Tag: store

New Ship Has Balance Without Ballast

  • A diagram of the ballast-free ship (Photo courtesy of Professor Michael Parsons)

Cargo ships move sea life around the world.
Moving aquatic life from one port to another can cause
environmental havoc. Lester Graham reports there’s a
new idea that could nearly eliminate the problem of
transporting sea life to foreign ports:

Transcript

Cargo ships move sea life around the world.
Moving aquatic life from one port to another can cause
environmental havoc. Lester Graham reports there’s a
new idea that could nearly eliminate the problem of
transporting sea life to foreign ports:

There is an invasion of every major port on the globe.

“Today, the world’s shores are under attack. Armies of aliens are secretly invading our coasts.”

If this video, Invaders from the Sea, from the International Maritime
Organization sounds a little over-dramatic, it’s really not. Invaders from far-flung
corners of the world are brought in by commerce. In their travels, cargo ships pick up the
hitchhikers.

Those hitchhikers can be fish, mussels – aquatic bugs of all kinds. They can become
pests. Out-compete native species for food and space. They can destroy the
native ecosystems and often damage the economic well-being of people.

Here’s how it happens. Ocean-going cargo ships dock at a foreign port. They pump in
water for ballast to keep the ship stable. They also pump in some of the living things in
the water. When they arrive at the destination port, they can pump out that water and
the critters that were sucked up with it.

In the US, ports from Chesapeake Bay to San Francisco have been invaded. But,
the Great Lakes have been hit especially hard by invasive species.

Michael Parsons is a professor of naval architecture at the University of Michigan. He
says when foreign ships were able to come in from the Atlantic and travel as far as
inland as Duluth, Minnesota; they brought a lot of invaders with them.

“With the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in the ‘50’s, that led to increased
introduction of non-indigenous species such as the zebra mussel, and the round goby, and
the ruffe, and the various smaller creatures that have been brought in to the Great Lakes.”

Those creatures have damaged the ecosystem of the Great Lakes. And they’ve cost the economy.
By one Environmental Protection Agency estimate about five-billion dollars a year.

Parsons and his colleagues have been working to design a ship that has no need for
ballast. In the lab, a scale model has been tested in a long pool. Instead of pumping
water in and out of the ballasts, the water would flow through big
tubes that run the length of the ship.

“And so, that’ll create a slow flow through these trunks so that they’re always swept
clean of foreign water.”

“A ship like that is just what we need in the Great Lakes.”

Andy Buchsbaum runs the Great Lakes office of the environmental group, the National
Wildlife Federation.

“If you eliminate the need for ballast water altogether, then you’re eliminating the vast
majority of invasive species introductions that come in through the discharge of ballast.”

The ballast-free ship design is creating some excitement. Even the shipping industry is
paying attention because the ship also is more fuel efficient.

If someone decides to actually build the ballast-free cargo ship, it’ll be a while before
the first one is on the high seas.

Allegra Cangelosi has been working on the ballast and invasive species problem for
close to a decade. She’s a policy analyst with the Northeast-Midwest Institute.

“I think it’s a wonderful development. I don’t think there’s going to be any one answer
for all ships plying all waters throughout the globe. However, the more good answers
that are out there to choose from, the better for the environment.”

Some of those choices are filtering ballast water or killing organisms in the ballast with
chemicals. Those systems are expensive. And since fuel isn’t getting any cheaper, that
might make a more fuel-efficient ballast-free ship attractive.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Organic Clothes a Bullseye for Target?

  • An outfit from American designer Rogan Gregory, which is made of 100% certified organic cotton. The collection arrives in Target stores on May 18th (Photo courtesy of Target)

If you want to buy organic clothes, chances
are you’ll have to order them over the Internet.
But that’s about to change. Lester Graham reports a
big retailer will soon be selling eco-friendly clothes:

Transcript

If you want to buy organic clothes, chances
are you’ll have to order them over the Internet.
But that’s about to change. Lester Graham reports a
big retailer will soon be selling eco-friendly clothes:

The big-box retail store, Target, will soon be carrying a line of environmentally-
friendly clothes for women.

Tim Craig is Editor in Chief for the magazine “Retailing
Today.” He thinks if Target starts carrying eco-friendly clothes, other retailers will take
notice.

