Most Popular | Beyond Suburbia | Making Sustainable Real!

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/03/21

As we work together to build, test and deploy rapid social, economic, and ecological prototype scenarios for sustainability, we can kick the ball farther down the road sooner, if we build in support.

My experience is the creative process pushes my buttons. My expectations of perfection cripples me.  How can I ask for help if my ideas are “halfbaked”?… Jill Badonsky, a creativity coach, says 85% of us will give up when our “demons” start to show up. (around 38 minutes into an interview Mastering the Shift, with Rebecca Skeele)

Stereotypically, we have a culture of men who don’t ask for directions, who don’t read the assembly instructions.  What I have in mind with this section of the website, is a place where we give ourselves permission to ask for, receive, and give support.

Getting feedback, brainstorming, asking for help when we run into inner and outer challenges, knowing when to hold back critical thinking and open up to the Believing Game, all are lessons in giving and receiving support.

Maybe we celebrate mistakes, cheer for the dumbest questions, share our perceived short comings, as we muddle our way to innovation. How do we reach out in support to “failure”, how do we open up to lessons learned and stop beating ourselves up?

Share your experiences of what was supportive. What kind of support would you like today?  What “monkey mind” thoughts and “demons” come up when you move into the creative?

Chattanooga Vision 2000- an inspiring story of citizens transforming their world

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/07/14

The intent is to give people the tools to redevelop their neighborhood sustainably. Here’s one way I see it playing out. (my take on the Chattanooga 2000 process).

1) All the citizens are invited to a “Make our City a Better Place to Live” event ( “A more sustainable town”, etc).

2) The question is asked to the gathering (say at the convention center, a school gym, a big place, a bunch of people)

“What would make our city town a better place to live?”   a thousand post-its go up on the walls.

“Ok! How would we know these things were accomplished?”   Another thousand post-its go up on the walls.

“OK! Go do it!”

So what happens??   A chaos of good ideas and enthusiasm gets set loose.  The Community taps into the greatest resource on the planet; heart felt human ingenuity. 

3) What happened in Chattanooga?  (again in my uninformed memory on what I read) The folks of Chattanooga got back together in 6 months and discovered that many of the one-two year goals they set, were completed in 6 months!!

4) I love my interpretation of what I remember!  Is says we can be living in a great town, filled with creative juice, where the barriers to innovation are lowered.

OK, here’s the real story, according to a write up by the Head Facilitator, Carl Moore.

Case Studies of Revitalization Strategies Working Paper

CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE REVITALIZATION

Problems Being Addressed

By the 1970’s Chattanooga was suffering from general economic decline and downtown

deterioration, brought on by severe environmental pollution, heavy loss of manufacturing

jobs, poor education, racial conflicts, and a decreasing population and tax base. At one time

the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare had called Chattanooga the

dirtiest city in the United States. Air pollution was so bad that people drove with their

headlights on in the daytime, the sky had turned orange, and the turbercu-losis rate was three

times the national average. Moreover, citizens felt pessimistic about the prospect of

politicians guiding the city to a better future.

Catalyst for Change

A handful of local officials, civic leaders, and business executives decided to take action

outside of the political process. They established a non-profit organization, called the

Chattanooga Venture, to help turn the city around. The Venture’s first project was Vision

2000, an extensive collaborative visioning process funded by the Lyndhurst foundation. The

process, which included over 2,000 citizens, created a grassroots, participatory method for

the community to articulate its goals and objectives. The process resulted in a plan called

“Vision 2000,” and ten years later, “Revision 2000.”

The visioning process and the plan stimulated a number of subsequent redevelopment efforts,

including creation of a private non-profit agency to facilitate redevelopment projects

(RiverValley Partners/River City Company), and another private non-profit focused on

eliminating substandard housing (Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise). The plan also

resulted in a number of transportation improvements, undertaken by the Chattanooga Area

Regional Transportation Authority (such as electric buses), and extensive environmental

clean-up efforts. A number of attractions, including a stadium, an aquarium, a restored

theater and bridge, and a cultural center, were developed as a result of the plan.

Consistent with direction from the Gwinnett County Revitalization Task Force, this case

study focuses primarily on the visioning process used in Chattanooga, rather than the

subsequent revitalization efforts.

Major Players

Major players in the visioning process include the Lyndhurst foundation, which provided

funding; the Chattanooga Venture, which was created to manage the process and act as

champion for the resulting plan; the private facilitators hired by the Venture; and the vast

number of citizen participants in the process.

The Visioning Process

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Visioning describes a process whereby citizens come together to articulate a shared vision

for their community. Carl Moore describes community-wide visioning as a process wherein

“a diverse cross-section of residents work together to define the key issues facing a

community and develop shared goals for addressing those issues” (Moore et al 1999, 558).

The process can address issues such as economic development, transportation, education,

culture, environmental issues, race relations, social services, and more. Typically, the

participants will draft recommendations describing how these goals should be achieved.

Visioning can provide several benefits, such as galvanizing a community to action, creating a

participatory culture, creating networks for future collaboration efforts, and shaping future

community leaders. However, visioning can also create an expectation that future projects

will involve similar public participation efforts. It also raises expectations that actions will be

taken on the agreed-upon goals. If action is not taken, the process merely increases

skepticism in the community.

Implementation and Logistics

According to Moore et al 1999, successful visioning involves the following phases:

1. Organizing.

Community-wide visioning can be initiated in many ways, for example, by a small group of

citizens or by a government agency. However, in order for the community to “own” the

process, it is important that elected officials not be solely responsible for designing and

managing the process. It is useful in this stage to gather information about other visioning

efforts.

The initiating group must first decide who will lead the visioning process. It is useful to form

a steering committee that includes representatives of all the major stakeholders. The steering

committee members should credibly reflect the broader community, have a reputation for

previous work in the public interest, and include strong leaders who believe in the

collaborative process. It is also important that the steering committee members represent

collectively a constituency for change (e.g., members who can leverage resources or can hold

authorities responsible for implementing the plan). A steering committee should not be too

large. In the Chattanooga effort, the steering committee for the two visioning efforts included

more than 50 people representing dozens of different organizations. The group was credible

because of its broad diversity.

After forming the steering committee, the group must form a staff. A paid coordinator is key

to the process, since the volunteers on the steering committee will be focused on process

design, fund-raising, retaining outside facilitation assistance, and publicity and education

efforts. Chattanooga Venture hired one full-time staff member to manage the logistics, a

local resident who was respected and knowledgeable about the community, with no formal

connections to local government, business, or the professional planning community. This

gave the staff member a certain level of autonomy.

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The steering committee or initiating group must then design the visioning process, grappling

with details such as how long the process will take, how many rounds of meetings are

needed, what the agendas should be, and who will facilitate. The process design should

consider a mechanism for tracking and documenting the participants. The process design

effort itself may require a substantial amount of time—for example, in Birmingham, the

initiating committee took a year to design the visioning process.

The last step in this phase is to get the public to participate. This requires a well thought out

publicity and outreach plan. Publicity campaigns should include a name, logo, and slogans to

create an identity for the process. Spreading the message about the effort through radio,

brochures, or newspapers is essential. The outreach component should consider how citizens

from all parts of the community will be reached, particularly those members that are often

underrepresented. Useful outreach techniques include working with existing community

organizations (such as religious organizations, PTAs, or Rotary Clubs). For example, a

rotary group meeting can devote one of its regularly scheduled meetings for input to the

visioning process. Another strategy includes appointing volunteer captains to ensure good

turnouts.

The steering committee must be cautious of overrepresentation by middle-aged, middle-class

participants. There are typically groups of community members that are underrepresented in

these processes, including groups at the far end of the socioeconomic spectrum or the age

spectrum. Including representatives of these groups, and others who might be

underrepresented, in the visioning process takes hard work and strategy. One strategy is to

meet in locations and times that are convenient for them (for example, at high schools, senior

homes, or in places accessible by public transit). Public information materials should

emphasize that meetings are open to all, and that the visioning is truly a democratic process

that equally values input from all participants, regardless of their age, class, race, political

clout, or ethnic background.

2. Conducting the Visioning Process.

Now the visioning process can begin. The first step involves gathering ideas through multiple

meetings held in a variety of locations. Every meeting should give participants a chance to

talk with each other about their long-term goals for the community (small group discussions

are quite helpful). These visioning sessions can yield thousands of ideas about the

community’s future. In Chattanooga, more than 2,000 people participated in two rounds of

meetings (the first round gathered ideas, and the other formulated goals and action items

based on those ideas). Nine meetings were held in one month for the first round, mostly

during evening hours. One meeting was held at a senior center, another at a convention

center where high school students gathered.

The participants at each meeting selected one topic from five potential topics (people, place,

work, play, or government). They were asked to respond to a question about the city’s future.

Facilitators then asked participants to describe their ideas one at a time, and each idea was

recorded on a flip chart. The group then clarified some of those ideas and selected the five

most important items. Each meeting produced a list of ideas with an indication of how

strongly the participants felt about each one, based on the number of votes it received. Even

rtf_final_report_addendum.doc A-25 Case Studies of Revitalization Strategies Working Paper

ideas that received no votes, however, would be considered during the goal-setting process,

as the facilitators informed the participants.

After the ideas have been collected, they must be shaped into goals and action steps. In

Chattanooga, a small group consisting of citizens active in the process and members of the

Chattanooga Venture Board met to review the 2,500 ideas generated. The group then sorted

those ideas into categories and created preliminary goal statements for each category. For

example, Chattanooga’s goal for education was “Excellent public schools, K-12, which are

well funded and actively supported by the community.”

The board of the Venture then held a second round of public meetings, using promotional

materials to increase attendance. Participants split into smaller groups, and each group

discussed one category. The participants then read the list of ideas in that category and

highlighted themes. After the themes were placed on flip charts, the facilitators read the

drafting team’s goal statement. After agreeing upon a statement, the participants then focused

on actions and projects that would be needed to accomplish that goal.

Chattanooga noted a drop off in public participation between the first and second round of

meetings. Thus, some communities use a process where goals and actions are discussed in a

single round of meetings. Whatever process approach is used, it is important to make sure

that the goals reflect public opinion in very clear language.

Organizers must continue their educational efforts throughout the process, not only to ensure

good attendance but also to keep the public informed about the dialogue. Organizers of

ReVision 2000 prepared a magazine with detailed information about the effort, mailed to

every household in the county. Other communities have used a newspaper supplement or

encouraged local newspapers to run articles featuring key issues that would be addressed in

the meetings.

The final step in this phase involves voting. Here, the public is invited to ratify the goals and

action steps. Having the public decide on the goals helps them appreciate the trade-offs

involved. Voting can be organized in many ways. Chattanooga held a Vision Fair at a central

downtown space. Citizens reviewed the goals and actions from the second round of meetings,

and each citizen cast votes for their five favorite actions. Other communities have used fake

money that citizens could put in front of their favorite items. Choosing a central venue, such

as a large commercial mall, helps increase the likelihood of high participation.

3. Implementing the Vision.

This final phase involves implementing the vision. Steering committees must begin thinking

about implementation strategies before the visioning process begins (e.g., while they are

designing the visioning process). This helps the committee strategize about overcoming

possible obstacles.

The most important implementation strategy is to build a broad base of participation and

interests. When residents and community leaders are excited about and invested in the vision,

it is more likely to happen.

rtf_final_report_addendum.doc A-26 Case Studies of Revitalization Strategies Working Paper

The vision must also clearly specify what needs to happen next. Another technique is to

assign individuals or groups to follow through on specific parts of the vision. Yet another key

technique is to incorporate benchmarks and indicators to measure progress. Benchmarks

(which describe a starting point) and indicators (tools for measuring change) help a

community see what progress is being made. In addition, successful implementation requires

leadership, a group or agency that continues to act as the champion for the vision (such as the

Chattanooga Venture). The Venture provided continued support and capitalized on emerging

opportunities to help the vision become reality.

Parallels to Gwinnett County

Although Gwinnett County does not suffer from the severe economic and environmental

pollution problems like Chattanooga faced in the 1980s, Chattanooga’s visioning process

can—and has—been used in many other communities of all types as a tool to help determine

a vision for their future. However, suburban communities face special challenges, as

residents tend to live there because of housing costs and not necessarily because of

government services or because they identify with the area. It is often harder to achieve

broad, engaged participation in suburban communities.

In addition, Gwinnett County may wish to target certain commercial areas for visioning and

revitalization efforts, rather than the entire community. If so, it may be more appropriate to

conduct a charrette rather than a visioning process. A charrette is an intensive and short

visioning process that often focuses on one aspect of community life in a particular area, or a

particular issue like transportation. Stakeholders interested in the issue convene in intensive,

interactive meetings, which can last anywhere from one day to several weeks, while they

design a plan for the issue in question.

Costs

Costs of the visioning process vary depending on the design of the process, the educational

materials used, etc. For example, the Chattanooga visioning process, considered the

“Cadillac version” of visioning, cost a quarter of a million dollars. In Los Alamos, New

Mexico, the process cost $80,000 for the facilitating team plus ads in the newspaper and an

educational supplement.

The Lyndhurst Foundation underwrote the Chattanooga effort. In other communities, the

United Way has sponsored the process. Most resources are raised outside of government

through foundations and others who promote community change.

Success Factors for Visioning Process

Factors that explain Chattanooga’s successful visioning effort include the following:

rtf_final_report_addendum.doc A-27

• Generous Foundation Funding. Lyndhurst Foundation funding allowed Chattanooga

Venture to form and conduct a thorough visioning and educational process. Case Studies of Revitalization Strategies Working Paper

• Creation of New Agency to Oversee Visioning Process. The Chattanooga Venture

served as manager for the visioning effort, then served as champion to implement the

plan. The agency helped ensure sustained attention to the plan.

• Extensive Community Input; Participatory, Highly Inclusive Grass-Roots Process.

