Q&A edition: Planning buildings in a climate emergency
(Ann Arbor Midnight Madness 2017 by Vanseka Photography on Flickr)
A few weeks ago I wrote about Ann Arbor’s planning commission’s frustration over a much-needed housing development in the city that didn’t match up with college town’s climate goals. The developer was not interested in building the 484-home development entirely without gas hookups nor adding solar throughout the site. Eventually they agreed to build the houses in the development as all-electric, but not the rented apartments.
The commission ultimately approved the Pontiac Trail site despite the frustrations of many of the commissioners and some residents. But there was one “no” vote: Ellie Abrons has been on the commission since 2019, is a professor of architecture at the University of Michigan and is a co-owner of her own firm.
She’s also one of thousands of planning commissioners across the country that helps make decisions about what gets built in her town, how it contributes to or reduces a city’s greenhouse gas emissions. Your area probably has a very similar board— I first got familiar with planning commissions as a local reporter in Montgomery Country, Maryland, where I covered a downtown undergoing lots of changes. Their meetings are almost always open to the public.
I reached out to Abrons because I wanted to get a sense of how this project fit in with larger conversations of climate change and buildings in Ann Arbor, and how she thinks about climate change as an architect. Read our Q&A below — followed by plenty of timely local links at the end.
TKB: In the story I mentioned, it sounds like there were negotiations between the commission and the developer: how long did discussions about including more climate-friendly elements in the development go back and forth? Did anything in those conversations surprise you?
Abrons: These conversations aren’t negotiations in an official capacity. But it’s true that during the public hearing, the Planning Commission tries to encourage petitioners to improve their proposals in regards to sustainability, pedestrian safety, landmark tree preservation and other areas that we think are important. We don’t meet with petitioners outside of the public meetings, so there’s not a lot of back and forth.
Why the compromise to make the houses all-electric instead of the rented apartments?
This is really a question for the developer, since it was their decision to only partially electrify the project. Many Commissioners expressed a desire to see the entire development planned for electrification. My understanding from the petitioner is that they are concerned about high energy bills for rental customers and therefore decided to keep the rentals hooked up to gas.
You were the only “no,” but the story seemed to indicate the other commissioners weren’t pleased about their yes votes. What was it about the project that made you decide to vote it down?
I often find myself in a difficult position when considering petitions before the Planning Commission because our city ordinances don’t align with the kinds of development I wish we’d see more of in Ann Arbor.
For example, our ordinances don’t regulate building energy supply type (gas vs. electricity), require projects to include solar panels or affordable housing, or dictate much about what a building looks like, with a few exceptions in the downtown zoning districts. In some cases, we are limited in what we can do by state-wide laws.
In other cases I think Planning officials are trying to find a delicate balance between encouraging [or] requiring responsible, sustainable development and ensuring that development is still possible here – that it doesn’t become prohibitively expensive and onerous.
In the case of [Pontiac Trail] my “no” vote was largely symbolic because it was clear that there were enough affirmative votes to pass the petition. I wanted to give voice to the frustration that I, and I think others, feel when we have to work so hard, through hours and hours of discussion at these public meetings, to convince developers to commit to more sustainable approaches.
I wanted to underscore that climate change is a shared crisis and that we all bear responsibility, regardless of whether you’re in the business of developing new building projects or a volunteer board member responsible for due diligence. Instead of an adversarial relationship, it should be a cooperative one.
[The built environment] produces almost 50% of global carbon emissions. Anyone who works on [it] (e.g., architects, planners, engineers, developers, builders, brokers, property managers, etc.) needs to bear responsibility for this.
The city has declared a climate emergency, and you clearly have residents who are engaged on the issue enough to come to the commission and even volunteer to meet with the developer afterwards. What’s the missing element here that would make an all-electric housing development not a big ask in Ann Arbor?
