East Point Plaza, Suffolk, VA (Streetview Rendering)

Rebuilding the fabric of inner cities has been a passion of mine since understanding the power of design and infill development-more specifically small-scale infill development. Small-scale infill can be classified as projects comprising less than 100 housing units and fewer that 10,000 square feet of commercial space. There a several definitions for this type development but it is my personal favorite. In the recent issue of Urban Land Magazine (City Futures, March/April 2010), Sam Newberg wrote an excellent piece entitled “Little Infill”. In his piece, he notes that 20 million attached housing units will be needed by 2025 and that some 3 million acres of greyfield sites will become available for redevelopment.

“They [small infill developments] are favorites of the planning and development industry for their compact urban scale, innovative design, and positive impact as catalysts for their neighbors.” Sam Newberg, Joe Urban, Inc.

I’ve long championed infill development, especially in smaller, less developed cities. Migration patterns have already begun shifting back to urban centers and smaller cities are positioned to take advantage of these trends. Small mixed-use infill projects do not fit most institutional investor business models. To date, I haven’t seen any REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) that focus on this segment of the market. Project cost can vary widely dependent upon product and construction type. Location also is a large factor. Cities where infill development is more prominent, financing may be less of a challenge to secure versus others where suburban (greenfield) projects are given priority. Greenfield projects are understood, safe and, in the bank’s view, offer less risk.

In an interview with Tom Powell, advertising executive and developer, he provided insight into how he found success in his development East Point Plaza. The project houses his ad agency’s offices, has 32 apartment units, street level retail and has a programmable plaza. Powell needed more space for his ad agency and his search lead to this development. “It was a once in a lifetime opportunity”, says Powell. East Point is the first private investment into the Fairground community in several decades. The project cost $4.1 million to restore. It’s Downtown Suffolk, VA location is literally ‘on the other side of tracks’ and pushes redevelopment into an underserved community. Powell noted the tax credit application process took longer than actual construction which began March 2009. Occupancy permits were issued in January 2010. Commonwealth Architects served as lead designer and produced a very innovative and efficient design both the community and city embraced.

Loft unit at East Point Plaza

East Point Plaza and other projects like it will become more popular as the migration back to cities continue. There may be a learning curve in many communities where density is often looked upon negatively. However, if cities begin to educate and show their support of infill development, developers are likely to fall in line. In my experience developers often take the most profitable route toward a project and if there are incentives in place to make small-scale infill more attractive, we’ll be seeing more of it in our cities. Are there are any communities in your city that have been impacted positively by an infill project?

The titanic effort of changing our energy policy, land use policy, and indeed our entire economy is overwhelming and daunting. Often though, it is the simple step that can generate significant incremental impacts. Baby steps are a lot easier for the public to grasp on to and adopt as well, thus creating behavioral change and lasting momentum. When viewed in the right lens, individual baby steps can truly be the lever to create lasting change.

The KISS principle – “keep it simple stupid” – is something I need to keep in mind professionally every day as a lawyer. I am forced to boil down legal precedent, complex facts, and apply psychology persuade on a daily basis. If I cannot translate my experience and knowledge into a format that a client can understand, the client will not be able to grasp my advice in making decisions. If I cannot translate the facts, documents and law of a case into a format that a jury understands and agrees with, I will lose my case.

Construction, land use, transportation, and energy policy certainly have their aspects of extreme technical and political complexity. The KISS principle certainly applies here as well, including introducing sustainability as a value into the decision-making processes in these fields. In the context of sustainability, there is another double meaning. The KISS principle can help keep the sustainability conversation focused, productive and manageable and help keep the uninitiated or unmotivated from being overwhelmed. In addition, keeping things simple is where we need to head on a regular, day to day basis to make lasting changes with regards to our economy, energy policy, land use policy and the environment.

I recently saw a blog post with something so simple, so obvious but also carrying such wide implications it resonated with me. The city of Portland has long been a progressive source of environmental thought and advocacy. As reported on the very interesting site GOOD, Portland now has three separate tool libraries. Having spent a lot of money on tools over the years that often sit unused in the garage, this seems like a very obvious and very useful service. While Stanley in particular may not like this concept, overall this is the type of simple step that can create huge ramifications on reducing the intensity of material extraction, energy usage, and reducing our environmental footprint dramatically.