Citizens in the Chattanooga process really felt as though they had been heard. In

addition, the Venture made strenuous efforts to ensure that typically underrepresented

segments of the population participated. This helped increase community support and

buy-in for subsequent projects. Use of the Nominal Group Technique, which is a tool

for generating ideas and organizing them into a prioritized list, helped make the

process participatory.

• Use of Highly Experienced, Paid Facilitators for Visioning Process. The highly

skilled facilitators brought their wealth of experiences from other communities and

applied those lessons in Chattanooga. The facilitators also trained a group of local

residents to facilitate other events in the future, an effort that met with success.

Community leadership programs are a good source of future facilitators.

• Visioning Process Community-Driven, Not Government-Driven. If citizens perceive

that the process is managed and controlled by elected officials, they will not feel a

sense of ownership of the process.

• Timing—Community Ready For Change, But Not Facing A Narrow Crisis. Timing

is important. The community must be ready for change (which in many instances has

meant exasperation with elected officials, and a sense that politicians cannot lead the

community effectively toward change). However, the community must not be facing

a narrow crisis, otherwise its vision for a comprehensive future will be unduly biased

by that crisis.

• Education and Outreach Efforts; Wide Distribution of Results. The Venture made a

tremendous effort to bring the public in, educate them about the process, and

distribute the results through all forms of media.

• Comprehensive Process (Addressed Many Issues). A community-wide visioning

process should provide a complex, all-inclusive, far reaching view for the future.

• Vision Must be Designed to Lead Directly to Implementation. If the vision is not

designed to lead to implementation, it will not result in positive change and will

merely increase community skepticism. A group or organization external to

government should broker the implementation process.

Contact

Chattanooga’s Visioning Process

Carl Moore, The Community Store

505-820-6826

rtf_final_report_addendum.doc A-28 Case Studies of Revitalization Strategies Working Paper

References

Moore, Carl. The Community Store. Interview, February 2002. www.thecommunitystore.com

Moore, Carl M., Gianni Longo, and Patsy Palmer. 1999. Visioning. In The Consensus

Building Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Reaching Agreement. Edited by Susskind,

Lawrence, Sarah McKearnan and Jennifer Thomas-Larmer. Sage Publications: Thousand

Oaks, CA.

Linton, Brenda L. Economic Development Case Studies: Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA.

Research Triangle Institute, NC. http://www.rti.org/cid/publications/Mun-Fin/chatta.pdf

Economics as if we live in a Sustainable Urban Village

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/07/13

This video brings clarity to the fundamental shift we are involved in…the kind of growth that leaves us living lightly on the planet. Join in! Slip into the nearest phone booth and reappear transformed into the stupendous steward you are. As for the current lack of phone booths, don’t let that small detail get in your way!Together, we can make sustainable real!

Ecologize Growth from StormCloud Media on Vimeo.

What action hero would you like to emerge as? What would be your super powers?  You know I’d be Polar Sam…

Industrial Farming + Drug Industry=Dumb and Dumber

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/04/21

Super Bugs-Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

I’ve been hearing, for years, the warnings about our overuse of antibiotics. Super Bugs are on the list of Impending Bummers. A report published on Friday by the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases demonstrates the day our antibiotics become ineffective is growing nearer!! In fact, the day has come.

Industrial Farms + Pharma=Dumb and Dumber

It amazes me our capacity to turn a blind eye to self-generated threats. We can be Dumb and Dumber. But it’s good for the shareholders! And anyway the flavor Staphylococcus aureus gives to a steak is this side of heaven! (I made that last part up)

Drug-resistant Staph is largely the result of overexposure.

According to the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, nearly 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the year 2009 were reserved for livestock and poultry, and in the case of Staph aureus, the chickens are coming home to roost.

The study tested 80 brands in 26 retail grocery stores in five cities across the country: Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Flagstaff.

They found strains of Staph bacteria in a whopping 47% of the meat they tested.

What’s more, more than half of those contaminated samples were resistant to at least three different types of antibiotics, including methicillin and more common antibiotics like amoxicillin and penicillin….

“For the first time, we know how much of our meat and poultry is contaminated with antibiotic-resistant Staph, and it is substantial,” said Lance B. Price, Ph.D., senior author of the study and Director of TGen’s Center for Food Microbiology and Environmental Health.

So on top of E. coli and salmonella, carnivores can now add staph bacteria to the list of potential dangers that come with consuming meat from industrial animal farming.

Bill Drayton, founder of Ashoka,  made the comment, “Our problems are outrunning our solutions.” It’s time to systemically rethink our way of life, from soup to nuts.  It’s time to work together and make sustainable real!

Image courtesy of GreenChipStocks

Curriculum – Because life is for learning!

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/03/21

I should have been a woodshop teacher, (BA in Industrial Arts) but went into construction instead.

Much to my amazement, I keep being drawn to learning, my own ongoing growth and the Santa Fe School District’s trials and tribulations. Quite a few years ago, I came across the idea that schools could be centers of communities; in fact they used to be, all across America. The light bulbs went off…What if schools were reconfigured and became the hearts of “Mixed use, mixed income neighborhoods, with lifelong learning, and open space”??!!

Live, work, play, learn, shop, all within walking

If they were conveniently located, and multiple stories for commercial shops and teacher’s housing were added for smarter density, teachers could walk to work and to the corner grocer.

If the buildings were used by the community into the evenings year round, the sharing of  facilities would lower everyones’ costs. The cafeteria and dining area could be a restaurant/cafe, a bakery, and a community gathering space after hours.  Solar panels on the roofs could supply electricity and hot water for not only the school, but excess capacity could be sold to the surrounding neighborhood, adding to the District’s coffers, with increased efficiency and lowered transmission losses.

All of these functions, planning, and redevelopment makes for great hands-on learning. It’s all curriculum. It’s all preparing our children with real learning for real jobs in the growth industry of the 21 st Century, the transformation of suburbia into sustainable neighborhoods.

So keep on the lookout for curriculum, mentoring programs, and other learning possibilities in your areas of concern, and post them to the website. This page will gather them all and make em available for learners of all ages- because we’re all learning what makes sustainable real!

The Real Life Adventures of Polar Sam- The Hot New Product Revealed

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/04/15

A polar bear, sent by his people to save their way of life, finds himself driving an ice cream truck around suburbia, on a mission to reverse global warming, one ice cream at a time

Episode #3

The Hot New Product Revealed

(previously…… Polar Sam is about to introduce a new product line. “What now, lemon flavored Krill oil?!”, exclaimed Doc Plaza. An involuntary shiver went through his body as he recalled last week’s  ‘Hot new product’. The memory caused his upper lip to curl in disgust.

“No, no, this is the real deal. Village in a Box!” Sam pulled out a book sized cardboard box, with a lively village street scene on the front. The three of them crowded under Sam’s oversized beach umbrella, and examined the front graphics).

“Shops below, living upstairs”, Doc Plaza remarked.  “Reminds me of the life downtown Santa Fe when I was a kid.’

Kid Suburban observed, “I like the people fishing in the town lake.  What’s this ‘Living Machine’ greenhouse thing?”

“Those are tanks of biologies where the water from the lake is cleaned and recycled back into the lake; keeps the algae blooms down and supplies filtered water to the greenhouses,” Sam replied matter of factly.

“Hey, look, people are growing food, and playing volleyball, and shopping, right next to the Post Office!”  Kid exclaimed.

Polar Sam couldn’t resist a little sarcasm,  ”That mixed use dealie is weird, huh?!  they don’t need to drive to everything.”

Sam turned down the sarcasm and continued, pointing out features.  “And those kids have a tree fort, right in the little plaza where they live.  Shops below, homes one and two stories above.  And the parents are over under the umbrellas barbequing”.

“Look at all those solar panels on the roofs. And the grandfather playing checkers with a young person. I wish Jason lived nearby. That kid makes me laugh”. Doc Plaza’s grandson and his daughter Irene moved 60 miles away last year, as the real estate prices of Santa Fe had gotten so steep.  A deep pause enveloped the men and the white bear.

“ I like the Community Forest and biomass power generation facility”’ Doc continued. “ Putting everything nearby is just better.  I’m telling ya Kid, the mixed income workforce housing is so important, how can you be so blind??”

Kid Suburbia suppressed his urge to choke the old man. “So what’s this Village in a Box thing?”

A wave of excitement passed over Sam.   He’d spent a whole weekend at the Sustainable Institute preparing for just this “magical sales moment’ moment.

A couple of kids showed up with a handful of coins. “Hey Polar Sam, I want a frozen snickers. Yeah, and I want a cherry popsicle.”

“You’re just in time for the premier showing of Village in a Box” Sam exclaimed.  He handed them their treats. “Here, help me set these up.”

Down from the racks on top of the ice cream truck came a couple of folding chairs and a little table, and from the Styrofoam box in the front seat came a projector.  The make shift movie theater on the sidewalk set up in seconds. Sam took the DVD out of the Village in a Box container, inserted it into the projector, pulled the movie screen down on the side of his truck, and “Wallah!”  Doc and Kid Suburbia starred in amazement, the kids cheered.

“Grab a seat,” said Sam, trying to be casual, while at the same time he could hardly contain himself.

Thoughts came pouring in. “If only my mother could see me now!!”

He flipped the remote video cam on. “Wait til the gang back home sees this!”  The thought of his friends, family, and the Elders, sitting around the iceberg, peering into the clan’s one laptop, waiting for the satellite feed to download, was overwhelming.

He brushed all the thoughts away to focus on the task at hand, and gleefully announced to his small but entirely captivated audience. “It’s Show Time!”

Envisioning A More Abundant Lifestyle

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/03/29

A few years ago,  the Sustainable  Neighborhoods Focus Group came up with the idea of giving as a key to a more abundant lifestyle. Currently, infill and new development often give very little to neighborhoods, usually a loss of views and open space, more traffic, and a deadness associated with second homes and single use neighborhoods.

From our Focus Group, a vision emerged where the residents of existing neighborhoods get more; More abundance and aliveness, more safety with neighbors walking on the streets to more conveniently located services. Along with a healthier, more pedestrian friendly lifestyle comes innovative ways to share more amenities, creating a greater sense of community and providing a more affordable lifestyle, a lifestyle beyond suburbia, a lifestyle that lives lighter on the planet.

A Neighborhood that Serves Itself, while Serving Others!

The Focus Group identified conceptual “clusters” of homes or workspaces, designed around residents’ simple but fundamental essential common needs; (in other words, the “cluster” could be a scattered site)

• Child-Oriented Houses
• a Cohousing Group
• an Elder Housing Group
• a Live/work and Commercial Space Cluster
• a Small Houses and Eco-Homes Compound
• Artist Cooperative Workshops
• Young People Living Over Garages….

Giving More Amenities, Getting More Life

These different clusters were assigned services to be provided, not only to meet the cluster’s own needs, but as economies of sale require, to meet the needs of the adjoining clusters and the existing, surrounding neighborhoods…. We created a list of amenities, based on our needs and desires. Some of these are for- profit, some are non-profit. Just as the fundamental clusters are conceptual, so are these amenities. As we locate different sites, those folks that like a particular site will create their own unique mix of clusters and amenities.

A daycare facility and a yoga room were assigned to the child-oriented houses. These could be run as for-profit businesses, offered to surrounding neighborhood residents.

A Cohousing Group with guest rooms and a large kitchen and dining facility, could well be used by the greater community.

We assigned the greenhouse, a community garden, and a library to the Elder Housing Group.

A spa and a meeting hall were assigned to the Live/work and Commercial Space Cluster.

The Small Houses and Eco-Homes Compound got the gym and a formal garden, whereas the Artist Cooperative Workshops were assigned a woodshop and salon/ gallery.

Young People Living Over Garages scored the car share program and a laundry facility.

Imagine the respect and appreciation and abundance in a neighborhood built using these concepts!

Let’s do it people, let’s make sustainable real!

Trading real adventures for online games & converting nature into goods, leaves us poorer

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/07/20

Growing the economy… sustainably. Conserving our way into a new economy.

In this video, Charles Eisenstein lays it out.What sounds totally illogical, that less is more, helps me think in new ways.  Values get turned on their head. Time bank anyone?

Charles Eisenstein Interview from StormCloud Media on Vimeo.

Hey, what’s one of your favorite songs to sing? How bout we meet at the common house after 5, play some ping pong, have a beer, and do a couple of karaoke songs??!! See you there!! Together we can make sustainable real!

Renovate Your House, Transform the Neighborhood

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/05/09

Washing machines sit idle most of the time

Looking at the challenge of how to build our futures resilient and sustainable, my sense is the insulation in the burbs across America is woefully shy. Heating systems are not so efficient, heating ducts leak, appliances are not so energy efficient, and windows are not so good, to say the least.  These aren’t really economic problems until we hit global peak oil production.  Then the pain of rising prices, utility bills, and commuting will become increasingly excruciating,  is my guess.

What service would you like to provide to the neighborhood? Originally, the “dress” on House #1 was meant to conceal a gambling casino.

The cost of renovating a suburban home to a highly efficient passive (zero or low emissions) house is cost preventative in many situations.  My sense is most suburbanites will only be able to make these upgrades if they can bundle the costs as they add a second, third, four stories to their homes. To make this scenario work, the first floor will become mostly commercial, home occupation, and the floors above will contain rentals, offices or residential, maybe  multigenerational families with multiple contributions to the mortgage. The densities in the neighborhood have to be high enough to make the commercial successful.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the numbers for this “2-4 story smart density infill/renovation to passive home standards” will only work if these free standing suburban homes are joined to create row houses.  My guess is the cost challenge of upgrading from an R 13 or R19 wall to a R 40? is too great a hurdle. By creating row houses, I’m thinking the amount of exterior walls is greatly reduced. Good sound insulation is essential, but much less expensive than getting to R 40 (or whatever a passive/zero emissions house design requires).

To add to the complexity,… these suburbia transforming strategies aren’t going to work in a piecemeal, unilateral fashion. A well thought out community planning process is necessary to satisfy all the neighbors, as well as the policy makers and investors.

