New Rules Project www.newrules.org 1 Self-Reliant Cities Energy and the Transformation of Urban America DAVID MORRIS [email protected] Including a 2008 Foreword a publication of New Rules Project 612-379-3815 1313 5th St. SE, Suite 303 www.newrules.org Minneapolis, MN 55414 New Rules Project www.newrules.org 2 Table of Contents Introduction: What Makes a City?.............................................................................................. 13 PART I......................................................................................................................................... 17 CHAPTER 1............................................................................................................................... 18 Shaping the American City: From Wood to Coal to Petroleum.................................................. 18 CHAPTER 2............................................................................................................................... 25 Facing the Grid:From Neighborhood Power Plants to Continental Grid Systems..................... 25 CHAPTER 3............................................................................................................................... 35 Governing the City: Municipal Authority and Planning............................................................. 35 CHAPTER 4............................................................................................................................... 49 Financing the City: The Power of the Purse............................................................................... 49 PART II....................................................................................................................................... 55 CHAPTER 5............................................................................................................................... 56 A Critical Juncture....................................................................................................................... 56 CHAPTER 6............................................................................................................................... 60 First Steps.................................................................................................................................... 60 CHAPTER 7............................................................................................................................... 72 Humanly Scaled Energy Systems............................................................................................... 72 CHAPTER 8............................................................................................................................... 90 Financing the Transition.............................................................................................................. 90 CHAPTER 9............................................................................................................................. 101 The Ecological City.................................................................................................................. 101 Notes......................................................................................................................................... 109 Bibliography............................................................................................................................. 113 New Rules Project www.newrules.org 3 Acknowledgments I am grateful for the emotional and intellectual support given me by the staff of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance during the period I was writing this book. Special thanks are due Edward Hensley for talking the book through with me and for Joan Matthews for turning the manuscript into electrons. I am grateful for the assistance of my special friend and colleague, Harriet Barlow, a woman who teaches each person she touches. And my thanks to Mary Jo Sutherland-again. If the tone of this book is optimistic it is an optimism that grows out of my personal acquaintance with hundreds of people working in every section of the country. Space does not permit me to list all their names. Some are involved in local politics; most work in small businesses and community organizations. These people, working in communities as disparate as small towns in Maine or major megalopolises in California or New York, have been a source of inspiration to me. The movement towards local self-reliance comes from below. It is a heterogeneous movement. Each community shapes its future to its specific needs. But there is a common element linking each discrete activity-the belief that the average person can shed the role of spectator and can become an actor in shaping the future of the community. The Sierra Club, founded in 1892 by John Muir, has devoted itself to the study and protection of the earth's scenic and ecological resourcesmountains, wetlands, woodlands, wild shores and rivers, deserts and plains. The publishing program of the Sierra Club offers books to the public as a nonprofit educational service in the hope that they may enlarge the public's understanding of the Club's basic concerns. The point of view expressed in each book, however, does not necessarily represent that of the Club. The Sierra Club has some fifty chapters coast to coast, in Canada, Hawaii, and Alaska. For information about how you may participate in its programs to preserve wilderness and the quality of life, please address inquiries to Sierra Club, Copyright © 1982 by The Institute for Local Self-Reliance All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Morris, David J. Self-Reliant Cities Bibliography: p. 235 1. United States-Public works-Energy consumption. 2. Public utilities- United States-Energy consumption. 3. Cities and towns-United States-Energy consumption. I. Title. HD4605.M67333.79'13'0973 81-18301 ISBN 0-87156-296-0 AACR2 Since 1974, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) has worked with citizen groups, governments and private businesses to extract the maximum value from local resources. A program of ILSR, the New Rules Project helps policy makers to design rules as if community matters. ©2008 by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. All Rights Reserved. New Rules Project www.newrules.org 4 alternative days, depending on whether their Self-Reliant Cities license plates ended with an odd or even Foreword number. October 2008 Washington reacted by launching Project Independence. Congress enacted a series of f Self-Reliant Cities is a snapshot of a new energy laws, mandating energy I certain historical moment, why then have efficiency upgrades in cars and major we decided to reissue it more than a quarter of appliances, abolishing the utilities’ monopoly century after its original publication? on the generation of electricity and requiring utilities to purchase power from small on-site Because we deeply believe the energy and and independently owned power plants. climate crises must ultimately be solved at the Incentives were offered for renewable fuels. local level. It is there that the proverbial The R&D budget for renewable energy and rubber meets the road, where theory becomes energy efficiency exploded. Congress practice, where policy must be implemented. established a national Solar Energy Research Cities are where more than two thirds of Institute (SERI). Americans and half the world’s population live. Cities are the locus of authority closest Simultaneously, the first Earth Day in 1970 to the people. Cities have significant marked the beginning of mass grassroots authority over land use and building environmental activism. An explosion of standards. collective activism demanded more rigorous environmental policies while at the same time Self-Reliant Cities was published by Sierra an explosion of individual activism in the Club Books in 1982. As we would later form of tinkerers, inventors and entrepreneurs discover, the country was at the tail end of our experimented with new building designs and first national effort to eliminate our growing environmentally benign energy technologies. dependence on imported oil (33 percent in 1974). That national effort was catalyzed by The guiding philosophy of these movements an embargo imposed by the newly formed was summed up by the title of Fritz Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Schumacher’s best selling and widely Countries (OPEC) on oil exports to countries influential 1973 book: Small Is Beautiful. supporting Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. My own organization, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance was born in 1974. The focus The Arab nations reduced their oil production then and now has been on building equitable by some 5 million barrels per day, resulting in and responsible humanly scaled economies a 7 percent drop in world oil production. Oil and political systems. prices, stable from 1958 to 1970 at about $3 per barrel, suddenly quadrupled to over $12 For many, the shift to renewable fuels also per barrel. Lines at gas stations snaked portended a more decentralized energy around the block. Many jurisdictions system. Joseph Lindmayer, inventor of the required drivers to purchase gasoline on first high efficiency solar cell used by orbiting New Rules Project www.newrules.org 5 satellites in the 1960s and the owner of the system. It added