Cool Communities 2.0 - A Retrofit Ramp-Up Initiative

Cool Communities 2.0

A Retrofit Ramp-Up Initiative

By Tom and Carol Braford with input from David Gershon and David Martin

Cool Communities 2.0 builds on the experience accumulated over 20 years working in over 200 communities worldwide, improving the lives and livelihoods of millions of people, building up sector by sector a comprehensive way to address the many challenges that stand between us and a sustainable civilization and planet.

The core of this work has focused on individuals living and working in communities and the impact that they can have on their quality of life through collaboration across their families, across the hall, across the street, across town, across the tracks and across all the other physical and societal barriers that divide us until ultimately we are connected across the world.

This application will “Show You How” by expanding the Cool Communities work in a specific place, the bi-state region surrounding St. Louis, Missouri, it can expand out around the world and back.

Given that the possibilities here could fill a book and we are limited to 20 pages, we will limit this proposal to a few innovations that fall squarely within the scope of the Retrofit Ramp-Up program and the reach of our collaborators in this undertaking.

These include but are not limited to initiatives we are calling Green Lining, Green Edging, Green Lighting, Green Banking, Green Faith, Green Offsets, Green Grubstakes, Green Porting and Show Me Green.

Green Lining

Years ago red lining killed communities.  Today a more insidious version is killing civilization and the planet.  Green Lining can turn the tide and bring back these communities and bring back civilization and the planet from the brink of disaster.  By incentivizing the greenest practices and behaviors we can reverse the effects of red lining and all its associated maladies and create a countervailing force to off set the effects of climate disruption, economic uncertainty and social fragmentation.  In a time when everything has fallen into the dichotomy of either two big to fail or expendable, bold comprehensive natives are called for.  Green Lining is such an initiative.

The City of St. Louis once boasted a population of close to 900,000 and is now at a third of that with aging infrastructure and much of the original building stock remaining.  The city and region are on the move and many innovative and creative state, regional and city programs have been implemented to spark a resurgence that is well underway.

Scattered complexes of vacant salvageable buildings remain and whole occupied and partly occupied neighborhoods that could benefit from energy conservation and renewable energy upgrades exist.  Green Lining creates a way to efficiently and effectively upgrade the entire residential building stock of the city over ten years by starting with concentrated, high quality, micro neighborhood scale upgrades using the urban ecovillage model as the mechanism.

Ecovillages, which in this case will all be LEED Platinum for Neighborhood Development, are typically made up of two or more contiguous cohousing neighborhoods, some commercial development and intensive agricultural amenities like CSA gardens, greenhouses and aquaculture and have proven to be socially, economically and environmentally sustainable.

Several shovel-ready ecovillage projects with the requisite 5 to 1 leverage in place have already been identified throughout the city and have been Green Lined by circling them with a green line on a map of the region and assigning a priority number based on the order in which they have joined the queue by committing to the green criteria of the program and demonstrating the prerequisite leverage.

The $75M in Retrofit Ramp-Up funds except for applicants’ cost will all go into a Green Line Revolving Loan Fund.  Developers of vacant properties who meet the criteria of the program, as well as home owners who join together with their neighbors to retrofit their occupied or partly occupied city block scale micro neighborhoods into urban ecovillages, will receive a spot in the Green Line queue on the same basis.  After the first three years of the program, individual homeowners will be able to apply for revolving fund loans on a 5 to 1 leverage basis as well.

Green Lining is expected to leverage the enabling state legislation and the establishment of PACE financing and other energy efficiency and renewable energy bond and tax credit based financing programs that will be broadly available from the beginning of the program regardless of whether or not participants want to be part of an ecovillage.

Green Lining is a collaboration among the City of St. Louis, Irresistible Community Builders, LLC, the State of the World Forum 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign and the Empowerment Institute, and is open to participation by other organizations that are able to commit to joining the collaboration in time to be included in the application.

Green Edging

If Green Lining is the third level or fruit, then Green Edging is the second level or branches and more accurately the leaves or green growing edge of the trees that make up the groves that we call neighborhoods.

Green Edging is a companion program for Green Lining that will focus initially on the neighborhoods surrounding Green Lined ecovillage projects. 

It is more than a parallel program, however, in that many synergies are created with the Green Lined ecovillage projects and neighborhoods immediately surrounding them and the extended neighborhoods and cities that in turn surround these first ring neighborhoods.

The first synergy is that Green Edging attempts to accomplish many of the same social, economic and ecological results as the ecovillage without going to the same level of rehab or intensity of planning and social organization that is required in successful ecovillage development.  Since at least the initial ecovillages are being developed utilizing vacant properties, later ones are expected to be retrofits of existing occupied city blocks with most if not all residents staying in place, so Green Edging is partly a strategy for identifying at least some early adopters who may choose to upgrade their present physical and social situations to ecovillage living and therefore are candidates as renters and buyers in these first ecovillages.  Energy savings and emissions reductions through both physical and social means are therefore significantly enhanced over the estimated 25% on the technology side and another 25% on the behavior change side of the equation.

