As noted in DOT’s press release accompanying the announcement, “The TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) Discretionary Grant Program was included in the Recovery Act to spur a national competition for innovative, multi-modal and multi-jurisdictional transportation projects that promise significant economic and environmental benefits to an entire metropolitan area, a region or the nation.”

About half the money will go to transit and rail projects, including $83 million to fund the first phase of the long-anticipated “new Penn Station” in Manhattan.  The new facility will occupy the city’s huge Farley post office building across Eighth Avenue from the current Penn Station and Madison Square Garden.  It will be named for New York’s late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who championed the project while he was still alive.  Moynihan also was the principal author of the landmark 1991 federal transportation legislation that for the first time opened federal transportation funding to community and environmental projects.

What a great and fitting tribute to a giant among legislators.  And what remarkable evidence of this administration’s much-appreciated commitment to efficient, people-oriented transportation.

The group Friends of Moynihan Station hailed the announcement, which completes the funding necessary for Phase One of the project, which will include new entrances to the current, underground Penn Station from the Farley building, major improvements to passenger and visitor concourses, and new escalators, elevators and stairs to the train platforms.  Construction can begin late this year.  Phase Two will include, among other major improvements, an iconic, open train hall in the Farley Building.

Penn Station is the nation’s busiest transportation facility, handling over 600,000 passengers daily.

Those of us who use it, and that includes me when I travel to New York several times each year, know that the current Penn Station leaves a lot to be desired, to put it mildly.  Unlike wonderful stations in DC, Philadelphia, Paris, Berlin, and London, just to name a few, Penn station is cramped, claustrophobic, and completely devoid of natural light.  While there have been some heroic attempts at improving the place over the last 10-15 years, it is not somewhere you ever want to be if you don’t have to.  It doesn’t come remotely close to Grand Central, Manhattan’s iconic station on the East Side.

And that’s a shame, because Penn Station once was itself grand and inspiring (see photo of its interior, below).  It was demolished to make way for the current facility as a result of a litigated decision that was lost by the old station’s proponents but nonetheless galvanized the preservation movement in New York and elsewhere.

When the new project is finished, intercity passengers using Amtrak will be shifted to the Farley building, and local and regional commuters using New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Railroad will be given more space in what is now the current facility. While there is no doubt that the major upgrade to Eighth Avenue will spur additional redevelopment near the new station, the project will focus on its transportation purpose.  The New York Times saluted this decision in a recent editorial, noting that given earlier talk of an elaborate mix of major shopping, housing, and sports facilities in the project, its focus – and, given the recession, perhaps even the whole idea – was in danger of being lost.  New York’s senior senator Chuck Schumer has been credited with reframing the project to place the emphasis on the station itself, and with helping the project seek stimulus funding.

I had the pleasure of hearing Pat Moynihan speak a couple of years before his death, and it was one of the most intellectually impressive speeches by a politician that I have ever heard.  I was sitting at a large dinner with a seasoned lobbyist from the National Trust, who leaned over and said, “There will never be another like him.”  But now at least there will be a legacy.

Here’s a short video – now somewhat dated (Eliot Spitzer was New York’s governor at the time) – that was produced by the Municipal Art Society of New York, explaining the genesis of Moynihan Station and its proponents’ goals:

Principles for a Great New Penn Station from MAS on Vimeo.

Vancouver’s civic leaders believe that the athlete’s village built for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, and the planned neighborhood that will surround it, will be one of the very greenest neighborhoods in North America.  I am inclined to agree.

The village is the central parcel in a larger planned redevelopment of a section of the city’s old industrial waterfront called, somewhat awkwardly, Southeast False Creek.  When the Olympics and Paralympics are finished, the village will become a mixed-use community called Millennium Water, which sounds a lot more marketable to me.

I haven’t visited the site, but I have sifted through virtual reams of information about it, and I have paid particular attention to its plans and progress for some time now because Southeast False Creek is participating in the LEED-ND pilot.  (It hasn’t been evaluated yet but the development is aiming for a gold level award.)  The city’s summary information sheet explains the project’s goals:

“While maintaining heritage ties to the past, SEFC is being planned as a model sustainable development based on environmental, social and economic principles where people will live, work, play, and learn. SEFC will be a mixed-use community, with a focus on residential housing. This complete neighbourhood will ensure that goods and services are within walking distance and that housing and jobs are linked by transit.”

The 80-acre site’s mostly mid-rise buildings will provide ample density to support retail and walkability while still leaving 26 acres available for park land, including playgrounds and space for community gardening.  There will also be an elementary school and new civic center.  Some of the site’s historic buildings (notably including the Salt Building, shown in the photos) will be preserved, along with other reminders of its historic past.  Transportation options will include rapid transit, a “skytrain,” a streetcar, multiple bus lines, three new greenways with cycling facilities and, of course, a pedestrian-friendly atmosphere.  The site also needed and received extensive brownfield remediation.

