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 GWs 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 countrys major
exports. Countries as diverse as Turkey and Kenya are following the
US living pattern.
Were 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.
Its a University-wide center based in the Law School, so
in some ways, it brings together the best of both worlds, Weiss
says. Its 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 centers 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 peoples radar screens
as major issues of our time.
I dont 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