Bankers/investors are going to want assurances the location for this loan is well thought out…the results of a community wide agreement as to where the community square, plaza, services, open space, schools, etc are located, such that the result is a walkable, sustainable, resilient, mixed use, mixed income community is created.

Shared amenities and facilities like washing machines, car shares, local food production season extending arrangements, work out facilities, parks, bike trails, aging in place strategies, downsizing  in the hood, etc, etc are essential to making the numbers work, so it seems to me.  Which is good news….collaborative consumption (a phrase I came across yesterday) is necessary to get our carbon footprint under control.

Inspired by the service-oriented mentality of New York, Open House by Droog led by Diller Scofidio + Renfro is a movement in which suburban homeowners supplement their income and develop a new vocation by offering home-made services and facilities to the public.

What I appreciate about the Open House Event, is it gets suburbanites thinking bigger.  For them to sign off on transforming their neighborhood sustainable, they need to see all the benefits, a “compelling why” to offset their NIMBYism. They get more, they give more…the quality of life is appreciably better, more affordable with integrated renewable energy, local food, housing for farmers and their employees, vibrant alive pedestrian friendly streets, all kinds of great, creative endeavors, neighbors going for their creative dreams etc, etc.

In addition to suburbanites thinking bigger, we need great modeling tools so they can see all these benefits at the end of the planning sessions.  The city bureaucrats will see the infrastructure costs vs the increase in property tax revenues.

Also, these neighborhoods need to fit into the regional water sheds, food sheds, energy sheds, transportation plans, and habitat preserves, etc.

What Services would you like to offer your neighborhood?  Share them here!! together we can make sustainable real!!

Image courtesy of New York Times

Real Estate has a suicidal tendency

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/07/15

I’m looking for the 12 step program and enrolling the country.

A vibrant alive, great place to live gets “discovered”, the prices go thru the roof,  the locals get bought out, and the neighborhood ends up with hard working professionals, empty nesters, and second homes. Some would say this phenomena is a good thing. From my experience, we tend to kill off the very thing we love. Real Estate has a suicidal tendency.

Oh, the neighborhood is still beautiful. The Historical Preservation folks are doing a good job of keeping the architecture out of the hands of our compulsion, but the soul is dying. The streets are quieter. The traffic is lighter. Many young families can’t afford to move in. Most of the neighborhood’s children leave with their working families. Local schools loose enrollment and get closed. The artists are mostly gone. The original locals are now having to commute longer and longer distances to work. The living cultural heritage is going, going, gone.

“Hi, I’m Brian, and I have an American Real Estate Suicidal Tendency”

All together now…  ”HI BRIAN!”…

So as we’re designing our Sustainable Urban Village, yet another key component to keep in mind, is taming our inner gentrification beast.

The good news here, is the American Psychological Association has summarized the 12 step program into 6 steps.

The first step is admitting that one cannot control one’s addiction or compulsion.

“The market made me do it. The appraiser and my real estate agent said it was worth twice what I paid for it…What else could I do? If I didn’t take the money, the new owner would get the windfall when she resells it!”

You can see how deeply the compulsion runs.  I’m thinking we are going to have to go to 2 a day meetings. Stay with me brothers and sisters. Together we can make sustainable real!

Friends don’t let friends develop great neighborhoods in an open real estate market.

Image courtesy of AOTAG

Climate Carbon Wedges

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/03/21

Now maybe you’re saying to yourself, “Why is he talking about those things that bullies do where they pull someone’s underwear way up?”, ya know “wedgies”.  Nope, but you’re close! I could take an hour to explain it, but these guys are on it.

The climate carbon wedge concept was introduced by two Princeton professors, Rob Socolow and Stephen Pacala. These wedges describe a portfolio of energy technologies and choices about how we live, that when taken together form wedges against increasing carbon emissions. This is perhaps better explained by looking at the diagram above…

In figure A, you can see the line in the graph goes up against the timeline and if we continue with Business As Usual (BAU) it will keep rising. However, in figure B, and if we adopt a number of different non fossil energy technologies and make different choices (the climate carbon wedges) about how we live, then the carbon emissions can be constrained (stabilisation triangle) and the line flattens out. So we need a number of carbon neutral or low emission technology wedges to bring the line on the graph back down to a point where carbon emissions are limited.
The fact is we already have the fundamental scientific, technical, and industrial know how to solve the carbon and climate problem for the next half-century. The climate carbon wedges propose to limit atmospheric carbon dioxide to a concentration that would prevent even more damage through global warming.

The current concentration of carbon dioxide is about 375 parts per million (ppm) The goal is to stabilise carbon dioxide levels at around 500 parts ppm, or less than double the pre-industrial concentration of 280 ppm. In very rough and round figures, stabilisation at 500 ppm requires carbon emissions be held near the present level of 7 billion tons of carbon per year (GtC/year) for the next 50 years, even though we are currently on course to be more than double this.

In terms of tackling climate change, there is a very real choice here between action and delay. None of the options are a pipe dream or an unproven idea, and we must choose to change from our fossil addiction to more sustainable practices or we will destroy our planet. You can adopt the 3 Step Climate Action Plan and make a difference!

Potentially, there are about 15 of these wedges that we could introduce, and most of them could be implemented right now. Whilst there are significant costs associated with these technologies, the Stern Report makes it very clear that we can’t afford NOT to address climate change. If we don’t tackle our emissions contributing to global warming now, the cost in the future to our scoiety will much higher.

I find the concept of wedges really useful; we make our choices now and reap the consequences later. Come to think of it, it’s kind of like wedgies! We decide now how severe a wedgie we want later!

This is where the Killer Modeling Tool will be amazing.  It’ll answer the question! What choices make sustainable real??  How deep a wedgie do you want??

Image courtesy of Global GreenhouseWarming.com

Transform the Burbs, one service at a time!

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/04/22

Imagine your neighborhood filled with home occupation services and businesses!

On Saturday, April 23, busloads of visitors are expected to descend upon Levittown for the unveiling of nine style renovations of local homes.

Free Up Disposable Income, Ditch the Car

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/05/12

Mixed use neighborhood. Sounds simple. Saves money. Artur C. Nelson presented the info. Robert Steuteville wrote about it.  The question remains…where do you want to live?

“The average American family spends 32 percent of its income on housing and 19 percent on transportation, leaving 49 percent for all other expenditures. Those who live in auto-dependent suburbs spend 25 percent of their income on transportation, leaving only 43 percent for all other expenses. Those who live in transit-rich neighborhoods spend only 9 percent on transportation, leaving far more money for discretionary expenses.”

Another beautiful thing about living in a walkable mixed use community, is the attached part.  Just by the virtue of being attached, your house has less exterior wall exposed, thus a savings in heating and cooling,  and less maintenance. Polar Sam gives it two big thumbs up!…

Also, walking is healthier, and healthier will cut down on your healthcare expenditures!

As you can see from the table below, the attached housing type is in demand. Which ever way of life you’re looking for, somewhere between 25-38% of Americans are in agreement with you. So ditch the car… and go to Share Your Vision and spend some time dreaming of your desired future lifestyle. Your envisioning will encourage others! Together, we can make sustainable real!

Images courtesy of New Urban News

More Dwindling Natural Resources…Bummer Dude!

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/06/08

“‘Hold on you guys…it’s my wife’s car!”  You should have seen it… just like that scene out of Bullitt, ya know where Steve McQueen casually fastens his seat belt while looking in the rear view mirror?  Well we’re sitting at this stop light, and the car next to us rolls down his window… I’m thinking he’s gonna ask directions… “Nice Prius, what year??”  My wife’s been here before, she casually lowers her sunglasses, mutter’s something about the guy’s mother, and the next thing I know, we’re flying down the road, sliding sideways thru turns taking bullets from an automatic assault rifle.  After a couple miles, she rolls down her window, salutes the guys goodbye with the Hawaiian peace sign, and let’s loose with an ear piecing holler…”Damn I love my Prius!!!”

We live in unprecedented times!!

My wife’s Prius almost got jacked!

And I thought buying our Prius was gonna save Western Civilization….Bummer!   I guess I’ll have to add another Impending Bummer to the list. But hey, when the price of rare earth metals goes through the roof, our Prius will be worth more than gold!!!

Turns out,  rare earth metals are rare. Just when gold seems ridiculously high, the neodymium and dysprosium come along.

Desperadoes have been crawling under Toyotas, and cutting the catalytic converters off with battery powered saws. In a few years, the rare earth metals in the battery powered saw’s batteries will be worth more than the platinum in the catalytic converters…then what?? A real dilemma!

Electric cars and wind turbines may indeed help wean the U.S. from oil dependence, but these technologies rely on rare-earth metals to operate—metals that are in short supply, and that leave radioactive waste behind after extraction. According to a recent article in MIT’s Technology Review, 95% of the rare-earth metals needed for everything from compact fluorescent bulbs to magnets for electric vehicle motors and wind turbines come from China—and these metals are increasingly difficult to find.

The article reports: “Of particular concern are neodymium and dysprosium, which are used to make magnets that help generate torque in the motors of electric and hybrid cars and convert torque into electricity in large wind turbines. In a report released last December, the U.S. Department of Energy estimated that widespread use of electric-drive vehicles and offshore wind farms could cause shortages of these metals by 2015.” There is no real known alternative to these metals needed to make magnets that are incredibly strong. The article reports that a Toyota Prius motor uses about a kilogram of rare earth metals, while offshore wind turbines need hundreds of kilograms of such metals each. Here’s the full article…

OK, our options seem to be getting fewer… guess it’s time to figure out what makes sustainable real!…

Images courtesy of Norcal minis …

Architectural Designer Contests!

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/03/21

I love architectural contests! Somebody puts up an award, and all these designers submit their best ideas.  and Wallah! The community gets a wider range of possibilities to work with.

How can the use of contests help bring forward our collaboration and creativity and further truly sustainable lifestyles, across the US and around the world?

I’ve heard rumors of websites for entrepreneurial  fund raising.  I just participated in a fundraiser for a green home building project in rural Mexico on Kickstarter.

Kickstarter fundraiser for Architects for Humanity

Share your ideas Contest ideas here! It’s time to be making  sustainable real!…

We are the ones we’re looking for

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/07/19

The Great American Quest, ” life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” has led us to the mountain top, the shopping mall. We sat there in rapture, beaming and gleaming in the sunlight streaming into the food court, all the abundance of our bags full of awesome stuff. We filled our homes up with the awesome stuff, and then we filled up our storage units.

And we find ourselves still waiting for the rapture. We set up ingenious manufacturing supply systems, global supply routes of mining, processing and sculpting our planet’s resources to fill the shelves of the malls, as if we lived in infinite abundance.

Somehow, I was blessed with eyes to see, and ears to listen, “the emperor has no clothes”, well at most he’s wearing a Speedo. I chose a path less followed, a path I once judged as kind of spineless, “a weed in the wind”, a wandering around, trying to find my own pursuit of happiness….

It’s become an inner journey, a daily surrender to the unknown. I wake up in a new world, unknown adventures awaiting. And I take steps forward. What I discover, every day, is I am the one I am looking for. Miraculous connections occur, something magnificent is unfolding.

What I find inside is peace… And a calling. “What else can we do besides suburbia?” has become my outer quest, fueled by my inner fire.

And what comes forward, over and over again,  is a knowing; a vision of a quality filled lifestyle, where we are living in balance with our planet. I search for signs of this sustainable reality outside, and over and over again, I just get bits and pieces.  I find I have the capacity to put these pieces together like a 3 dimensional puzzle, and it’s a wondrous, awesome place to live, a community filled with others who also are living from their inner knowing, their inner quest.

From my experience, this living in the world from the inside, is challenging. It takes courage to mine the depths, the shadows, the judgements, the fears that lurk inside as well. What I’ve learned, and continue to learn, is the more I go into those places,  and bring my compassion to whatever is present, the more freedom, joy, and mastery shows up.

My defining question has evolved from “What else can we do besides suburbia?” into “How do we make sustainable neighborhoods real?”  And thus here you are. reading www.beyondsuburbia.com, one of the steps I’ve taken down this path to sustainableville.  See you at the stop at the Transit Oriented Development Station. Jump on board! Together, we can make sustainable real!

Are you looking for me?

Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.

My shoulder is against yours.

you will not find me in the stupas, not in Indian shrine

rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:

not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding

around your own neck, nor ineating nothing but

vegetables.

When you really look for me, you will see me

instantly –

you will find me in the tiniest house of time.

Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?

He is the breath inside the breath.

~Kabir

Image courtesy of LaVidaBoca

Pathogens in our Wheaties- Restoring the Balance of Human Over Population Thru Science!

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/04/09

The list of Impending Bummers is long. At some point the Impending part converts, and the Bummer is now happening. Genetically Modified Crops have made it to the Now Happening list!

What’s the Problem?? I like Cauliflower with my Lamb!

Monsanto Is Poisoning Us All: 117 Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Expose Hazards of Monsanto’s Roundup Herbicide & “Roundup Ready” GMOs

In a previous issue of Organic Bytes, we reported that Don M. Huber, Ph.D., emeritus soil scientist of Purdue University, wrote a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack about a newly discovered virulent pathogen that proliferates in soil treated with Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.

The Monsanto pathogen is taken up by plants, transmitted to animals via their feed, and is passed on to human beings by the plants and meat they consume. The pathogen has yet to be described or named, though that work is almost complete. …

At a March 24 seminar sponsored by Knox County Extension and the Center for Rural Affairs in Nebraska, Dr. Huber said that all the research and data would be published in a matter of weeks.

In his presentation, Dr. Huber summarized 117 peer-review scientific studies that show the hazards associated with Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide and the “Roundup Ready” GMO crops that have increased its use:

* Compromised plant defense mechanisms; plants more susceptible to disease. * Reduced availability and uptake of essential nutrients. * Increased virulence of pathogens that attack plants.

* Lower yields.