Development costs in Ann Arbor are very expensive. Land costs, labor shortages, mandatory infrastructure improvements, and other regulations make it challenging to build here. Developers are reluctant to include anything in their proposals that presents a risk, either to their budget or to their product (i.e. Will the project cost more or take longer to build? Will I have a hard time finding buyers/renters because their utility bills will be higher?)
At this time, we don’t have enough fully-electric, demonstration-type projects we can point to to reassure developers that it can be done in a cost-effective manner. (There is at least one in the pipeline that I’m hopeful can serve as this kind of demonstration, but it will be years until it is complete). The technology is getting cheaper and better each year, so hopefully the architects and engineers who are working on these projects will be more willing and able to stop designing for fossil fuel connections and move towards all-electric development. Unfortunately, the problem is urgent and the building/construction industry moves at a notoriously slow pace!
There is a climate action millage on the local November ballot. If this passes, it will provide funds for rooftop/community solar, EV infrastructure, etc. I’m not sure that this would be allowed, but I wonder about the city using these funds to offer incentives or subsidies for building electrification as well.
What other climate-related issues have come up in front of the commission and what happened when they did?
Almost everything we work on is related to reducing carbon emissions in some way, whether it’s focused on bicycle and pedestrian mobility, EV parking/charging facilities, making solar panels more accessible, increasing housing supply and diversity, encouraging public transportation use, and so forth.
Some of the recent ordinance revisions we’ve made are:
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Eliminating parking minimums across the city and instituting maximums in some cases
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Requiring EV parking for all new development
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Revising the ADU [accessory dwelling unit - basically an additional building on an existing plot of land that often only holds a single family home] ordinance to allow more ADU development across the city
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Creating a new transit-oriented zoning category for mixed-use development, TC1
As an architect, what are you looking for in a new development that would be truly responsive to the climate emergency? What’s the baseline here?
I think we need a holistic approach that considers every aspect of building design. I don’t think there’s a magic bullet. This means: considering more adaptive reuse and accounting for the embodied carbon in existing buildings; caring for construction waste and looking for opportunities for material reuse; turning towards more efficient construction systems such as CLT or prefabricated systems; designing for energy efficiency and well-insulated building skins; and incorporating renewable energy systems such as geothermal and solar and avoiding fossil fuel connections such as natural gas.
I think it also means building less and building smaller. Some say that by 2060, we will add 2.4 trillion square feet of new floor area to our global building stock, the equivalent of adding an entire New York City to the world, every month, for 40 years. In order for this not to have a catastrophic effect on the rate of carbon emissions we need to figure out how to achieve zero emissions from new construction and to curb unnecessary development when possible.
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More local climate stories
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Speaking of: California will ban the sale of natural-gas heaters by 2030 and Maine funds work to electrify homes and make them more energy efficient in small towns.
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How thawing permafrost threatens a Biden-supported plan to drill in Alaska’s Arctic.
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Oregon ends plans for a gas-fire power plant near the Columbia River
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Massachusetts program allows homeowners to share excess solar power with neighbors who can’t afford to install it
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Florida’s “first-solar powered town” withstands Hurricane Ian (although this development is very far out from Florida’s Gulf Coast urban centers that were hit the hardest). On the coast, Ian’s storm surge has now killed more than 100 people, flooded homes and washed away whole beaches, but preventive work helped limit how much of the electricial infrastructure will need to be rebuilt.
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Before Hurricane Ian, the state’s Republican politicians have rejected federal action to cut greenhouse gas emissions and boost climate resilience. Now they’re relying on it.
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California residents responded to text message appeal to conserve energy during the worst of September heat wave but the state’s electricity grid used more gas than usual to support record-high demand
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Every state has submitted highway EV charger plans to the federal government. Here’s what happened in Wyoming.
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Solar and wind farms can hurt the environment. A new study offers solutions
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Palo Alto aims for carbon neutrality by 2030 with electrification program, but will still need to majorly reduce how much its residents drive.