Vacant suburban areas are emerging all over the U.S. due to the credit crunch. Houses are either being abandoned or areas that were in the process of development have been left undeveloped at  the subdivision level.. So what do you do with these vacant houses and abandoned sub-divided lands?

In an article “What will save the suburbs“, by Allison Arieff, there is the prospect that “The problem now isn’t really how to better design homes and communities, but rather what are we going to do with all the homes and communities we’re left with”. I recommend you read this article.

These suburban lands could be redeveloped in a number of different ways, which is not dissimilar to the way traditionally urban areas have been turned over, old warehouses become loft apartments, industrial lands become parks in cities.

Suburbia  could be redeveloped in a way that generates carbon credits, if the change of land-use included multiple projects that could earn carbon credits. Out on the wind-swept urban moors, and not so windy urban areas all over the USA a variety of voluntary carbon offsets projects could be generated, which have additional  social benefits in terms of job creation, food production and reduced greenhouse gases. Eventually all the displaced persons have to be re-housed somewhere. Some of the land could be re-released as housing in a compact urban settlement.

An area now abandoned could under the  Voluntary Carbon Standard be re-modelled as a mixed development, with areas set aside for wind farming, compact urban housing developments, with higher densities that are energy efficient and use renewable energy.  The use of electric cars powered by PV cells on the roofs could be another additional carbon credit.

If the U.S Cap and Trade Emissions Trading Scheme were to include energy efficiency and agricultural offsets, then aspects of sustainable community development would also be eligible for credits.

Urban gardens could provide some of the produce for local populations under the ‘Locally Grown’ initiatives, which aim to reduce food miles and greenhouse gas emissions.  Many aspects of the redevelopment of vacant and abandoned houses could be converted to carbon offset projects. All it requires is a developer with some vision to work out the financing of such a development.

In other words a transformation of the suburbs into sustainable communities, providing local energy,  growing food locally may well be the way to revive these communities. The carbon credits earned every year from these communities would be able to assist with the management of the community owned environmental initiatives. Just a thought, but why not!

Bio-diversity of thinking key solution to multiple crises

The conventional wisdom sees Climate Change and population growth causing water scarcity, storm damage, sea-level rise leading to a lowering of average food harvests. More recently the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the Global Food Crisis have been linked in so far as the financial resources are unavailable to address the scope of the food problem. In fact many are now discussing this multi-factorial nature of crises that are mounting up. In an article, by Tony Burke, “Food for thought as other crisis hits hard”, 19th Nov 2008, he states that, “The world is facing a challenge to produce more food, while combating climate change, which further exacerbates, water scarcity and a global financial crisis’.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization met in Rome to discuss these inter-locking crisis, whilst primarily concerned with food production, climate change was never far away from the discussions. Food prices in 2008 have risen worldwide and food riots have occurred in Africa and South-East Asia this year, and prices are predicted to worsen in years to come.

Lower agricultural production is not just an impact of Climate Change but current methods of food production are in fact the largest single source of Climate Change.

An excellent video with many facts on the use of fossil fuels in agriculture is called, “How Cuba Survived Peak Oil”- Power of Community. In Cuba agriculture, before 1990 consumed more oil than cars and houses in a ration of 10:9:7. Cuba has become a laboratory experiment when it faced in the early 1990s an artificial energy famine, an economic and energy crisis when the Soviet Union collapsed. During the Special Period 1989-1994, Cuban food imports collapsed by 80%. Oil imports dropped from 14 million to 4 million tons.   Cuba had no access to the World Bank or IMF. Faced with food scarcity, no imported oil, no electricity, no refrigeration, no air-conditioning and having to cook daily and pull water from ropes, the Cubans were forced to embark on survival agriculture. They have 2% of the population of Latin America, but 11% of scientists who took over Cuba’s agricultural systems. They developed urban gardens, sustainable agricultural practices and land redistribution. Before the special period Cuba was the most intensively farmed country in Central and Latin America and agriculture was set up for export markets based on plantation agriculture. Today Cuba is self-sufficient in food and 80 % of food grown is organic.The Cuban experience is a model of what needs to be done when confronted with multiple crises.

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