Green Edging is based on the work of our collaborator on this project, David Gershon, founder and director of the Empowerment Institute which has established neighborhood Eco Teams that they consider second level behavior change strategies.  This basic approach has been used in over 200 communities effecting millions of people around the world.

The second synergy and the innovation here is that by creating Eco Teams in neighborhoods surrounding ecovillages we are counting on the modeling effect of this third order behavior change model to upgrade performance in the surrounding second order Eco Team in the first year at least in multifamily, mixed-income rental communities that typically surround the presently vacant building complexes that we are targeting as our first ecovillage sites. 

This is an innovation in that it reverses the typical redevelopment pattern that usually starts at a solid edge and works outward leading with mixed or low income rental development that is flipped to condos once subsides run out and the redeveloped neighborhood has been stabilized.

By putting the most technological and effective behavior change that incorporates development at the epicenter of blight and working back towards stabilized development, it provides a model that adjacent, low income renters can emulate and pass on with the help of the Eco Team approach to their condo and single family, owner occupied neighbors on the more stabilized side of the redevelopment thus reversing the direction of the growing edge.  That should accelerate the spread of the Eco Teams.  This should also have the added benefit of undermining the negative stereotype that low income people are wasteful of energy.

It will also have the effect of reversing the direction of increasing property values with values rising faster the closer you get to ecovillage epicenters.  This should also speed the spread of non-subsidized, retrofit ecovillages in established neighborhoods and a reversal of the NIMBY syndrome.  So now instead of opposing cohousing and ecovillage development as has happened in a few places, established stable neighborhoods are likely to begin competing to attract ecovillage retrofit upgrades.

This is necessary if cohousing and ecovillage development and their companion, Eco Team based upgrade development, are going to reach their full potential and become epidemic in a region, state and country and ultimately pandemic around the world.  Creating an epidemic of much greener living and ultimately a pandemic is essential if we are to meet our goal of 80% reduction in greenhouse emissions by 2020 in our region and beyond, which is the goal of Green Lining & Green Edging.

In order to achieve that, three things must happen.  We must demonstrate that cohousing / ecovillage retrofit and adaptive reuse redevelopment can result in technological and behavior change based energy savings / emissions reductions well beyond 80% in ten years and that this kind of redevelopment and adaptive reuse can become a mainstream option, i.e., the paradigm must shift.

Secondly, we must demonstrate that Eco Teams in conjunction with cohousing / ecovillage development can result in CO2 reductions in excess of 80% as well.  This is because although the Empowerment Institute has demonstrated that a three year approach can achieve an 85% penetration with reductions of up to 40% just on the behavior change side, that alone will not be sufficient to get us to our overall goal of 80% in the region.

The Empowerment Institute has further demonstrated that levels of participation beyond 85% are not practically achievable because there will always be at least 15% laggards in any market. 

Broadening this 85% level of penetration from residential housing to business, industry government and nonprofits is, of course, possible and reductions on the technological side are virtually unlimited.

Our overall strategy, therefore, is to maximize reductions on the behavior side, which is the lowest cost and quickest approach, and to make up the difference needed to get our 80% goal on the technology side. This roughly equates to a 40% savings on the behavior side and a 40% savings on the technological side over 10 years in the region.

Given that we know we are going to have at least 15% laggards on both sides of the equation we need to achieve at least 50% savings on the behavior change side and over 50% on the technology side.

Our strategy therefore will be first to concentrate on achieving 85% penetration for the Eco Teams in all sectors.

Our nonprofit, business, government and industrial collaborators will each seed their sectors with the Eco Team behavior change approach.  We are counting on this all in approach, stretch goals and friendly competition within each sector to see who can be the “biggest losers” when it comes to carbon reduction to get us to our goal of 85% penetration and an average reduction of 50% over ten years on the behavior side.

On the technology side we have a ten year stretch goal of 100 ecovillages or about say 10% market penetration for rehabbed and adaptive reuse housing in the region, plus say a 5% conversion of existing occupied housing to this model of social organization and technological upgrade.  We expect that these developments will be able to achieve reductions of 60 to 70% depending on if they are gut rehab or retrofit.  Our stretch goal therefore is 65%.

Unlike Eco Teams in other cities where the Empowerment Institute has started programs, teams in St. Louis will have access to resources through the financing and technology assistance programs leveraged by Green Edging and after three years by access to the Green Lining Revolving Loan Fund.  As a result, we are expecting 40 to 60% reductions within Eco Team communities for a stretch goal of 50% on the technology side.

We are also expecting a knock-on effect as the program expands by people not joining teams and technological laggards applying for loans and technological assistance as well.  Based on previous Empowerment Institute programs, we estimate an additional 10% reduction from this source which should make up for any shortfalls in other areas.

