The Oil Drum: Europe

Now that $4 gas is here and looks like it might be a short stop before $5-$10 gas, Smart Growth is getting more attention as the best method to maintain a high standard of living and promote economic growth.

So let's take a look at some videos from around the country on what's happing on the Smart Growth or Transit Oriented Development front to reduce out dependence on automobiles.

The Ontario government has recently been emphasizing its green credentials, particularly in relation to small-scale renewable generation, in the run up to a provincial election this fall. The Standard Offer Program (SOP - previously discussed here) is claimed to provide a framework for bringing a substantial array of new embedded generation on to the grid - generation based on different energy sources and varying widely in size. This is exactly what needs to happen if Ontario is to avoid a painful energy squeeze in the future, due in part to the approaching decline of natural gas supplies in North America. However, achieving it is proving to be far more difficult than one might reasonably expect.

It's impossible to think of ways of curing our overwhelming addiction to oil and other fossil fuels or significantly cutting our greenhouse gas emissions just through altering the source of our primary energy production. If one truly wants to achieve greater efficiencies and demand reductions, you have to start including two important policy areas: Transportation and Land Use.

We recently discussed New Jersey's Transit Oriented Development projects in local communities - the Transit Village program that encourages mixed use development around mass transit hubs.

Today, Jeff Zupan of the Regional Planning Assocation and Martin Robbins and Scott Weiner of Rutgers University calculate the efficiency difference of workers commuting to suburban office complexes, versus those that commute to downtown business centers. They write about it in today's NY Times opinion section:

A recent Rutgers study documented the energy benefits that derive from commuting to cities by public transit versus commuting by car to suburban work sites. We found that driving to a suburban office campus in Morris County's Parsippany-Troy Hills area consumed 57 percent more energy than taking a train or a bus to downtown Newark. If the substantial job growth predicted over the next two decades was in downtown Newark and similar cities instead of in distant suburbs along highways, New Jersey would see huge energy savings. Nearly 11.5 million gallons of gasoline a year would be saved by increasing the number of jobs in downtown Newark, essentially doubling them, instead of locating them in the suburbs.

This shows that energy, transportation and land use policies are all connected. So, how can we change the path of job creation and development away from the suburbs and closer to denser population and mass transit hubs?

Imagine instead of eating a Pizza (my favorite food), you were to separate the ingredients and eat them one at a time - first the bread, then the cheese, the sauce and finally the toppings. It wouldn't be the same right? It would be boring to eat and take a lot more time to do. That's what happens in the Suburbs - residential all in one spot, shopping in another, restaurants somewhere else, work off over the horizon...but nothing co-located. A city is supposed to be the opposite - encouraging the mixing of uses to bring all these ingredients together and combining them in different ways to create unique flavors and textures.

Why do I bring this up now?