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The Rebirth of Green America June 6, 2004 Two decades ago, I visited Michael Corbett in the future. Corbett and his wife, Judy, bought 70 acres of tomato fields in the college town of Davis in 1976. There, they built Village Homes, the first fully solar-powered housing development in America and one of the modern world's first examples of green urbanism. As Corbett escorted me around this 200-home neighborhood, I was struck by the inside-out nature of the place. In Village Homes, garages were tucked out of sight; homes pointed inward, toward open green space, walkways and bike paths. In a typical planned community, you would find martially trimmed postage-stamp yards and covenants that prohibit or restrict variables on the developer's original theme. At Village Homes, I saw a profusion of flowers and vegetable gardens. On roofs, grapevines thickened in the summer, providing shade, and thinned in the winter, letting the sun's rays through. Residents were producing nearly as much edible food as the original farmer had. Instead of a gate or wall, this community was surrounded by orchards. Corbett's teenage daughter, Lisa, elaborated, "We've got a group of kids called 'the harvesters.' The orchards are set aside for the kids; we go out and pick the nuts and make money and sell them at a farmer's market at the gazebo in the center of the village." By nearly every measure, except one, Village Home succeeded. From the time Village Homes was launched, people lined up to move in. Among them: liberals, conservatives, libertarians (including economist Milton Friedman's daughter); this was never a counterculture commune. Last year, a professor of Environmental Science at UC Davis told CBS's Charles Osgood that the typical Village Homes resident's energy bill was a third to a half paid by residents in surrounding neighborhoods. Developers and architects from around the world visited Village Homes. And as the years passed, similar eco-communities started springing up across parts of Western Europe, where green design is now considered mainstream. In America, however, no commercial developer replicated the Village Homes concept, a fact that deeply disappoints Corbett. Still, the morning is young. Timothy Beatley, a professor at the University of Virginia and author of "Green Urbanism" and the new book "Native to Nowhere: Sustaining Home and Community in a Global Age," reports an array of new U.S. experiments in green urbanism. The city of Davis now requires new developments to be connected to a greenway/bikeway system that extends through the city. "An important objective is that elementary school children be able to travel by bike from their homes to schools and parks without having to cross major roads," according to Beatley. Under the leadership of Mayor Richard Daley, Chicago has launched a campaign to recreate wildlife habitat, greenways, stream corridors and other natural land. Daley's goal: make Chicago the greenest city in the nation. In Oregon, Portland's Greenspaces program calls for the creation of a regional system of parks, natural areas, greenways and trails for wildlife and people. A 1997 study by Portland State University students identified that a third of the downtown's roofs could be converted to "greenroof" design, a covering of vegetation that offers environmental and aesthetic advantages. This rooftop area could potentially reduce the volume of combined sewer overflow by up to 15 percent, achieving a huge savings to the city. Green architecture is catching on. In San Bruno, the new Gap Inc. office has a greenroof of native grasses and wildflowers "which undulates like the surrounding green hills," according to Architecture Week. The roof reduces sound transmission by up to 50 decibels. In Utah, the new 20,000-seat Conference Center for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is capped by a greenroof. In Michigan, designers of a Herman Miller furniture factory constructed a wetlands system for collecting and treating storm water runoff. The most ambitious green building of all is the new Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies, at Oberlin College in Ohio, according to Beatley. Designed to be disconnected from the outside power grid, the building treats its own wastewater and generates its own power through a combination of southern orientation, rooftop photovoltaics, geothermal pumps, and energy conservation. Carpet tiles, replaced in future decades, will be returned and recycled at the end of their useful life. As one designer put it, the Oberlin building "comes closest to achieving the metaphor of a structure functioning like a tree." Perhaps the most moving representation of green urbanism was offered last month by The New York Times, when it presented the proposals of several architectural firms to green part of ground zero at the World Trade Center site. The proposals provided "ample proof of the power of landscape to transform a scarred and haunted place," according to the Times. Designers would turn the crater into a tree nursery, "a memorial arboretum – a large sunken garden of extraordinary tree specimens, flowers and wildlife from all over the world." Trees germinated there would be carried along "the same routes once traveled by daily commuters from the World Trade Center on their way home," to be planted in neighbors and parks throughout the city. That serious consideration is given to such ideas today speaks well of Mike and Judy Corbett's vision, which they struggled to build in that tomato field so many years ago. Next Sunday: San Diego's Green Visionaries. Louv can be reached via e-mail at rlouv@cts.com or via www.thefuturesedge.com. Find this article at: |
