Category: Climate change & energy

CSG in the News: Editorial: A Falls Church Example Of ‘Smart Growth’

Posted on by Cheryl Cort

Editorial: An F.C. Example Of ‘Smart Growth’

 by FCNP.com, Falls Church News-Press

Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the prestigious Coalition for Smarter Growth, last weekend chose to conduct one of his organization’s famous walking tours in the City of Falls Church, focusing in the recently-completed cottages project developed by City developer Bob Young, chair of the City’s Economic Development Authority, and his team. The cottages were identified by Schwartz’s group as important in the wider conversation about “sustainable growth” because they represent a departure from the prevailing notion of what single detached homes should look like and offer to the demographic trends of tomorrow….

The cottages project, he added, “Point the way to the potential for smaller homes, and especially duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes, to provide more options with greater affordability…Creating more walkable, transit-oriented communities is how we can grow sustainability, provide the homes we need and fight climate change.”

So, clearly, where the City can “lead by example” would be in the area of instituting the kinds of planning and zoning rules changes that will have the effect of incentivizing shifting development priorities in just that direction.

View the full commentary in the Falls Church News-Press here.

Testimony on Need to Set a Target for Reducing CO2 Emissions from Transportation

Posted on by Candace Wilkinson

Recent reports show sea level rise will contribute to flooding of our Monumental Core. Reports on the impacts of climate change are increasingly dire. We are the nation’s capital, the capital of the most powerful nation the world has ever known, and this region is collectively wealthier than 99% of the rest of the world. If we don’t lead on this issue from this region, who will? What will it take to get the leadership we need?

 

 

Testimony Concerning the Transportation Gap to CEEPC and MWAQC Committees

Posted on by Candace Wilkinson

The 2014 CLRP performance assessment makes clear that while COG’s regional climate goal is to reduce emissions 80% by 2050 below 2005 levels, that the list of regional transportation projects, if built, will cause emissions to rise rather than fall. We have on our hands a Transportation Emissions Gap – a major discrepancy between our goals, and our regional plans. Our question is, how can we work together to close that gap now? Because transportation decision take so long to implement, getting started now is critical to make the changes needed.

 

Testimony to the TPB re Climate Change and the CLRP Update

Posted on by Nick Ruiz

Over the past three years and particularly since last summer, the TPB has asked the staff to review CLRP updates for conformance with the goals of Region Forward, the COG Climate Report, Access for All, and the Regional Transportation Priorities Plan. The COG staff, elected officials and a wide range of stakeholders have committed significant time and resources into developing these plans and associated goals.

Letter to TPB Regarding the 2014 CLRP Update

Posted on by Nick Ruiz

Dear Chairman Wojahn and Members of the Transportation Planning Board:
Please accept the following comments on the draft 2014 update to the Constrained Long Range Plan (CLRP). The Coalition for Smarter Growth (CSG) urges the Transportation Planning Board (TPB) to fundamentally reevaluate the entire Constrained Long Range Plan this year in order to meet the Council of Governments’ (COG) own goals, including addressing climate change and meeting ever-stricter air quality standards for human health. This reevaluation should include the ability to remove projects which do not support your goals, including allowing for shifting funds to transit and the internal connectivity needs of the mixed-use, walkable and transit-oriented activity centers to which you have committed.

DC region’s new long-range plan fail to meet its own climate goals

Posted on by Nick Ruiz

If sea levels rise just one foot in the Washington, DC, area, nearly 1,700 homes could be lost. Is the region’s transportation planning agency doing enough to stop that from happening? Several environmental and smart-growth organizations in the region are saying no. Seventeen groups have signed on to a letter, being delivered today, urging the agency to take action. The comment period on the agency’s latest long-range transportation plan closes tomorrow.

The Constrained Long Range Plan update must address regional climate change goals

Posted on by Nick Ruiz

The undersigned organizations call on the National Capital Transportation Planning Board (TPB) to commit to full disclosure of the forecasted climate change impact of the 2014 Constrained Long Range Plan (CLRP), and to take action to align the CLRP with the region’s climate change goals. One of the most important national and
multi-national public policy issues of our time, climate change must be tackled by every city, county, region, state, and nation. Given that our region has already adopted important goals, it is past time to begin implementing them.

Principles Linking Smart Growth & Stormwater

Posted on by acustis

eams that feed it. Stormwater runoff from farms and development gouges out streams and pours pollutants such as farm and lawn fertilizers, livestock waste, and oil and gasoline from cars and trucks into the very water we drink and depend on for food and recreation. As our communities have spread out and our daily activities have become increasingly separated and car-dependent, we have consumed thousands of acres of forest and farm land for parking lots, roads and highways to accommodate our vehicles. This explosive increase in land consumption for paved or impervious surface has exacerbated and continues to exacerbate the stormwater runoff problem throughout the Chesapeake region.