Most of the development’s buildings will qualify for a  LEED-gold building certification (in addition to the LEED-ND goal for the project as a whole).  One of them has been designated as a “net zero” building that will have no net carbon emissions.   It will be converted to 64 homes for seniors after the Games.  And the developer is aiming for a LEED-platinum rating for the community center that will be the village’s focal point during the Games and the most publicly visible of the neighborhood’s buildings afterward.

Southeast False Creek/Millennium Water will also sport the city’s first renewable district heating system, which will provide heat and hot water to all the neighborhood’s buildings, including those in the Olympic village. It will be the first time in North America that heat recovered from wastewater will provide a primary source of energy for an urban neighborhood. The wastewater technology will be supplemented by solar hot water.

The city began planning development of the site in 1997 and committed to a vision of sustainability in 1999.  Eventually it will be home to 16,000 residents.  Close to 3,000 will be housed there for the Games.

The environmental accomplishments and goals of the Olympic village (officially Village A, since there is a second athlete’s Village B in Whistler, BC, where downhill events are being held) are summarized in an overview on the Olympics’ official site.  In addition to those mentioned above, they include ecological restoration of the waterfront; reintroduction of intertidal marine habitat and indigenous vegetation, and extensive green stormwater infrastructure.  As shown in the images, most of the buildings will have green roofs.  Other laudable elements include accessible design, job training and procurement for inner-city residents, and impressive (and sustainable) public art, including traditional and contemporary works by Inuit, Métis, and other First Nations indigenous artists from across Canada.

The village’s sustainability features are seen by the Games as part of a larger goal of sustainability throughout the Olympic venues and events, and by the city as consistent with its’ leaders vision of becoming “the world’s greenest city.”

As with any large development, especially infill and especially one receiving subsidies in the context of a recession, the project has not been without controversy.  This is well-documented on the Web and was succinctly summarized by Jonathan Hiskes on Grist.  The project was planned to be financed largely by Millennium Water’s investors and recouped by them after the Games as its units were sold.  But a major source of the developer’s capital collapsed with other financial institutions and the city had to come to the project’s financial rescue (to be repaid when the development sells).  There were also the usual construction problems and cost overruns.  The financial squeeze meant that, unfortunately, some of the project’s Phase I affordable housing had to be scaled back.  In addition, some Vancouverites have long resisted the idea of the city’s hosting the Games at all, and the village became a bit of a rallying point for the opposition.

But now the village has been completed and was handed over to the city on schedule, in November.  It has received glowing reviews not just from environmental writers but also from real estate observers who believe Millennium Water will be a huge commercial success when it is handed back to the developer (see, for example, here and here).  Based on what we can see, that’s hard to argue with.  I can’t wait to see it for myself.

Here are two really good videos about the project.  The first models the development’s progress from start to finish with very cool animation, and has an awesome soundtrack.  (Someone please tell me who that is; if you prefer Beethoven, by the way, go here.)  And the second provides a montage of the project’s construction with an excellent explanatory narrative and first-rate visual production.  Highly recommended:

For a short commercial for Millennium Water, try this one.  Let the Games begin!

The Center for Neighborhood Technology released a new series of GIS-based maps showing where carbon emissions from driving are the highest in the nation’s metro areas.  The maps demonstrate vividly that, although emissions on a per-acre basis are greatest in highly urban areas, it is in the suburbs and outlying areas where we pollute the most on a per-household basis.  This is because rates of driving are so much higher in spread-out suburbia than in places where homes, jobs, shops, and services are in more convenient proximity to each other.

Above left, for example, is the Tri-State area including and around New York City.  The map on the left shows that the areas with the highest emissions, in red, are those that are most heavily populated.  That much should not be surprising.  But the map changes dramatically when carbon emissions are plotted on a per-household basis, as shown on the right.  It is essentially a reversed image of the map on the left, showing that the most populated areas actually have the lowest pollution rates per household.

The differences show up even more dramatically in the sprawling Phoenix region:

CNT is a longtime collaborator with NRDC and many other organizations, and their GIS work is superb.  I have previously written about their excellent work on the geography of home affordability (for example, here and here) and have cited an early prototype of the CO2 mapping in a post about per-capita thinking in environmental impacts management.

Transportation accounts for 28 percent of all US greenhouse gases, according to CNT, and I believe it accounts for an even higher portion of carbon dioxide emissions specifically.  According to CNT president Scott Bernstein:

“Cities are more location-efficient – meaning key destinations are closer to where people live and work They require less time, money, fuel and greenhouse gas emissions for residents to meet their everyday travel needs. People can walk, bike, car-share, take public transit. So residents of cities and compact communities generate less CO2 per household than people who live in more dispersed communities, like many suburbs and outlying areas.