We need to think of the big picture in terms of land use and community planning. We need to foster change in the market towards denser urban and transit oriented development and away from sprawl and McMansions. At the same time, we need to remember that cultivating simplicity and finding structures and mechanisms to encourage that simplicity can also have a tremendous impact.

The current economic crisis offers a chance for a paradigm shift. We should not waste this opportunity by returning to the status quo that existed before the downturn or even pining for that unsustainable state. Instead, we should embrace rethinking our economy, and in particular our land use, development and construction policies.

We are already seeing some economic changes relating to the downturn. Prior to the economic freefall over the last year, savings rates had dwindled to literally nothing. With the modest level of recovery, some are bemoaning the lackluster spending on American consumers. What we are seeing is actually a rebound of more healthy savings rates rather than a continued hunger for excessive material goods fueled by debt financing. Count me as one who sees this as a long term win even if it means a slower recovery.

The downturn has had disparate impacts that in some markets are directly tied to land use policy. In urban style Arlington County, Virginia, the recession has certainly slowed business growth and hurt specific businesses. Overall, however, property values have dropped only very modestly in the midst of a global downturn. The 2009 budget actually called for a 4.4% budget increase while 2010 recommended a very modest 1.3% decline. These budget estimates reflect a modest drop in property tax revenues associated with a modest property tax increase and moderate value decreases.

By comparison, Prince William and Loudoun Counties experienced spectacular numerical growth fueled by huge sprawling single family subdivisions which feed into clogged arterial highways. These regions have suffered precipitous drops in property values and high foreclosure rates. For example, in 2006, Prince William recorded a total of 249 foreclosures. In 2008, this number jumped to 6,549. These jurisdictions are now struggling to shift their focus and development approach.

Transit oriented dense development has demonstrated a more sustainable environmental footprint and economic framework in challenging times. This intersection of economic and environmental sustainability makes the discussions blooming at places like Aribra and Build2Sustain so exciting and timely. Sustainability requires both economic and environmental consideration and in the end, both are truly symbiotic.

On one level, I see these changes and events as looking forward to the future. On another very different level, I see them as harkening to the better part of our nation’s past. I was raised in large part by my grandparents, children of the depression. My grandfather served in both World War II and the Korean War. Their generation, rightfully called the Greatest Generation, worked, fought, scrimped, and challenged our nation to success. It was these qualities of talent and character, coupled with a wealth of natural resources and a structural backbone of democracy and freedom that constitute what I associate with the phrase “American Exceptionalism”.

Over the last few decades, I believe we have strayed far from the ideals of the Greatest Generation. Deficit financing of excessive consumer goods does not match that generation’s value system. Folks who trumpet the theory that American Exceptionalism means we are “the best” and therefore can swing our global weight around do not get it either. It is not that we ever were or thought we were better than anyone else, but rather that the Greatest Generation did what they had to do and got it done. In fact, this co-opting of the Greatest Generation’s spirit in political discourse runs counter to the very concepts of humility and service that ran at the core of the Greatest Generation.

I think about these themes quite a bit in my daily life, my legal practice, and talks amongst friends. I was so struck when my friend and twitter pal James Bedell recently commented on this very theme in a post The End of American Exceptionalism. If this concept is about permanent US world domination, that is not reality in my book: what goes up, must eventually come down. I grew up pondering the theory of cost of empire and the fall of the Roman Empire. I was part of the guinea pig test history classes for Paul Kennedy’s widely respected The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, a tremendous book that still rings true decades later.

In the end, I agree with James that the world hungers for, loves and purchases our “culture”, but I believe to my core that what is perceived as American culture is part of the problem and not the solution moving forward. American Exceptionalism started and maintained from a very different set of core values, and those core values propelled us in large part to our success. In the end, it is about a more modest set of assumptions and expectations, values based on service and leadership rather than consumption and domination. These values in turn fit directly into developing a more sustainable model of growth and the economy moving forward. These values are ours to embody and demonstrate or to ignore and discard, so in the end, the question of whether American Exceptionalism is alive is up to us.

