Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1132

Larry Beasley and Jonathan Barnett are about to start teaching a free online course through the University of British Columbia edX called: Ecodesign for Cities and Suburbs . It starts April 4, 2017 and runs for 6 weeks.

Here’s what you’ll learn (taken verbatim from edx.org):

• The principles of ecodesign and why it is important as a response to the current disorganized urban growth model
  

• Ways to adapt to a changing climate, and ways to mitigate climate change locally
  

• Policies to balance auto and airplane transportation with walking, cycling, transit and high-speed rail
  

• Ways of designing urban and suburban regulations to make cities more livable and environmentally compatible
  

• Strategies for designing and managing the public realm, plus innovative arrangements and processes for implementing ecodesign
  

The course is geared toward urbanists from all over the world and so the case studies will be global in nature. You can also participate as actively or passively as you’d like. Though, if you’d like to get a certificate, then you need to fully participate.

What immediately stood out for me was the focus on both cities and suburbs. In many ways the suburbs are a more challenging problem to solve. So I hope there’s a good amount of focus on that context.

Beasley was formerly co-director of planning at the City of Vancouver and Barnett is a professor of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania (my alma mater). It should be an interesting course.

Yesterday the New York Times reported on the fact that Donald Trump has ordered the removal of most of Barack Obama’s policies intended to fight climate change. 

(Interestingly enough, the Editorial refers to Donald Trump as simply Donald Trump, but it refers to Barack Obama as President Barack Obama.)

Here’s a sampling of what they had to say :

It was dismaying also because it repudiated the rock-solid scientific consensus that without swift action the consequences of climate change — rising seas, more devastating droughts, widespread species extinction — are likely to get steadily worse. It was dismaying because it reaffirmed the administration’s support for older, dirtier energy sources when all the economic momentum and new investment lies with newer, cleaner forms of energy. It was dismaying because it flew in the face of widespread public support for environmental protection — including the pleas of the executives of hundreds of major American corporations who fear that without energy innovation their costs will rise and their competitive edge over foreign companies will be lost.

This is certainly frustrating, but as they mention in the article, it is not unexpected.

San Francisco has something known as the Commission Guide for Formula Retail . Formula retail = chain store. Formula retail uses are regulated by the San Francisco Planning Code. 

The intent behind the guide is really twofold: It’s to help assess the appropriateness of chain store uses in specific locations and it’s to help counter their homogenizing force on neighborhoods.

This, of course, is a perennial tension for city builders. The challenge is that formula retailers usually have the ability to pay higher rents compared to smaller independent businesses. And so that’s who landlords will often lease to.

If you’re the kind of person who enjoys reading esoteric planning documents, then consider incorporating the above SF commission guide into your bedtime reading repertoire.