“Without a doubt there will be some me-too-ism. And they watch each other very
carefully. Certainly, Kohls and Target go back-and-forth as to who has the leadership position and I
wouldn’t put it past them to have some one-upsmanship, if you will, in the area of
offering sustainable, organic product.”

Craig says it’s unclear whether there’s a demand for those kinds of clothes. But for
women who want eco-friendly clothing, being able to see, touch, and try on clothes
before buying them might persuade them to skip ordering on the internet and instead shop at
the store.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Food Prices on the Rise

  • Produce section of a supermarket in VA. (Photo by Ken Hammond, courtesy of the USDA)

Food prices are going up worldwide. A new survey
by the American Farm Bureau Federation finds supermarket
checkout costs have risen nearly 8% this year.
Julie Grant has more:

Transcript

Food prices are going up worldwide. A new survey
by the American Farm Bureau Federation finds supermarket
checkout costs have risen nearly 8% this year.
Julie Grant has more:

Retail food prices usually increase 3% per year. But over the last year the
cost of flour, cheese, bread, meat, oil, and produce is up – by more than
double the average.

The United Nations has predicted prices will stabilize in the long term. But
that consumers worldwide will face at least 10 more years of rapidly rising
food prices.

Commodity prices for corn, wheat, soybeans and other staples have been
skyrocketing over the past year – to more than double 2006 prices.
The higher costs are due in part to weather affecting crops, and growing
demand in China and India.

Economists also point toward the increased use of grains for ethanol and
other biofuels, putting pressure on food prices.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

A Closer Look at Chinese Organics

  • Produce section of a supermarket in VA. (Photo by Ken Hammond, courtesy of USDA)

More companies are importing organic
products from China and other countries. But
contaminated pet food, tainted toothpaste,
and unauthorized antibiotics in fish have been
imported to the U.S. from China. Now, some people are
concerned about organic foods from China. Julie
Grant reports:

Transcript

More companies are importing organic
products from China and other countries. But
contaminated pet food, tainted toothpaste,
and unauthorized antibiotics in fish have been
imported to the U.S. from China. Now, some people are
concerned about organic foods from China. Julie
Grant reports:

When you see that round USDA organic seal on a carton of
milk, boxed foods, or bananas , it means that on some farm,
somewhere, something like this happened:

(farm inspection sound)

Inspector: “All righty. Anything under the box on the far
right.”

Farmer: “That’s the burnout. Which I haven’t used for 3 or 4
years.”

An inspector walks around looking at the greenhouse, the
barn and the fields, in the greenhouse, and in the barn. He
works for an agency that’s accredited by the USDA to certify
farms as organic. He’s making sure nothing is happening on
the farm that’s prohibited by the National Organic Standards.

But small farms like this one are no longer the norm in
organics. Organic products have become a big business all
around the world.

So people are wondering… who inspects those farms?

(store sound)

Sheila Rombach is a buyer for a small natural foods store.
Like a lot of people, she’s a little nervous about the safety of
food coming from China. Last year’s pet food scare and
poisonous toothpaste are still fresh in many people’s minds.

Rombach’s customers pay a premium for ‘organic’ foods.
She wonders how the USDA can certify that farms all the
way in China are following organic rules.

“I guess it crossed mind because of all the negative publicity
about things manufactured in China. I want to be sure that
the items grown under the organic label are truly organic.”

It’s such a concern that one large health food chain, Trader
Joe’s, is taking all Chinese imports off its shelves. Trader
Joe’s plans to have Chinese garlic, ginger, and all other
single-ingredient foods out of its 300 stores this spring.

But the U.S. Department of Agriculture maintains if it says
organic, it’s truly organic. Barbara Robinson is chief
administrator of the USDA’s National Organic Program. She
says foreign products go through the same process as those
grown here.

“So, if the product is coming from India, or the product is
coming from Australia, and you want to market in the United States – then
you need a certifying agent who is accredited by us.”

Robinson says all certifying agents accredited by the USDA
should be enforcing the same organic rules. If a product has
that little round seal, Robinson says consumers can trust it
meets the U.S.’s National Organic Standards.

But enforcing the rules isn’t always that easy. The USDA is
having difficulty making sure those rules are consistently
applied on U.S. farms. So how can the agency be so
confident about farms in other countries?

One expert on Chinese agriculture and politics says that’s a
good question. Paul Thiers is a political science professor at
Washington State University who’s been visiting farms in
China since the early 1990s.

