Blog IX: Providence Lost a BIG Opportunity for Environmental Planning.
The number of living people on planet Earth reached one billion people in 1804, an unprecedented milestone after 200,000 years of our species’ ascendence. Although it took 200,000 years for the human population to reach one billion people, it took only 200 to reach seven billion. In 2009, humanity cleared yet another milestone, the number of people residing in cities exceeding those living in rural areas for the first time in human history.[1]Current population trends centuries in the making act in tandem with the current climate crisis, of which more humans than ever will be forced to deal with in the twenty-first century and beyond.
Chapter six of Living in the Environment heavily focuses on Earth’s carrying capacity–– i.e., the number of people that existing natural capital and ecosystem services can adequately support. Debate about the physical boundary to human growth has gone on for centuries. Notably, in 1798, Thomas Malthus hypothesized that exponential population growth coupled with comparably stagnant food production created a proverbial ceiling for the exponential population growth he identified. Of course, during Malthus’s time, industrial agriculture was somewhat of an oxymoron, he could have never predicted that food production too would also increase exponentially due to industrialized agriculture.
During my History of Capitalism, I was required to read Planet of Slums by Mike Davis. The book delineates an environmental history of what is perhaps the ultimate rejection of Malthus’ hypothesis: The Green Revolution. After World War II, philanthropic efforts on the part of the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller foundation introduced industrial agriculture technologies such as pesticides, fertilizers, irrigation infrastructure, and high-yield crop variants to what they saw as destitute peasant populations, most notably in India, Mexico, and the Philippines. Although the intentions of the foundations were good, (although incredibly utilitarian in hindsight) what ensued was the disenfranchisement of peasants from their land, followed by the swelling of slums encircling cities such as Mumbai, Mexico City, and Manila, contributing the lion’s share of urban development globally. The Ford and Rockefeller foundations assumed that the peasants, needing not to grow their own food any longer, would live a metropolitan urban lifestyle as they enjoyed in the West.
Urban slum dwellers in the global South account for the majority of the world’s urban expansion. In summary: More people today are living in cities today but in the ever-expanding rings of slums within and surrounding cities. I can already see North American urban planners looking at global urban demographics and concluding that the pro-urban sentiment espoused by the authors of their dogma over the years has finally caught on, and people are ascending to a new urban rapture. Slum-dwellers, the vast majority of urban populations in the Global South, endure the most reprehensible environmental conditions in the world. The largest city in North America, Mexico City, has a dirty environmental secret that foreign visitors to places like Chapultepec Park seldom know. The city hoards several tons of feces in open-air garbage dumps, located next to or on top of the city’s slums. Slum-dwellers are known to scavenge dumps and landfills in hopes to find something of sustenance or utility, and particles of shit carry through the air often irritating the throat and lungs of people unfortunate enough to be in proximity to them. In Mumbai, not many people other than slum-dwellers shoulder such disproportionate burdens of climate change. Slum dwellings are often constructed out of scrap metal with no ventilation or proper insolation. When monsoon season arrives dwellings often flood, and when the water drains out it leaves mold behind to be perpetually inhaled. The tin walls and rooves of slum buildings in the summer make the unfortunate residents inside feel like they’re baking, even more so with rising temperatures.[]
North American urbanists may think that cities have a default setting towards environmental friendliness, as we see in the global South, they do not. This sentiment may come from, the improving environmental condition of cities in the Global North (although they have a long way to go.) Mayor Bloomberg’s “PlaNYC” initiative provides excellent examples of what cities ought to do in order to effectively mitigate climate change. Two things from the plan I find incredibly interesting are congestion pricing and the creation of beautiful waterfront parks, perhaps the most physical representation of Bloomberg’s legacy (aside from rebuilding from the rubble of Ground Zero.) Congestion pricing in New York City is effectively a toll on vehicles moving in and out of Midtown Manhattan during times where traffic is heaviest. Cities such as London, Milan, and Stockholm show that levying tolls on rush hour traffic is an effective way to incentivize transit ridership and get carbon-emitting cars off the road. The majority of New York City residents don’t even own a car anyways[2], making the weight of each resident’s carbon footprint a whole lot lighter. Fewer cars on the road equates to lower carbon emissions. Unfortunately, however, New York City lags behind its international counterparts due to the reluctance of Trump DOT under Secretary Elaine Chao to implement anything of the sort. Biden’s DOT, however, recently lifted the roadblocks to congestion pricing leftover from the previous administration, and the city should be set to implement it in a matter of months.[3]
The Bloomberg administration also constructed some magnificent and beloved waterfront parks on top of former industrial sites. One of the best examples of this Bloomberg initiative is Brooklyn Bridge Park (BBP.) The park makes for a great case study in sustainable design,[4] I believe that it represents part of what other coastal cities in the Northeast ought to be doing with their waterfronts to mitigate the effects of climate change. Old industrial piers on the edge of Brooklyn Heights were transformed into Brooklyn Bridge Park using recycled wood and granite for park benches, structures, and decking, as well as recycled fill material from the (long-delayed) East Side Access Project. BBP also restores vital habitats of native plants, birds, and marine life by recreating the salt marshes and meadows that were destroyed as Brooklyn grew. Notably, the BBP also partnered with the Billion Oyster Project to restore oyster reefs to the Hudson. The reintroduction of oysters is in large part responsible for the estuary’s dramatic environmental turnaround from a deathly polluted waterway to a place where even whales and seals have returned.[5]
Providence has the opportunity to create its own iteration of a Brooklyn Bridge Park-style sustainable green space, but that opportunity is already diminished and threatened to be completely decimated by development. In 2002 the Rhode Island Department of Transportation completed work on relocating an old elevated viaduct of Interstate-95 that separated Downtown Providence from the Jewelry District for over half a century. While I would have preferred the complete demolition of I-95 within Providence, still, it was a great first step by the state’s tragic history of land-use planning. Being such a poor city, however, and desperately wanting to scrape off residents from Boston and New York, the city put as much land as it possibly could up for development.
