically nicknamed Lavender Lake by the locals) but, property values being what they are in New York, there is significant pressure to develop around it.  And Lightstone has responded that they intend to move forward with the project.

Credit: Lightstone

New York City is a place that revolves around, and is largely defined by, real estate. Property ownership is sacrosanct, in some circles probably considered more fundamental than access to oxygen.  The Lightstone proposal is essentially “as of right”- meaning they are not requesting any variances to zoning or codes like more bulk or more square footage than allowed by the baseline codes, and therefore will not have to go through extensive environmental reviews.  Whether you agree or disagree with a new housing complex being located alongside the Gowanus, it is a significant change in the conversation for a public figure to openly request that the developer withdraw their proposal.  Will Lander be suggesting a wholesale review of the zoning around the Gowanus?  Or will the city be reviewing proposals near water bodies with a renewed scrutiny?  The former seems complicated and the latter seems a little vague, and probably unfair.  That said, Lander raises good questions about the ability of the project to withstand storm events.  There are not easy answers to these questions, and I’m certainly not suggesting solutions here.  But the conversation has started.  We should all take note.

Quite a few people have commented on the recent proposal by Apple to build a kind of suburban spaceship headquarters (pictured above) in Cupertino, CA.  Alexandra Lange at Design Observer has noted that suburban HQ’s are decidedly retro, and Lloyd Alter at Treehugger is reminded of the passage from Lord of the Rings, “One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them” and predicts the end of the creative giant (Apple, not Sauron.)

There is something kind of creepy about the uber-slick aesthetic Apple has successfully applied to their gadgets and retail stores being applied to such a massive structure. With a diameter similar to the Pentagon, the pop cultural reference it brought to mind for me was Revenge of the Sith. But that’s all totally subjective. What struck me most forcefully was the difference between this particular design solution and the solution proposed by another global tech company trying to house a rapidly growing workforce: Google.

First, let’s review the Apple proposal. The building, though only 4 stories in height is massive and is designed to provide space for 12,000 employees. Presenting the project to Cupertino City Council (see the video here),  Steve Jobs points out that the current site is only 20% green space and that their proposal will increase this to 80% landscape, achieved by placing “most” of the parking underground. I put “most” in quotes because in addition to underground parking below the main building there is a huge above-ground parking structure proposed alongside I-280. Jobs says this parking structure is 4 stories because they want everything on the site to be “human scaled,” but one wonders how a parking structure that appears to be 2,000 feet long can be considered in any way approachable. To give you a sense of the scale of parking required in places like Cupertino (where everyone drives everywhere, for everything)- Apple will reduce the surface parking by 90%. It’s a laudable achievement, but still leaves 1,200 surface parking spaces on the site. Another scale adjustment for you, the “café” in the new building serves 3,000 people at a sitting.

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Urban Green Council Program Associate Emma Gillespie recently had the opportunity to interview Brooklyn Bridge Park architects Nik Elcovitch and Matthew Urbanski from Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates on the park’s sustainable features. Urban Green Council will be offering a tour of the park on April 21st.

Emma Gillespie:  The park has many sustainable design aspects- which ones are you most proud of?

Matt Urbanski: I think the main thing that makes this project most unique is the overarching concept of creative reuse. Along with reuse must come resourcefulness- trying to make the most out of the resources a site provides, which is different than what you might be encouraged to do otherwise. Our approach is one of resourcefulness but its not one solely motivated by sustainability or a green agenda. That, of course, dovetails beautifully with what we are doing, and this approach of resourcefulness is an aspect of the green agenda… And it was also out of great respect of what was already there… [Reuse and resourcefulness] came together to support the green agenda. One of the great resources of the site was the incredible scale of the site. There was an industrial scale that came out of the utility that seemed to work very well as a new type of experience for New Yorkers. We have some of the best parks in the country, but they’re not necessarily industrial. So to tap into the industrial scale was key to the idea behind this project.

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There’s some news today that won’t be noticed by major media but could potentially have a far greater impact on the environmental footprint of our country and communities than most environmental stories you’ll find in the Times or on CNN- today the LEED for Neighborhood Development standard opens for business.