“There is some difficulty, I think, in expecting people from
outside of China to really get far enough in and understand
what’s going on in political and economic conditions of rural
China.”

Thiers says many Chinese farms are run by the local
government. Others are run by private managers with
peasant farmers working the land.

“In some places, peasant farmers who were purported to be
part of organic production, who were on land that was
certified, couldn’t tell me what organic was, had no
conception of different production standards. And all they
said was, ‘we just sell our product to the government’.”

Thiers says at that time, five or ten years ago, farmers were
probably using chemicals, even though they were selling
food labeled organic.

Thiers expects that China’s organic farming practices are
improving, though. He says people in Chinese cities are becoming
concerned about food safety and want to buy organics. But
the USDA has to rely on organic certifiers in China. And with
the rapid growth of organic farms, no one is sure they’re
actually meeting U.S. standards.

Thiers says there is one consolation. At least organic farms
are inspected by someone. Conventional farms don’t get
those kinds of visits from inspectors.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Preserving Cultural Remedies

  • Faith learned about the use of many herbs for home remedies from her father in Louisiana when she was a small girl. (Photo by Kyle Norris)

When most of us get sick we go to the doctor and get medicine. But
some people are holding onto the old ways of healing. And many
people think we could learn a lot from the old ways. Kyle Norris has
this story:

Transcript

When most of us get sick we go to the doctor and get medicine. But
some people are holding onto the old ways of healing. And many
people think we could learn a lot from the old ways. Kyle Norris has
this story:


The small store is called Nature’s Products. It’s in a neighborhood with
a lot of abandoned buildings and store-front churches. When you walk
inside the store, the smell of incense clings to your clothes.
Green plants hang in the windows, and there are jars and jars of bulk herbs lining
the shelves.


Gary Wanttaga opened the store thirty years ago. He’s always been
interested in natural healing techniques and herbal medicine. That all
might sound new-agey, but this place is not new-agey at all. The
reason Wanttaga opened the store in his hometown of Detroit was
because he wanted to help the people who lived here:


“In lot of urban areas people are very limited on resources. They’re limited
with money. They’re limited with shopping resources. And this is one way
that I try to give back to the community”


Wanttaga says one of the main reasons he’s stayed in Detroit is because of
his customers. They’re some of his biggest teachers. Many of his
customers are older African-Americans. They came from the South to work
in the factories during World War II. When they came they brought with
them a cultural knowledge of herbs and natural healing techniques.


One of his customers is 72-year-old Faith. That’s her legal name – just
“Faith.” She grew up in a segregated farming community in Louisiana. Her
father was a farmer, and he taught her all about the herbs:


“I’m the youngest child of all, so I’m the baby. And he would often let me
ride on his shoulder. And sometime I’d be saying ‘Papa, what is this?’ and he
would tell me what that was, we’d be walking through the fields and he
would tell me what was, and he would tell me different things, what you use this for
what you use that for. I had 100 questions. Boy, I was a kid I had a 100
questions.”


She says back then, everyone knew about the herbs, and everyone used
them. At that time, people who were poor or black or who lived in rural
areas did not often have the option of going to a doctor. And so they turned
to the plants and trees around them for medicine, and they developed a great
knowledge about what did and didn’t work to keep people healthy:


“The pine tree was used for many things. Because it’s one of things where
you get turpentine from. It was definitely used for healing. And we used
turpentine for sores. And it works today! If you get a cut and you put
turpentine on it immediately as soon after you hit it, it will never be sore.”


Herbs were out first form of medicine. That’s what Suzanna Zick says.
She’s a naturopathic physician who teaches at the University of
Michigan. She says we have a collective knowledge about herbs that’s
thousands of years old. She says when you compare that to what
modern-day science knows about herbs, it’s not much of a comparison:


“In a sense we have just a tiny little window that science shows us, as
compared to the long use.”


Zick says we could learn a lot from these folks and the knowledge they
have, but not many researchers are studying people like the customers
here in Detroit:


“I think that we can actually learn what herbs they’re using a lot of and
what for. Because I think those are probably the ones that would be of
most interest. In particular, it’s a good question too if they’re using
them with conventional medications, it’s for safety issues. But also if
this is their primary health care for some of them, if it’s working, then
this is a very inexpensive way of providing health care for people who
might otherwise get none.”


