The Atlantic Cities:

“What the Urban Coyote Can Teach Us About Nature in Cities

CHARLES R. WOLFE. FEB 12, 2013

Successful integration of nature and the city is a hallmark of sustainability. Sometimes it occurs without effort or provocation, while other times it results from projects or plans. In both instances, the natural and artificial merge, morph and redefine urban reality going forward.

Last week, on a Seattle winter evening, my dog and I stood at a neighborhood street corner in a spontaneous meeting with an urban coyote who, for several moments, owned my neighborhood pavement with conviction. Upon rounding a corner and coming face-to-face, the coyote cast a long stare (with those “I am not a pet” eyes I once saw in Africa), turned around, and moved on. For this feral, walkable urbanist, the city sidewalk was clearly as customary a migration route as wooded paths or the open plain.

Several recent articles address the growing presence of coyotes in urban areas as an indicator of changing relationships between the city and larger, surrounding ecosystems. Whether considered pests or admirable interlopers, they are increasingly sharing (PDF) our places and spaces.

A landscape architect friend explained this integration as a merger of surrounding nature with urban culture and physical form, two things that need not be as distinct as we might expect. In my recent experience, no longer separate from the city, an animal corridor aligned with the sidewalk, a mainstay of urban transportation. I saw a spontaneous integration of nature and the city without any “urban sustainability plan” in place to allow indigenous wildlife safe passage on city streets.”

Photo: Charles R. Wolfe

“That Parking Spot In Front of Your House Doesn’t Belong to You

A-P Hurd. OCtober 16, 2012

I live on a single family residential street in Seattle, and in the evenings, it looks like this:

This makes me wonder sometimes: why is the city in the business of paving and maintaining three lanes of street when only one of them is actually moving cars? In fact, many people in my neighborhood have a driveway or a garage (and zoning requires on-site parking for any new construction) but they still choose to park in the street, presumably so they can use their garage for something else.

Next obvious question: Why should local zoning require on-site parking when hardly any one is using their on-site parking for parking?

Third, and perhaps most interesting question: If we think on-site parking has better uses than parking, could we elect to use our street parking for better uses as well?

Think about it. Most of us in single family neighborhoods have a proprietary relationship with the street parking spot in front of their house. We think: “someone is parked in MY spot.” This is understandable on a logical level when there is a foot of snow outside and someone has shoveled out a spot, but it’s much less understandable when it’s just part of the city right-of-way.

Given that people do have this relationship with the parking spot in front of their house, what if we enabled them to do something other than park there? Some compact neighborhoods have taken to putting bike corrals or patios in parking spots, provided a reasonable percentage of the neighbors agree

But what if we could do this, and more, in single family neighborhoods?

The transformation of street parking in single family neighborhoods could make even more sense since there is more often room to spare in those parking lanes. Not to mention that if you have zero, or even one car per household, you’re not really allowed to do anything else with that space, so you’re losing out relative to your multi-car neighbors, which isn’t really fair.

What if cities allowed residential blocks to apply to convert those parking lanes to whatever they wanted to, including cottages, bike lanes, extra garden space, public p-patches or dedicated car-share parking? Even better, what if our cash-strapped cities started monetizing the value in those two lanes and allowing neighborhoods to do whatever they wanted (including parking there) as long as they rented out the space, and generally agreed on a plan? The drive lanes in the middle of the street would be conserved, we might find ourselves with more neighborhood parks, or perhaps more little cottages permeating the urban fabric. We might even find new neighborhood amenities in these spaces that we hadn’t even thought of.”

Via: The Atlantic Cities

Photo; Noreiga Street Parklet, San Francisco: designed by Matarozzi Pelsinger Builders, Photo by Wells Campbell Photography

“Seattle, Washington’s Rain Wise Program: Making Managing On-Site Stormwater Easy

Akua Nyame-Mensah. June 25, 2012

Cities across the United States are turning to property owners to help reduce the amount of stormwater runoff making its way into sewers and stormwater drains. In Seattle, Washington, the Residential RainWise Program aims to reduce the impact of stormwater running off of private impervious surfaces in the city by providing homeowners with resources and incentives to implement low-cost green infrastructure techniques to mitigate stormwater.

By appealing to property owners, the city hopes RainWise property interventions will “reduce flooding, protect property and restore … waters for people and wildlife.” The program aims to encourage property owners to capture rainwater, reduce impervious surface, and “help the rain soak into the soil, just like it does in … native forests.”  The RainWise Program website makes it easy for residents to find the footprint of their property and select the appropriate RainWise intervention for their property from a list of recommendations.  The city has also developed a database of licensed contractors, engineers, and landscape architects to help residents with installing interventions, such as rain gardens and cisterns that require a permit.

Currently there is a rebate program for residents based on the amount of square feet of roof runoff that is controlled by cisterns and rain gardens in select areas of the city that have combined sewer overflow issues. The city hopes to increase the area of the city that is eligible for these rebates.

As the cost of installing and maintaining traditional stormwater infrastructure, such as storm drains, continues to increase, cities like Seattle, Washington will continue to look for ways to encourage property owners to sustainably manage rainwater onsite.” 

Via: Global Site Plans

Image: 

Seattle Shows Cities the Way to Carbon Neutrality

“A little more than a year ago, the Seattle city council decided to make the city carbon-neutral by 2050. Few other cities in the world have committed to such an ambitious plan, and those that have, like Melbourne and Copenhagen, will rely heavily on purchasing carbon offsets, which Seattle will not do. With 40 years to bring its net emissions down to zero, the city hired a consulting group to draft a preliminary plan (via Think Progress) that lays out a road map for how major cities can reach carbon-neutral status.”