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ATLANTA’S FUTURE: THE SOUTH’S SUSTAINABLE CITY

Blake Ellett

Atlanta, GA

December 2014

Achieving a truly sustainable city system is an increasingly complex and complicated challenge. As our societies evolve, we need to understand the importance of achieving goals towards a sustainable future. The United States contains some of the most urbanized landscapes in the world, with approximately 80% of the population in these urbanized areas (Schewenius, 2014). Atlanta has an incredible opportunity to be on the forefront of achieving sustainability goals within the city and surrounding the city. Atlanta already has a sustainability initiative (http://www.sustainableatlanta.org/), with initiatives such as such as eco districts and local gardening to help support sustainability within the city. For more information on current initiatives see my eco district blog for a better understanding of the process as well as ideas on how to progress these current initiatives within the city of Atlanta, Ga in regards to eco districts and urban agriculture. With these initiatives comes a plethora of unforeseen and interconnected issues within the progression of achieving a truly sustainable city. So where do we focus our attention in the process of molding a sustainable Atlanta?

With so many factors to take into consideration in the sustainability process, there has to be proactive and progressive approaches to solving the issues that we find within sustainability. As our species expands the impervious urbanized areas across the globe, we can embrace the ecology surrounding the city and incorporate it into the ecology of our city, taking to the ecology of cities approach as opposed to the ecology in cities approach. The ecology of cities takes into account the urban environment as being a part of the overall environmental system, looking at the city as being connected to the ecological processes surrounding the city while the ecology in cities attempts to look at the ecology of the non-human organisms within the urban setting, separating the city from the surrounding ecosystems (Wu, 2014). Urbanization does not have to be a detrimental anthropogenic

impact to the natural systems of the world. We can use our platform of control over our city systems to manage and create innovative and effective sustainability planning practices and methods to further enhance the quality of life in and around our urban centers. So where do we begin? In this blog we will explore of few topics to focus on in the sustainability planning process as well as ways to incorporate progressive action to make legitimate and measurable positive impacts for reaching a sustainable Atlanta. Some of the factors that can be influence to increase the sustainability of Atlanta are biodiversity, transportation, housing, and water resource management.

BiodiversityUnderstanding that urban citizens are typically more supportive of conservation efforts, we can take steps to incorporate improvement methods to increase the biodiversity of the Atlanta metropolitan area with the help and support of the local community (Oliveira, 2011). Including the ecology of Atlanta to the sustainability goals can be instrumental in achieving a symbiotic relationship with the ecosystems surrounding the city as well as provide a better quality of life within the city. Protecting habitat and improving the quality of habitat within Atlanta will improve the quality of life within and around the city. What do we focus on and how do we achieve these improvements to increase biodiversity? We see species such as bats taking advantage of urbanization by utilizing manmade structures for roosting habitats. Peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus) use the high rise buildings and structures for hunting vantage points and roosting sites. Realizing that nature adapts and evolves to changing environments, we should see urbanization has an opportunity to include the natural system as a part of the urbanization of humanity.

One species in particular that I am familiar with in the context of urban environments is bats. Bats are great insect controllers as well as indicators of your watersheds health. Correlations to insect larvae production in streams can be made to bat populations in regards to the amount of individuals that are

able to survive and be supported within the urbanized areas. An individual bat can eat thousands of insects in just one night! This portion of the discussion is a good example of the interconnectedness of all the factors that go into developing sustainability plans. In urban agriculture areas, bats assist in the overall health of the process by providing natural pest control. More bats eating insects mean less pesticide use in

our environment, and less pesticides in our environment mean cleaner food and water.

The ability to incorporate several different factors of sustainability allows innovative and connected problem solving opportunities for development and planning incorporation. What exactly is the incorporation of these factors? Biodiversity can be directly associated with the water resource management zones in and around Atlanta. Typically a jurisdictional water of the U.S. has a 25-ft vegetated buffer surrounding the stream. These areas can be managed and improved upon to provide habitat for different species and encourage native species utilization. These areas can provide habitat for bats and birds and increase the connectivity in urban ecosystems acting as greenways and ecological networks (Ahern, 2012). These green zones can also mitigate impacts from urban heat islands. Heat islands are created by the reduced vegetative cover and increase impervious dark surfaces within the urban environment (Pickett 2011). These heat islands influence the temperature within the urban areas

as compared with the surrounding ecosystems and influence the leaf emergence times of species within the urban setting as well as increase the total energy consumption of the city.

Within these buffer zones, botanical biodiversity can also flourish. One goal for managing areas for increased biodiversity can be the removal of invasive species. From “privet pulls” to direct herbicidal treatments, invasive species control can be an arduous and complicated task. As technology advances and we gain more access to different technologies, we have to advance our management practices with the increased abilities gained from new tech. One type of tech that can be used to monitor and manage areas in which we wish to improve the biodiversity is drones.

My current employer is allowing us ways to explore drone utilization in the environmental field. Drones provide us with a bird’s eye perspective. With this perspective we can accomplish many goals including herbicidal treatment, monitoring, image compilation, and video compilation of the managed areas. For a more detailed description of environmental drones and how they can be utilized see my presentation here.