Huber warned that ignoring these emerging realities may have dire consequences for agriculture such as rendering soils infertile, crops non-productive, and plants less nutritious. He said it could also, and apparently already is, compromising the health and well-being of animals and humans. For the full story click here.

Image courtesy of ecoki.com

Renovating Your Neighborhood Sustainable!

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/04/25

Cooperation, Collaboration, a community based on common values…..Sounds so technical!  What if your neighborhood made choices like incorporating a swimming pool or a movie theater into the community??  The ownership structure could be by membership, a coop, or a private business.  The list of possible shared amenities and services is endless.

Transforming the American Dream

Maybe you’d like to down size in your neighborhood into a compound of casitas, small homes for seniors. Maybe your daughter would like more independence and yet would like to live nearby in one of the casitas. Maybe she has autism or maybe she’s changing careers.

The American Dream is morphing into community. We’re learning to work together to create a more abundant lifestyle, where we share more, own less, and have a higher quality of life, while living lighter on the planet.

What services and amenities would you like in your neighborhood? What would you like to give?

Share your ideas!!  together we can make sustainable real! As for the neighborhood theater?? I make the best popcorn in the world.

Image courtesy of Architectural Record

Call it Poverty, call it Voluntary Simplicity

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/05/13

I lived out on Taos Mesa in the tiniest trailer known to mankind.  There were no utilities, no running water. I’d haul water from Henry’s house, just down the road, and heat up a pot of water to take showers. Invigorating showers out in the wide open space, freezing night air.  A 5 gallon bucket was my toilet, which used sawdust to cover contributions. When the bucket got full, I’d bury the contents in the earth, feeding the earthworms.

The remarkable thing is I loved it.  I felt wild, and yet I was surviving creatively.  A boy from the burbs of Southern California. I felt freer, less rent to pay. Except for filling the propane tank for heating and cooking, I had no utility bills.  I’d clip a power cord to my truck’s battery and have a little light at night.

The one thing about the road out to my trailer on the Mesa, was the spring thaw…you had to leave early and get home late, cuz when the daily thaw happened, the muck was amazing.

Other than that, call it voluntary simplicity, call it poverty…I called it good. I was a new father, in the middle of a separation, learning to be a construction carpenter, and was looking to live inexpensively.

Even then, I was dreaming of sustainable villages; high density, vibrant alive, local food, local energy. Heck, Mike Reynolds was my nearest neighbor. His house/office under the windspinner was my nearest neighbor to the south. We’d argue about where to build sustainably; he was a “in the country” kind of guy, and I’d argue for urban settings… turns out we were both right.

I want to live in beauty, but I don’t want all the maintenance that goes with it.  I want thriving, vibrant, alive streets, with kids roaming and having fun. A sunny spot at a wind sheltered table for a morning coffee. Watching the sunlight bounce of the pond’s surface. I want to be a part of an abundant life, I’ll help maintain the pond, I’ll help establish frog habitat.

My wife is much more domesticated that I, and she has a strong sense of beauty.  She once visited the trailer on the Taos Mesa, there is no way she’d have anything to do with it.

This is one of the defining challenges we face…how do we live lightly on the planet, and yet have a high quality of life? How do we make sharing easy, convenient, so we aren’t owned by all our stuff?  I believe it takes a village to go sustainable. My spiritual practice reminds me I can’t find what I’m truly looking for in this world.

Share your ideas! How would you make sustainable real? Call it poverty, call it voluntary simplicity….I’m calling it good.
Images courtesy of Taos homes, Arttattler…

Peak Oil Production…OMG

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/04/01

Because they only made so many old, raggedy dinosaurs

From the chart on the right, you can see the predicted world peak oil production... looks like 2012-13 to me. Notice how the line heads south in rapid order; Down 25% by 2020… that is incredible!!!

I can understand why oil companies want to drill everywhere; Artic Circle, way off shore, Tar Sands of Alberta. Lord Have Mercy! we are gonna be short on supply!

In a paper he presented to the American Petroleum Institute in 1956,  American geophysicist M. King Hubbert predicted that production of oil from conventional sources would peak in the continental US around 1965-1970. America’s oil production peaked in 1972, as I recall.

Hubbert’s Peak further predicted a worldwide peak at “about half a century” from publication and approximately 12 gigabarrels (GB) a year in magnitude. In a 1976 TV interview Hubbert added that the actions of OPEC might flatten the global production curve but this would only delay the peak for perhaps 10 years *.

The price of oil effects the price of everything. I predict YOU are gonna wanna be living in a “mixed use, mixed income neighborhood, with conveniently located lifelong learning and open space” by the year 2020. (I call em SUV’s-Sustainable Urban Villages)

(I’ll have to come up with a name for my Theory; how ’bout Skeele’s Make Sustainable Real Theory-Skeele’s MSRT.. rhymes with lizzard).

MSRT has a bunch of corollaries and branch theories.  The one that comes to mind right now, is  2A:YOU are gonna wanna have a house with a lot of insulation in the walls and ceiling, great indoor air quality from a Heat and Energy Recovery Exchange Unit, and be connected into a renewable/highly efficient cogeneration energy system.

We might as well have fun with this; gallows humor, knock knock jokes, etc as we are redeveloping our way of life to one that is “good for people, good for the planet, and good for the polar bears”! There’s a FUN section…post your funnies there!

Together, we are going to get really creative, and innovate our way to a sustainable future…What?  did you have something better to do??

One more thing. I am trying to be light about these Impending Bummers we are facing, but I can get scared. The good news is my wife is a counselor, and she is really good at setting up experiential processes that teach how to shift from our human nature to our spiritual nature. Another way of saying it is learning how to find the inner power that lies hidden behind the fear.  I’m going to be posting these helpful learning process in Life Skills.

-MSRT!

Fridgehenge

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/05/19

Once upon a time, in a far off corner of the world…..People would pilgrimage to Santa Fe New Mexico and stare in amazement at what the ancients had created.  Right up there with Machu Picchu, Stonehenge, and Chaco Canyon, perched on the old landfill, set one of the testaments to the creative ingenuity of man.

Build with simple tools, and tuned to the cosmos, every solstice earth renewal ceremonies would once again align the planet.  Time dealt Fridgehenge harshly, as did the city fathers.  It’s now a memory, a long gone relic of a time when the humans began to come to grips with their unsustainable ways.

I love the creative, whimsical, surprising gifts we are. I imagine neighborhoods filled with celebration and artistic expression, from 4 year olds telling jokes on open mic evenings, to roof top viewings of the sunset.

What ingredients would you add to your neighborhood? As it is said “If it ain’t fun, it ain’t sustainable!”  Share your ideas, your stories….Together we can make sustainable real!

Image courtesy of bizarrebytes.com…

Beyond Bartering-tapping into human ingenuity

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/07/21

Volunteers earn these Time Dollars by doing things for others, such as making them jewelry or baking them pound cake.

Edgar Cahn was lying in a hospital bed recovering from a heart attack, when the inspiration came through. He created timebank usa, and a tool for honoring everyone’s contribution has been established. Check out audio file how teen offenders recidivism has been reduced to 10%!! That is incredible.

I’m telling ya America, Together we can make sustainable real! …

Map to the Sustainable Gold! Part 2

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/06/10

All together now…  ”We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine…We all live in a yellow…”

I’ve embarked on this adventure that leads, I fully believe, to the promised land, the gold at the end of the rainbow, the treasure…Sustainable Urban Villages.  I bought this map from a guy in the alley…. the story unfolds from Part 1…

Yar Maties, we be in the hunt for the Sustainable Gold!

The Map, as best as I can read it,  says we’re starting with Stories from a Sustainable Future.

Over a short  meeting in Seth’s office, he offered to make Sustainable Urban Villages the theme of an entire issue (40 or 48 pages). I immediately saw the opportunity: we could get the word out across North Central New Mexico…  one of those “Yar Mates, thar she blows!” moments…

I’ve put a draft  of a brochure together. The front panel reads:

What if You Could Design Your Thriving, Alive, Resilient, and Sustainable Future?

What Would Make the Design of Your Neighborhood So Compelling, You’d Move In?!…

The idea of the brochure, is as I come across people who might want to submit their ideas,  I can leave them with some info, the guidelines and a reminder. And something they can pass on to a friend.

The submittal deadline is August 15, for articles and art work. Articles can be 800-1000 words long.  Another submittal opportunity is a “news bite”, a short item, or an excerpt, from a longer piece.

There is going to be an online component to this Sustainable Santa Fe endeavor.  Any overflow articles or the longer pieces of the excerpts, will post to www.sustainablesantafe.com.

Another awesome idea popped up in my meeting with Seth. I can sell ads in the Sept issue, and make a commission. The  commission could help pay for the website! The brochure will also be a useful in getting the word out to advertisers !

So Maties! lend your efforts  and help the emerging sustainable economy…..emerge! Write up your compelling ideas and put an ad in the September Green Fire Times!  Together, we can make sustainable real! to be continued in Part 3

” In the town, where I was born, lived a maaaan, who sailed to sea, and he told us of his life, in the laaaand of submarines…”

Image courtesy of Wandafulwonders

Best Popcorn in the World and Other Benefits of Living in a Sustainable Neighborhood!

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/04/26

Imagine a room full of people, all gathered in a circle and sharing  their ideas on what makes a sustainable neighborhood. “I would like a swimming hole, like at my grandpa’s farm”, a 12 year boy shares. “It has a rope swing and turtles and the fishing is pretty good”. 

“I love prisoner of war escape movies and sci-fi movies. I’d like to curate a series of Saturday afternoon showings.  I just got a huge big screen TV, and my living room holds about 30 people!” Herb, a retiree, offers.

A young mother speaks next, “I’d like to contribute part of our front yard to community gardening. With the new baby, I would like to be growing more food, but we need help getting the soil ready. My husband agrees; he’d rather pull weeds. He’s tired of mowing the lawn.”

Around the circle the sharing continues.  ”Well”, Jack, a waste water engineer offers, ” I’d like to set up a water recycling facility… my idea is to go to the low point of the sewer system, and set up a series of living machines. Living Machines are greenhouses filled with translucent tanks full of water plants. The biologies on the roots of the water plants will purify the water, and we can then do a final UV treatment so the water is better than drinking quality. And that will fit into your ideas: One, the water would fill up the swimming hole and be a place of beauty and fun, and two,  the water from the pond could be fed to orchards and community gardens. Another benefit would be in case of a fire, the fire department could use the stored water for fighting the fire.”

My hand goes up.”Hey, I make the best popcorn in the world.  No brag, just fact! I’ll give lessons and man the popcorn machine on one Saturday matinee out of the month!” (See recipe below!)…

As the sharing goes around the circle, it’s as if a 3 dimensional image begins to appear in the center of the room. Each person’s contribution brings the neighborhood to life. The compelling image of an abundant future, drives innovation. Policy issues need  to be addressed, with new supportive rules created. New ownership models need to be set up.

My Grandma loved to clean house, and bake pies.  My grandfather loved to garden and be around babies. I could be having fresh pie, fresh vegetables and my infant children watched while I take a break or run errands.  With all the complexity of our lives, it takes a village to go sustainable and have a quality filled life.

World”s Best Popcorn. 1) airpop corn, 2) drizzle olive oil and then Bragg’s Aminos over the popcorn, and then sprinkle mild red chile over the top. 3) gingerly stir to mix from the bottom  and 4) pour onto a cookie sheet, 5) dry out popcorn in a warm oven, say 250 F degrees until the kernels of popcorn become crunchy (takes 15-20 minutes) again.  Enjoy with a neighborhood Saturday matinee or the Super Bowl!

Our priorities change when each person brings their unique contribution that adds to the quality of life in the neighborhood. We can negotiate about barking dogs and other irritations. Yeah, it’s going to take learning new relationship skills.  It’ll be worth it!

What are your unique contributions? What would you include in your neighborhood that would make it a great place to live?

Together, we can make sustainable real!

Image courtesy of New Zealand

When competition drives excellence

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/07/22

Elisabet Sahtouris…I don’t know who this lady is, but I’ll bet there’s more pearls of wisdom where this comes from! Kill your enemy or feed your enemy…hmmmm… Tough choice, eh?

Elisabet Sahtouris Interview from StormCloud Media on Vimeo.

Freiberg Germany has a yearly contest as to who’s neighborhood can have the lowest energy consumption. Another example where competition drives excellence. That’s what I’m talking about. Together we can make sustainable real!

Drought Happens: US and China

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/03/30

Drought is the Impending Bummer of the Southwest.  We pay attention to La Nina and El Nino, the ocean currents whose temperature determines how much rain and snow we get in Santa Fe.  I think it was the summer of 2003 when we had a serious drought, pinon trees died, and the city went into water rationing. You got a ticket if you watered on the wrong days, or in the middle of the day!  There are still dead, barren pinon trees standing across the landscape, reminding us that drought happens.

A few weeks ago I was buying a replacement part for a storm door from the manufacturer in South Dakota and got to talking to customer service about the weather.  She was saying they had a wet fall which saturated the ground, and then a lot of snow fell this winter.  If the snow should melt rapidly, 1/2 of the upper US will be having serious flooding this spring.

Drought in China has parched 16+ million acres of farmland, threatening the livelihood of 50 million farmers. 20 million people without drinking water.

I shared with her we’ve had a really dry winter and spring.  In southern New Mexico, there have already been fires, and the fire danger remains high.

Today I came across this news report that China is having a similar occurrence; really wet in the north and severe drought in the South.

In 2007, NASA released a report that 17 out of 18 computer models predicted permanent, catastropic drought in the Southwest US and the Mediterranean by 2050.

My take on all this, is we had better get good at recycling water!

I’ll be talking about water recycling in future posts, but for now, here is some of the article about China’s Drought…

An unusually long dry season, along with deforestation, pollution and dam-building, leaves farmers struggling. In some areas, people cannot even wash their hair regularly.

April 26, 2010|By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times

The images are heart-rending, farmers kneeling over the cracked earth that looks to be straight out of a post-apocalyptic movie, the dust swirling in the wind.

