I spent this past Saturday hanging out with my brother-in-law Mike and my niece, Olivia. Watching her this weekend made me think of sustainability. Holding my three-month old niece gives me a tangible feel for the future. At one point I was in a room with all of my sisters my neice and my mother, three generations of women.

The eldest born in the 50’s (sorry Mom) and the youngest born in 2009.  Looking at them all I can’t help but think of how much the world has changed over the source of that time-for a little perspective, Dwight Eisenhower was President when my mother was born…her grandchild was born at the beginning of the Obama administration. What amount of change will take place over Olivia’s lifetime? Will we create a sustainable culture in the US in her lifetime? Shouldn’t we? Shouldn’t we make certain hers is a life free from an energy crisis? Free of water shortages and dirty air? Shouldn’t she be able to grow up in a world where she can be anything she wants to be and not be concerned about the ramifications of her actions on the planet…because her way of life is part of a sustainable system and culture?

Olivia and her generation will face a whole host of challenges we can’t even imagine yet. Creating a truly sustainable culture will be the work of generations…but shouldn’t we give her a head start?

“There are always two parties; the establishment and the movement.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Once upon a time in a land far away…

The last decade is not that far removed to start a fable but one thing is for certain, there were some characters and plots that took shape-for better or worse. What should we expect of the next year, decade? A foundation for the coming years was being laid in the latter part of the decade that hinted we may be seeing an era of personal accountability, corporate responsibility and community engagement. It’s evident in almost every aspect of our lives; from the All-State commercials on responsibility to Subaru contributing apart of every vehicle sale to a charity of your choice.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HNKqffU3Cc

If you’ve read my other blog posts, each is sprinkled with a sense of optimism and cautiousness. I don’t doubt we have what it takes to create a more just, equitable society but am often leery of the human element. Given the right opportunity, visions of sustainability, curbing climate change and any other worthy cause can go out of the window. Take a look at the weeks that followed 9/11. Everyone was patriotic; American flags were on nearly every lawn, car and bumper sticker. At that time, I felt a sense that our States, well, were United. Though quite horrific, those events have fallen into memory and serve as a guidepost that marked a decade. Do we move on or dwell on the past you ask? We move on with the same conviction that together we are stronger than any challenge our nation faces.

As a 30 year old American, this new direction is somewhat of a culture shock. Many in my generation were raised on the premise of “more, more, more” being the standard for success. We believed that having the biggest house, car, bank account and TV signified status or “making it” -- I don’t think that will be the case as we move forward. I’m not suggesting we don’t want to be successful in our respective careers but the way we measure success has no doubt changed. In James Bedell’s “Why We Will Save The World”, he noted that “people are the new profit” and that “less is the new more”. I couldn’t agree with James more.

“So goes GM, so goes the country.”

The US automobile industry was pushed to the brink of disaster before an overhaul began. I personally didn’t support the auto bailout or any other federal intervention but was aware that without it, it could have easily tilted our country in another depression-easily. So what of capitalism? I’m not an economist but am of the opinion that the human element trumped reason on this one.

Moving forward our industries must evolve and commit to investing in R&D, infrastructure and education. Watching CBS Sunday Morning’s recent coverage of the last decade showed that the US created 0% jobs (zero) in an entire decade. Our labor market is suffering because we haven’t worked to create new industry domestically and trade policies have effectively shipped American ingenuity abroad for production and redistribution back to us.

With a defunct energy policy, declining dollar, lackluster labor and housing markets, the push is now toward sustainability, efficiency, buying local and community engagement. What happens when our GDP is growing, our communities are stable, CO2 emissions decrease and rail becomes a viable transportation alternative in the states? If our economy is to grow, history shows us that we’ll need innovation to push the limits of what we can accomplish. As those innovations come to market, legislation will be slow to understand the affects they’ll have on the public long after fortunes have been made and fortunes lost, hence the financial crisis.

I advocate growth, change, prosperity and hope. However, I’m well aware that what goes up must come down. America will recover. We will prosper again and again, we will become complacent.

I look to the past for clues and I’m cautiously optimistic we’ll get it.

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Download Build2Sustain’s White Paper “It’s Time To Jump Into Sustainability”.

As I thought about my good friend Eeyore, and my prior post (and borderline obsession with children’s characters (a totally different issue)), I realized that many can (and sometimes do) take my attitudes and penchant for baby steps as skepticism toward the whole idea of sustainable construction and its necessity.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.

I am committed in a very real way toward the idea of sustainability, I just feel that we are rushing headlong into the void without thought of potential consequences of our actions.  In the laudable zeal to make broad sweeping changes to governmental policy and building activity, I see the details being lost.  As I have posted before, here and elsewhere, I am at heart a risk management guy.  I see many issues through the same liability lens and feel that Murphy was an optimist.  For this reason (much to my lovely wife’s chagrin) I always look for the cloud in the silver lining (is that enough mangled cliches for one post?).

While I don’t think everyone in the “green” construction space should be thinking this way, we do need folks who are willing to look at issues as simple as a broken window or the potential for liability due to new technologies that are not time worn and tested as we move forward toward a more sustainable future.  This is not rocket science.  These are not high level policy issues.  We need to make sure that we consider the simple questions even if we don’t have the answers.

