May 2002

Promoting the Virtues of
Sustainable Living

GW Center Aims to Offer a Balanced Perspective and Open the Law on Smart Growth

By Greg Licamele

More people living in cities lead to more automobiles. More automobiles create more pollution. More pollution creates higher temperatures in cities and then around the globe.

Welcome to the complex world of sustainable living and smart growth; welcome to the world in which we already live.

Perhaps no other issue today permeates so many disciplines than the way people live and organize their society, especially buildings and roads. It affects countless fields: the environment, transportation, law, politics, schools, business, health, zoning, communications, privacy, and engineering.

This interconnected world of planning and developing our subdivisions, streets, and stores is under close watch by GW’s Center on Sustainable Growth. Its goals are as wide-ranging as its interdisciplinary nature, but the center acts as an impartial resource for decision-makers navigating their way down advocacy groups’ information superhighways, which are often snarled by biased data.

Sustainable living and so-called “smart growth” initiatives have grabbed the attention of a majority of US governors and local politicians. The way Americans live — in manicured cul-de-sacs and traveling from suburb-to-suburb — has become one of the country’s major exports. Countries as diverse as Turkey and Kenya are following the US living pattern.

“We’re trying to promote international dialogue and exchange on urban sustainability issues by providing information and encouraging the sharing of that information across the world,” says Jonathan Weiss, professorial lecturer in law and director of the center. “Our center, based at GW, can play an important role as a credible resource. We also look at reducing legal barriers that have made it difficult to do sustainable planning.”

Since its inception, the center has hosted a variety of forums ranging from international sustainability to civil rights and smart growth to promoting the use of technology throughout the DC area.

“It’s a University-wide center based in the Law School, so in some ways, it brings together the best of both worlds,” Weiss says. “It’s able to draw on and link together different disciplines and schools across the University.” In addition to the law expertise Weiss provides, the School of Business and Public Management, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences (specifically, the Department of Geography) have contributed to the center’s work, among others.

Mark Starik, associate professor of strategic management and public policy, SBPM, says his department provides “long-term” and “big-picture” notions of sustainability.

“As any of us in a metropolitan area know, this means considering the environmental and social aspects of the quality of our lives, as well as the economic,” Starik says. “Businesses and other large organizations should take a ‘sustainability’ view when they are considering where to locate their headquarters or main activity buildings so their employees can take advantage of urban transit systems and help reduce the pressure of urban sprawl and its many negative environmental and social impacts.”

One of the most challenging obstacles in planning and developing communities is embedded in the law, Weiss says. His center is building upon the work of others in this field and it is opening up the law so more people, for example, can encourage development around mass transit while improving the environment.

“The laws that impact communities and growth impact all citizens,” Weiss says. “Decisions should not just be left in the hands of a few developers or a few municipal officials.”

Weiss has had many experiences with developers and municipal officers, including times when many of them ignored the potential of abandoned industrial sites. Weiss worked at the Environmental Protection Agency and later as an adviser to former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore. It was in the bowels of the EPA in the early 1990s that the term “brownfields redevelopment” was born with Weiss’ help.

“People just used to drive by these old sites without thought as to what they were and what potential they offered for redevelopment,” Weiss explains. “Once consciousness started changing, people could start recognizing them and see the potential for their clean-up and redevelopment.”

In 1999, Weiss says, the word “brownfield” entered the dictionary.
In addition to the dictionary, Weiss and Starik agree that sustainability and growth are just starting to appear on people’s radar screens as major issues of our time.

“I don’t think enough disciplines are paying attention to urban sprawl issues, nor do I think enough organizations or individuals are doing so,” Starik says. “I think [the Center for Sustainability and Growth], and many others who think urban sprawl issues need more attention, probably need to become more visible and do more coordination (internally and externally).”

Weiss says that the fact people now notice they are stuck in traffic more, and what kind of impact traffic jams have on them personally, is new, despite data that show the amount of time spent in traffic has not increased much in the last five years.

Weiss says law reviews and magazines are devoting more ink to smart growth and sustainable development, another sure sign this is a “hot” area of the law.

“There has been more demand for articles than I have time to do, which is good sign,” Weiss says.

While students, lawyers, and a cadre of other professionals and, ultimately, citizens, understand more about how we live, Weiss predicts that in 50 years the earth will become even more urbanized. The center will act as a resource to help explain the impacts of this urbanization.

“Cities are becoming urban heat islands, where the temperature is several degrees higher than the temperature outside the cities,” Weiss says. “The cumulative effect of that local climate change is global climate change.”

Weiss hopes that through the Center on Sustainable Growth, he and his colleagues will be able to affect change in the US and especially across the globe.

“The decisions made today in the developing world about how they grow their cities will have a tremendous impact not just on those cities, but the planet in the next 50 years,” Weiss says. “I hope one of the other things we can export now is the lessons we have learned from the way we have grown. Cities can grow in a more balanced way with less dependence on the automobile.”

 

Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu

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