By year ten or sooner, we expect the Green Lining and Green Edging approach to tip and become epidemic in the region infecting the last holdout pockets of resistance in the region.  Repeating this approach in other regions will soon make Green Lining & Green Edging pandemic in the world, thus saving civilization and the planet.

Green Lighting

Green Lighting is a metaphor for the fact that the City of St. Louis is getting serious about being green and saving lots of green dollars for our citizens and giving them the green light to do the same for themselves and each other and their communities.

It is also an actual program that will save the taxpayers of St. Louis millions of dollars over the next ten years and set the stage for sustainable lifestyles and economies in the city and region.

It will start out by addressing street lighting and other currently inefficient public utilities using innovative bond financing mechanisms.

Green Banking

Green Banking will prioritize CRA lending to Retrofit Ramp-Up projects and will start a Bike Friendly Banking campaign in St. Louis to better serve customers who wish to ride bicycles to their local branch banks.

Green Faith

Green Faith will build on the EPA Energy Star for Congregations program in St. Louis.  Congregations will issue Green Faith Bonds to pay for the upgrades in physical plants and buildings that will be paid back out of savings generated.  Bonds will be structured so that, as technology advances, additional upgrades can be made resulting in further savings and increases in yields to bondholders.

Green Offsets

Green Offsets is the opportunity for people in our region to have their Carbon Offsets go directly to support the greening of our region through the expansion of greenways and community gardens throughout the region.

Green Grubstakes

Green Grubstakes is a web based application that connects small green entrepreneurs directly with lenders in much the same way the micro lending site, Kiva, does.  During the grant period we will limit our reach to the St. Louis region and expand outward after three years.  Loans will be limited to products and services that have the potential to significantly cut carbon emissions.

Green Porting

Green Porting addresses the huge challenge of making transportation in our region and beyond more sustainable.  Given St. Louis’ position at the center of the country in the traditional breadbasket of the world that is also a center for ground, rail and barge transport as well, a move is well underway to make us a hub for air transport to and from the developing world with processed agricultural products as the primary export from our region.

China is expected to be our biggest trading partner initially with Lambert International Airport in St. Louis as the hub, and the rest of the developing world to follow with Mid America Airport in Illinois as the hub.  By linking this trend to biofuels production in the region as a replacement for jet fuel and filter technology to capture the particulate carbon produced, the St. Louis region will secure a sustainable source of jobs and revenue that is not dependent on the vagaries of fossil fuels.

By encouraging a trend to more sustainable agriculture practices in the region, our position as sustainable breadbasket to the world will be further solidified.

Within the St. Louis region, development corridors will be enhanced by the development of dedicated streets for bus traffic following the Curitiba model of large accordion busses, loading platforms and dedicated streets.

A single north-south route connecting to the multimodal transportation center in downtown St. Louis will be added during the grant period with other routes to follow.  Public transportation connections going east and west are passable but sorely lacking going north and south, and the cost of additional light rail at this time is prohibitive.  The Curitiba model is a cost effective alternative and biodiesel powered busses could strengthen the demand for this regionally produced product.

Show Me Green

The Cool Communities movement is now well established around the country and is making inroads around the world, most recently with the adaptation of the strategy for carbon reduction by the Low Carbon Cities movement in China, so the time has come to broaden and deepen this highly effective movement. 

Show Me Green will do that by modeling all the other social, technological and financial innovations listed above along with all the other innovations too numerous to mention and yet undiscovered innovations that will certainly come out of the implementation of this proposal.  This is because one of our other collaborators, the State of the World Forum, is making this project an integral part of their strategy to reduce climate emissions by 80% by 2020 and to facilitate the establishment of sustainable lifestyles and economies in their 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign.

Green Biz

Many of the Ecovillage sites, as mentioned earlier, will include some commercial activity.  Because of their location or scale, however, some of the collaborating projects in this application will focus exclusively on business and commerce.  Others will include some residential redevelopment, especially in cases where residential over retail is the existing pattern.

Manufacturing and marketing operations will provide products and services that can be incorporated across the realm of scalable projects included in this application.  All will include many of the social and technological innovations included throughout the application.

The Clean Green Dozen Revolving Loan Fund

The Empowerment Zone, in conjunction with our other major collaborators, has identified a dozen grassroots organizations that are already playing an essential role in stabilizing and maintaining the communities that they serve and are interested in greening up that role.  The Empowerment Zone is setting aside a portion of the Retrofit Ramp-Up funds that of organizations with annual operating budgets of under $1 million per year will be able to apply for grants up to $75,000 to help fund operations, as well as a revolving loan fund for loans of up to $20,000 for an organization to cover program development costs.

This circle of committed grassroots organizations that form the backbone of any community empowerment movement will be expanded as the first round of grants and loans are paid off.  A list of expected first round recipients, along with a brief description of the role each will play in implementing and fulfilling on the goals of Cool Communities 2.0 and a concrete plan for paying back the loans within three years will be included in the application.  Members of the group that are successful will also assist in identifying future recipients much in the way that microcredit lending circles and Mutual Housing tenant selection communities operate.