Everyone we heard from in this story said the same thing. For us to
have good health, the old-school ways of healing can work hand-in-
hand with modern-day doctors and science. But the people who know
about the herbs are growing older and dying, and their knowledge is dying with them.


For the Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

Related Links

Returning Quality Food to Urban Areas

  • Chene Street, on Detroit's east side, was once a thriving retail corridor. Now, it's a decimated stretch of crumbling and burned-out buildings. (Photo by Marla Collum)

Finding a big supermarket is next to impossible in many inner-city
neighborhoods. That means a lot of people do their shopping at convenience
and liquor stores, where there’s rarely fresh produce. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports on one group’s efforts to get around
the grocery store problem – and help revitalize a neighborhood:

Transcript

Finding a big supermarket is next to impossible in many inner-city neighborhoods. That means a lot of people do their shopping at convenience and liquor stores, where there’s rarely fresh produce. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports on one group’s efforts to get around the grocery store problem and help revitalize a neighborhood:


(Sound of traffic)


Up and down this street as far as the eye can see are crumbling and burned-out buildings. This used to be a thriving business district. It’s where Vlasic Pickle, White Owl Cigar, and Lay’s Potato Chips grew into national brands. Today, the most evident sign of commerce is the prostitutes walking the street. Smack in the middle of this is Peacemaker’s International. It’s a storefront church where Ralph King is a member.


“Now if you look at it you see that there’s no commercial activity, no grocery stores within a mile of here. And our concern was that people had to eat.”


There are about seven liquor stores for every grocery store here on the east side of Detroit. Some people can drive to the well-stocked supermarkets in the suburbs, but many families don’t have cars, and King says the city busses are spotty.


“So they’re buying food at convenience stores or gas stations. And quite frankly, it just doesn’t seem a good fit that a community has to live off gas station food.”


That means processed, high-starch, high-fat diets that lead to illnesses like heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure. Those are all problems that disproportionately hit African Americans, and public health researchers say those higher rates of illnesses are linked to the food availability problems in poor black communities.


Amy Schulz is with the University of Michigan, and she’s studied the lack of grocery stores in high-poverty neighborhoods.


“What we found, in addition to the economic dimension was that Detroit, neighborhoods like the east side that are disproportionately African American are doubly disadvantaged in a sense. Residents in those communities have to drive longer, farther distances to access a grocery store than residents of a comparable economic community with a more diverse racial composition.”


In other words, if you’re poor and white, you have a better chance of living near a grocery store than if you’re poor and black. Ralph King and the folks in this neighborhood want to get around that problem. So about three years ago, they decided to try and reopen a nearby farmer’s market. They turned to Michigan State University Extension for help. Mike Score is an extension agent.


“I thought it would just be the process of organizing some people, helping them buy some produce wholesale, setting up in the neighborhood, selling the food, and generating a net income that could be reinvested. And I was really wrong.”


The farmer’s market was a flop. Score says produce vendors set up in the neighborhood, but the fruits and vegetables sat all day, unsold. He says the problem was they were using the wrong currency. Most people in this neighborhood have very little cash on hand, and they need to use their food stamp cards to shop for groceries.


So, Score helped develop a plan for a neighborhood buyers’ club that can negotiate low prices by ordering in bulk. His business plan also calls for job training for people in the neighborhood.


“It’s going to give people who are chronically unemployed but who have some entrepreneurial skills access to food at a lower cost, and that enables them to think about starting restaurant businesses or smaller retail businesses. So that’s an important part of this project: in addition to getting people groceries, it also creates some job opportunities.”


It’s been a struggle to get the program off the ground. It took a long time to get approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for a machine to read peoples’ food stamp cards. People have stolen some of the project’s meager resources, but Mike Score and Ralph King say they’ll stick with it until families in this neighborhood can put decent food on their tables. And they say they hope it can be a model that other low-income communities around the country can use.


For the GLRC, I’m Sarah Hulett.