Why do I spread this wet blanket (okay I couldn’t resist one more bad metaphor)?  Because if we head into the future without consideration for these questions the whole sustainable enterprise could come crashing down.  One or two big products liability lawsuits or energy performance related lawsuits could chill the market for these buildings by driving contractors and suppliers from the space.  Without the companies that deliver the parts and build the buildings, all of the academic and policy decisions will be for naught.

In short, it is my commitment to a long term solution, and not skepticism that keeps me working to make sure that we understand the risks.  Without consideration of these very real and very critical (in my view as a construction attorney) issues, the market will not open and we will continue to live in the world of theory without meeting our potential and historical values through a long term and, yes, sustainable movement toward more energy efficient infrastructure.

Okay, that felt good, now back to working on contracts to deal with these issues.

**

Download Build2Sustain’s White Paper “It’s Time To Jump Into Sustainability”.

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.

Why do you prefer to shop and eat at certain places more than others?  Why do people in one neighborhood seem to all know each other while people in another neighborhood keep to themselves?  Why will you walk down main street, but drive from one end of the strip mall to the other to frequent different stores?   The design of place plays a major factor.  It affects your experience, your behavior, the value of the place, and of course the environment.

Below is a comparison of two retail centers designed very differently.  Both retail centers are located near each other in Atlantic Beach, Florida and contain popular locally owned and national neighborhood retail shops and restaurants.  The first example, the Atlantic Beach Town Center, has a pedestrian friendly design that encourages people to walk to and within the retail center, a fundamental element of sustainable design.  The second retail center is designed solely for customers to arrive by automobile, a common design flaw of unsustainable developments.

Atlantic Beach Town Center Design Elements:

• Buildings are setback from the street only enough to allow one row of parking, landscaping and the sidewalk.
• The landscaping and parallel parking along the street provide a buffer between the pedestrian and cars driving down the street, allowing the pedestrian to feel more comfortable walking down the sidewalk.
• The parking, landscaping, sidewalk, building pattern is mirrored on the opposite side of the street, framing the street.
• The buildings are to scale and in character with the surrounding neighborhood.
• The sidewalks are wide and made of dedication bricks.
• The angled parking in front of the retailers along the street is teaser parking, provided to allow for quick automobile stops (good for retailers).
• Parking is limited, encouraging bike and pedestrian traffic.
• Most parking is provided in surface lots located behind the buildings or buffered by landscaping.

Atlantic Beach Strip Mall Design Elements:

• The building is setback from the street to allow four rows of parking.
• Two sidewalks are necessary, one next to the street and one next to the building.
• The sidewalks are not connected, and therefore a pedestrian walking along the street has to cross through the parking lot to visit a business.
• Parking is plentiful, encouraging driving and creating unnecessary impervious surfaces and thus excess stormwater runoff.
• A minimal amount of landscaping is provided within the parking lot for aesthetic purposes, providing minimal shade for the cars and no benefits for the pedestrian.

Are there any other design differences you can find between the developments?  Look for future postings of “The Design of Place” with comparison pictures for different types of developments.

I am sitting here looking out at a wet, dark and windy day here in Richmond, VA.  In many ways I can relate to the clouds.  As an attorney I almost always feel like I am raining on the “sustainable building” parade.  On Build2Sustain conference calls, I always feel like I’m the one saying “whoa” we need to think about the liability.

As I’ve said at Musings before, Eeyore is one of my favorite characters from A. A. Milne.  Eeyore, you may remember, is the donkey on whom it’s always raining.  He is the loveable character that always feels like the sky is falling, but plugs along anyway.

I can relate.  I am firmly committed to sustainable building.  I think that the economic impact, combined with the moral imperative, make such a goal both worthy and required.  However, certain risks are inherent in any new use of technologies and any new mode of thinking, no matter how worthy.   Some of the issues that will need to be dealt with by contractors, architects, owners and, yes, lawyers, are the following:

• Insurance- the insurance industry is still catching up with energy related underwriting
• What standard of care applies due to a green building claim?
• Potential Trademark claims
• Longer time horizons and contractual or government requirements on energy goals

I sometimes feel like we are rushing past these issues without the careful thought that we need to give such risks in our (understandable) enthusiasm.  I tell clients to plan ahead, but it is human nature to be overtaken with excitement at a new venture and the vision of a better, cleaner, world.  However, until these issues are hammered out (hopefully without litigation to have judges tell us what to do), this march to a sustainable future will be a slow one.

The government can only do so much through mandate.  The private sector must be ready to move forward and pour money into sustainability.  Without some assurance and possibility to at least manage these risks, project owners and builders will be justifiably wary.  The sooner the risks are at least out in the open, if not resolved, the sooner the private sector will get fully behind sustainable construction and building management.

Until then, Eeyore and I will keep plugging through the rain.

If you were to ask three different people the definition of sustainability, you’ll receive three different answers; this is ours.  Business structures are moving away from models based solely on economic returns and are now considering the environmental and social returns as well. The tides are shifting.

