Speaking of outstanding ideas, if Berkeley can do it, why can't we?

Onward Oregon asks the same question here. Berkeley, California is way ahead in this.

Height limits, yes or no?

Definitely an important question as we think about a carbon-constrained future with much more expensive energy:

Height limits needed for downtown buildings

September 18, 2008

I believe it is important to maintain a strong visual connection between downtown Salem and the riverfront.

Several structures currently under construction along Front and Commercial streets form a wall of separation, especially the eight-story condo across from Riverfront Park.

I would like the council to enact height restrictions on new construction along Front and Commercial streets, including the area recently vacated by Boise Cascade, so that new buildings conform to the height of older, existing structures.

— Pat Simila, Salem

James Howard Kunstler (author of The Long Emergency and The Geography of Nowhere) argues that buildings over six stories don't have much of a future, extrapolating from the days before elevators and high-energy heating and cooling systems.

"Build up, not out" sounds good when you are thinking only about reducing sprawl, and there's definitely an important benefit there, particularly in terms of reducing the paved surface area (important if we plan on continuing to eat, something that figures prominently in many peoples' plans for the future).

But unless you design the "up" so that it reduces the building energy demand (just occupying our buildings consume about 40% of our primary energy use), you've merely traded one unsustainable form of living for another. It's clear that we can't emulate Portland or Seattle or other places where skyscrapers make it impossible for people to live without consuming prodigious amounts of energy just to maintain their habitation.

The emblem of "planning" in our time seems to be a complete lack of recognition of fundamental physical limits --- such as water adamantly refusing to flow uphill, to take just one example. The height of a building cannot exceed the height you are willing to pump water, and pumping water is one helluva an energy-consumptive practice. Put a typical bunch of profligate water-using folks up high and figure out how much energy is required to supply them with potable water -- there's not enough solar panels in the whole wide world to do it. Water's not optional -- unless you have the energy to pump that water to them, your skyscrapers are going to be pretty empty.

When people in Cuba and Baghdad and places like that have had their power problems, they've had to learn to hoist water up high on ropes and pulleys -- and they had buildings with windows that open! It's truly backbreaking, brutal labor, and it consumes enough calories that you can quickly find yourself losing more energy than you can supply without draft animals.

And that's just water. Now add heating and cooling, just to make the space livable, and you quickly see why there's a practical limit to height. I'm not sure it's six stories, maybe it's five, maybe it's seven, but I'm willing to bet it's less than eight for sure.

It's nice that someone opened the discussion about height limits in the Statesman-Journal; what we need now is some awareness that the same forces that are driving us to reduce energy consumption in cars are also going to exert pressure to reduce energy consumption in our shelter. A country with a broken economy (resulting in large part from unwise energy choices) doesn't get to simply decree tall buildings vs. sprawl. Tall buildings are a sign of wealth precisely because they require so much wealth to build and maintain. As our descent into a low-energy future continues, we won't have to worry too much about new buildings exceeding height limits -- we'll only have to worry about how to make the best use of uninhabitable space in existing ones.

A great idea to borrow and build on

Here's an important idea: using the intertubes for improving community connections and helping neighbors help neighbors .

Another great example for Salem

Nice story on the BTA blog about Paris's "Velib" system of low-cost, widely available bikes for loan to anyone who wants to use one. A nice fit for Salem.

More bicyclists = fewer car/bike accidents

MORE CYCLISTS MEAN FEWER ACCIDENTS

Ecomodder - It may seem counterintuitive, but according to a recent report more cyclists on the road mean fewer accidents involving cyclists and motor vehicles. . . "It's a virtuous cycle," says Dr Julie Hatfield, an injury expert from University of New South Wales. "The likelihood that an individual cyclist will be struck by a motorist falls with increasing rate of bicycling in a community. And the safer cycling is perceived to be, the more people are prepared to cycle." Also, even more encouragingly, it doesn't seem that cycling infrastructure is responsible for the change:

Experts say the effect is independent of improvements in cycling-friendly laws such as lower speed limits and better infrastructure, such as bike paths. Research has revealed the safety-in-numbers impact for cyclists in Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, 14 European countries and 68 Californian cities.

The Occult in Salem

One of the (sometimes dubious) perks of living in our fair city is that our biggest industry is government. This is one reason that Salem struggles economically: an inordinate fraction of prime city land sits under government (i.e., non-property-tax-paying) ownership.

Funny, Oregon's state government, which loves timber payments to compensate for all that federally owned (non-property-tax-paying) land, hasn't quite seen how that same idea applies to cities such as Salem.

Of course there is an real upside to living in a town where government is the main thing: a constant source of amusement.

Did you know that a little-known office within state government (called "The Real Estate Agency") claims that it can copyright information that appears to have once been compiled, published, and distributed at public expense?