Photo, Flickr

I live a double life.

Most recently that life has been spent amid a cacophony of rumbling trains on the elevated subway line outside my window, the din of car horns from the drive-through fast food restaurant below my building, shrieks from emergency vehicles, bangs and clashes from the construction work on Columbia’s new campus across the way, shouts from passersby, and yes on rare occasions, gunshots.

In contrast, I spent the majority of my life – I’m only 35 – in rural America where the audible equivalent to my current urban context consisted of insects louder than the 1 and 2 trains rumbling above Broadway, roosters and wild turkeys announcing the coming daylight, solitary cars on the highway just down what use to be a dirt road when I was a kid, the distant haunting drone of the Silver Meteor or the Palmetto passing through town three miles west, and, though with more frequency but less suspicion, gunshots.

Lately, I’ve been giving a considerable amount of thought to just how these two extremes, both of which I love for peculiar reasons, are actually two sides of the same coin. On Wednesday, May 23, 2007, that coin got a tad bit weighted to one side as scientists from North Carolina State University and the University of Georgia projected that the earth’s human population, for the first time in history, had become more urban than rural.

Even as these scientists urged us to avoid placing greater importance on urban populations in light of these findings, much of academia rushed to exploit and skew this information with untold numbers of urban studies. Urban had become academically fashionable in a way it never had been before. In actuality, we’re not talking about some dramatic shift; the United Nations estimated that by 2010, less than two months from now, there will only be a 2.6% difference in favor of urban population numbers!

This isn’t a zero-sum game. Urban and rural communities are not in competition with each other – at least they shouldn’t be considered that way. Rural communities produce goods and resources that are then processed by our cities for both urban and rural consumers. Interestingly, researches suggest that if either had to sustain themselves without the other, “few would bet on the cities.”

But there’s a dark side to this relationship between urban and rural communities. NC State and Georgia researchers concluded that not only do rural areas have more than their share of poverty and low education attainment, but they also receive a disproportionate amount garbage, polluted air, contaminated water, and hazardous waste produced by their urban counterparts!

Urban America, regardless of its newly established majority standing, can not afford to continue dumping on rural America.  While one might go so far as to consider this immoral, I believe it’s just plain dumb. Cities need the resources provided by surrounding rural areas for their continuation. Conversely, rural America cannot be left out of the conversations that are going on across this country regarding infrastructure, sustainability, community empowerment, education, and the arts.  It just will not do.

As I continue to discover the similarities and differences between my double lives, I look forward to sharing them and making the connections more mutually meaningful. Moving forward, it’s quite clear there can be no healthy urban America without a equally healthy rural America.

Over the past 100 years, public health in the United States has grown in importance by leaps and bounds. Much of the field has its historical roots based in events surrounding disease prevention, population safety and a slew of regulations that were enacted to generally make the country a safer place to live. Another aspect of public health that was integral in the shaping of the country was its role in developing the built environment.

Coming back from the Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco last week, I had the opportunity to read over a fascinating article about the involvement of the American Public Health Association (APHA) in the early 1900′s, in setting precedents for urban housing. In essence, the APHA and other health professionals created regulations that were used to declare certain inner-city residential areas as “blighted” or uninhabitable. What this meant for those neighborhoods and the people living in them can be summed up with two words: destroyed and displaced.

After World War II, the state of urban neighborhoods that were populated predominantly by African Americans were considered in very poor shape. Moreover, these substandard conditions allowed for an increase in public health concerns which were noted by the APHA. Between 1937-1938, the APHA created a Committee on the Hygiene of Housing and developed guidelines that outlined fundamental requirements (including physical, mental and social health) of living conditions in order to promote better health and reduce disease.

Because housing was responsible for poor health, it became a goal of the reformers to advocate for demolition of the worst units and for a comprehensive national program of housing construction that would build as many as 13 million units from 1937 to 1945.

As good as this sounded at the time, much of the demolition that took place caused more problems – including the extensive displacement of families (with many times no relocation plans for them) and the increased negative reputation of urban neighborhoods. Many of the guidelines that were put into place also turned a blind eye to blatant racial segregation that continued to exclude African Americans from proper means of living. Bias in housing location for them apparently ran rampant. Mental health also played a role as many ousted residents (which would also include Italian and Jewish residents) would return to the old neighborhoods to try and find solace.