There’s no way to sugar coat the issues- our country has an appalling record on land use policy.  From coast to coast we have fostered a development pattern entirely beholden to single occupancy automobile use that eliminates the distinction between town and country and leaves huge swaths of our population without any access to public transportation. The few that are lucky enough to live near a bus or train line find they have access to a few blocks of central business district and little else. (If you live outside Philly, for example, you can catch a bus or train into central Philly but there is no way to travel to an adjacent suburb or town.) And don’t even ask about walking or biking- which feel like criminal activities in most communities.  It’s a system that is both inefficient and ineffective. If our society is to have any measurable impact on our environmental footprint we need to make huge changes to our patterns of development and LEED-ND is the best tool we currently have to move in the direction of smart growth and sustainable communities.

Like the LEED standards for buildings, there will be lots to argue about with LEED-ND.  Should it do more to restrict greenfield development?  What are the hurdles to implementation in urban settings?  How will it mesh with municipal policies like Portland’s urban growth boundary?  I’m looking forward to those conversations- hopefully some of them will happen in this space- but first we need more people to understand that where we locate our buildings is as important as the performance of the buildings themselves and having a public standard like LEED-ND available will grease the grooves of the public conversation.  I’ve said before that one of LEED’s greatest contributions has been cultural rather than technical- it provides a conversational benchmark for people to talk about green building issues.  I expect a similar transformation of the public conversation around development issues in the years ahead.

Kaid Benfield, who was intimately involved in the development of the standard, has a nice post over at the NRDC Switchboard outlining today’s milestone.  You can find the Rating System, Checklists and the LEED Online portal to register your projects at the USGBC website.

If you follow architecture or the history of New York City you are no doubt familiar with Christopher Gray’s Streetscapes column in the New York Times.  Recently he covered my own neighborhood of Ft. Greene, Brooklyn and in particular Vanderbilt Avenue as it runs down the hill to the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  The column includes images of Vanderbilt from “about 1950″, included above, and from present day, included below.

The differences, of course, are striking, but while Mr. Gray focuses on the variety of architectural detailing to be found on the houses and the many changes to demographics the street has seen since shipping was the dominant industry, I find myself stunned by the two major changes to the cityscape revealed by these photos: the removal of the streetcars, and the introduction of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway at the end of the block.  The streetcars in the earlier image were removed in August of that very year, 1950, and the BQE was completed in 1964.  Both stories have been told many times by those more adept than I; the rise of the automobile, the virtual destruction of urban communities by carving interstates through them- but it’s fascinating to see the narrative so plainly exposed by a couple pictures in the paper.

Mr. Gray focuses at one point on the two houses at the end of the block, photo at left, and provides the following caption, “The houses at 69 and 71 Vanderbilt Avenue were built together around 1850. No. 71 looks freshly minted, but No. 69 is woebegone.”  What is cropped from the picture and not mentioned in the caption is that No. 69 faces the elevated highway (you can just make it out behind the forlorn trees on the left.)  There are many such houses alongside this road that once formed the center of a relatively thriving residential neighborhood and now face the bleak underside of an interstate- a haven for petty criminals and no doubt an asthma cluster.  Given it’s location it’s nothing short of a miracle that someone has seen fit to take so much care with No. 71.

On a brighter note, that picture from 1950 is, well, from 1950.  We tend to see things like the BQE as permanent fixtures of the cityscape, immutable.  But look at these images to see how much things can change in just 15 years, from the time the streetcars were removed and the BQE was completed, and ask yourself what you are doing to make sure things change for the better in the coming 15.

Update: The trees!  How could I forget to mention the trees?  They haven’t even been planted in the early photo but look at how, in the words of my friend Richard Yancey at Green Light NY “the street trees have transformed the environment for the better, and greatly enhanced the pedestrian and public realm.”  I have read some fairly snarky stuff about Bloomberg’s Million Trees initiative; questioning the climate change impacts, calling it a glorified publicity stunt, but just glance at this photo and you can see the inherent value of adding street trees to virtually any context.  And, by the way, the math works as well- street trees are one of the MOST cost effective measures to reduce CO2, improve air quality, and mitigate the heat island effect.  And the pits help with stormwater runoff.

George Hargreaves and the design team for the London 2012 Olympics site are using the opportunity of the games to regenerate the ecology of the Lea river.  The north London river and it’s many tributaries have suffered from 100 years or more of industrial use, including long stretches boxed into canals.  The regeneration project reintroduces the natural landforms of the river bank and includes the planting of some 300,000 native wetland plants.  This restored ecology will be the central component of the Olympic Park with further expansion planned post-Olympics that effectively stitches several north London communities together for the first time in a century.