It's Not Easy Being Green for Cities

As green building, sustainability or whatever people may want to call it, takes off in this country, more cities are facing the reality that it is not so easy being green. While we all admire the cities and businesses that are able to implement sustainable design into their building structures or planning, the greatest challenge facing green planning is the issue of money.

In Los Angeles, for example, a city mandate will require that 20 percent of the electricity used by the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power come from renewable energy sources by 2010. The idea? Commendable to say the least. The problem? In order for the LADWP to follow this mandate, substantial changes would have to occur to upgrade the municipality's electrical systems.

This translates into rate increases for users. To be specific, that's a 9 percent rate increase spread across the next three years and of course, people are complaining about this.

And so, as with many other public projects, everyone is all for the big idea when it comes down to the ethical arguments of whether implementation is "good" or "bad." However, no one wants to pay for the installation, which is the main component of any big idea.

At the same time, in Southern California, we have a major infrastructure problem as related to our traffic. After the Texas Transportation Institute released its latest traffic results, the fact that Los Angeles and Orange County drivers were at the top when it came to cities with the worst traffic, was no surprise. The study found that LA and OC drivers spent an extra 72 hours annually on the road in traffic - and none of us LA or OC drivers care about that. We want solutions.

For several years now, that solution has been in the form of more urban planning meaning pedestrian-friendly development and transit-oriented, mixed-use projects. However, while everyone is complaining and calling out for cities to build more of these types of projects, no one is talking about the funding or the financing that will actually make these projects a reality.

Taxpayers don't want to have to dish out an additional amount of money, which makes it difficult for cities to figure out how to pay for these developments because they need to find a developer willing to foot the bill for all or part of a project.

The problem is that all of these so-called green organizations and the like are so busy creating these national or statewide standards telling cities and people what they should do, but no one is looking at the cost. Realistically, that should be the first factor everyone needs to look at before we go about creating lists of what others "should" be doing to save the planet.

Instead, there are organizations like the Green Building Council and others trying to push for uniform standards, when in the case of most cities and municipalities that already know what needs to be done, the greater question is funding.

We all agree sustainability is a good thing. So, let's move away from arguing that and into a more realistic approach that discusses just how we are all going to go green.