Saving Plastic Bags, Destroying Buildings. Happy Earth Day from the City of Minneapolis!

Happy Earth Day, Citizens of Minneapolis. Your City government wants you to help make our city a Zero Waste city. On the City website, a page is devoted to ways you can be a "Zero Hero" and reduce environmental waste. 

Here are two of the tips offered on the page, with editorial comments highlighted in green: 

Buy It Durable and Maintain It To Last!

Long lasting, durable goods cost more at first but save money in the long run. Zero Heroes find that durable products break down less often too, meaning fewer repair bills. Like old houses built with pride from quality materials.

Creatively Reuse

Zero Hero creativity can play a big role in preventing waste. There are many things around the house that can have new uses.  Like the house itself. 

And here's a third tip I'd like to add:

Don't poison the neighborhood with airborne hazardous materials.

The City is to be commended for its excellent recycling program. But before we congratulate ourselves on saving the Earth by recycling pop cans and composting potato peels, we need to look at a very negative environmental impact that's totally ignored: the demolition of old houses. While the City concerns itself with recycling plastic grocery bags, it approves and encourages the demolition of well-built existing houses. These demolitions--seven in the Wedge alone during the last couple of years--send toxic particulates into the air and many hundreds of tons of building materials into the landfill.  

The energy saved by recycling plastic bags and aluminum cans represents a infinitesimal fraction of the energy saved by recycling buildings. Minneapolis is trashing hundreds of tons of building materials, destroying tons of embodied energy. And to make matters worse, the old buildings are replaced by stick-frame buildings, poorly designed, and thrown up as quickly as possible. Unlike the old houses, the new buildings aren't built to last, only built to last as long as developers and investors can make a buck out of them.  Putting up these new buildings requires the use of new, inferior materials and the energy required for construction--energy that would not have to be used if the old buildings had been recycled.

But you don't have to take my word for it.  A report produced by the Preservation Green Lab of the National Trust for Historic Preservation provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the potential environmental benefit of building reuse. This groundbreaking study concludes that when comparing buildings of equivalent size and function, building reuse almost always offers environmental savings over demolition and new construction.

 Some important findings in this study by the National Trust:

The Greenest Building: Quantifying the Environmental Value of Building Reuse

Reuse Matters. Building reuse typically offers greater environmental savings than demolition and new construction. It can take between 10 to 80 years for a new energy efficient building to overcome, through efficient operations, the climate change impacts created by its construction. The study finds that the majority of building types in different climates will take between 20-30 years to compensate for the initial carbon impacts from construction.
Scale Matters. Collectively, building reuse and retrofits substantially reduce climate change impacts. Retrofitting, rather than demolishing and replacing, just 1% of the city of Portland’s office buildings and single family homes over the next ten years would help to meet 15% of their county’s total CO2 reduction targets over the next decade.  
Design Matters. The environmental benefits of reuse are maximized by minimizing the input of new construction materials. Renovation projects that require many new materials can reduce or even negate the benefits of reuse.
 The Bottom Line: Reusing existing buildings is good for the economy, the community and the environment. At a time when our country’s foreclosure and unemployment rates remain high, communities would be wise to reinvest in their existing building stock. Historic rehabilitation has a thirty-two year track record of creating 2 million jobs and generating $90 billion in private investment. Studies show residential rehabilitation creates 50% more jobs than new construction.

Now to turn to the "Don't Poison the Neighborhood" part. . .

A recent toxic demo on the North Side. (Photo by Brian Finstad)

North Side resident Brian Finstad, who recently witnessed a demo on Dupont Avenue with no lead containment (see photo), spent hours contacting various agencies about the toxic cloud spreading through the area. According to Brian, this is "not a problem of permitting, but of practices and enforcement." The negative environmental impact of these lead-spreading demolitions is "one of the great unstudied public health issues of urban neighborhoods." When 2320 and 2316 Colfax Avenue South were demolished, a similar environmental nightmare ensued.  One guy wrecked the houses with a backhoe, while another guy walked around with a garden hose. Pathetic.

A cloud of hazardous particulates floated through the Wedge for three days during the demo of the Orth House. (Photo by Anders Christensen)

So far, the City of Minneapolis has completely disregarded the environmental impact of the demolition of well-built existing houses to construct new middle- and high-density "market rate" apartment buildings. The City hypocritically keeps patting itself on the back for its zero-waste initiative while soldiering on for developers, approving demolitions and ignoring the environmentally harmful effects of these inept, unmonitored demolitions on  neighborhoods.

Until the City takes into consideration the unhealthy and wasteful impact of its market-driven obsession with commercial residential construction, Minneapolis won't be anywhere near achieving "zero waste" status. 

The greenest building is the one already built. Period.

Related links:
Sustainable Communities
Creating Sustainable Communities
Greening Older and Historic Buildings
Preservation Green Lab
National Main Street Center

--T.B.