While a sustainable park was implemented in the execution of the former I-95 land’s master plan, it is much smaller than it needs to be. Therefore, the park’s potential utility as a public amenity that both protects Downtown Providence from rising sea levels and provides Providentians much-needed greenspace is considerably diminished. Even the existing parkland is threatened by a high-rise mixed-use luxury condominium building that would become the tallest structure in the state.
If I were in control of land-use planning of the land formally under the Interstate, I would strictly follow the Smart Growth Tools outlined in Chapter 20 of Living in the Environment. First, I would cordon off everything east of Dyer Street from development and hire the same landscape architecture firm that built Brooklyn Bridge Park to build a park on the model of BBP. Certainly, I would make the blocks of the new streets way smaller as to fit in with the historic streetscape of Downtown Providence and the Jewelry District to promote a mixture of uses and encourage transportation alternatives to automobiles. Scattered across the blocks I may create smaller urban parks on the model of those such as Father Demo Square in Greenwich Village. Some of my zoning ordinances would impose constrictive parking maximums instead of minimums, call for each building to implement green roofing, and encourage density and the mixing of uses, and inciting tax incentives would be offered to buildings that achieve high LEED ratings. Unsurprisingly, none of these incentives are being implemented by the State of Rhode Island or the City of Providence.
When Superstorm Sandy hit New York City, Brooklyn Bridge Park withstood better than city officials expected. The park absorbed much of the blow the storm dealt to surrounding neighborhoods.[6]Unlike New York, Providence has the geographic advantage of not being a low-lying archipelago. The city’s geography is characterized by steep rolling hills and deep river valleys and flatlands, the former comprises more of the city than the latter. Therefore, the city is naturally going to be more resilient than many of its northeastern counterparts. The only parts it needs to protect is its immediate waterfront and the flatland valleys of Downtown Providence. It seems as though the city’s urban planning department has been reduced to a wealth management agency. They would rather boost property tax rates and cram as much new development they can under the city’s arcane zoning laws rather than conserve and protect our irreplaceable, historic urban patrimony with a public amenity capitalized on to its full potential.
Question: The "15-Minute City," where people can find all of their needs and wants within a fifteen-minute walk from their home is often cited as one of the strongest answers cities give to climate change, by inducing less consumption (especially in the transportation sector.) However, I fear that designated 15-Minute city areas could become enclaves for the rich. Arguably, places like Greenwich Village in New York, or Wayland in Providence are already rich enclaves of the 15-minute city.
If we do not address inequality while implementing 15-minute city plans, will all
the environmental benefits be offset by the larger consumption habits of rich populations?
[1] United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs: Population Division https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/urbanization/urban-rural.asp#:~:text=By%20the%20middle%20of%202009,urbanization%20remain%20among%20development%20groups.
[2] NYCEDC: New Yorkers and Their Cars, https://edc.nyc/article/new-yorkers-and-their-cars#:~:text=According%20to%20recent%20census%20estimates,own%20three%20or%20more!).
[3] Kuntzman, Gersh. Congestion Pricing May Not Go Anywhere Unless Biden Wins, Mayor Says. Streetsblog NYC, 14 July 2020 https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2020/07/14/congestion-pricing-may-not-go-anywhere-unless-biden-wins-mayor-says/
[4] https://www.brooklynbridgepark.org/about/sustainability/
[5] https://untappedcities.com/2021/02/03/history-new-york-city-oysters/
[6] https://www.ecolandscaping.org/01/managing-water-in-the-landscape/stormwater-management/weathering-the-storm-horticulture-management-in-brooklyn-bridge-park-in-the-aftermath-of-hurricane-sandy/
