Mose Durst Ph.D.
"There are many good books focused on the theme of sustainability and cities. However, very few books examine how the three sectors of organizational life in a city -- the private, government, and non-profit -- work toward sustainability in one particular city. Oakland, California: Toward a Sustainable City identifies some of the best projects, practices, and people who are contributing to the present and future sustainability of Oakland. Although the focus of the book might seem local -- Oakland, California -- the projects and practices are ones that can be replicable in any city. The book is unique also in identifying how religious organizations, that responded slowly to environmental issues, are very much involved in the sustainability of a city. Finally, the book identifies practices in schools that can help young people develop the good character to improve the quality of life in a city."
Some of the chapters in the book discuss green design, green business, and green building; sprawl versus the compact city; the automobile-dependent versus the pedestrian-centered city; affordable housing and homelessness; rebuilding community; and utility bicycling.
Mose Durst, Ph.D. is currently the co-founder and Chairman of The Principled Academy in San Leandro, California, the city adjacent to Oakland. He was for many years the President of Project Volunteer in Oakland, a food bank and community service organization. He has been a professor at Laney College in Oakland; the Senior Director of the Global Economics Action Institute; and he has written six books and two children’s books, included such titles as Essays Toward a Principled Economics; Shakespeare’s Plays; and Principled Education. He lives with his wife in Berkeley, California.
The Self-Reliant House and Environmental Education Center
A hidden jewel of environmental education can be found in the hills of Oakland at Merritt College. In Amsterdam and other European cities, there are model houses to demonstrate various aspects of sustainability. In Oakland there are numerous buildings that exhibit energy efficiency, green building materials, and waste recycling, but there is only one place to learn about and experience a fully integrated model. This is the Self-Reliant House and Environmental Education Center at Merritt College, a source of inspiration and education.
For more than twenty years the college has been creating a work-in-progress toward the ideal sustainable house and garden. From the outside it looks like a suburban home, and the interior too appears fairly average, like a typical middle-class residence that’s been cleared of furniture and made into an office, a reference center, and a demonstration laboratory. But while the interiors of most homes remain more or less fixed, the sustainable house is constantly being adapted to new environmentally safe products; recycled materials are added as they become available, and novel techniques for increasing energy efficiency are brought into play. The Self-Reliant House is a structure that seems to be learning new things, just as a truly sound business is always learning as it looks for better ways to reduce waste and integrate more creatively with the environment.
Robin Freeman, the current director of Merritt College’s environmental program, has worked on this demonstration house along with many other clever people, many of them volunteers. Since its inception in 1982, the Self-Reliant House has been the centerpiece of the college’s program. Students, or visitors like myself, learn very quickly from Mr. Freeman, as he explains various aspects of the building, that sustainability is a concept involving numerous disciplines.
He points to the smooth floor tiles: they are resurrected glass bottles. We walk over to the kitchen area, which has the look of a normal suburban kitchen, and he indicates the cabinets: they are made from reused wood. He opens the door to the bathroom and points to the linoleum floor, made from linseed oil and burlap, and the water-efficient one-gallon flush toilet. In the office area, several faculty members are seated at computers that are powered by solar photovoltaic panels. Overall, the house’s interior is comfortably warm and bright, even on a cool Bay Area day, and we look up at the large windows facing south to capture the sun’s rays.
We walk out the front door and Freeman mentions the garden fence, which is made of recycled plastic and wood. A large barrel collects rainwater from the roof, and a 120-degree composter produces soil free of pathogens. The organic garden is the habitat of hosts of related things: flowers, fruit trees, vegetables, and drought-tolerant plants that shelter gangs of tiny scurrying native wildlife.
We return to the house and sit on chairs that, like most of the furniture in the house, have been reprieved from landfill graveyards. Along the walls are poster-like displays of eco-friendly building materials that can be alternatives to the expensive and toxic substances used in much construction and home remodeling. A small research library is tucked away in one quarter of the room, and Freeman offers me some of the curriculum material that forms the basis of various courses in his program.