“If you’re deciding where to live, consider moving to an urban area. You’ll help fight global warming by emitting less CO2. And you’re likely to drive less, so you’ll spend less on transportation, saving up to $5,000 annually.”

I would add that the emissions savings come not only from a greater array of transportation mode choices but also from the shorter driving distances that are taken in more accessible locations.  And, in addition to cities, the traditional centers of well-established suburbs also can exhibit favorable per-household emissions profiles.  This is illustrated in the maps below of metro Cincinnati, where I was last week:

The carbon maps are part of CNT’s larger Housing +Transportation Affordability Index, which includes geographic data and mapping on housing costs, transportation costs, gasoline prices, and various customized variations thereof.  You can currently access the CO2 maps for 55 US metropolitan regions, and zoom in on particular neighborhoods or local communities if you like.  Later this year CNT expects to have 330 metro areas mapped on its site.

“My goal is to show people what can be done with a concept I call Salvage Building, thus what you see is 99% Pure Salvage. That means that everything from the doors, floors, windows, lumber, porch posts, glass, and even the siding has been saved and used to create houses that we hope will last for at least another century. I believe that there are presently enough building materials sitting on the ground to build much of the next generation of housing. All it takes to make it so is pure human energy, spirit, and the desire to build something that will last for several lifetimes.

“I also believe we don’t need as much space as we have become accustomed to in this country. Therefore I have created Tiny Texas Houses to demonstrate just how great it can be to downsize our carbon footprint, simplify our lives, and live in a house with a soul that will be energy efficient as well as beautiful.”

These creations have some spiritual cousins in the Third Street Cottages on Whidbey Island, Houston’s Project Row Houses, LA’s Watts House Project, and the cottages built to house people displaced by Hurricane Katrina.  While they are certainly not for everyone, that may not be the point. The images of Kittel’s houses are exceptionally provocative, given the excesses of our society.

I am certainly not the only one who has noticed: the Tiny Texas Houses have garnered a ton of press.  All the images you see here are from the website, and there’s also a video:

A view of downtown Vienna, which ranked 1st in the international "quality of life" ratings.

1   Vienna

2   Zurich

3   Geneva

4   Vancouver

5   Auckland

6   Dusseldorf

7   Munich

8   Frankfurt

9   Bern

10 Sydney

The highest-ranking US city is Honolulu at #29, trailing Vancouver (4), Toronto (15), Ottawa (16) and Montreal (22) in Canada.

Other US cities in the top fifty include San Francisco (30), Boston  (35), Portland (42), Washington (tied for 44), Chicago (tied for 44), and New York (49).

According to the company’s website, Mercer “is the global leader for trusted HR and related financial advice, products and services.  In our work with clients, we make a positive impact on the world every day.  We do this by enhancing the financial and retirement security, health, productivity and employment relationships of the global workforce.  Mercer has more than 18,000 employees serving clients in over 180 cities and 40 countries and territories worldwide.”

More on what the rankings purport to measure:

“Living conditions are analysed according to 39 factors, grouped in 10 categories:

• Political and social environment (political stability, crime, law enforcement, etc)
• Economic environment (currency exchange regulations, banking services, etc)
• Socio-cultural environment (censorship, limitations on personal freedom, etc)
• Health and sanitation (medical supplies and services, infectious diseases, sewage, waste disposal, air pollution, etc)
• Schools and education (standard and availability of international schools, etc)
• Public services and transportation (electricity, water, public transport, traffic congestion, etc)
• Recreation (restaurants, theaters, cinemas, sports and leisure, etc)
• Consumer goods (availability of food/daily consumption items, cars, etc)
• Housing (housing, household appliances, furniture, maintenance services, etc)
• Natural environment (climate, record of natural disasters)”

On some level, rankings like this are inherently silly and arbitrary.  But they are fun, which is why as a society we are obsessed with ratings, rankings, and competitions.

And it’s worth noting that the top contenders are all relatively compact and walkable, with excellent multi-modal transportation systems.   Of the top ten, I’m most familiar with Geneva, which I have visited quite a few times while shamelessly tagging along on my wife’s business trips.  It’s wonderful, though seriously expensive (affordability is conspicuously missing from Mercer’s criteria, apparently aimed at a corporate clientele).

The compact, walkable, and transit-friendly description fits the Canadian and American cities as well, at least compared to most American cities (with the possible exception of Honolulu, with which I am unfamiliar).

The top 50 cities on Mercer’s list, with some discussion, may be found here.