Tài liệu Creation Care for Neighborhoods: The Quest for Bayview Village docx

Creation Care for Neighborhoods:

The Quest for Bayview Village

Sherman Lewis, PhD.

Copyright 2013 Sherman Lewis Smashwords Edition

***

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re￾sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another

person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this

book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please

return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the

hard work of this author.

***

Table of Contents

Preface

The Foundation

Creation care: the evolution of culture and the need for inspirational language

Evolution of thinking

The Whole Economy and Values

Chapter 1 -- Transportation Pricing Reform: Paying Directly for Driving

Carism

Definition

Specific Transportation Pricing Reforms

12 topics

Involving People in Parking Policy

Mode diversity and the locational decision

The Shuttle

Land-based shuttle finance

Conclusion

Chapter 2 -- Neighborhood Systems

Density details

Suburbia, a wonderful failure

Six goals for neighborhood systems

Affordablity; Sustainablity; Mobility; Health/Saftey/Security; Design; Community

Low productivity consumption

Smart Growth

Functional density

Grocery Store Trip

Short Corridor Systems

Optimal Building Design

Floor plans

Water and landscaping

Energy

Analysis and assessment

Chapter 3 -- Going Dense

Old and dense in Europe

New and semi-car free in Europe

Old and dense in America

Relevance for other places

Chapter 4 -- A Freeway Dies, An Idea Is Born

Early history

7 sections named by dates

2013

Chapter 5 -- Bayview Village Project Summary

Location Map

Planning Tools

Chapter 6 -- Project Description

Site, Properties, Conditions

Geotechnical Engineering

Site Plan

Bayview Village Center

Circulation

Parks and Recreation

Acres summary

Grading

Utilities

Engineer’s report

Related Development

Chapter 7 -- Green Building

Affordability

Unit types and floor plans

Elevation issues

Building costs

Green Building Specifications

Chapter 8 -- Green Energy

Green Energy Cost

Green Energy Specifications

Chapter 9 -- Green Water and Landscaping

Chapter 10 -- Green Mobility

Walking and cycling

The Village Bus

Parking

Car share/rental

Other mobility

Travel time and cost budgets

Chapter 11 -- Green Jobs and Economy

Chapter 12 -- Design

Chapter 13 -- Community

Pets

HOA Services

Chapter 14 -- Regulation

a. California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)

b. City of Hayward General Plan and Zoning Ordinance

c. C.3 Provisions

d. Green Building Code

e. Inclusionary Housing Ordinance

f. ADA and Fire Requirements

Chapter 15 -- Evaluation

Evaluation

Affordability

Sustainability

Mobility

Security, Health, and Safety

Design

Community

Related Evaluation Systems

LEED and Green Point Rated

International Living Future Institute

Litman

Chapter 16 -- Markets and Marketing

Supply and Demand

Market Research

The Market

Buyer Profiles

Pricing and Comparables

Rent, Lease to Buy, Buy

Buying Energy

Point of Sale Choices

Transitional Parking

Advertising and Buyer Education

Initial Services Implementation

Chapter 17 -- Financing

Financing

Financing Overview

Financing Details

Other Financial Analyses

Village Bus

Chapter 18-- Stages

Chapter 19 -- Risk Factors

Chapter 20 -- The LLC Option

The LLC Option

a. Investor accreditation

b. Investors and the LLC

c. The Board of Directors

d. Management

e. Accounting/Reporting

f. LLC Definitions

End Note

Preface

This book aims to move thinking forward on one of the most important places we

take for granted: our neighborhoods.

Bayview Village needs financing. Unless an investor takes it seriously, it is not going

to happen. The Hayward Area Planning Association, which I lead, has been planning

the project for ten years and has spent over a year seeking financing, without success.

HAPA seeks someone to take over the project and work with us to make it happen.

At a few places in this book, I mention what I don’t know––a Beta version comment.

This eBook is a draft for electronic circulation. All this work needs to be made available

now, yet also needs more work. Further, an auction of an important property within the

site is being sold at auction on March 13, and the position of the new owner will be of

major importance for whether Bayview Village succeeds or fails.

I do not have connections to investors or developers. I suspect that the few hundred

parties I have sent information to have not responded because they don’t do anything

close to what HAPA is proposing, their corporate investment policy is not flexible, they

have a short-term, three to five years, time horizon to get their money out, real estate

development is in a major slump, the project is too big for them, the property is not on

the market yet, they are not looking for projects, or, if all that were not enough, the

proposal has very limited parking, only 100 spaces for 1,000 units.

