Sustainable Community Commons

Sustainability Now #23, July 12, 2020, with Len Beyea, addresses sustainable community planning in Santa Cruz and cities in general. Len is a semi-retired energy engineer and commissioning agent, former land-use planner, musician, Interfaith Minister, gardener, dancer, political and cultural commentator. He is host of the Wednesday broadcast of Talk of the Bay on KSQD and shares hosting of Border-Free Radio, which airs just before this time slot.

Len writes that “The modern city has grown up during the era of the automobile, resulting in sprawling land use, paving over of up to 60% of urban space, loss of productive farm and range lands, forests, and wetlands, destruction of riparian habitats, and increased runoff and erosion; while within the urban spaces offering a lack of walkable neighborhoods and real centers of social and civic engagements, financially unsustainable infrastructure, traffic jams, and almost total dependence on private motorized transportation for shopping, school, work and basic services.”

He addresses the current state of Santa Cruz County’s urbanized spaces and their unsustainable characteristics, principles of urban design for walkable neighborhoods and “new urbanism” that can bring our cities back into balance, visualization of a transition to more sustainable and inviting spaces for various local neighborhoods where we live, work, and engage socially, and exploration of the concrete and specific changes that can help get us there. You can read about attempts during the 1960s to turn Santa Cruz into an industrial city in “The plan to make Santa Cruz into Detroit and Los Angeles,” by Ross Eric Gibson in the Santa Cruz Sentinel. Another interesting publication about sustainable planning is “Civic Commons: Reimagining Our Cities’ Public Assets,” 2016.

Additional Resources

Local groups working on Santa Cruz area planning issues:

• Downtown Commons Advocates – https://downtowncommonsadvocates.weebly.com
• Campaign for Sustainable Transportation – http://sustainabletransportationsc.org

And further information about New Urbanism, walkable cities, transit-oriented development, etc (and this is a very partial list):

• Congress for the New Urbanism – http://www.cnu.org
• New Urbanism – http://www.newurbanism.org
• Articles, Events, and Resources on Sprawl Repair – http://sprawlrepair.com
• Strong Towns is an international movement that’s dedicated to making communities across the United States and Canada financially strong and resilient – https://www.strongtowns.org
• City Repair Project – https://cityrepair.org
• National Complete Streets Coalition  https://smartgrowthamerica.org/program/national-complete-streets-coalition/
• Original Green – http://www.originalgreen.org – this website emphasizes the importance of the collective wisdom of sustainability in contrast to technical fixes – the collective knowledge and traditions of vernacular architecture and land use that enabled our ancestors to survive and thrive without modern technology
• “Owned: A Tale of Two Americas” – https://www.ownedfilm.com
• Placemakers – We’re planners, urban designers, form-based code wranglers, storytellers, advisors and advocates. http://www.placemakers.com