If anyone has a copy of this magical "yellow book" that has gone occult (hidden from view, concealed), please speak up in the comments section. Everyone in Salem deserves to know what vital information was once -- but is no more -- contained within it.

Questions and Answer Book Discontinued

The Real Estate Agency is no longer selling the publication "Questions and Answers in Real Estate" (also known as the "yellow book").

The Agency also wishes to remind interested parties that the questions in the "Questions and Answers in Real Estate" are copyrighted. Making copies of the book without permission of the Agency is not allowed.

Please contact the Agency if you have any questions.

Moments of the past -- and the future?

This appeared in the Statesman-Journal on November 9, 2007, reprinting a piece from the Capital Journal that ran on May 27, 1890:

The electric street cars made their first trip this morning. Mr. Knight invited the Board of Trade, the City Council and the representatives of the press to make the trial trip with them. A Journal reporter was on hand. Everything moved off smoothly and all were pleased with the workings of the machinery. The cars move off rapidly and with a steady motion and there is no danger of having your next on jointed by the sudden jerks in starting or stopping.

The cars are single motor of 15 hp, and are capable of a speed of 25 miles an hour, though a usual run, including stops, they will make about 10 miles an hour. The manipulation is so perfected that only a moment is required to stop and reverse the power, and before it is thought, the car will be moving in the opposite direction.

Those speeds compare quite favorably to the average speed attained by automobiles on city streets here in Salem. But are we wise enough to recognize how much our abandonment of what would today be called light rail has cost us?

And are we wise enough to reverse course as smoothly as those cars did in 1890, and rebuild an electric-based transit system option before it is too late and the financial shenanigans of Wall Street and the relentless upward pressure on energy and food prices uses up all the available money and reduced driving depletes the Highway Trust Fund?

Not obviously.

Consider this editorial from the business descendant of the Capital Journal, just a month after the flashback story (December 6, 2007)--it displays the usual preoccupation with pouring more and more resources into trying to maintain automobility, which is, at bottom, the underlying root cause of our economic collapse.

Don't let Salem be site of traffic bottleneck
Third bridge vital to Salem regional transportation

This week's storms brought home the fragility of the transportation network on which Northwest Oregon depends.

A few hour's of lashing by Sundays and Mondays rains were all it took to close the highways from the Willamette Valley to the coast. Deliveries of groceries, newspapers and fuel came to a halt. Tourists bound for casinos and hotels turned back. Coastal residents canceled plans for medical appointments inland. . . .

If today's harsh storms can have such an effect on East-West transportation, just think of the consequences of failing to build a third bridge across the Willamette River at Salem.

This project has been talked about since the 1960s. Without some agreement on where to build the bridge and how to raise the ever-increasing local share of funds, the bridge to get put on the back burner yet again.

That would doom Salem to be a bottleneck for regional transportation, just as surely as Portland's I-5 bridge or Oregon's mud-covered highways have been this week.

Christian Science Monitor covers Transition Towns

A very good paper covers a very important subject: transitioning to be ready for a low-energy future.

Great News -- Community Radio coming to Salem!

Kudos to Karen Holman for all her work!

Salem area receives clearance for FM radio station

Salem is on the way to having a nonprofit, community FM radio station, with the issuance of a construction license to Radio Free Salem.

Karen Holman, a board member of nonprofit Salem Folklore Community and chairwoman of its radio project committee, received the Federal Communication Commission permit last week, the preliminary to the issuance of a license. . . . Radio Free Salem will lease a tower on Wipper Hill in Turner for its antenna, with a signal expected to reach most of Salem, Stayton, Sublimity, Aumsville and Turner. . . . The programming will be 50 percent music, with the rest community-driven programming, such as news and talk, similar to Portland's KBOO. . . . The official city of license will be Turner; being based in a small community helped Radio Free Salem get a license.

Letter of the Month

Return airport funds, protect quality of life

Why on Earth would we want to expand and intensify the use of the
Salem airport? It will benefit a few and will adversely impact the
quality of life for many people who live in the core area of Salem,
some who have lived here for decades.

We already tolerate increasing train noise and traffic congestion.
Increasing air traffic noise and pollution will detract from efforts
to promote the livability of the core area of Salem and discourage
new residents.

I would vote to return the $8 million in federal funds to forgo
improving the existing airport and to protect livability in Salem.

I place a high value on quality of life. I don't like the community
being forced to accept a noisy helicopter school that we don't want
in order to keep money for airport expansion. The expansion is sure
to result in more unwanted air traffic, noise and pollution.

If Salem needs a bigger airport, and I am not sure it does, maybe it
should be relocated — before we invest $10 million of our hard-earned
tax dollars on "improvements."

— Tracy White, Salem