It has been hard to figure out who to ask to invest, given the unusual nature of the

project. Organizations like Smart Growth America, which has some developer

involvement through its LOCUS program, have not helped, and are not set up to help.

Many financial firms invest in existing real estate but not development. Firms that

develop commercial properties don’t do residential. Large residential developers

concentrate on large car-oriented subdivisions; a few are doing smaller condo projects.

Affordable housing agencies depend on tax subsidies and do not do market-oriented

projects. Bayview is much bigger than their usual projects.

HAPA has tried going outside the development investment network to reach other

kinds of investors. Most never answer my email, mail, or calls. Some have told me they

like the project but never invest outside the area they know about. A few say, in effect,

“Go away.” I suspect they may see Bayview Village as just another real estate

development, or think it won’t work because of the lack of parking, if they get that far in

looking at the idea.

I need to do more to get attention, to climb over the wall that seems to make

Bayview invisible to those who should think about it, i.e., green patient investors.

Hence, this book. You will find the project carefully thought out, but that does not

get us all the way there. The crucial ingredient for investors is intuition, that extra

entrepreneurial insight that comes after extensive knowledge.

The plan of the book starts off with a philosophical non-chapter, The Foundation,

discussing creation care, evolution of thinking, and the whole economy and values. For

a summary of the proposal, go to Chapter Five.

Chapters One and Two have policy analysis that lay out the framework for

sustainable neighborhood development. Such development involves six systems and

goals, and how they reinforce each other to achieve the goals of each system:—

affordability, sustainability, alternative mobility, health and security, good design,

and community.

Chapter One covers Transportation Pricing Reform, the biggest missing policy to

create a level playing field in the whole economy. Chapter Two focuses on

neighborhood systems, short corridors, and functional density. Chapter Three covers

existing dense neighborhoods, consisting of certain older European neighborhoods,

newer European car-free neighborhoods, and certain old American neighborhoods.

Chapter Four covers the unusual historical circumstances that stopped an ill-fated

freeway and saved a large property near California State University East Bay in

Hayward (CSUEB Hayward) long enough that it may be possible build a new,

progressive neighborhood system.

The main part of the book starts with a summary of the Bayview Village plan in

Chapter Five, then Chapters Six to Eighteen cover various aspects of the plan. These

chapters should be of interest to those considering investing in the land or the project,

those who are planning a sustainable community and would like specific ideas about

how to do it, and those with an interest in the environment and sustainable cities.

Chapters Six to Eighteen cover a myriad of details on many subjects relating to

Bayview: 6: project description, 7: buildings, 8: energy, 9: water and landscaping, 10:

mobility, 11. jobs and economy, 12: design, 13: community, 14: regulations, 15:

evaluation, 16: markets and marketing, 17: financing, and 18: staging.

The Foundation

While this book is primarily about how to implement a sustainable neighborhood

using a specific example, those ideas result from a framework of supporting ideas. This

introduction covers ideas fundamental to the whole sustainability movement, using three

major topics. Creation Care covers the religious or spiritual basis, the deepest, most

profound feeling and thinking we can do about life and existence in general. This topic is

strenuously avoided by secular academics, but I want to make clear that our eventual

discussion of details springs from the most important issues of our age or any age.

Evolution of thinking discusses how our thinking about how we think has been

revolutionized by scientific discoveries about our brains, the biological basis of culture,

the power of culture to override facts, and how culture frames policy. The whole

economy and values discusses how some cultures value monetized transactions as a

dominant reality, other cultures value non-monetized reality, both sides fail to recognize

the arbitrariness of their values, and the need to integrate both values.

Creation Care

Creation Care is a term used by religious progressives who care about our

stewardship over the earth which God, or some similar source of meaning, created for

our enjoyment and entrusted into our care, with the long term enjoyment depending of

the quality of care. Secular environmentalists and other progressives use a different

kind of language for similar underlying ideas, often creating a gulf between religious and

secular progressives.

The term “creation care” is not used by secular environmentalists, but their term,

“environmentalism,” does not frame the issue in a compelling way. Secularists can be

uninformed about, and uneasy with, “religion,” and often can’t tell the difference

between religious progressives who use science, as opposed to doctrinaire ideologues

who command the attention of a benighted mass media. The media covers the zealots

and not the poets, sectarianism and not spirituality, the conflicts that divide us and not

poetry than can bring us together.

In California, religious progressives have a coalition, California Interfaith Power and

Light: “A group of religious groups that seek to respond to global warming through the

promotion of energy conservation, energy efficiency, and renewable energy.”