From Mother Nature Network | Sustainability: What does it really mean?

We are perhaps transitioning from a communications age to one of sustainability.

It is the buzzword of today, used in reference to the environment, economy, development, health care, food and more. During his address last month to Congress on health care, President Barack Obama said, “our health care system is placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers.” He is working to restructure our economy around sustainability and “green” jobs rather than manufacturing and finance as in the past.

The Dow Jones Sustainability Index now tracks the financial performance of leading sustainably driven companies worldwide. We see the ideal in the construction of our homes and businesses. Colleges and universities now are creating environmentally sustainable campuses and adding courses that reflect students’ new belief that their futures will be driven by the ideal, says Dr. Shana Weber, sustainability manager in the Office of Sustainability at Princeton University. At Princeton alone, 51 courses now address sustainability in some way, in subjects such as the economy and energy.

We use the word so much, but do we really understand what it means? Is the word so overused it is in danger of losing its meaning?

Sustainability refers to everything

The word carries a “green” connotation, but really everything is connected, says Nancy Gabriel, director of the Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program at the Sustainability Institute in Hartland, Vt. A world in which the environment is pristine but poverty is rampant is not sustainable. She believes the definition includes three components: the environment, economy and social justice.

“It is truly an all-encompassing word,” Weber says. “We have to look at business structures. We have to look at social structures. We have to look at almost every aspect of how we live. And so that seems overwhelming, but that’s really what it’s about. What can we do to stabilize our global environment, social and economic systems?”

The word’s modern meaning dates to 1987. That year the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (also called the Brundtland commission after its chair, the Norwegian diplomat Gro Harlem Brundtland) issued a report defining sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

In time, a movement began revolving around a word that didn’t carry the negative connotations of environmentalism, Weber says. The LEED green building rating system emerged, making environmentalism more mainstream, and then Al Gore released his film, An Inconvenient Truth. The film was released at “exactly the right moment,” she says. “It was already in the air, and that film really seemed to galvanize something.”

At risk of losing its meaning

Today advertisers and marketers use sustainability to describe nearly everything. Perhaps the word is in danger of losing its meaning. But we also have been shocked by economic collapse and natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami that devastated South Asia. We have watched water levels rise and glaciers melt. We understand change is necessary. Gabriel wonders whether, in fact, a sustainability age already has passed, whether instead we are entering an age of restoration or regeneration.

“People are feeling that I think our lifestyle of consuming goods, the way our lifestyle is, it has disconnected us from each other,” she says. “People are feeling that and feeling and really looking, wanting something different. And so this, all these kinds of collapses are opportunities really to restructure in different in ways.”

In a country where more is the American way, is sustainability feasible?

Embedded in our identity is a deeply held ambition to push away at boundaries. Early Americans pushed across the Atlantic and declared our independence. Then we pushed across the continent toward the West, crossing the Mississippi River and scaling the Rocky Mountains. We invented cars and planes and reached for the moon. Over time even our houses and food portions grew in size. “Where’s the beef?” we said.

That is why what has happened to our economy is so shocking and painful. The contraction we have experienced is un-American. The discouragement and humility we feel are foreign. Sustainability advocates insist they do not mean for us to lower our standard of living, but rather they want us to understand that less of many things taken together actually can lead to a better life.

Sustainability is a concept we are drawn to because it offers hope, Weber says. It makes us believe we can have both less and more at the same time, that our problems are surmountable, and the solutions lie within us.

“I think we have to shift away from this industrial growth model,” Gabriel says. “I really think there is a way to look at how to do development that’s more focused on well-being and not on this consuming of goods.”

Full | Sustainability: What does it really mean?

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

Welcome to the new Aribra.com

It’s official. The transition is complete and we’re off! Thank you so much for the continued support and encouragement as the project was and continues to be underway.

I founded The Aribra Group, LLC as a think tank and real estate development services organization to promote and demonstrate best practices in the built environment with a primary focus on the smaller city. Aribra provides two distinct but complimentary services: 1) fee development services and 2) Aribra.com.

Aribra.com serves as an online forum and blog to exchange ideas advancing sustainable real estate development within small and medium-sized cities (populations less than 500,000). In our research, we found a plethora of information on efforts to encourage infill development, create pedestrian-friendly streets and develop human scale communities for larger metropolitan regions (New York, San Fransico, Chicago etc). There is very little literature, however, on smaller locales. Aribra.com serves as that bridge that will aid smaller cities in successfully implementing redevelopment initiatives.  Aribra will also offer possible solutions to public health conditions attributed, in part, to inadequate community design. Additionally, we profile thought leaders, developers and projects that best exemplify what can be accomplished when an integrated approach is taken in building community. Aribra.com has contributors that blog on issues surrounding urban planning, community development, design and public health. The Aribra Group seeks to rebuild communities offline through communities online, utilizing the core principles of sustainable development; environmental, social and economic.

I’m excited about the positive trends in real estate toward more human scale, walkable environments. You’re invited to join the conversation and community as we usher in another voice advancing sustainability in the built environment.