Articles by Payton Chung

Investors see green in buildings

Contrary to popular belief, most developers don't bulldoze Bambi solely to satisfy their innate avarice. Instead, they pave the Earth at the bidding of their clients -- by which I mean lenders and investors, not homebuyers, office tenants, or other such "end users." Regardless of how exciting and cool a development proposal is, it just won't happen if some faceless banker doesn't advance a big pile of cash.

As rapacious national banks swallow smaller, local competitors by the dozen, these lending decisions have increasingly fallen to bankers blindly applying generic guidelines. The result: a paint-by-numbers landscape of interchangeable (but financially safe) subdivisions, strip malls, and office parks. Any developer who dared to innovate would have to do so on his own dime -- and sure enough, many pioneering examples of New Urbanism have been backed by "nontraditional" investors like old-money families, large corporations (like Microsoft, Disney, EDS, and Ebsco), and even charitable foundations. Despite growing interest in socially responsible investing, few investors have thought of how to clean up the picture in the building industry -- source of, say some, half of America's greenhouse gas emissions.

NY Times headlines Chicago as “green business”

This Sunday, The New York Times ran a package of Business articles focused on "The Business of Green." (If previous packages are any indication, the links will remain active longer than the standard week.)

Hearteningly for this Second City resident, Keith Schneider's banner headline -- To Revitalize a City, Try Spreading Some Mulch -- spotlights Mayor Richard M. Daley's efforts to improve the city's quality of life through greening initiatives. While many local wags have ridiculed the Daley as a mere gardener, the article calls new street trees and spiffy parks an "economic development strategy" central to the city's general economic resurgence:

Jetting off to global warming

This week's The Economist (paygate, although you may be able to get a "day pass") carries a special report on aviation's contribution to carbon emissions:

... flying a fully laden A380 [super-jumbo jet] is, in terms of energy, like a 14km (nine-mile) queue of traffic on the road below ... Aviation is a relatively small source of the emissions blamed for global warming, but its share is growing the fastest. The evidence is strong that emissions from jet engines, including the streaks of cloud (called contrails) they leave behind in the sky, could be especially damaging ... You can buy a hybrid car, switch to low-energy light bulbs in your house and eat locally grown organic food. But the dozen daily decisions on which you base your husbandry are trivial compared with the handful of yearly choices about that holiday or this business trip.

Even worse, air travel demand has grown by 75% since 1980 (my brief lifetime) and shows no sign of abating: Airbus projects that in 2020, just the increase in miles flown will equal all air travel worldwide in 1969.

Earth bites SUV

A water main break beneath 73rd Street and 4th Avenue in Brooklyn's Bay Ridge neighborhood opened up a 12-foot-wide sinkhole that literally swallowed an SUV. You bite the earth, she bites back. (The driver was not seriously injured.) On the other hand, maybe bad eco-karma isn't at fault: the water also flooded into a subway tunnel, disrupting thousands of eco-friendly commutes on the R train.

Photos available from Newsday.