Green Village Consulting

My latest piece for Empire State Future is about the astonishing over-retailing of Upstate New York. Despite flat or even negative population growth in Upstate’s regions, new retail is coming on line at a steady clip. Most of this new retail is chain/franchise and big box stores. For example: despite having no more doughnut eaters in Greater Rochester, the Canadian  doughnut chain Tim Horton’s has opened 33 outlets.

It is this kind of over-development that is causing trouble for Upstate’s regions and communities, but is still seen by local government officials as positive economic development that creates jobs and tax revenue. The truth is that the big box and chain stores simply draw market share from others in the region, which results in vacant property and lost jobs. Empire State Future is working hard to show communities that this kind of development is a zero-sum game at best.

Read “Retail overabundance blights, strains New York’s regions at www.empirestatefuture.org

Here’s a link to a piece I recently wrote for Empire State Future, New York’s statewide smart growth advocacy organization.  This piece was inspired by my observation that most people sincerely working to “go green” don’t have the key piece of this quest plugged into their consciousness and actions.

Read the piece at  http://www.empirestatefuture.org/geography/state/the-big-missing-piece/

From this grand, never-ending title, you might get the sense that I had something to do with this site.

Well, I did! I proudly assisted the development of Empire State Future’s new web site, www.empirestatefuture.org. Empire State Future is New York State’s first and only statewide smart growth advocacy and education organization, now in its fourth year. While I am proud to assist the good and important work of ESF over three years now, I am also proud (once again!) to say that I am a co-founder of this organization, which has made quite an impact for a very young organization:  already, ESF has played a leading role in passage of a landmark smart-growth bill into New York State law. This Public Infrastructure Priority Act instructs state agencies and authorities to carefully screen their infrastructure spending plans to be sure that those dollars enable smart growth and not sprawl. Today, ESF is aggressively working to move two other key bills– Complete Streets and Land Banking Authority–into law.

Empire State Future has a new three-dimensional place, as well as a new virtual home. Earlier this year, ESF opened offices on Washington Street in Albany, within a good six-iron of the Capital complex.

Join me and Empire State Future as we work to halt sprawl and actualize smart growth and sustainable communities across New York!

Thanks to the user friendliness of Flickr, I’ve uploaded a couple of hundred of my favorite “smart growth” and livable communities photographs. I’ve taken these photos over the last two decades, and have compiled them for Empire State Future, a New York-statewide smart growth organization. As you’ll see, the pictures feature an array of natural and built environments. Take a look, if you wish– I hope you’ll be inspired, informed, uplifted, provoked, and in other ways reached by the pictures!

Empire State Future Flickr Photostream: Photos by Evan Lowenstein

Spending the golden years in cities like Cleveland, Rochester, Buffalo, or Syracuse might just be wise rather than wacky. A blogger on Reuters’ Prism Money blog points out why:

I could take my Washington-Baltimore corridor housing money (median home value, $310,000) and trade it in for an average Cleveland house (median home value, $114,000). And that would give me almost $200,000 worth of cash that I could use to fly to Key West or Cozumel for the winters, even if I didn’t downsize my house.

Pretty powerful argument, right? Especially if you’ve lived in or spent time in Rochester, Buffalo, or Syracuse–places where you can live for little but get a lot.

Read the whole Reuters post here.

For decades, the City of Rochester has suffered from the flight of its businesses to the surrounding suburbs, sometimes even taking their city names with them. For example, Park Avenue Bicycles moved from Park Avenue in the city to a strip mall in a burb. (An even better example is in my hometown, Charlottesville, Virginia, where Downtown Athletic moved from downtown to the suburban strip, but kept the name.)

But check this out: the Pittsford Framing Company–which began in the most affluent suburb in greater Rochester–just moved from Pittsford to an eclectic old industrial building in the heart of the city.

This is an auspicious indicator– a business moving from the most affluent suburb back to the city to realize the advantages and assets of an urban location. This is happening more and more as city neighborhoods improve. Here’s to an exponential acceleration of this trend!

Learn about Pittsford Framing Company and their new city location at http://ppframing.com/

A landmark smart growth bill is now law in New York State. The Public Infrastructure Priority Act (see my last post) was signed by Governor David Paterson on August 30. This means that New York State agencies and authorities must now run their infrastructure spending through a smart-growth screen to ensure that the funds don’t enable or support sprawl, and contribute to revitalization of cities, villages, and older suburbs.

I was tempted to write this news in all caps to emphasize its importance and supporters’ excitement about it. But that would make it seem like I was yelling at you. But this is a big, big deal!

See a press release about the passage of the bill into law; and my blog on the subject for NeighborWorks Rochester.

And this release, from State Senator Suzi Oppenheimer’s site.

And one more piece, this one from Smart Growth America.

More to come.

Green Village Consulting is proud to have supported Empire State Future’s marshaling of the groundbreaking Public Infrastructure Priority Act through the New York State Assembly and Senate. This bill requires New York State agencies to carefully examine their infrastructure programs and funding to ensure that they are not subsidizing or in other ways enabling inefficient land use and development known as “sprawl.”

Such sprawl–especially Upstate, where development continues unabated into much of the suburban and rural areas even with flat and declining population–has for decades undermined the economic, ecological, social, and aesthetic health of all community types in New York. And much of it has been fueled by state infrastructure programs and resources.

The Public Infrastructure Priority Act signals unprecedented state government understanding of sprawl and its causes and consequences, and its real commitment to smart growth and sustainable development, from Montauk to Chautauqua, and everywhere in between!

For more information on the legislation and process, see these links:

http://www.empirestatefuture.org/2010/06/smart-growth-bill-receives-legislative-approval.html

http://www.empirestatefuture.org/2010/07/nys-legislature-passes-the-smart-growth-public-infrastructure-policy-act-empire-state-future-urges-g.html