Related Links

RECONNECTING FARMERS TO LOCAL MARKETS (Part 2)

  • Many of the crops being grown in the U.S. don't end up in the produce aisle. In fact, they usually aren't even sold to people in neighboring areas. (Photo by Rene Cerney)

Some experts think farmers could do a lot better for themselves if they changed what they’re growing. They say growing corn and soybeans subsidized by the government doesn’t do much for the farmer and almost nothing for the local economy. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports on efforts to change that:

Transcript

Some experts think farmers could do a lot better for themselves if they changed what they’re growing. They say growing corn and soybeans that are subsidized by the government doesn’t do much for the farmer and almost nothing for the local economy. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports on efforts to change that:


It can be hard to find locally-grown broccoli, milk, or beef in most grocery stores, even in the middle of farm country. In some states, ninety percent of the land is farmed, but ninety-eight percent of food people eat is shipped in from other parts of the nation or other countries.


The local farmers are growing commodities: corn and soybeans harvested for cattle-feed or processed foods, not stuff that winds up in the produce aisle. But ag economist Ken Meter wants to see that change.


“Farmers have doubled their productivity since 1969, and yet, they’re not making more money, they’re actually losing more money after doubling productivity.”


Meter has studied the economics of farm communities. In one area, he found that nearly all of the farm fields there were used to grow corn and soybeans for the commodities market, but farmers were losing money. At the same time, nearly all of the food people bought there was shipped in from other places.


“The economy we’re in right now is extremely efficient at taking any money that you or I earn in our neighborhood or in our daily lives and basically pulling it into a big global network that very efficiently takes that money and helps other people elsewhere make some value from it.”


It hasn’t always been this way. Richard Pirog is food systems researcher at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture in Iowa. Eighty years ago, he says, most farms grew a lot of different
products and processed them to be sold locally or within the region.


“Iowa back in the 1920’s had fifty-four canneries. We were the canned sweet corn capital of the world in the mid-1920’s. Fast forward to today, there isn’t a single cannery in Iowa. So that infrastructure is gone.”


Pirog says you could tell similar stories in farm areas across the U.S. Back during World War Two, the federal government encouraged farmers to grow commodities, such as corn and soybeans. The government starting paying them subsidies to grow those crops.


These days, Pirog says a lot of farmers wouldn’t even think about risking those subsidies to grow something besides corn and soybeans. Economist Ken Meter says that might be a mistake. He says many farmers don’t realize there’s a growing market for local ag products.


“All of us get focused on whatever we’re paying attention to, and as a farmer you get focused on producing quite well. I’ve spoken with farmers who’ve told me that they really didn’t have any clue that that their neighbors would be looking for different foods, because they just haven’t heard of the tremendous increase in demand we’ve had for things like organic milk or higher quality meats or fresher produce.”


There has been an organic explosion of local farm markets in recent years, because customers want to buy fruit, vegetables, milk, and meat directly from the farmers who produce them. But government policy and farm subsidies mainly still support the commodity production of corn and soybeans.


Richard Pirog hopes that changes, but it’s unclear if growing produce for the new local markets is always economically viable. No one has studied the phenomenon.


“It has to make economic sense for a community and a region. We believe it will, which is why it’s spread so rapidly. But it’s sort of like, the real numbers, the quantification hasn’t caught up with all the growth and explosion and the interest.”


Pirog says he’d like to push the process along. He says it would make more sense for the government to shift subsidies from corn and soybean production to the farms that produce food for their local communities.


For the GLRC, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Eminent Domain Debated

  • The intersection of Devon and Broadway in Chicago, just a few blocks from Lake Michigan. Alderman Patrick O'Connor is concerned that this corner is a bad use of space - not as walkable as the rest of the neighborhood. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Cities are always coming up with projects to improve land or even create jobs, and sometimes existing buildings just don’t fit into those plans. Often, owners of such property won’t sell to make way for new development. The U.S. Supreme Court will soon rule on the legality of one tool cities use to force reluctant landowners to sell. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee looks at one politician’s use of this legal power:

Transcript

Cities are always coming up with projects to improve land
or even create jobs, and sometimes existing buildings just don’t fit
into those plans. Often, owners of such property won’t sell to make
way for new development. The U.S. Supreme Court will soon rule on the
legality of one tool cities use to force reluctant landowners to sell. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee looks at one
politician’s use of this legal power:


This big-city neighborhood is the kind of place where shoppers usually park their cars and walk around. Brick store fronts and restaurants are usually just a few feet from the sidewalk.


But there’s a corner that looks different, though. A lot different.


It’s home to three fast-food buildings. The first business is a popular donut shop. Next door, there’s a fried chicken drive-through. And the last building was once a burger joint, but today it’s home to a car title lender.