Zoned Out in Gopher City

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a conference on “Building the Urban Utopia: A Blueprint for the Competitive Global City.” The featured speakers were part of a contingent from Gopher City, MN:  Phillip Space, internationally renowned architect and author of “Den$ity for Dummies,” Gopher City Council Member Malcolm “Mal” Feasants, and city planner Uriah Heep IV.

MAL FEASANTS: I’m delighted to be invited to speak on the wonders of the high-density urban neighborhoods we’re rebuilding in Gopher City. The first step in this process is clearing old buildings, old people, bellyaching minorities, and the financially disadvantaged out of these neighborhoods to make way for new mixed-use commercial buildings and high density housing. It’s easy to do--We just ignore or crush any obstacle that gets in our way, like zoning ordinances or small-area plans. If a developer needs a variance or a zoning change for a new project, we just do it. That’s the beauty of being the government. As chair of the Gopher City Zoning and Planning Committee, I control what goes down and what goes up. The voters gave us a mandate, and we’re doing what’s good for them--even if some of them don’t appreciate it.

URIAH HEEP IV [M.A.,Ph.D. Stalinist Planning and Architecture]: The Gopher City Planning Department is proud to be part of the private-public partnership. We are pleased to assist any and all new development by providing the rationale needed to argue for bypassing regulations. We’re the go-to agency for developers. Who knows the city and its buildings better than we do? Who knows better how to spin the rhetoric, using all the buzzwords: “green”, “transportation nodes”, “bike-friendly”, “affordable”, and so forth? 

 The Chinese know how to do high-density development. Complete government control, planner paradise.“Harmonious Society! Long Live the People!”

PHILLIP SPACE [A.I.A., S.O.B.] May I take a moment to brag about a new project I’m designing, a six-story hotel that developer Hy Density has proposed for Gopher City’s Ro-dense Zone? It’s cheap, it’s right on the bus line, it’s easily accessible to downtown. Who cares if the current zoning doesn’t allow a hotel next to two-story-family housing? Who cares if it doesn’t suit the Ro-dense Zone small-area plan? Who cares if building it requires a conditional use permit and a floor area ratio variance? it’s what the City needs, and Mal, here, knows how to get past these pesky ordinances and get the thing built. We’ll put a bike rack for guests by the lobby entrance. No need for parking spaces. Cars are so 20th-century.

 MAL FEASANTS: One important undertaking we GC CM’s are working on is eliminating every way that citizens can comment on projects. We’re cutting out citizen review boards that allow residents free rein to bitch about what the City is doing or not doing. We still have tiresome hearings which can’t be scrapped--yet. BOR-ING. I would go out of my mind if I didn’t have my smart phone in my lap so I can tweet and look at Facebook posts while these old NIMBYs are cranking away. When they won’t shut up, I just cut the mic. The new Gopher City, love it or leave it. 

Gopher City Council Members at public hearing.

It's essential that we rid our cities of these old knee-jerk jerks who don't appreciate the Brave New World we're fashioning in the old neighborhoods. The time of these superannuated losers has passed and so should they. The new neighborhood belongs to the developers and the young and hip. If someone isn't fit enough to ride a bike or walk to a bus stop, they should be harassed into going somewhere else to die. 

PHILLIP SPACE: Hear, hear, Mal. That reminds me. I must tell you about a brilliant scheme my firm has developed to deal with both senile senior undesirables and our supporters who can't afford the rents in the new buildings. Let me announce the latest in minimalist urban pads: Troll Holes. These young male internet trolls don't have jobs, don't have friends, and don't have lives, so they don't need all the amenities required of hipsterdom. They live online. So we've designed small, windowless one-room underground units with high-speed internet access, so they can spend all their time launching anonymous attacks on the recalcitrant NIMBYs who are such a thorn in the side of the City and developers. The City can subsidize  rents in these Holes, for these young wits are providing an important service to local government. 

We've already cleared the neighborhood of annoying minorities who are always protesting for some lame reason or the other. In the big scheme of building the great metropolis, their lives certainly don't matter. And the poor? They're already on the streets or out in suburban ghettoes. Everyone else can pay up or move out.

 A-hole online in a Troll Hole

URIAH HEEP IV: Great plan, Phil! Now, I’d like to congratulate Minneapolis on the fine job the government has done in converting antiquated cow-town Uptown into a wonder of urban planning. Uptown is very much like our awesomely hip Ro-dense Zone. Thirty years ago we threw out all the bozo small businesses there.  We used tax increment financing and got subsidies by selling the Feds on how the area was blighted. Man, what suckers! It’s taken 30 years, but now we have exactly what we wanted: a place for hipsters, yuppies, bros and suburbanites to party till they puke.