But what underlies China’s worst drought in nearly a century is a matter of great debate. Is it Mother Nature or human failure?

Beyond the official explanation of “abnormal weather,” Chinese environmentalists are pointing to deforestation, pollution, dams, overbuilding and other man-made factors. Scientists are searching for clues about why rain hasn’t come in some parts of the country.

Some scientists say the fault lies with the destruction of the natural forest and the replanting of cash crops that suck up too much water. Among the notorious water-guzzlers are rubber trees and eucalypts, which are used for paper and pulp production and are so vigorous that farmers sometimes claim to hear them growing at night.

“In the rainy season, the forest holds in the water and releases it slowly in the dry season. That is the natural ecological function of the forest,” said Ma Jun, a well-known water expert whose writings about China’s water crisis have been likened to Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring.” “The drought is obviously caused by lack of rainfall, but the deforestation hurts our ability to adapt to unfavorable climate.”

Yunnan, the hardest-hit province, is home to China’s last swatch of rain forest and many of its glaciers, which gives it an unusually fragile ecosystem. The largest lake in the province, Dian Chi, which used to supply drinking water to the provincial capital, Kunming, is now so polluted that the water cannot even be used for agriculture.

An unusually long dry season — which has stretched from September to the present — is at least part of the problem, but the underlying reasons are less clear. Some Chinese scientists believe that abnormally cold, wet weather in the north of the country is also linked to the drought in the southwest.

“The Earth is reacting to climate change,” said Kuang Yaoqiu, a professor with the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, who predicted the drought last year. “China’s mainstream meteorologists haven’t accepted these theories. It will take time.”

In Chinese government circles, many people still subscribe to Mao Tse-tung’s famous dictum that ‘’man should conquer nature,” but that’s proving difficult to accomplish.

‘’Man should conquer nature,”…good luck with that Mao!  Nature Bats Last…I’d rather spend my time learning to be a wise steward, and figuring out how to make sustainable real!

Map to the Sustainable Gold! Part 3

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/06/13

Continued from Part 2…An Interactive Website and a Brochure are the 1st elements of the map to the Sustainable Urban Village!

The idea of the brochure, is as I come across people who might want to submit their ideas,  I can leave them with some info, the guidelines and a reminder. And something they can pass on to a friend.

Another interact tool I’m conjuring up works off of Zoomify. The idea is the viewer can zoom into a site plan, look around, and click on points of interest (“hot spots” in Zoomify speak), and more info comes up. So it’s like a narrative, a walkthru.  This is very useful.

Al Moore’s St Mikes center section

A year or so ago, the City of Santa Fe commissioned seven planners/architects to come up with their ideas on how St Michaels Drive could be remodeled.  My experience, standing looking at each of these site plans was pretty empty.  A couple of days later, one of the architects, Al Moore, gave me a verbal tour through his ideas, and the neighborhood came alive…It was a fabulous place to live…sexy,  contemporary architecture, a fun creative environment.

So here’s my idea…not only would Al provide a written tour with Zoomify, but other viewers could take Al’s layout, and change the names/functions of the buildings.  You could create a whole ‘nother mix of commercial businesses and  services using the same layout. Or you could invite your friends, classmates, or fellow employees to participate, and together another Village mix would be created.  Name em, post em to the  website, and everyone can vote on their favorites!…

As you long time readers know, I’ve set the intention that “Sustainable Neighborhoods will become as indispensable as  cell phones, and like cell phones, will spread across the planet”.

We need “killer” modeling tools, that will put the sustainable future in the hands of those that want to move in.  The market demand will make sustainable real!

“We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine…”    to be continued Part4

Image courtesy of City of Santa Fe

Major change is inevitable

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/05/16

I love this piece, so I posted it. Enjoy!! I got it from New Urban Network. Brian

Blog post by Charles Marohn on 14 Feb 2011

Charles Marohn, New Urban Network

As the United States economy remains hooked up to life support, it is natural for those gathered around the bedside to see hope in each flicker of life. We humans are optimistic by nature, which is certainly an evolutionary trait that has served us well in darker ages. Even so, unfounded optimism can prove disastrous, especially when it keeps us from doing the difficult things that need to be done.

This past weekend, my hometown paper ran an article detailing how the economic signs are starting to point up. This is a theme I see reflected recently in the Old Economy circles, that if we just build enough capacity and subsidize enough undertakings, we can revive 2005 back into existence. The beyond-wishful thinking in the piece was highlighted by this passage:

[Brainerd City Administrator Dan] Vogt said Brainerd is well positioned for an economic turnaround with available industrial land and electrical system upgrades for attractive and lower cost energy. Brainerd now has more load capacity for business and industry, Vogt said.

This is akin to the owner of a dying mall — one that is old, falling apart and financed with enormous government subsidies that are about to expire — looking at the growing number of empty spaces and saying they are “well-positioned.” Some see the glass as half empty. Some as half full. And some are evidently drinking stuff a lot stronger than water….

Wishful thinking is not a crime, and we can forgive those whose job it is to be optimistic. But what is exceedingly frustrating is how the entire establishment seems to be lacking even a basic understanding of how the world is changing and what the likely implications are for the United States. As Andres Duany indicated in a video we have quoted here a number of times, we are likely to never go back to where we were, a result of enormous constraints and opportunities.

Those opportunities are numerous, but they are a product of the constraints. The quicker we understand and acknowledge those constraints, the sooner we can mobilize the tremendous opportunities for addressing them. One only need read the news last week to get a sense of what some of those constraints may be:

Peak Oil

I am a member of the drill-baby-drill party, but am not your standard Republican when it comes to my understanding of energy. We have built an entire economy on the premise of continuous, cheap energy. We are not at all resilient in the face of rising oil and gas prices. Understand that “peak oil” does not mean running out of oil — we won’t run out of oil for a long, long time — but simply the notion that we can’t increase production to match demand. The United States, even with deposits in North Dakota and elsewhere, hit peak oil in the 1970s. Geologic estimates put global peak oil somewhere between a few years ago and in the next couple of decades. Since all of our economic growth is tied to cheap energy, anything that keeps the supply of oil from increasing as fast as the demand increases inevitably means higher prices (see Law of Supply and Demand) and dampened economic growth.

In the last week, documents released by Wikileaks show that American officials believe that the Saudi Arabian government is overstating its reserves by 40 percent. Saudi Arabia has the only oil fields in the world believed to not currently be running at maximum output. Yes, technology will continue to increase our ability to tap into new sources of oil, but not cheaply. Gas prices sustained at $4 per gallon and above dramatically undermines our entire economy.

Interest Rates

We are in the midst of an unprecedented period of very low interest rates. Following the bursting of the tech bubble at the end of the 1990′s, the Federal Reserve lowered rates, did so again after the September 11 attacks and, with a slight uptick in between, again with the financial crisis. The Federal Reserve, through their quantitative easing program, is printing money to buy U.S. treasuries to keep rates artificially low.

Despite this, rates are rising. It was reported this week that the 30-year mortgage rate has ticked up, threatening to further undermine the housing market. And also this past week, the US Treasury Department warned the administration that higher interest rates are going to increase our nation’s borrowing costs substantially. Long-term, the cost of servicing our debt is going to change every facet of our economy.

“It’s a slow train wreck coming and we all know it’s going to happen,” said Bret Barker, an interest-rate analyst at Los Angeles-based TCW Group Inc., which manages about $115 billion in assets. “It’s just a question of whether we want to deal with it. There are huge structural changes that have to go on with this economy.”

Reserve Currency Status

An odd thing happened during the recent turmoil in Egypt. When such international crises happen, scared investors flock to safe havens, which for decades has meant the US dollar. Not this time.

The US dollar is currently the world’s reserve currency. This means that banks around the world must hold dollars, and dollar-denominated debt (US Treasuries), as part of their capital reserves. In an article on China, The Economist recently reported that 60 percent of the world’s currency reserves are in dollars. Stop and consider for a moment how uniquely cheap its makes capital here in the United States, for everything from home mortgages to the national debt, when the rest of the world must transact in our debt.

The International Monetary Fund is responding to global calls for a new reserve currency by working to promote the Special Drawing Right (SDR), a composite currency comprised of a basket of different currencies. This is not an anti-American move as much as it is a defensive measure for countries concerned with our level of debt and the unsustainable nature of our economy, which the current reserve-currency policy subsidizes.

Commodity Prices

Higher commodity prices are a function of higher interest rates, loss of reserve currency status and increased demand across the world, all of which are inevitable. Commodities like corn, sugar, beans and wheat are extraordinarily cheap here in the United States, giving families the ability to devote more of their income to housing and transportation. While there is little doubt that we will be able to continue to feed ourselves (not so with other parts of the world), it is not likely to be nearly as cheap. When combined with higher energy costs, every other part of the economy will be severely squeezed.

Our commodity reserves today are at record lows, a fact that can be attributed to a bad year, but also a product of many successive years of growing worldwide demand. There is a good case to be made that tightening commodities markets were the spark that lit the Egyptian and Tunisian flames of unrest. If so, we are likely to see more turmoil abroad in the coming years.

Will we be able to retool? Sure, but not quickly and not easily. The fact that 2/3rds of the food we eat here in my home state of Minnesota is imported reaffirms how dependent we are on a cheap-energy economy to grow, transport, process and deliver our food supply.

Fannie and Freddie

Much of the hope that local officials pin on a recovery rests in the real estate market. There is a sense among glass-half-full types that the worst just has to be over. Unfortunately, this is a belief of the heart and not of the mind, as all indications point down for residential and commercial real estate.

We’ve done entire podcasts and blog posts on this topic, so I’m not going to rehash it again, except to point out some news from the past week regarding the federally-supported mortgage giants of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This week the Obama Administration released a report indicating that their activities should be wound down, essentially that they should be closed. They will find no argument from Republicans.

Over half of the homes that Fannie and Freddie now hold loans on are in foreclosure, delinquent and/or underwater. This is a national nightmare, but what it means for our optimists is that, in the very near future, purchasers of real estate will need to have such bizarre intangibles as a down payment, a good credit history, a stable source of income… you know, the ability to pay back their loan. The number of Americans that can save up a down payment drops every day, further depressing demand. There is only one way for prices to go with dropping demand, and they seemingly have a long way yet to fall.

Conclusion

If there is opportunity amidst all of these challenges — and we believe there is — it will be found not in clinging to the Old Economy but in transformation to a new reality. We can deal with these changes, but we have to start the process of retooling now. A Strong Towns approach can guide us to a more stable, resilient and productive model. The longer we delay, the longer we kid ourselves about a recovery, the more we are going to be forced to make changes in the face of ever-stronger headwinds.

Our future is not going to resemble our recent past. We need a new model, a model that builds places to last, even through great adversity. That’s Strong Towns.

Charles Marohn is a Professional Engineer licensed in the State of Minnesota and a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners. He is president of Strong Towns, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that advocates for changes in development patterns and a complete understanding of the full costs of methods of growth. Strong Towns is seeking tax-deductable, $25 donations from 100 readers to create a video version of its Curbside Chat presentation.

http://newurbannetwork.com/news-opinion/blogs/charles-marohn/14103/major-change-inevitable

A Sustainable Way of Life Becomes the Curriculum! Part 1

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/04/27

Together, we can transform our way of life sustainable! By sharing our visions and ideas of our desired future, we can “build it on paper”.  That’s how real estate development works.  The proposal gets created, the numbers are crunched, the financing lines up, and building permits are issued.  It all starts with the vision!

Puzzle pieces coming together around a shared vision

The prospects for sustainable “mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhoods” has never been brighter. Suburban sprawl has run its course. Gasoline prices are facing a new era of worldwide Post Peak Oil production. Those of us who have a vision and want to move in are in the driving seat of the emerging sustainable economy; the construction industry is all ears!

Be bold, Dream Big, envision with all your heart. In that way, we will have a “big enough why” to be as creative and innovative as necessary to make sustainable neighborhoods real!

Here’s my vision of a sustainable, quality filled neighborhood that lives lightly on the planet.

Imagine. An elementary school and the surrounding neighborhoods joining  together to become  a sustainable community with a school at its heart.

The entire community is experiencing a wide range of benefits since neighborhood residents, the city, local service providers, nearby businesses, parents, students, teachers and the school’s administration decided to work together to create mutually beneficial facilities. Benefits include job creation, an increase in city revenues, a pedestrian friendly lifestyle, safe streets for children to play, a huge jump in test scores, a much lowered dropout rate, a big increase in workforce housing and a less consumptive, more affordable lifestyle that allows Santa Feans to live lighter on the planet….Kids and Neighbors are Mutual Beneficiaries

Not only is the school’s curriculum drawing enthusiastic reviews in pre-K to 8th grades; classroom facilities have been extended into the evenings, offering a lifelong learning environment. High School and college students come to participate, teaching and learning. Students are drawn to hands-on learning where socially, economically and ecologically sustainable principles are taught and practiced throughout the school and the surrounding neighborhoods.

The school’s social sustainability curriculum includes the “Growing Together” program, where students learn how to provide elder care, from running errands such as walking an elder’s dog, to helping them move into the Sage Cottage Cluster where more assistance is available on a sliding scale. This program is one example of many where students get practical self-esteem building experiences as they find their place in the circle of life in the school community.

Advanced classes give older students “aging in place” and assisted living care certification. Both are skills for jobs in demand around Santa Fe and beyond. Other “Life As Curriculum” classes include pre and Early Childhood Development, relationship and emotional intelligence skills building programs and the “Homes to the Homeless” program, where mobile citizens learn life and job skills as they transition from the streets to homes.

I’m just getting warmed up! See the next excerpt  Food-Community, Connection, Curriculum, and Cooking.