To hear the alderman, Patrick O’Connor, tell it, the strip looks like a piece of suburbia landed right in his big-city ward.


“There’s no symmetry, no walkability, it’s all car-related and it’s all basically parking lot. There’s more asphalt than there is building in those places.”


He says this corner on Chicago’s North Side is a bad use of space, and he’s hoping to attract new, more pedestrian-friendly businesses or buildings. But what’s to be done about it if these shops are already there and don’t want to sell? One of O’Connor’s options is to have the city force the owners to sell their properties and then redevelop the land.


The power to forcibly buy property is called eminent domain, and O’Connor says the city’s using it to speed redevelopment throughout Chicago. But O’Connor’s concerned time may run out on the use of this power.


Governments have long-used eminent domain for public use. For example, a city or state might condemn a whole neighborhood, buy out the homeowners, and level the buildings to make way for a road or airport.


But the U.S. Supreme Court, in a case called Kelo versus New London, is considering just how far government can go when using eminent domain to bolster private development.


O’Connor hopes the court sides with local governments.


“In our community there’s not too many open spaces. So what we look to do is to enhance what we have to try to utilize space to the maximum effectiveness. That’s really where the court case hinges, you know, Who’s to say one use is better than another?”


And that question – who decides the best use of a property – is the rallying cry of critics who say cities abuse eminent domain powers.


Sam Staley’s with the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think-tank. He says the Supreme Court case is really about fairness.


“Those people that know how to use the system and know the right people in city council really have the ability to compel a neighbor or another property to sell their property whether they want to or not.”


Staley and other property rights advocates are also convinced that cities don’t need eminent domain for economic development. Staley says local economies can improve without government interference.


“The private sector’s just gotten lazy. They no longer want to have to go through the market, so they don’t come up with creative ways of accommodating property rights of the people that own the pieces of land or building that they want to develop.”


Staley says, instead, developers find it easier to have cities use eminent domain.


But most urban planners and some environmentalists say a court decision against this use of eminent domain could threaten redevelopment of both cities and aging suburbs. John Echevarria is with Georgetown University’s Environmental Law and Policy Institute.


“If you don’t have the power of eminent domain, you can’t do effective downtown redevelopment. The inevitable result would be more shopping centers, more development on the outskirts of urban areas, and more sprawl.”


Alderman O’Connor says constituents will always push urban politicians to put scarce land to better use. He says that won’t change if the court strikes down the broadest eminent domain powers; cities will just have to resort to strong-arm tactics instead.


“The alternative is the city then has to become harsher on how they try to enforce laws. They have to try and run sting operations and go after businesses that are breaking the law and then try to close them down and live with empty places until the sellers get tired and they sell.”


The small business community finds this attitude outrageous. They say as long as they improve their businesses and people frequent them, the market should decide whether they stay or go.


On the other hand, urban planners say the market doesn’t always make best use of land. They say local governments need eminent domain powers to control development, and they’re looking to the court to protect those powers.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

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The High Costs of Empty Parking Lots (Part Ii)

  • A new book says that much of the space covered by parking lots is only designed for use for the holiday rush, and is unused for the rest of the year. (Photo by Lars Sundström)

A growing number of city planners say we’re building more parking than we really need. They say the fact that nearly all parking is free, makes the situation worse. Their ideas are turning nearly fifty years of urban planning on its head. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee has this second report in a two-part series:

Transcript

A growing number of city planners say we’re building more parking than we really need. They say the fact that nearly all parking is free, makes the situation worse. Their ideas are turning nearly fifty years of urban planning on its head. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee has this report:


If you had to pay for a parking space, would you think twice before making a frivolous trip, say, to a convenience store for a candy bar?


City planning researcher Donald Shoup bets you would stay home if you had to pay, or maybe you’d walk instead. That’s a point he makes in his recent book, The High Cost of Free Parking. In it, he tries to show that free parking entices us to waste gas. He says paved lots also compete for better uses of land, like parks or housing. Shoup says the problem’s very real – but to see it, you need to step out of your automobile.


“Any view of suburbia from the air will show you a lot of parking lots and a lot of these parking lots will have empty parking spaces.”


