Interview on Urban Re:Vision

I spoke last month at the Green Cities Conference in Orlando.

It was the first times I did not speak about green building, but instead spoke about the amazing work of Urban Re:Vision, a non-profit on whose board I sit.

I was interviewed at the conference. An excerpt:

Our measurement of growth is that you continue growing, but in nature that doesn’t happen. Animals don’t keep getting fatter and fatter until they explode… and so our cities shouldn’t. They should grow to a certain size and then stop when they are sustainable. But we haven’t done that. We have presented the idea that it’s an either/or...

Read the full interview here.

5 ways to increase area of Manhattan without tearing down old buildings

The Bigger Apple is a wonderful discussion of ways to increase the size of Manhattan Island. The author, the former chief executive of the Battery Park City Authority, gets into details of how to develop these areas.

Very clever and something we could do in every city, even in our suburbs.

Thinking of being your own contractor?

Here's a good cautionary tale of why you should rethink being your own contractor. There is a huge difference between a handyman and a contractor - a state license for starters.

This house collapsed when the homeowner inadequately braced the foundation he was replacing. Luckily, no one was hurt (even the dog was rescued!). He had permits, but not a proper contractor.

Permit hell is getting worse

Carol Lloyd has a great piece in the paper today about the nightmare that is known as the San Francisco Department of Building Inspections.

The article tells the story of a woman trying to build a green home with some innovative ideas, such as an equity-sharing model to create new paths into home ownership for her tenants. Sounds like a great things right? Wrong. The city is putting up their usual roadblocks, demonstrating once again it is better to break the rules rather than play by them.

As an architect who has worked in this city for a decade, I routinely will talk our clients out of certain features knowing it will add a roadblock to their permitting process. Sometimes I use "tricks" to get things through that would never occur if we did everything by the book. Ask any good architect and they will tell you stories of how they got this thing approved, or that other thing through... it is part of the game.

But the story shows how a well-intentioned client, and a good architect (Toby Long of CleverHomes), are not welcomed with open arms by the SFDBI. Instead, we have a bureaucratic obstacle course from a department more concerned with liability than with re-building the urban fabric of our beloved city.

Full Story