In essence – the public health workers had their minds in the right place however the political figures and others involved in the urban renewal process let the ball drop on quite a few important issues.

From the article:

Focusing on the health effects of the built environment, new research has shed light on the association between the physical form of neighborhoods and the physical activity levels of its inhabitants – and the role of housing in asthma.

Today, the public health field has another opportunity to examine the effects of the built environment and make positive connections and changes with regard to public health. The next few years will be an important opportunity for public health as we can no longer ignore the effects of how the built environment affects the health of its residents. From addressing childhood obesity to improving physical activity options for the entire family, I hope that we can move forward with sustainable solutions.

Additional Resources:

National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Summary on Public Housing and Public Health (PDF)

Housing and Health: Time Again for Public Health Action (PDF article)

“Commercial real estate is perhaps the most compelling investment opportunity in the United States right now, it is a $5 trillion business where one percent is minority.” Quinton Primo III of Capri Capital Partners L.L.C. “  ~ from Black Enterprise

Under Construction

The real estate industry, from a development perspective, is singly the least diverse industry on the planet.  You could also say one of the most vital. There are proportionally more minority accountants, doctors and lawyers than minority management-level commercial real estate professionals (less than 1% of 125,000 – source REAP).

I think part of that rests in the fact that it’s primarily controlled by a few white males. Literally, a small fraternity controls the majority of the world’s real estate. There is some historical significance to this as most property was held by white owners and has been passed down throughout generations. It largely remains that way today. One percent of real estate wealth is held by minorities. No wonder heavily populated urban areas suffer  steeper declines compared to more diverse cities. Women are also significantly underrepresented in commercial real estate as well.

The essence of real estate development is identifying a need and filling it. Whenever I hear someone say, “This area needs a supermarket,” or “We really need a drug store,” I can only think to myself how many would-be developers exist who could benefit from mentoring.  It’s a catch 22: you need minorities in development to mentor other minorities in development, but if the numbers of minorities aren’t increasing, the gap will only continue to widen. By 2030, it’s projected that America will have to build another 200 billion square feet of space to accommodate growth for an expected 70 million, and a great majority of that growth will be from non-whites.

As urban renewal becomes more pronounced, we’ll need a cross-section of real estate minds to address our ever-changing demographics. Chances are your community – no matter the cultural makeup – was developed by someone who does not look like you or share the same value systems you do; a need was identified and filled. Many communities are accustomed to being part of a charette. However, what communities are not used to is being apart of the implementation process once suggestions are made and adopted by a given city.

I think we should inspire, educate and empower community level leaders with the resources they need to redevelop their own communities. The response was quite astounding on Ava Bromberg’s new model that seeks to leverage strip malls into vehicles of economic activity. For example, Abyssinian Development Corporation (ADC) is the largest community development organization of its kind and demonstrates the power of community engagement – they have a portfolio of over $350,000,000.

Detour: Level Playing Field

The need is much greater than many realize but the conversation has largely been non-existent because so few are affected. I’ve chaired several industry committees and have witnessed, personally, the underrepresentation of women and minorities within the industry. On any given day, you’ll find a number of minorities who practice residential real estate. They often lack the knowledge on how to structure projects and thus pass them on to someone who has the knowledge capital to deliver a project. This isn’t an indictment, we need skilled professionals in real estate but the lack of information sharing has reached critical mass.  Just as social media has allowed communities to be formed online, I believe communities can be rebuilt offline utilizing a similar platform – create the conversations, share solutions and implement the best ideas.

I’m pulling back the curtain to say the secret is out – anyone can develop real estate, it’s not an elite club meant for a few. The question then becomes a matter of how to connect the many dots. I’ve met with some prominent minority developers with businesses that range from a few million to a few billion dollars, but none of them offered solutions to lift up the next generation of real estate leadership. Social media has allowed for the brokering of ideas a world over; Aribra seeks to accomplish a similar feat in the built space. Is this about economic benefit? Absolutely not. It’s about taking our communities back. A lot of people bemoan capitalist organizations that effectively strip other countries of their natural resources. This could happen for any number of reasons; some are political, some are not. Whatever the reason, there is no need for our communities to be exploited by developers, most who don’t live there and are solely looking for economic returns instead of leveraging already existing assets.