I decided to take a look at what’s Shoup’s talking about in Lincolnwood Illinois, a Chicago suburb. I cheated by skipping the air fare, though. Some new Internet sites can provide satellite photos of your area. I joined two of Lincolnwood’s city planners, Tim Clarke and John Lebeque, in their office to get a birds-eye view of their home turf.


Clarke: “The plus is closer.”


Allee: “Right, and go ahead and see if you can find… There it is. Lincolnwood.”


Clarke: “Wow.”


Lebeque: “Whoa.”


Allee: “So find a retail strip.”


Turns out, Donald Shoup was right. Within a minute, we find a popular grocery store, with a huge parking lot. Tim Clarke recognizes it.


“It’s probably one-third filled. I’m not sure when this aerial was taken. I’ve never seen the parking lot full.”


So why should a busy store’s parking lot be two-thirds empty most of the time? Shoup says it’s the cities’ fault. Cities make the rules. They say how many spaces each new business, house, and apartment building must provide.


By his estimation, city government does a poor job at guessing how much parking we really need. Shoup says governments force businesses to provide enough spaces to meet peak demand, such as the day after Thanksgiving, the busiest shopping day of the year.


“Everyone understands the advice, don’t build your church for Easter Sunday, but we build our parking for the week before Christmas.”


In other words, cities tell stores to build parking for the year’s busiest two weeks, even if most of the spaces are empty the rest of the time. He says, without city pressure, a lot of businesses would create smaller lots or they’d sell off parking space they don’t need.


Tim Clarke, the Lincolnwood planner, says suburbs do err on the side of too much parking, but they’re often planning for future growth. He gives an example of a small Lincolnwood dental practice that had 7 examination rooms, but only used three of them. The dentist wanted to build fewer parking spaces than the village required, because it was small and family-run.


“But one could imagine that that family at some time in life would sell that business and someone would come in and want to use all 6 or 7 examining rooms at one time.”


So city planners have to look at the long term use of a building.


Many of Lincolnwood’s largest retailers actually build more than they need to. Bob Johnson runs a Lowe’s Home Improvement store built in late 2003. He says stores like his don’t gamble with having too few spaces.


“I think customers are going to shop, again, where they feel most comfortable and what’s convenient for them. The key word there being convenience. If they’re inconvenienced, they might drive another couple blocks down the road.”


Shoup says that’s a calculation that businesses have to make. He says market forces can help decide how many spaces should be built, but government should not force retailers to have too many spaces. Nor should it force them to offer only free parking.


In fact, Professor Shoup says cities, especially suburban cities, could use land more efficiently if businesses controlled demand for parking like they control everything else: by setting the right price.


“I’m just saying that cities should not force anyone to provide more parking than drivers are willing to pay for.”


Killing our appetite for cheap, abundant parking could be difficult, but Shoup says pressure’s building for change. He says, as suburbs grow, space gets tight. And that raises prices for all land uses.


“I think most people now are focused on the high cost of housing. I think we’ve got our priorities wrong if housing is expensive and the parking is free.”


In his battle against too much parking, Shoup says the most effective weapon might be a little comparison shopping. Free parking might not seem so cheap once it’s compared to the cost of other needs.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

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A “Pollution Free” Coal-Burning Power Plant?

  • States are competing to have FutureGen, a power plant that claims to be pollution-free, built in their state. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Department of Energy)

Coal-burning power plants from Great Lakes states are often blamed for much of the pollution that hits the East Coast. But now, the federal government is proposing a massive research project that they say could eventually perfect a way to burn high-sulfur coal without sparking pollution. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen has this report:

Transcript

Coal-burning power plants from Great Lakes states are often blamed for much of the pollution that hits the East Coast. But now, the federal government is proposing a massive research project that they say could eventually perfect a way to burn high-sulfur coal without sparking pollution. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen has this report:


The feds are proposing a massive one-billion-dollar plant that’s billed as the world’s first non-polluting, coal-burning power plant. About twenty states say they’ll compete for it. Ohio is one of them. Mark Shanahan of the Ohio Air Quality Development Authority says the plant will first turn coal into gas. And then either recycle or safely store the by-products.


“And when it turns to gas, it’s able to pull out the pollutants much more efficiently and economically. It will pull off hydrogen for fuel cells and it will also test the ability to put carbon dioxide into very deep geology to basically bind it up forever deep in the earth.”


The U.S. Energy Department will pay for most of the plant, but it will be several years before it’s actually online.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bill Cohen in Columbus.

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