The Designers Role in Addressing Climate Change
Image courtesy of UnSplash provided by @li_anlim
My company is updating employee bios and sent out a questionnaire to help craft the text. One question in particular spurred this blog post—What role do you think designers / planners play in addressing climate change? My answer in a nutshell was—a very important one. In 2017 the U.S. EPA estimated commercial and residential markets accounted for 12% of greenhouse gas emissions and transportation 29%. How and where we build directly impacts nearly 41% of all greenhouse gas emissions meaning our design decisions have a profound impact on the future of our cities and environment.
What Designers Are Doing
So, what are we as design professionals doing to reverse the trend of rising emissions? Some architecture firms are choosing clients based on their willingness to incorporate sustainable decisions in the design process at the same level as the layout and look of the building. Many are championing programs like LEED, Net Zero, Passive House, Living Buildings, and Well Building. While the metrics of these programs vary, they are all designed with the same end goals—save energy, reduce fossil fuel reliance, produce less pollution, and create more livable spaces. These programs are important because buildings consume the most energy at 39% compared to transportation uses (29%) and industrial uses (32%). Paul Hawken’s estimated in his 2017 book Drawdown that if 9.7% of buildings were net-zero by 2050 we would lower greenhouse gas emissions by 7.1 gigatons.
Software programs exist to help design professionals make decisions with a greater impact. Tools like COVE, which several architects in my company are using, model how certain design decisions will impact the building efficiency. While programs like this are great for architects to use on a building by building basis, planners can do even more with similar software scaled citywide to model how various land use decisions will impact their community’s emissions and begin to coordinate sustainable development. Several tools exist, but the metrics are limited. MIT created the Urban Modeling Interface but it only measures embodied energy use, walkability, and daylighting potential.
While a detailed modeling tool pulling numerous aspects of sustainability together would be ideal, many basic rankings and tracking systems exist today that combined show how well a city is performing in different categories. Replica is a new tool designed to help cities make decisions about transportation. Walk Score ranks cities based on their pedestrian environments. The Trust for Public Land puts out the ParkScore Index each year. Separately they tell one story, but combined planners get a better understanding of how what areas of weakness exist that are leading to increased emissions.
Capturing COVID-19 Environmental Gains
As planners our job is to create livable cities for all residents. This means walkable, healthy cities with less congestion, pollution, and traffic fatalities. We are seeing a unique glimpse of this during the COVID-19 pandemic. It would be ideal to maintain the environmental gains and drop in pollution resulting from the reduction in vehicle traffic, plane travel, and factory production, but with the ability to leave our homes to enjoy it. Residents in major cities are finally able to see a skyline that has been hidden behind smog. According to the EPA, L.A. they had their longest stretch of “good” air quality since 1995. In Manhattan, monitoring found decreases of 10% in carbon dioxide and methane and 50% in carbon monoxide. Carbon Brief estimates U.S. emissions are down by 37% and Coronavirus will trigger the largest ever annual fall in CO2 emissions of any national threat.
Many are asking the question how do we maintain the environmental benefits after COVID-19 is past us? Dr. Carl-Friedrich Schluessner was quoted saying “even the most stringent responses to the climate crisis would be much less abrupt than what we are seeing now.” This is true, but hopefully we can retain a portion of the gains even after we return to business as usual because we have proven it is possible. Companies can continue to operate with their entire workforce or a large portion of it working remotely. Individually we can go longer without a trip to the grocery store and reduce the number of trips overall. We rediscovered walking allowing us to rely less on cars for every trip. Maybe it is possible to walk to the drug store down the street or even to the office. As Professor Mike Berners-Lee said “COVID-19 is a reevaluation and rewiring opportunity. It won’t be much fun, but it does give humanity an enforced chance to stop and think.”
Call to Action
We should use this time to seriously consider the world we want to create for future generations. Do we want to continue investing in buildings and development patterns that lead to reliance on vehicles and energy consumption? Or do we want to create the type of environment where kids can walk to the store for an afternoon snack or to play in the park? Once we can gather again, do we really want to return to a lifestyle stuck in traffic, commuting long distances daily? Or do we want to bike to work or work from home a few days each week?
I hope companies review their former policies and make changes that allow flexible schedules, reduce the amount of commuting and travel required to do our jobs. More meetings can be done online instead of flying to see the client. Leo Murray puts it perfectly when he says, “intervening strategically at these moments can help steer people into a lower carbon consumption pattern more seamlessly than trying to prise them out of their existing habits and bring about more lasting reduction sin lifestyle emissions.” We are already working from home and meeting via teleconference, can we not keep this up even after we no longer need to keep our distance?
Designers will have a large impact on steering us into a more sustainable future. We need to create cities that are walkable, dense, and mixed use to support the ability for someone to live without relying on a car regardless of the city size. Offices need to be designed with adaption in mind to accommodate a changing workforce that may not all work from one central location. The buildings we do construct need to rely less on fossil fuels and do more to produce their own energy and should be equipped to support bike commuters. We need to use the tools available and the lessons learned during these trying times to support a more sustainable and healthy future.