The following are organizations that have sought to address the issue of diversity in commercial real estate.  I’ve found them to have successful inclusion programs.

a. CCIM’s Cultural Diversity Education Program (CDEP)

b. Project REAP [Real Estate Associate Program]

c. Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW)

It’s our time.

As I typed the title of this post, even I cringed. Anyone who thinks they’re a social media “guru” or “expert” or whatever, is wrong. Why? Because Web 2.0 style social media is too new to have any experts. How can you be an expert on Twitter when it’s only really been around for three years, and popular for one? How can you know how to treat Facebook when the functions keep changing. In truth, no one is really sure what the effect of updating your status and tweeting your thoughts constantly will do to our culture yet. We’ve moved beyond insta-polling and gotten to the point where Twitter can tell you what the world is saying about any subject almost instantly.

Within this tapestry of intermingling voices (that was a pretty way of describing what others might call “noise”) there are real communities forming, there are real examples of the social web becoming a way for people to gather and create something, a positive force for good. Some examples….

The 12for12k movement led by @dannybrown, he crowdsources – leveraging social media to raise funds for different charities all year. His work and the work of all those donating their time and money is changing the world in a positive way by personally linking others on the social web to their movement. It’s a massive shift in the way we think about charity donation. It’s web based, diffuse, and personal–you feel like you KNOW those who fight for 12for12k because, well, you do.

What if you are struck by a personal tragedy, say contracting cancer? Today, you can leverage the social web to make a difference. That’s what Drew Olanoff is doing via Twitter. His @drew account, followed by over 10,000 people is inspiring people to fight cancer. Not only has he partnered with @livestrong to raise money, including auctioning his twitter handle to Drew Carey, but he’s done something bigger. He’s attacked cancer with his unique brand of humor. Now anyone on Twitter that has something to complain about can #blamedrewscancer it’s a way to use humor to raise awareness across the web and anyone can participate. That’s the power of social media to do good in our society.

But if you’re like me, you want to do something practical. You want to use the social web to solve a problem. I want to make our building stock in the US more sustainable, so I’m starting a company called Build2Sustain to do it. Part of starting that company has been signing on an advisory board. Every single member of that advisory board is someone I began conversing with through Twitter. Reading their thoughts on sustainability and the building space, I got a sense for their thought processes. We tweeted, we emailed, we spoke on the phone, now we work together to try and build a business that might help the world in some small way.

The walls have been broken down and now if you really are committed to an idea or a cause, you can find others who are too. You can reach out and get inspired through the work of others, join a cause or start one of your own.

“For too long, federal policy has actually encouraged sprawl and congestion and pollution, rather than quality public transportation and smart sustainable development.” President Obama

Obama Administration Urban Policy

From Washington Post | President Pitches Plan to Revive America’s Cities

President Obama, the first urban president since John F. Kennedy, is putting a new federal emphasis on revitalizing America’s cities with a coordinated effort that involves infusions of stimulus funding and getting multiple agencies to work together to improve schools, housing and neighborhoods.

The approach is winning applause from local officials and urban thinkers, who credit the administration for quietly beginning to put in place the most ambitious new policy for the nation’s urban areas since the Great Society programs of the 1960s. But the plan involves fundamental changes in the way federal agencies dole out assistance to urban areas, making its ultimate success uncertain.

“This is way more than an ocean liner trying to change direction,” said Angela Glover Blackwell, founder of PolicyLink, an advocacy organization that has consulted closely with the Obama administration. “This is glacial.”

Peniel E. Joseph, a Tufts University historian, said it appears that Obama is trying to reverse a trend in which urban issues slipped down the national agenda. Obama’s stimulus plan included at least $20 billion in funding for urban programs, outside of education.

“The stimulus certainly put billions into urban areas, but we are still going to have to see over the course of his administration what this adds up to,” Joseph said. “Right now we just don’t know.”