(http://interfaithpower.org) Their leaders:

Let me also introduce Richard Cizik and his New Evangelical Partnership for the

Common Good. He says, [I believe] “that ultimately evangelicals will themselves be

persuaded by the evidence of the argument, and people change their minds. I changed

my mind, and I used to be part of the group of people that are advocating for cutting

Title X funding. I changed my mind because the evidence indicated that I needed to

change my mind.” Title X funds services like Planned Parenthood. Cizik was an early

advocate for creation care, which, for him, is of one piece with science, climate change,

population stabilization, status of women, health care, reproductive services, synergy

among progressive policies, and Christianity. (http://grist.org/climate￾energy/evangelical-leader-says-we-need-family-planning-to-help-fight-climate-change,

Grist, Dec. 10, 2012)

With the human habitability of the earth at stake, how we talk about sustainability

needs to embody its emotional centrality, not just its rational pragmatism, in order to

inspire the deepest motivations of a rising generation with a transforming purpose.

Hence, I use the term creation care to frame the issue in stronger spiritual language.

Framing is important. Poetic language, secular or religious, reaches other people

outside the choir. Poetic language educates and persuades others using words that are

meaningful to them. Too often, environmentalists and secularists use a language of

facts, analysis, and pragmatism that fails to inspire. Lots of facts are, in fact, my

personal predilection, as most of this book will prove. (We can’t all be John Muir.)

The challenges of creation care cover a wide range of policies, a number of which

come together in neighborhoods. Neighborhoods as social places get a lot of attention,

but hardly any attention as systems needing a lot of creation care. This needs to

change. Neighborhoods are the major missing ingredient in the debate on creation care

and sustainability. Changing how neighborhoods work is essential for slowing and

reversing the environmental devastation of the earth, for gross domestic happiness

(also known as the economy), and for social equity.

HAPA is looking for investors who want to invest carefully but also want to make a

difference on one of the most important challenges facing humanity. Bayview Village is

not just about a real estate investment; it is about entrepreneurship.

Evolution of Thinking

Humanity is in a bit of a bind. Our lop-sided skill set is really good at analysis and

tool use, which has allowed us to revolutionize technology. On the other hand, our

brains as evolved to date are not really good at moving beyond tribalism, broadly

defined as the us-versus-them mentality. Tribes here include corporations, nations,

sects, and other reasons for dehumanizing, hating, robbing and killing other people.

This genetic predisposition, which is as natural as cooperation, makes people compete

with each other in “tribal” groups, in ways often devastating to the tribes. Their

competition in today’s world is devastating to nations, and, with atomic weapons,

possibly huge parts of the earth. The path away from nuclear war, climate change, and

other environmental devastation must be to reduce tribalism or, much the same idea, to

expand the tribe.

Tribes in the old-fashioned sense still-exist off in isolated rural and wild areas, are

politically weak, and suffer at the hands of the big tribes, with their nationalisms,

corporate power, agribusiness, mining, ethnic cleansing, mega-capital mega-projects,

and various kinds of oppressive dictatorships. Those little tribes, which are sustainable

by nature, and those of us in the modern world who are trying to get there, are being

overwhelmed.

The thinking styles of our species naturally spread along a spectrum from

doctrinaire ideological thinking concerned with narrow values at one end, to pragmatic,

scientific, tolerant, complicated thinking concerned with many values at the other.

Doctrinaire ideological thinking as used here does not refer to various philosophies of

government, opinions, and values, but to asserting one’s own facts unsupported by the

rules of evidence and science. The Pope once had more power than Galileo, and today

Grover Norquist has more power than pragmatic moderates. Historically, the Age of

Enlightenment did not achieve much in society as a whole. The enlightenment went only

a little bit forward, with too few people and just the start of science.

Ideological thinking is not related to intelligence or information. There seems to be

some period of adolescence and early adulthood when individuals acquire the interests

that shape their careers and social action. Some individuals internalize an ideology of

some kind, grab the information that reinforces their ideas, and ignore the rest, often

with some, if selective, intelligence. Ideologues by nature can out-yell the pragmatists.

Their advocacy can pull the uninformed into their camp along the fault lines of ignorance

and fear in our culture.

In current American culture there seem to be three ideologies creating big

problems: 1) an anti-science, religious fundamentalism intolerant of personal freedom;

2) anti-government feelings, from the Tea Party to Wall Street, opposing regulation

protective of workers, consumers, and the environment, opposing to fair or adequate

taxes, and using magical thinking about fiscal deficits; and 3) neo-conservatism,

proclaiming American exceptionalism, supporting militarism and aggression, and

claiming to advance democracy while advancing American political and corporate

power.