Transportation and Housing Atlanta faces a commuter congestion and traffic issue that affects the mobility of the entire city. Traffic in Atlanta can be a nightmare and cause significant delays. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, 10 seconds of idling uses more fuel than restarting your engine. Atlanta is known for having long

commutes on average of 35 miles, which makes it the nation’s longest average commute (usatoday.com). What has been done by the city governance to help address issues in transportation into and out of Atlanta? The state agreed to emphasize mass transit and test emissions on cars every year, instead of every two years. This has improved the air quality in the metropolitan area and reduced the

number of vehicles on the road, but what are some of the more aggressive strategies to help solve the GHG emissions and reduce the commute? One solution to the issue of the amount of cars on the road is to increase the density of the population in a centralized manor. The increase in higher densities of jobs and people can lead to more walking, less driving, less energy, and less carbon emissions (Seto, 2010).

I support the idea of the "tent pole" high density planning, it makes sense to mold your cities in this fashion. Affordable housing, job creation, centralized location, and pedestrian friendly transportation seem to be some of the main starting components in possibly re branding Atlanta. One of the trends I have noticed around Atlanta is the live, shop, and dine housing developments. Emory University has incorporated the all-in-one living approach to some of the newly developed housing (see

http://www.emory-point.com/ for an example). I really like this approach in that these areas create affordable, well equipped apartment and condominiums with markets, entertainment options, and restaurants all connected to the same building development.

Another trend I have noticed in and around the Atlanta area is the influx in electric powered vehicles, specifically the Nissan leaf and Tesla model-S. These vehicles have zero emissions and run solely on electricity. Not only are these people saving money on gas, they are also completely removing their input into the GHG emissions of the city. As the electric car improves in functionality, Atlanta is installing more and more of Tela’s super charging stations. Many of Tesla’s stations are capable of delivering up to 120 kW to the Model S, which can replenish half a charge in as little as 20 minutes, for free. Tesla is currently working on installing super charge stations all across the U.S. (See figure). The spatial distribution of these charging stations will allow Tesla owners to travel major highways in North America for free (http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger). Tax incentives and further infrastructural investments by the city of Atlanta in electric charging stations would encourage a new market of the economic sector as well as provide people with a cheap and renewable energy source for transportation within and around the city and help mitigate the GHG emissions from around the city.

Water Resource ManagementGlobally, only 2.53% of the water resources available are freshwater (Siingh, 2014). Already at a global level we see that water usage has increased five-fold over the past 60+ years, with the exception of a few countries such as the United States (Richter, 2013). Industrialized countries have taken big steps in improving urban water systems with updated management practices and developments in biotechnology, materials science, real time sensory systems, and computing power (Hering, 2013). An average of 14% of all treated water in the U.S. is lost to leaks, updating and instituting real time leak detection and monitoring systems is one way planners are seeking to advance their water management systems and increase the overall effectiveness of the current systems (Hering, 2013). Technology can assist in monitoring Atlanta’s water management systems, but natural methods of cleaning and treating our water can also be an effective and advantageous method for managing our water and storm water runoff.

The hydrology of the impervious urban environment increases the runoff speed and load into natural stream systems via our storm water management practices increasing contaminants, temperatures, and

changing natural hydrology (Pickett, 2011). Utilizing wetland plants into conveyance ditches will provide natural filters to water runoff, cleaning and treating the conveyed water before it is diverted back into our watershed and water treatment facilities. Atlanta has already made small steps in creating a sustainable storm water management system (saportareport.com). The city’s plan envisions a

storm water management system that will use permeable pavers, bio-swales, detention ponds and storage vaults to capture from 10 million to 30 million gallons of storm water.

Managed wetland systems add resiliency to the water supply portfolio, enhance urban aesthetics, provide wildlife habitat, and improve water quality (Hering, 2013). Actively managing natural systems such as wetlands and bio-infiltration basins have shown success in treating wastewater and storm water runoff, but the effectiveness of these natural systems can be limited to factors such as lack of production in winter months. Taking into account limitations and advantages of the different systems in place, natural and manmade, it should be an avenue to consider implementing many different practices to address the overall issues of water management in and around Atlanta. Concepts in decentralized systems are able to be applied as a complimentary process to the existing centralized systems, promoting innovation and technological advancement (Marlow, 2013). One example that comes to mind is the utilization of pervious pavement, especially in parking lots. The paved lots are constructed with impervious materials atop gravel beds, with the idea that storm water will trickle through the permeable pavement and slowly be recharged into the adjacent soils. I have seen examples of these in Athens, GA at the “park and rides.” These park and rides are basically places for commuters to leave their personal cars and use the public transit system to travel to their destination. This is another great example of the interconnectedness of the sustainability process, you can create advantageous and effective storm water treatment in the parking lots with pervious pavement as well as encourage public transportation and mass transit for the community.

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http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger http://www.emory-point.com

http://saportareport.com/blog/2014/07/atlanta-installing-sustainable-storm-water-system-near-turner-field/