Obama has lamented the historic failures of federal efforts to rejuvenate urban areas, noting in July at a White House urban policy roundtable, “For too long, federal policy has actually encouraged sprawl and congestion and pollution, rather than quality public transportation and smart sustainable development.”

In the same way that federal highway spending encouraged sprawl, the Obama administration says more concentrated development can lead to more job opportunities for residents and neighborhoods that are both environmentally friendly and economically viable.

To coordinate his initiatives, Obama created the position of urban “czar” and in March named Adolfo Carrion Jr., the former Bronx borough president, to direct his new White House Office of Urban Affairs.

“This is not your father’s White House,” Carrion said in an interview. “This is a new way of looking at the new city-metro reality.”

Over the past two months, Carrion and other top administration officials — from agencies as diverse as the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Transportation Department and the Environmental Protection Agency– have visited cities to observe innovative development schemes that fit the model.

In Kansas City, federal stimulus funds have galvanized a project called the Green Impact Zone, led by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.), the city’s former mayor. About $200 million in mostly federal money will be invested in the project, which aims to transform an economically depressed 150-square-block area of the city known as “East of Troost Avenue.” With vacant homes, high crime and unemployment rates approaching 50 percent, about half of its residents live in deep poverty.

The project involves a coordinated rush of federal money. Stimulus funds will be used to weatherize the 2,500 homes in the community. Block grants from the Department of Energy will be used to hire area residents and train them to do energy audits. Meanwhile, the local power company will build a “smart grid” in the area, using $25 million in stimulus money and $25 million of their own. More than $30 million, mostly from the Department of Transportation, will be used to build a 13-mile rapid transit line through the community to downtown that will feature solar-powered stations and buses that run on bio-diesel fuel. There also will be job training in environmental clean up and community policing funded by various agencies.

Full | President Obama Pitches Plan to Revive America’s Cities

From Planetzien | Creating Neighborhood Capital from Strip Malls

Strip malls probably don’t fit into the definition of progressive urbanism for most people, but maybe they should. Well, perhaps after a little organizational tweaking.

The small retail centers are ubiquitous in American cities, with their generic shops selling doughnuts or beer, offering dry cleaning or key-cutting. They’re a part of many neighborhoods, but not necessarily an essential part. They bring goods and services to the area, but are ultimately of the greatest benefit to their owners – off somewhere cashing monthly rent checks from the moms and pops running the little businesses within. That model can change, according to Ava Bromberg. She’s a PhD student in UCLA’s School of Public Affairs and she is developing a new vision for small retail centers that would transform them into engines of social and economic capital at the neighborhood level.

“It’s part mall, part business incubator, part cultural hub,” says Bromberg. The idea is to overlay a distributed ownership model on the typical strip mall that enables the value created by this commercial real estate to cycle back and benefit the neighborhood it serves. Consumers are also business owners, property shareholders, and decision-makers. In this model, the building goes from being a cash cow for one owner to being a bank for the community, into which investments can be made and from which public benefits can be funded.

But it’s also about activating disused retail space for more than retail. Bromberg wants the spaces to partner with local institutions like hospitals and universities to create learning environments and job training opportunities on-site. The idea is to retool the existing neighborhood infrastructure to serve unmet needs within the community.

Full | Creating Neighborhood Capital from Strip Malls

The Company

Aries + Libra = Aribra (uh ree bra)

Aribra represents a convergence on public health, climate change, sustainability and real estate. We believe these issues should be apart of a collective conversation versus  separate ones.

The Logo

The Aribra logo is our interpretation of the Sustainability Diagram. We modeled the colors represented; orange/gold (economic), blue (social) and green (environment) respectively. There are several interpretations of this diagram. For instance some use red to represent the economic component; the decision was made to use this one as the model.

The Tagline

Our tagline encompasses our mission and development strategy. Aribra truly has adopted the position that any development that does not include the principles of sustainability and capture the essence of a community, does not make sense. In that regard, Aribra’s holistic approach to developing takes all of these factors in consideration as well as those relevant to the communities we serve.

The Mission

To be an industry enhancer through the equitable development of communities that are triple bottom line; economically, environmentally and socially sustainable.

The End