WANTED: Killer Modeling Tool to Sell Sustainable Urban Villages! Part 2

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/03/10

Continuing the walk thru of my take on the Killer Modeling Tool…

As the amount of input from the Charrette (design) process builds, the needs and desires of the future residents, landowners, finance people, city planners, designers, the school district,  neighbors, etc, are collected.  People are starting to get excited. The question is “How can we tell how close we are to achieving a socially, economically and ecologically sustainable  lifestyle? ” or in other words “Where’s the Killer Modeling Tool??!!”

We can convert the demand and jump-start the emerging sustainable economy, if we can make all the numbers and qualities of life real (or at least a reasonable facsimile). Future residents will be assured of the quality and cost of moving in.  The development/lending community will be reassured of the strength of the demand.  The City will see the increased tax revenue vs the costs of infrastructure, etc.

How much residential does it take to make the commercial successful?… How many people would use a car share, the bus; how much will they save per month?  How much local food can be grown and processed? Where the numbers don’t seem to work, innovation is called for.  The list of info we need is long. Here are some of the elements;

To capture Economic sustainability and create vibrant alive neighborhoods;

• We need to know the monthly rent/mortgage payment on a wide selection of floor plans, ranging from single room efficiencies and unfinished studios, to double master suite homes and homes with multiple home offices; A selection way beyond suburbia’s choices generated by the needs of empty nesters, singles, and single parent households, etc.
• We also need to meet the market demand for deep affordability and high ecological efficiency by offering a wide range of shared facilities; guest rooms, a library reading room, laundry, gardening area, a bigger space for gatherings and parties, storage, workout facility, workshops, conversation nooks, coworking facilities, playgrounds, playing fields, parks, water features, local services, etc.
• Rather than single, stand alone residential units, our above options need to be offered in rowhouse, townhouse, flex use, and mixed use configurations; again to create a more affordable, yet well-designed “product”.
• Green design options such as increased insulation, upgraded window quality, and passive solar gain are accounted against initial costs reduced size of heating systems, and lowered long term utility bills.
• Once conservation/economic optimizations are established, the primary renewable energy loads can be calculated and the further saving from neighborhood systems can be ascertained.  In other words, reduce the demand, and generate the needed power locally to reduce transmission line loss and fix energy prices for the rest of our lives!
• Local food production,  water and  solid waste reduce, reuse and recycle innovations, and creating urban natural habitats all are part of the open space strategies that can be well orchestrated to lower costs to all; residents, landowners, and the City.

As these systems within systems get creatively and synergistically re-imagined, opportunities for new products, processes, and jobs will drive economic development. “Wastes” fr0m one component becomes feedstock of another. All of this complexity can be tracked with the Killer Modeling Tool. The cost of living of proposed scenarios and choices can be tabulated, giving the Charrette participants crucial feedback, so they know when they are economically making sustainable real! To be continued.

Creating More Time-It takes a Sustainable Urban Village!

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/04/12

How can we have more time?? How are we going to live lighter on the Planet??!! Significantly lighter??  SHARE YOUR IDEAS! (comment below, or go to Share Your Vision!)

Creating More Time-It Takes a Sustainable Village!

Here’s my take.  If we were to create a great neighborhood, a convenient, mixed use, inspiring, supportive atmosphere, we would be richer.  If we could find ways to downsize our financial needs, we’d free up time; More disposable income, more time.

To be able to walk,  ride your bike, or take public transportation to work, requires a mixed use community. Now your family can let go of a car or two, and life becomes more affordable.

A mixed use neighborhood, with neighbors out and about, creates safer streets, so our children can get about without chauffeuring, freeing up time and peace of mind.

A short commute, or joining a meal share plan frees up and creates more time.

What would you do with more Time? Work on the new career…..lifelong learning…professional development….time to contemplate?

Spending time lingering over a cup of tea, or a beer, with a friend, reading a book, spending more time with children, or working in the garden; maybe these make for a more abundant life for you.

To have an end of life strategy, an aging in place program where I can help the elders of my neighborhood, and in turn, when my time comes, be assured of helping hands nearby, these are qualities money can’t by, but time can.

The trend over the last 40-50 years has been to make the home the center of  life;  Our theater, our library, spa, restaurant, entertainment center,  a sanctuary, an isolated unit in suburbia; an increasingly bigger house connected to the world in a sprawl car dominated lifestyle.

My wife and I are a unit, a band of two, holding it together.  As we’re both self-employed, even our offices are in our home.

When I contrast that with the stories I hear of long established village life is Europe, it gets me to thinking.   How can I lower my expenses so I can have better choices?  How can I lower my eco footprint?  What would I be willing to share?

As I understand, in this European lifestyle, community life plays a bigger part of the home life.  The home is smaller, the living room in the nearby restaurant.  Many evenings are spent over a meal, enjoying the comradery of community.  Maybe it sounds kind of  gossipy and claustrophobic, and yet there is something alluring.

As we learn to live in balance with the planet, we’ll be learning to make choices that can give us more time and a higher quality of life!

My intention is for this website to become a living compliation of good ideas, what works, what makes sustainable real. SHARE YOUR IDEAS, STORIES!

Image courtesy of Virginia Tech

One Brighton, Sonoma Mt. Village, One Planet Communities

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/06/14

Here’s the givens…a walkable, green lifestyle.  ”5 minute living”, is how the Sonoma guy refers to it.

Now add the amenities you’d like to have in your neighborhood.  Make it so compelling you’d move in! The beauty of the situation is you’re not alone. You share your ideas, your inspirations.  Others share theirs. Together, we can make sustainable real! 

A Sustainable Way of Life Becomes the Curriculum! Part 2

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/05/04

Imagine. An elementary school and the surrounding neighborhoods joining  together to become  a sustainable community with the school at its heart. Part 2

Food; Community, Connection, Curriculum, and Cooking

Health, nutrition and cooking are all coordinated around the local agriculture program, “Yards to Farms”.  The school’s kitchen has an expanded program that uses food to teach and create a more sustainable lifestyle.  “Farms to Schools” and “Yards to Farms” bring regionally grown food to the plate, increasing local food security while lowering the shipping distances. Children now have a personal connection with their food as they regularly take working field trips to farms in the region and integrate classroom learning with hands-on growing. Several homes and commercial facilities in the neighborhood have constructed attached greenhouses, so food production is a year-round occurrence in the community.

Salsa Café and Bakery has transformed the former school kitchen into a great place for a meal. The facility is used “around the clock”, with the “Git ‘n Go Assembled Meals,” two different meal share plans, and the evening music scene where kids and adults get together and have a lot of fun playing music. Culinary and baking skills are taught to all ages, and the meals feature local and regional organic produce, dairy, fruit and meats.

The “Git ‘n Go Assembled Meals” program, especially appreciated by working parents, … is a profitable service offered to the community. Parents get together at appointed times and put together wholesome meals for their families for the coming week.

The meal share plans are two other affordable service that gives great value to the community. Folks who have similar dietary preferences organize evening meals, taking turns shopping, cooking and cleanup, giving the others several nights “off” each week and at the same time creating a natural sense of a mutually beneficial community. The vegetarian group gathers on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and the Organic Omnivores man the kitchen Monday and Wednesdays.

Part 1 

Cattle + Predators=Soil Carbon Sequestration… How Burgers Can Save Us From the Ravages of Global Warming

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/03/23

The Professor is in the House…

Cattle + Predators= Soil Carbon Sequestration. How’s that for a Math equation??!!

You have sharp hooves (no sneakers allowed), You poop, you roam…You restore the planet’s balance.  Duh!!

Any questions??    Yes, you with the red blouse. More Specifics?? OK, here’s how the Savory Theorem works…

In a natural context, constantly moving, healthy herds of large herbivores, interacting with their associated predators, create the disturbance (grazing and animal impact) necessary to maintain healthy ecosystem processes. Their presence ensures the continuation of the carbon cycle (with the all-important step of “decay” accelerated by the microbes in their digestive tracts), high levels of plant diversity, and a covered soil surface. Because the animals are constantly moving to new grazing, plants (between episodes of heavy grazing) have the chance to fully recover their above-ground leaf area and restore carbohydrate reserves in their crowns, roots, and stem bases. Holistic Management’s expertise is in re-creating/imitating these natural grazing patterns with domestic livestock, and regenerating the land in the process.

Any more questions?  Yeah, you in the back. Yes, that’s right, if you eat Predator Managed Open Range Certified burgers you will be sequestering carbon back into the earth, and helping reverse Global Warming.

Yes, of course. The distance from the ranch to the slaughter house to your plate adds to the carbon footprint. That’s why ranchers and meat packing plants are switching to algae biodiesel…

Are there any more questions? The founder of the Savory Theorem?  Allan Savory and he has been working out his Holistic Management over the last 40 years… I’ve written the link on the board.  I suggest you study up on it, as there will be several questions on tomorrow’s test on how burgers can save us from the ravages of global warming.

One more thing…anyone that brings me a burger from the student union gets extra credit. Serious brownie points for their Predator Burgers!!  extra green chile!  See you tomorrow!

Holistic Management is the paradigm shift that will address this need. First conceived and developed by Rhodesian biologist, game ranger, politician, farmer, and rancher, Allan Savory, over 40 years ago, Holistic Management is driven by a decision making framework which ensures economic, ecological, and social soundness, simultaneously, both short and long term. Savory articulated four key insights which are pivotal to our understanding of the natural world —insights which underpin the Holistic Management decision making framework.  Land, grazing, and financial planning procedures complement the framework, enabling on-the-ground managers to effectively handle the inherent complexity of stewarding natural “wholes”.

Our core competency in Holistic Management is the ecologically regenerative, economically viable, and socially sound management of the world’s grasslands, rangelands, and savannas. These environments comprise two thirds of the planet’s surface area. Their degradation has been ongoing since the first hominids discovered the tool of fire, and has accelerated in concert with the expansion of the human population (with its associated eradication of most of the world’s grazing and browsing megafauna, the subsequent replacement with fewer numbers of more sedentary, domesticated livestock, and soil degrading cropping practices). This degradation is characterized by a loss of soil cover (comprised of both living plants and decaying plant litter), which leads to less effective water and mineral/nutrient cycling, poorer solar energy flow, and reduced biodiversity. This all leads to the loss of previously sequestered soil carbon (a major source of our existing atmospheric CO2 load), severely degraded land or deserts, and the loss of food production capacity.

After nearly fifty years of practice, we now have successful Holistic Management practitioners spread across the globe, from Canada to the tip of Patagonia, and from Zimbabwe to Australia to Montana.

A Sustainable Way of Life Becomes the Curriculum! Part 3

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/05/11

Imagine. An elementary school and the surrounding neighborhoods joining  together to become  a sustainable community with the school at its heart. Part 3

Working Together to Get to a Zero Carbon Emissions Lifestyle

The “Gone Green” Neighborhood Renovation program continues to transform energy inefficient homes into zero emission homes.

The “Whole Home Audit” documents the existing water and energy consumption of each home as well as the homeowner’s financial status and comes up with a comprehensive plan that works for the owners as well as the surrounding neighbors. Two man teams of students conduct home surveys and get amazing hands on experience of the challenges residents face. Working with an architect mentor, the homeowners and  the student teams, they come up with three different options,  which eventually get turned into the “Gone Green Action Plan”.

Single-story homes often have been granted zoning variances to allow the neighborhood to go mixed use. Commercial and residential additions and resulting revenue streams are tailored to fit, ensuring a retirement plan that gives great comfort to each household. The local residents not only get to retire in familiar surroundings, but in many cases, their home’s equity is converted into their retirement funds and the neighborhood gets a mixed-use community. The resulting walkable pedestrian-friendly streets are alive and safe with neighbors out and about. Kids bicycle everywhere and families enjoy the affordability of viable one-car families. Mass transit, the train and car-share services are affordably available to all, and based on usage, are highly successful.

The “Gone Green” program has also evolved into a local bank… where the neighborhood gets to invest in their community. Loans for solar hot water and electricity have transformed the utility bills. The school’s curriculum demonstrates and teaches classes on the latest energy and water-saving devices and strategies.

Neighborhood homes have wireless meters installed on all water and energy appliances and each home has an electronic screen readout, so residents see their usage. Usage is way down, and neighbors meet regularly to brainstorm with students on what new strategies to implement next to reach their much anticipated goal of a zero carbon emissions lifestyle.

The school led the way by planning and redesigning its water and energy systems. Water is captured, recycled and reused throughout the community. All the savings have allowed the neighborhood’s population to grow without the need for any new water.

Recirculating pumps and the biomass district heating, augmented with solar collectors, have also been an amazing conservation program.

Four mini laundromats have been incorporated into the community. Parents and students can have a latte, read or go shopping at the corner general store while their clothes are being washed in the conveniently located facilities with state-of-theart highly efficient machines. Waste heat is used to warm attached greenhouses.

All kinds of opportunities here! How would you lower your carbon contribution and help make sustainable real?

Part 1  Part 2  

A Rock Star in the Pantheon of Sustainability

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/08/05

In the 60′s “CLAPTON IS GOD” graffiti started showing up around London.  I’m sure if you’re wandering around Chicago, you will find graffiti paying homage “DAVIS IS GOD”.  But you asked yourself, “What the heck does that mean?” and dismissed it “Kids on drugs”.  Well, here’s the story.

See this kind, grandmotherly lady smiling at you? She is the Mick Jagger/Keith Richards in the world of sustainability!  Check out A Trojan Horse of Love.  It’s right up there with “Stairway to Heaven”, or “Satisfaction” for all-time greats.

OPERATING PRINCIPLES OF CAPITAL MISSIONS COMPANY (one of her many children)

Talk about rock stars- Susan Davis is in the Pantheon!

• A deal is a good deal when it’s good for all concerned.
• Tell the truth.
• Generosity comes back ten-fold to the bottom line.
• Socially responsible companies are more productive and profitable than others.
• Water doesn’t rise any higher than its source.
• Treasure teamwork; share the wealth.
• The best call a company can get is a call of complaint because it helps it to improve, so when you get a complaint call, start by saying “thank you!”.
• Love the discipline of the numbers.
• Never make decisions out of fear
• Trust the universe.