PHILLIP SPACE: Well, friends, it's been fun, but we gotta run. I need to check out several building sites to be bulldozed, and I trust that Mal and Uriah here will keep up the good work running interference for us architects and our developer employers. [Applause]  And remember, as a famous German once said, "The victor will never be asked if he told the truth."

                 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
                                             Praise be to Nero's Neptune.
                                             The Titanic sails at dawn.
                                              Everybody's shouting,
                                              'Which side are you on?'
                                                      --Bob Dylan, "Desolation Row"  1965

                                                   
                             With a tip of the hat to Harry Sinclair Lewis of Gopher Prairie, MN.                                                   

--T.B.

Once Upon a Time

. . .there was an old streetcar suburb located just beyond downtown Minneapolis. It began its life in the 1880s with the arrival of Thomas Lowry's public transportation system, the horse-drawn streetcar lines. In 1884 new tracks were laid from the urban core southwards, past Lowry's mansion on the east slope of what is now known as Lowry Hill, down Lyndale Avenue, turning west onto 27th Street, then south onto Dupont Avenue.

A Minneapolis horse-drawn streetcar.

With the streetcar line came a host of builders who began platting and developing lots on and around the tracks. Before that, farms and fields filled the landscape east of the swamp that was later dredged to form Lake of the Isles. The building frenzy that ensued in the mid-1880s and ended with World War I filled the neighborhood with middle- and upper-middle-class homes. The designs of these large, handsome houses reflected the changing architectural fancies of the time: the playful Queen Anne, the decorous Colonial Revival, and the scaled-down, cozy Prairie School.

Victorian houses on the 2100 block of Hennepin Avenue South in the early 1900s.

The Depression brought major changes to the housing stock of the neighborhood. Some large, old residences became boarding and rooming houses; single-family homes were often occupied by multiple generations. In 1963 the City rezoned the neighborhood to allow the construction of two-and-a-half-story walkup apartment buildings. Scores of houses were wrecked; gardens and orchards became parking lots. The north-south streets were made into "paired one-way commuter corridors" to allow downtown workers coming from the south to speed through the neighborhood.

2747 Dupont Avenue S., a typical Wedge walkup apartment building of the 1960s, now condos.

A number of  residents, both established and newly arrived, grew alarmed at these City-made changes affecting all aspects of neighborhood life. The neighborhood took on a new identity as the Wedge. In 1970 these residents banded together to form the Lowry Hill East Neighborhood Association (LHENA) as a forum for discussing neighborhood concerns, a vehicle for solving problems, and a means of promoting community life.  As a result of their efforts, the core of the neighborhood was down-zoned to R-2, allowing only new single-family and duplex apartments. The one-way racetracks were turned back to two-way streets, with direct access from Hennepin Avenue cut off.

But the periphery of the Wedge remained zoned commercial or multiple-unit housing (R-6). Forty years later, with the encouragement of the City, developers again turned their attention to the Wedge. The entire commercial corridor along the former railroad tracks was cleared, the old buildings replaced with luxury condos and apartment buildings. When that area was filled, developers began eyeing the residential area zoned R-6. Aided by City Hall, the wrecking began.To date, five Wedge houses have been demolished. with another one slated to go down soon.  In the R-6 area, many properties are worth more as vacant land than with the buildings sitting on them. Predatory investors are buying up these hot Wedge properties in the expectation that they will be continue to get the backing and variances from City Hall they need to put in new higher-density luxury housing. This process will continue as long as developers own City government and/or the luxury housing market in Minneapolis tanks.

An ad welcoming "tarts" to the new Lime apartment complex on Lyndale Avenue South, 2013

For me, the most unfortunate part of the transition has been the loss of community spirit in the Wedge. LHENA meetings have become tense, filled with factional disputes. High-density advocate trolls make vicious ad hominem online attacks against those who don't agree with them. Citizens who speak critically of  development proposals at City Hall get ignored, or worse yet, sneered at. Forget dialogue.

The frenzy and debate surrounding the current candidates for president underscore for me just how weary Americans are becoming of a political process that seems rigged for the Establishment. From both right and left, American voters are speaking out against the business-as-usual which is part of every level of government.  We can't change the past, but we can make changes for the future.

Owner Sheldon Strom removing the asbestos siding on 2116 Bryant Ave. S., 1976

By telling the story of how residents came together four decades ago to make a decaying urban neighborhood into the sassy, funky Wedge, I hope to spur vigorous discussion about how we can best manage change in Minneapolis neighborhoods. It certainly won't be done by wringing our hands and talking about the Good Old Days. And it won't be done by getting involved in the so-called "citizen participation process."

Do we sit around and watch the march of the faux-urbanist developers, or do we stand up and get cracking? Time will tell.

“Community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world where people so often either ignore or fight each other. It is a sign that we don't need a lot of money to be happy--in fact, the opposite.”
―Jean Vanier, "Community and Growth"

 --T.B.