Research by Dan Kahan and others finds that for some personalities, ideological

commitment funnels thinking into highly selective use of facts and non-facts to support a

point of view, with intelligence tending to make the distortions more severe. This focus

on highly selective facts blinds people to the pressing environmental crises taking place

today. Ideologues are more interested their own “facts,” not the facts that will create a

long-term environmental benefit to the community. We do not yet have much useful

scientific understanding of the social and physiological bases for this kind of thinking. (It

also exists on the left.)

Speaking for the pragmatists, we try to understand science. When the vast majority

of hundreds of scientists from all over the world tell us much the same thing for about 20

or 30 years, we tend to believe them. When all the evidence from the earth confirms the

science, we tend to believe it. It is hard for us to deal with the ignorance of the many

and the bias of the ideologues. A few skeptics are jeopardizing the future, not of the

planet, but of its human habitability for their own children. Unfortunately, so far, science

understands the earth better than it understands why we think the way we do about it.

The human genome has inertia and is not going to evolve much, if at all, in a time

frame we can understand. The human historical trajectory, however, has been more

defined by culture than by genes, and that culture is evolving rapidly. The challenge we

face today is to have the quality of social thinking catch up with the advancement of

technological thinking, to reduce extreme ideological thinking, and to enlarge the tribe.

Some of the answer is probably in how we raise our kids before they get to grade

school, because so much of culture has been created by then, in billions of growing and

connecting brain cells, and may relate to some predisposition to later ideological and

tribal thinking vs. pragmatic and empathetic thinking.

While ideological thinking characterizes much of our politics, mainstream culture is

equally important, long on habits and short on knowledge. American culture gets in the

way of achieving the more important American values embodied in Bayview Village.

A prime example is global warming. James Hansen’s testimony to Congress in

violation of White House orders in 1988, the creation of the International Panel on

Climate Change also in 1988, and Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance of 1992 mark a period

when wide spread policy concerns among scientists and environmentalists broke into

the mainstream of policy debate. There is no scientific debate on major issues, but

effective policy has been blocked by vested fossil fuel interests, anti-science ideology,

media complicity, Republican party partisanship, and public ignorance. Forests burn,

droughts get longer, storms increase, the oceans warm, rise, and acidify, and most

Americans still don’t get it. Internationally, given the failure of the Earth Summit in Rio in

2012, things are not getting any better worldwide.

As the political situation deteriorates, the earth does likewise. Most recently, an

article in Nature stated “Localized ecological systems are known to shift abruptly and

irreversibly; from one state to another when they are forced across critical thresholds.

Here we review evidence that the global ecosystem as a whole can react in the same

way and is approaching a planetary critical transition as a result of human influence.”

Human “ ‘forcings’ far exceed, in both rate and magnitude, the forcing evident at the

most recent global scale state shift, the last glacial-interglacial transition.” (David

Roberts, “We’re about to push the Earth over the brink, new study finds,” Grist.org, June

7, 2012, David Perlman, “Close to ‘tipping point’ of warming,” S.F. Chronicle, June 7,

2012)

The scientific consensus is way ahead of the policy consensus, yet often behind

the actual pace of climate change. For the first time in geological history, a species by

its own conscious decisions is ending one epoch, the Holocene, and starting another,

the Anthropocene. It doesn’t look like it’s going to work.

Reinforcing the need to reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) is the ambiguous,

complicated emergence of peak oil. (http://crudeoilpeak.info/global-peak has excellent

data on the past, less certain projections for the future) The ratcheting upward of oil

prices increases efforts to extract even dirtier oil, to risk the oceans even more, to mine

more coal, and to fracture substrates for relatively cleaner natural gas, none of which

really works long term as well as non-fossil alternatives. Newly and rapidly growing

economies demand more oil, and conventional oil seems likely to have peaked.

Alternative energy like wind, photovoltaic, and thermal are expanding, and energy

efficiency, also known as “nega-watts,” has increasing policy maker, if not popular,

recognition. What is missing is the role of land use, transportation, transportation pricing

reform, and urban systems.

In 2010 the International Energy Association announced that peak oil may have

occurred in 2006. The price of gasoline has been, and is likely to continue to, ratchet up.

Most Americans, they will continue to buy gas as if there were no tomorrow and blame

politics, oil companies, and speculators for a problem inherent in the earth’s crust. The

timing of the action of the ratchet is unpredictable, but it is likely that some price spike

will occur during the build-out of Bayview Village and that it will increase sales.