As I browse through the syllabus of an urban ecology course, I note several homework assignments. “Choose a planning condition in your living or working neighborhood which you would like to see improved and [explain how you would improve it].” A second task has direct bearing on the college: “Help organize a Sustainable Site Ecological Design Development Project for Merritt ‘surplus land’ parking lot B. Work with any creek or watershed organization.” These practical assignments give students the training for placement in jobs in the fields of environmental, urban, and product design. Since Merritt is a community college with many older students who are learning new skills for a new economy, the environmental arena is of special importance. This is where ecology, equity and economic efficiency meet.
Merritt’s course normally enrolls between 100 and 150 students each year, and Freeman provides me with several reports that lay out the burgeoning field of environmental occupations. If the United States is one of the gross violators of the environment, it is also the nation that has produced some of the most effective tools to prevent its degradation. From such areas as waste management, renewable energy, landscape restoration, and organic agriculture, new technologies and new occupations offer hopes for restoration combined with higher standards of living. Organic agriculture, for example, has become a multibillion-dollar business in America, and it is just in its infancy. Tens of thousands of jobs will open to qualified students in this field alone.
Energy
When Jerry Brown was governor of California, he emphasized the need for original approaches to the practical problems that beset us. His state architect, Sim Van der Ryn, who went on to become a major figure in the California green movement, provided the governor with plans for solar power in government buildings, as well as other ideas for better energy efficiency through sophisticated but sensible methods. Governor Brown was able to pass legislation that created some of the major energy-efficient buildings in Sacramento.
In his incarnation as mayor of Oakland, Brown has continued to promote this type of project, appointing Randy Hayes as his sustainability director. I meet Mr. Hayes at his desk, which is only a few feet from the mayor’s office. He says that Brown continues to take alternative solutions to the energy problem very seriously indeed. A solar program has already begun, and in the next two years (2004–2005) “Oakland will put 5 megawatts of solar on our houses and businesses,” enough energy to power 5,000 houses. With improved energy efficiency comes improved economic competitiveness, they believe, and with the resulting growth comes the blessing of more employment.
He also tells me that the mayor wants Oakland to be one of America’s hydrogen cities, where hydrogen use will be combined with solar power and the San Francisco Bay’s “power of the tides.” In a fact sheet he offers to me, I read how Oakland “can generate the equivalent of at least 7 giant power plants with tide power from the bay.” Jerry Brown has often been regarded as essentially a visionary, but it’s obvious that the people he has placed in positions of authority are down-to-earth as well as dedicated.
The same fact sheet points out, impressively enough, that the City of Oakland has “installed energy-saving equipment in 21 city facilities” at a savings of $31,000 per year. “Approximately 15% of the City’s fleet is powered by alternative fuels,” and Hayes expects this to increase significantly in the next few years. Finally, “Oakland has applied to the California Fuel Cell Partnership to be a fleet demonstration site for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.”
Beyond the mayor’s office, city officials from various departments have gotten the message that energy conservation is a priority. When I talk with Scott Wentworth, engineering honcho of Oakland’s Energy Section, he outlines three main purposes of his work: (1) To collaborate with businesses and builders in the private sector and to make them aware that a partnership with the city works to everyone’s advantage; (2) To illustrate that energy efficiency is directly related to economic profitability; (3) To design computer-modeled scenarios that estimate payoffs from various energy plans.
Mr. Wentworth’s department reviews energy use in city projects, and in an e-mail he sends me I gather that even the smallest light bulb can be assessed for efficiency: “Roughly 1.7 million of the City’s 2.7 million square feet of facilities have been retrofitted or designed to include aggressive energy efficiency.” Oakland’s streetlights have been replaced with better equipment; the budget is routinely evaluated for energy savings; and the Public Works Agency is similarly monitored. And the energy department doesn’t forget to promote “cost-effective solar power” for residential projects, also.