Image courtesy of A Trojan Horse of Love  …

A Match Made in Heaven

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/05/17

Foundation Investing and Your Vision of Sustainable Neighborhoods

Foundations grant 5% of their assets and invest 95%.  As I understand it, the branch of the foundation that invests has very little connection to the branch that makes grants.  In fact, sometimes their actions are running against each other.

The beauty of socially, economically, and ecologically sustainable neighborhoods, is they meet both objectives! The social mission of empowering, resilient, health lifestyles, uplifting,  poverty busting, social justice,  ecologically sound, and local economic development all gets handled in  ”mixed use, mixed income neighborhoods with lifelong learning and open space” .

The investment mission gets handled in creating large opportunities for investing in real, lasting values!

So… submit your ideas, your vision of the sustainable life you want to be living. As the needs aggregate, the existing market demand for sustainable neighborhoods becomes more apparent. Once the construction industry, from builders to banks to investors, finally accepts the go-go days  are gone, they will become more open to this new form of community based in real, lasting values. National foundations will have something to invest in that meets their asset needs. And their funding branch will see their missions move forward.

Your vision of your desired future sustainable lifestyle and billions of foundation $$$ assets ….A match made in heaven!!…

As in all marriages, there’s work to do. What are the criteria that triggers the foundations loans? I’m suggesting the metrics the foundations are looking for are going to be the same indicators, the same scorecards, city planning departments will be using in granting approvals.  These social, economic, and ecological indicators will be the same that you and your community agree upon; The common sense community values based in real, lasting values.

So share your visions, your ideas of what works… State pension funds, church investment funds, foundations asset management, all need your help.  Together we can make sustainable real!!!

Image courtesy of Samantha Lane Fiddy

1 of 29 WAYS TO MAKE MONEY FROM YOUR WELL DESIGNED HOME AND NEIGHBORHOOD

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/04/11

As we face higher gasoline prices again, we’re getting more practice in the emerging, post peak oil economy. Our ingenuity will kick in, our lifestyle will transform, all “good for people, the planet, and the polar bears”.  With this global warming dealie, time is of the essence; we can evolve faster, learn from our mistakes, share good ideas, and have fun! Share your ideas, dreams and ingenuity! We can make sustainable real!

I’ve started a list of good ideas that come about if we rethink the functions and interplay of our home and its neighborhood.  So far I’ve got 29 killer (If I do say so myself)  ideas.  The first 7 are home oriented, the last 22 are more neighborhood oriented. Add to the list via the comment area!

Home Design

#1. Rent Out a Room

Maybe one of your family boomerangs, and ends up back home. Maybe you just got sick and tired of trying to do it all yourself. Maybe you’re ready to change careers, go back to school, retire, or get divorced. Our suburban, rugged individual, nuclear family lifestyle isn’t set up to be as supportive as it can be. Just the opposite, sprawl and isolation throw up barriers.  So take a sledge hammer to it! Tear out a wall, add a door! make it a private entrance. Make life easier on yourself….

Design  tips.

Design in private entrances, choosing bedroom locations away from each other.

Design two master suite homes with transition rooms between private and shared spaces.

Sub meter so everyone pays his or her share. Does that long shower your son takes drive you crazy? Have him pay for it!

Potential  income; $300-$600? per month plus % of utilities!

Challenges and New Skills

With sharing your home, good chance conflicts and irritations will come up.  Share what has worked for you. Maybe it’s a new communication skill, maybe it’s a structual solution, like adding another bathroom. Share it!

Post your Challenge. Kind of like Ask Ann Landers meets This Old House….and the collective wisdom answers!

Change can be scary. How do we work with our fears?  We’re all in this together, Let’s make sustainable real!

Image courtesy of Warrenrentals

The Real Estate Bubble takes out another

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/03/23

HGTV doesn’t have a real reality show….this could be the pitch for the pilot!…

WANTED: Killer Modeling Tool to Sell Sustainable Urban Villages! Part 3

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/03/16

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — New construction of U.S. housing units plunged in February, erasing a sharp gain in January and coming close to an all-time-low level. March 16,2011

Bed ZED is different. We’re not in Suburbia anymore, Todo!

If we want to revitalize the US Economy, we have to do things differently.…

If we work with the 1/3 of the Boomers, and 88% of the Millennials that want to move into vibrant, alive, pedestrian friendly walkable neighborhoods, we can resurrect the construction industry and send us on a path to a prosperous, positive future! What is required is using a whole systems approach and designing for an exponentially more efficient way of life…

Up to now, we have been on a monoculture kind of world view, zoning to spatially separate the functions of our lives, using cars to connect us-an “isolating-the-systems-of-our-lives” approach. As these systems within systems get creatively and synergistically re-imagined, opportunities for new products, processes, and jobs will drive economic development. “Wastes” fr0m one component becomes feedstock of another.

This is all a profound process of proposing scenarios and getting feedback from a myriad of view points. Like a giant 3D puzzle.  As costs of living of proposed choices and scenarios are tabulated, renewable energy players and building designers compare individual to community applications, searching for economies of scale that give users the biggest bang for their bucks.  Composting enthusiasts, water recycling mavens, food production farmers, food processers,  open space/season extending planners, landowners, and density transfer policy wonks all collaborate to achieve high quality neighborhoods within a much more socially, economically, and ecologically affordable lifestyle, connected as much as possible with short distances, bicycling, walkable, and transit friendly realities.

All of this complexity is crying out for a Killer Modeling Tool which gives the design participants crucial feedback, so they know when they are making sustainable real!

Image courtesy of Inhabitat.com

FOUND? Killer Modeling Tool

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/03/12

I happen to talk to one of my partners about my latest blog on the Killer Modeling Tool, and he directed me to “Write this down. EVONY”. So I did, and later last night I went to the web site, remembering the advice he’d given me,   “Don’t let the way they built the game distract you from the platform.  We can get it built however you want it”

Well, here’s my questions…

Can I go to Google Earth and put my own neighborhood into the  playing field?

Can I add stories to existing buildings?

Can I reshape blocks, creating a new cross street in a long block?

Could a stand alone be turned into a row house of three homes, for instance?

Wow, I’m running out of hurdles.  Other configurations seem doable.

We can plug in numbers for the number of residents it takes to support a corner grocer, for instance.

Stephen Mouzon was saying the other day, that the usual numbers quoted are 1000-1500 residents, but there is a neighborhood of 350 that is really committed to  shopping at the local store, hang out, and it is thriving apparently. I think it is Waters, near Montgomery Alabama.

1/4 mile radius is the typically quoted “how far Americans will walk to a service, with the exception of 1/2 mile to a transit stop.  I bet those numbers change when gas goes to $4.50/gallon!

Stephen said something else I found awesome.  Five years ago he moved to Miami, into the second most walkable neighborhood in America (South Miami Beach), and has lost 60 pounds.  He showed a map of all his haunts, the work out place, the bookstore, etc.  The map of his world…  that’s what I want this Killer Modeling Tool to be able to do! Download your neighborhood, and see what it takes to make a sustainable lifestyle REAL!

For more of Stephen’s years of experience, go to OriginalGreen… 

A Sustainable Way of Life Becomes the Curriculum! Part 4

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/05/18

Imagine. An elementary school and the surrounding neighborhoods joining  together to become  a sustainable community with the school at its heart. Part 4

“If it Ain’t Fun, it Ain’t Sustainable”

If it ain’t fun, it ain’t sustainable!

Students of all ages have learned that working together with the whole community, coming up with inspired ideas on how to live more affordably and lighter on the planet, is fun.  Out of a Community Design Day session, a recreational waterslide was created utilizing the rooftop of the 2-story addition.  In the winter, a used snow-making machine, donated by the Santa Fe ski basin, turns the waterslide into “the Luge,” a great playground for the entire community. The water park and snow playground are the source of many lesson plans; hands-on everyday science.

So what kind of fun would you add to your future neighborhood??….

Part 1  Part 2   Part 3

A Sustainable Way of Life Becomes the Curriculum! Part 5

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/05/25

Imagine. An elementary school and the surrounding neighborhoods joining  together to become  a sustainable community with the school at its heart.

Biologies on the roots, detoxify water!

Science Rules! Tapping into the Power of Biologies; Community Composting and Recycling Water – Part 5

Throughout the neighborhood, attached greenhouses provide essential composting, soil studies and crop production opportunities. The solar recharged neighborhood electric cart collection service gives teens an opportunity to make money by driving household food scraps to the community composting bins.

“Living Machines,” water recycling tanks, demonstrate how bacteria and microorganisms purify water.

Living Machines, invented by Dr. John Todd, use plants and microbes to clean water instead of chemicals. They can handle household waste, and easily tackle industrial wastes, turning 600 to 750,000 gallons of waste per day into hyacinths and snails… Dr. Todd (a student of Bucky Fuller BTW), has been working with Living Machines for decades has found that there are certain plants or small animals that love certain kinds of waste. What he does is let the water run through a series of cisterns with different plants in each. What one plant likes to eat, it turns into other forms of waste, so in the next cistern he has the plant that considers that waste food. By the time the water comes out, it’s 5 times cleaner than traditional waste water treatment….

Part 1  Part 2   Part 3 Part 4  Part 5   

Quest for the Killer Modeling Tool

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/03/13

For the last decade, I’ve been focusing on the “functions” side of the smart modeling tool that will help neighbors in retrofitting their community sustainable, all the while hoping the world will have developed a video game or software that can be adapted to suite my needs.  As Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera put it, “Envision how you want it to work, and then remove the barriers”.

Last night, as I was brainstorming with one of my partners who knows the video game world, I had a slow dawning awareness. Creating the Killer Modeling Tool may not be so easy.  Evony’s “platform” isn’t set up to import a real world neighborhood.  So I’m cruizing the internet, looking for a tool that is ready to go off the shelf.

I looked the Sims, and SimCity.  As “games with no objective” I’m fascinated these are the most popular video games of all times, but how easy can they import Google Earth??

On a tip from friends, I heard about Intracycle.  Now Infracycle crunches numbers to establish the “financial sustainability” of a project; life cycle costs, community services cost, etc., certainly an essential component to the Killer Modeling Tool! Maybe Ray E will have some ideas…

On the quest to make sustainable real!…

A Sustainable Way of Life Becomes the Curriculum! Part 6

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/06/01

Imagine. An elementary school and the surrounding neighborhoods joining  together to become  a sustainable community with the school at its heart -Part 6

Locally Created Services and Products – the Sustainable Economy Emerges

As homes and business were renovated into multiple-storied, zero emission buildings, more space was created for residences, services and commercial usages. A network of used clothing stores trades across town with other recycle stores. The clothing fashion center teaches sewing and clothing design and runs a brisk business featuring student consignments.

Bicycle sales and repair, a computer lab, a graphics design shop and café, a library and bookstore, a woodshop/metal shop and an eBay store have all opened with help from the Business Incubator Loan Fund. Entrepreneurs of all ages are encouraged with micro-loans, business skills training programs and affordable facilities, to create products and services that evolve into locally created jobs.

Mentors and apprentices share their love for teaching and learning. With the abundance of affordable housing, young adults can stay in their community and the long traditions of Santa Fe’s cultures are sustained….

Video documentary labs and a soundstage have created a facility that beams the learning experiences of the entire community to the rest of the world. There is a large demand for information on how to live sustainably, and the elementary school and it’s surrounding community have led the way.

What we’ve learned is that an amazing abundance, a wealth beyond money, is available to all when a community works together to create a sustainable lifestyle where lifelong learning becomes a way of life, and life becomes the curriculum. The results?

A lifestyle that’s good for people, good for the planet and good for the polar bears!

Part 1 Part 2   Part 3 Part 4  Part 5    Part 6   

Smart growth for an economy built in real, lasting values

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/06/17

Today’s local newspaper, the Santa Fe New Mexican, talks about a big cut to the new nuclear facility at Los Alamos. The US Senate’s new budget cuts the funding in half. What irritates me about Los Alamos National Laboratory is its focus on bombs and nuclear industry. I can’t believe we need more of either. I hear this “oh but we need the jobs… what about the economy?”

Hey, these are disruptive times…a job for the sake of a job isn’t enough. Jobs created from building a bomb making facility on top of a earthquake fault is not a justification of stupid.

I’m a general contractor. The jobs have gone away. The construction industry is comatose, on life support. Is this justification for building more suburban sprawl?? Hell no.

It’s time to get smarter. Find the unmet market demand, and build Sustainable Urban Villages!

Stupid jobs, that ultimately take out species, cause cancer, or put too much at risk further down the line, are not good options… I know, we will sell anything to anybody, if it’s good for the economy. Those days are over….tobacco, asbestos, DDT, plutonium, and sprawl just aren’t viable options!

It’s a new day! Get smart! Together we can make sustainable real!…

Image courtesy of Fundly …

Safe in My Home-Time to Legalize Drugs?

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/05/20

Stealing Stuff, Security, and Trust of Neighbors

I recently heard Mark Fisher on NPR. The guy had his home broken into, and laptops and money stolen.  The real kicker, was the burgular went on Mark’s son’s Facebook page, and posted a picture of himself pointing to the money, while wearing Mark’s  brand new coat.

Mark learned about the system, and about himself. ” I don’t feel as safe any more.  I’ve lost trust in my neighbors. The system is overwhelmed, only 12% of burglars are sentenced.”

Two officers confided that they and their colleagues rarely press hard on burglary cases because the courts almost always let thieves go with nothing more than probation. Maybe that’s why four days after we handed over the photo, we were still waiting to hear from the detective assigned to the case.

Burglaries are up 11 percent citywide this year, to a total that will top 4,000 — most likely a reflection of continued hard times, especially since virtually every other category of crime is down. D.C. police made 30 burglary arrests in the last two weeks of November, up from six in the same weeks last year. Nationwide, police solved only 12 percent of burglaries last year, according to FBI data; in big cities such as Washington, the figure often is barely more than half that high.