The most effective policy to reduce GHG would be to put a price on a “bad,” carbon

emission, reflecting its true cost. The carbon tax swap should start at a moderate level,

enough to change markets but not excessively disrupt the economy. The disruption

should not be worse than the disruption now being caused by the lack of a tax swap.

The policy has to be durable enough to affect long-term planning by investors, or, in

other words, strong enough to deter them from using political contributions to try to

reverse the policy. Taxes on “goods,” such as labor (social security taxes and benefits),

should be correspondingly reduced. Government should not try to pick winning

technologies, but pay attention to sectorial impediments to emerging businesses. The

swap level can increase as alternatives take hold. A major result would be to change

neighborhood systems. Economists concerned with climate change and whole economy

productivity support a carbon swap; the average American, not so much, even though

the puts and takes of the swap have no net impact on the family budget.

A carbon swap would affect one of the most important and politically sensitive

prices in the country, gasoline. We don’t just give our cars secure, free places to sleep

at night, close to our own bedrooms; we don’t just use our cars a lot without thinking

about it–––we have a culture of car dependency, car subsidy, and degradation by car.

This kind of thinking, which can be called “carism,” automatically leaps to the conclusion

that something like Bayview Village is against cars. Not so. Bayview accommodates

much car use, yet provides comparable mobility using a fundamentally different

neighborhood system.

Concern for climate change, population growth, peak oil, water, environmental

degradation, sustainability, population, biodiversity, species extinction, oceans,

hazardous chemicals, bioengineering, and healthy life styles is causing some cultural

change, reinforced by higher fossil fuel prices. Important advocacy groups, adding up to

some kind of new environmental movement, are growing. Some remarkable things have

happened in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany.

In the US, the Blue Green Alliance (http://www.bluegreenalliance.org/) is bringing

blue collar workers and green environmentalists together to increase the economic

success of reform. Van Jones has started his own group, Rebuild the Dream, as have

Al Gore with The Climate Reality Project http://climaterealityproject.org and Bill

McKibben with 350.org at http://www.350.org/en. These new efforts add to the new

web-based groups like MoveOn.org, older environmental groups like the Sierra Club,

Greenpeace, Ocean Conservancy, Population Connection, and the Democratic wing of

the Democratic Party, all creating a solid base for, hopefully, more political influence.

(More of my musings are at http://www20.csueastbay.edu/class/files/docs/Emeritus

%20faculty/sherman-lewis-2.pdf.)

The costs extreme ideology and carist culture are already high and are likely to

climb higher. Human thinking so far is not evolving fast enough. The creation care

movement has not yet incorporated neighborhood systems, and needs to. Progressives

focus too much on cars and electricity, and too little understanding of the role of

neighborhood systems.

The Whole Economy and Values

“Whole economy” is a way of measuring the economy using both money and the

things that money doesn’t measure. Better economic analysis can provide a unifying

frame of reference for many problems. Most of the time, when we say we are talking

about the economy, we are really talking only about the money economy. We leave out

social and environmental costs.

The whole economy includes values not monetized in market exchanges, and uses

more than money to measure welfare. The obvious problem is quantification. To get

started, whole economy analysis has to make heroic assumptions, but they are really no

more heroic than money thinking. Money economists make assumptions that they are

generally unwilling to admit or examine, such as using money to measure value. Money

accounting has value judgments; it is not objective. For example, when spending on

insurance and crime go up, the GDP goes up. When a parent stays at home, raising

self-confident, educated, well-behaved, curious children, the GDP does not go up.

Which is more important?

Still, the money economy is a good place to start for defining the whole economy.

Then we need to add in the rest. Already, analyses of nature services, pollution costs,

and cost-benefit have often found interesting ways to quantify some of the whole

economy. Similarly, the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) applies puts and takes to

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to estimate welfare. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genuine_progress_indicator.

Micro-economic analysis and business accounting use an elegant system of income

statements, assets and liabilities, and changes in financial position, but I’ve not seen

this system applied to GDP thinking, let alone asset values based on value judgments

about welfare in the whole economy. An input–output models and other GDP models,

while hugely complex, are not yet good enough. They need to be developed so that

money economists and whole economists can get on the same page, or at least in the

same book.

Value judgments, hidden in GDP thinking, become obvious in whole economy

analysis because non-monetary values must be quantified, necessarily a subjective

process. Understanding the whole economy requires environmental and social values to

be translated into monetary equivalents. There could be two or more versions of the

whole economy reflecting differences in values. For example, those who value

biodiversity and wilderness would give it much more weight than those who don’t. Value

judgments are applied according to science and fact, so climate skeptics and