I just completed a three month Citizen’s Academy, where we met once a week for 2-2 1/2 hours with a different part of the Santa Fe and State of New Mexico law enforcement community.  It was an amazing experience, quite the eye opener.  An officer told us that 95% of burglaries are by druggies.  95%!!!!!

Granted, sustainable mixed use, mixed incomes create safer “eyes on the streets” neighborhoods, with folks out and about, walking to their daily tasks.  But if you ask me (or even if you don’t), making drugs illegal is really stupid!

The collateral damage is unacceptable, from outrageous corruption and violence in Mexico, Central America, and American cities, to the huge prison industry.  Police officers risking their lives daily, so we can have illegal drugs. It’s time to reclaim all that twisted creativity and human ingenuity!

So this kid, Rodney Knight,

“He’s really had a fairly minimal criminal history,” the lawyer said of a 19-year-old who had already been arrested seven times, faced criminal charges in Virginia, New York and the District, and skipped out on court appearances twice — and that’s not even counting his juvenile record.

In our burglary, Knight probably got a longer-than-usual sentence because of the bizarre twist to his crime. At the sentencing, he claimed that the burglary was almost accidental: “I was homeless, hungry and lost. I was wandering around. I knocked on your door. I was attempting to ask for help. And then it just happened.”

Well, sort of. If Knight’s invasion of our house wasn’t planned, it surely was more than a fleeting impulse. We know this because within two hours after he took my son’s computer and cash, as well as my new winter coat, Knight used my son’s laptop to take a photo of himself wearing my coat and holding my son’s money. The burglar also wore a satisfied, gloating grin.

Then he posted that picture on my son’s Facebook account. The gall and stupidity wrapped up in that act made our case something of a sensation. Newspapers, Web sites and TV stations from New Delhi to New England carried the story after I wrote a column about the burglary. Before D.C. police even assigned a detective, more than 150 news outlets had published the burglar’s photo.

But while Knight’s face went viral, the authorities made it clear that they had bigger fish to fry. As one officer put it to me, “We do not have the resources to take this kind of crime seriously.”

Treating burglary as an offense every bit as corrosive of personal security as an assault could overwhelm an already stressed system. A Justice study concluded that it would cost on average about $20,000 per burglary to collect DNA evidence and identify and arrest a suspect. That doesn’t begin to account for the cost of convicting and punishing those burglars.

Then Judge Epstein, after assuring me that “I take property crimes very seriously,” sentenced Knight — who before the plea bargain faced up to 15 years in prison — to a term of 3¹ / ₂years: 27 months for the burglary and 17 months for the weapons offense.

I just don’t see this as a cost effective way to be a civilized society. How would you go about creating a lifestyle where Rodney Knight’s world supports him in making choices that more directly lead to him discovering and developing his talents and contributions? “Rodney, how would you give yourself a better world?”  Dude, share it here!!! Together we can make sustainable real!

Quest for the Killer Modeling Tool continues

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/03/15

The Quest is on!  Ray at Infracycle recommended taking a look at CommunityViz.  Coincidently, recently I’ve attended a couple of their  CommunityViz’s “Community Matters”  webinars….

On capturing customers for successful commercial-

This article about Hershey Pennsylvania’s attempt to revitalize the town, from the ERSI site, has a good discussion on how to figure customer capture using the Huff gravity Model.

I found a video on how to most accurately collect data-  the Block Point method wins! on ERSI’s site, but lost the link. Having the critical numbers of residential to make the commercial successful is one of the essential  pieces to a walkable lifestyle.

Here’s another interesting piece I’m learning about …APIs  Application Programming Interface.  Different software programs create the tools to encourage others to adapt into them with their own needs, thus spreading the usage of the original software.  So this says to me, I’m looking for software that has APIs that integrate into GIS and Google Earth, or maybe I’m looking for Google Earth APIs???

Hey, whatever it takes to make sustainable real!

I’m thinking of creating another site where this conversation can build…. maybe a more wiki kind of online tool…I don’t have much traffic at this point, but the day will come!!…

Vibrant, Alive, Affordable + Living Lightly Locally= Sustainable Neighborhoods

By Brian Skeele, On 2015/06/17

5 Planets! How are we, the US of A, going to be a serious leader if our lifestyle requires 5 planets of resources??

How are we going to look our grandchildren in the eye and say with pride “All this is yours!”??

The good news is we are innovative. So, my fellow Americans, let’s roll up our sleeves and seize the opportunity. What else are we gonna do?!

Join us on Tuesday nights, and help design and build the 21st Century sustainable! MeetUp Design Lab for Sustainable Neighborhoods

More good news! Ya ready?  Mixed-use, mixed-income sustainable neighborhood infill developments of 2 or so acres, located in rural, urban, or suburban settings, meet the challenge to deliver sustainable lifestyles that are good for people and our planet!

Here is a drawing of one possibility that is efficient, affordable, and creates a beautiful oasis.

With approx. 40 residential units of varying sizes on the upper floor, and mixed-use commercial and shared common facilities on the ground floor, we just need 80 or so people who want to move in. Want to have your business here?

Come to the next Designing Sustainable Neighborhoods Workshop

Go to Meet Up Santa Fe and RSVP! and check the box letting us know you’ll be attending. Together, we can make Sustainable Neighborhoods real!

Don’t live in Santa Fe, but want one in your community??!! Let me know!

Senior Cohousing!

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/05/23

Enjoyable and affordable. “In a retirement community, things are done for you and to you. In a cohousing community things are done by you.”  Sharing caregivers….having fun.  How’s this compare to your envisioned retirement?

Mountain View Cohousing Community from David Burwen on Vimeo.

Sounds good to me! Charles Durrett’s Senior Cohousing is an amazing book. He reports on the wide creative options the Danes have created in their senior cohousing communities across Denmark. We can be having way more fun! And way better safety nets!

Share your experiences in senior cohousing…We’re clueless as to what the options are compared to retirement homes!! Together, we can make sustainable real!

Share Your Ideas of A Sustainable Urban Village in Santa Fe!

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/06/20

What would you include in a Sustainable Urban Village in Santa Fe, that made it so great, you’d move in?! The September issue of the Green Fire Times is going to be a compilation of ideas and visions, and you’re invited to contribute!

Download the flyer here. Download tri-fold brochure here. (two sided print). Share this invitation with your friends and networks! Submittal deadline for article and images is August 5.

Image courtesy of Spears Architects

Suburban sprawl could well have run its course. It’s time for something new to emerge and resurrect the economy. Polls have shown that 1/3 of the Boomers are looking for a simpler, walkable lifestyle, and 88% of their children, the “Millennials” want to live in a creative, alive urban environment. 9000 Santa Feans currently commute to their jobs in town. Many of these people (and others) would welcome an alternative to car-dependent sprawl. This sizable unmet market demand could help the emerging sustainable economy….emerge!

Because this is a new market, your ideas and visions are key; Design it to your specs and needs, and I believe the planning and construction industries will work to make it real!

What would make this neighborhood so compelling, so supportive and fun, that you would move in??!!

Download the flyer here. Download the tri-fold brochure here. Share this invitation with your friends and networks! Submittal deadline for article and images is August 5.

Brian Skeele, June 16, 2011

What

A Deeply Affordable Sustainable Urban Village (SUV); a lively, 3-4 story, mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhood with enough density to make the commercial successful, say 5000 residents within walking distance.

Located Where?

To give these sorts of visionary ideas a place to focus, let’s look at an area in Santa Fe that has the potential to actually be transformed for the betterment of residents and businesses. With 72% paved parking area, Rail Runner access (commuter train), vacating car dealerships, an art/design college at one end, a hospital at the other end, and nearby Santa Fe High, De Vargas Middle School, two elementary schools, and Llano Library, St Michaels Drive is a good choice for visions of a major redesign.

SUVs can exist in rural, suburban, as well as urban locations. The key is to have the commercial and services supported by the residential within pedestrian-friendly distances, making non-car ownership a viable option. Not having to purchase, maintain, fill up, and insure a car is a substantial savings, and frees up disposable income for a wide range of benefits, such as local food, innovation start ups, as well as creates a healthier, walking lifestyle.

In a rural community, farming families and farm employees need affordable lifestyles, including affordable housing, transportation, land, water, organic fertilizer, etc. A rural SUV with the focus on agricultural production is an essential part of a regional food “shed”.

Similar dynamics exist in a suburban environment. Evolving into a pedestrian-centered lifestyle will increase the vitality and resiliency of up and coming mixed use, mixed income community. As we surpass global peak oil production and gasoline prices continually rise, the long commute is deeply threatened. Soccer Mom chauffeurs are soon to listed on the endangered species list.

Benefits Why

If Santa Fe was to create a SUV, the benefits could well be substantial;

A compelling reason to visit Santa Fe-with a world renown demonstration showcase site, a destination attracting eco tourists, students, government officials, and business owners from around the world, such has happened in Gussing Austria. economic growth-as in Gussing, many companies focusing on sustainability relocated (50 companies) and 1000 jobs were created. a significant revival of the local construction industry the development of Santa Fe’s capacity to collaborate. a Pathways curriculum, hands on, relevant learning, giving high school students the real world challenges that deeply respect and call forward their innate capacity.

Neighborhoods can once again become vibrant and alive- with safe, pedestrian- friendly streets and a simpler lifestyle supporting rich diversity; a mix of incomes and housing, young families and retirees, employers and employees, artist and patrons – a lifestyle that’s based on real, lasting values; a lifestyle that’s good for people, good for the planet, and good for the polar bears!

2nd of 29 WAYS TO MAKE MONEY FROM YOUR WELL DESIGNED HOME AND NEIGHBORHOOD

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/04/14

I’ve started a list of good ideas that come about if we rethink the functions and interplay of our home and its neighborhood.  So far I’ve got 29 killer (If I do say so myself)  ideas.  The first 7 are home oriented, the last 22 are more neighborhood oriented. Add to the list via the comment area!

Home Design 

Granny Flat Above Garage

#2. Rent Out “Granny Flat” Over Garage

The space above the garage is an opportunity for a guest room, separate residence, or a home office.  A typical garage is what, 20′ x 24 ‘? That is 480 sq ft.  I know I want to stay independent when I get older, and having my own space would be fabulous!

The space could work really well for a young person as well. They’re learning to be more independent and they have a bio-clock that likes to stay up late and get up late.

Maybe you’d like to move into the granny flat, and rent out the main house, staying in the neighborhood with long time friends.

Design  tips.

Going up stairs is a great way to stay in shape. Maybe at some point, … having grandad living in a spare bedroom inside the house makes more sense, but until then, having one’s own space is awesome.

480 sf is a big space especially if it is well designed.  Do you have a 480sf floor plan you love and would like to share? or some ideas that need help?  Submit it below and we’ll put it into “floor plans” or make the Challenge of the Week.

Sub meter so everyone pays his or her share. Does that long shower your daughter takes drive you crazy? Have her pay for it!

Build in flexibility to allow the space to be reconfigured as a home office, or two!

After grandma moves into the spare bedroom, the living quarters over the garage could be where a part-time or full time caregiver lives.  Maybe there are several elders in the neighborhood that could share the caregiver’s services, making it more affordable for everyone! See Time Banking!

Potential  income; $300-$800? per month plus % of utilities! or consider the savings versus a retirement home.

If you move into the granny flat, the main house can be rented out for even more!

Challenges and New Skills

We avoid the eldering part of our lives; the grand parent doesn’t want to be a burden; The adult children have tough choices to make.   Share what has worked for you. together we will bring more awareness and innovative solutions that make the end of life transition as magical as the birth.

Maybe the local ordinances don’t allow accessory units.

Post your Challenge. Kind of like Ask Ann Landers meets This Old House….and the collective wisdom answers!

We’re all in this together. Let’s make sustainable real!

Image courtesy of NSW, Sydney, Au govt

A Map to the Pot of Gold-Sustainable Urban Villages

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/06/21

Here ya go… one simple diagram to guide your people to the New American Dream- Sustainable Urban Villages.

Every community needs a Coalition for Sustainable Community!Together, we can make sustainable real!…

3rd of 29 Ways to Make Money on Your Home-Open a Commercial Shop

By Brian Skeele, On 2011/04/15

I’ve started a list of good ideas that come about if we rethink the functions and interplay of our home and its neighborhood.  So far I’ve got 29 killer (If I do say so myself)  ideas.  The first 7 are home oriented, the last 22 are more neighborhood oriented. Add your ideas to the list via the comment area!

Home Design 

I like the idea, the signage could be improved!

3. Rent Out a Work Space

Live/work homes have a separate workspace with commercial potential. What if you reconfigured part of your house to be a workshop or a commercial space?  Of course the zoning may not allow it.  Here in Santa Fe, home occupation is an accepted usage, with conditions on how many parking spaces and the number of allowable employees. A big difference between home occupation and commercial in the eyes of Santa Fe regulations is the home occupation is for appointment only customers/

If your clientele would “follow you home” , opening up your business out of your house could be a large saving.

Maybe your house has a great location, and a neighbor is interested in opening up a yoga studio;  maybe you just don’t need such a big house, and could use the income. …

Design Challenges

As we evolve our lifestyle to the sustainable, mixed use neighborhoods will become the norm. To make the commercial space successful, we may well need to add more residential in the community.  Our homes also could use an upgrade to green; more insulation, better windows, higher efficiency appliances and heating system.  How do we pay for all of this?

One possibility is your green upgrade will get funded along with the addition of more residential, and commercial to your home.  The increased rents and leases will cover the cost of new insulation!

Of course you’ll install sub meters during the renovation. Each occupant needs to be aware of and pay their share of the utilities!

All of these creative solutions will come about in the context of a neighborhood working together. It take a neighborhood to create a sustainable village!

Potential income. $12/sf per month and up.

Share your ideas and experiences, lessons learned around Live/work, mixed use house design.  Together we can make sustainable real!

Image courtesy of Kerrville Tx