Alec Appelbaum

Containing Multitudes

Since I last posted here, I've done near-daily commentary on building a green economy at the Faster Times, reported on a design-driven response to drug-fueled misery in urban New Jersey for the New York Times, and guided Architect's Newspaper readers to the most space-efficient theater on Broadway. I'll be writing more about big initiatives in compact space, and about the systems connecting cities. 

Keeping the Lights On (and Off)

A key method for dialing down greenhouse-gas emissions involves turning out lights when you don't need them. In recent reporting for the New York Times and the Architect's Newspaper, I've covered how landlords and architects are getting religious about making sure nobody forgets it.

Strength in Numbers

My piece in this past weekend's New York Times explores a project whose developer claims to be gaining by selling jumbo-sized apartments in a neighborhood for well-heeled transients.

A story in the current Architect's Newspaper explains how a young developer (and onetime colleague from my days in community development) adapts to Manhattan's real estate market and the government's real estate policy. The story's only readable in print, but you can contact the paper for a copy.

Faster, to More of the World

I've started as business editor and green-economy correspondent at the Faster Times, a new Web newspaper worth getting to know. I'll be posting and editing fearless journalists there every day.

Nobody's Driving This Bus

A recent report in the Architect's Newspaper explaining how the state, sorely needing big and wise transit investment, goes day to day without transit leaders.

Crop This Shot

Aging, food panic, water shortages. Or taste, neighborliness, natural joy. Something is driving developers to build and sell subdivisions around organic farms rather than around golf courses, as my story in the New York Times chronicles.

The Crossroads and the Crosshairs

My recent essay about Times Square at UrbanOmnibus extols the simplicity of low-carbon urban design. At FastCompany.com, we're broaching the complexity of low-carbon high-output business.

Opportunity Rides a Bus

Developers love transportation, or whatever else Washington calls "free money" this year. Yesterday I saw a ballroomful of New York real estate players cascade applause when federal Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood promised a range of incentives and programs to "get people out of their cars." Granted, real estate types have heard rather too few applause lines in recent months. But this liplock between development and transit is as vital as it is real. See, properties can gain value over the medium to long term if prospective tenants can easily get to them, get away from them, and use them as bases in their mobile lives. And the Obama administration is boosting this philosophy with serious capital. HUD grants, as I'll write more about this summer, will privilege projects near public transit. And the tax code will stoke more big transit investment in big cities. To take one marginal example, look to page 82 of a document the Treasury Department released on Monday.

There you'll find a proposal to scrap tax incentives to private developers in Lower Manhattan and allocate $200m per year over the next decade for transit investments around the World Trade Center site. $2 billion is a nice round figure, roughly the shortfall facing Moynihan Station and probably a useful plug at Ground Zero. But this reflects a policy that transcends Gotham development delays. This administration- and probably its corollary Congressfolk looking to deliver jobs and cut ribbons- believes the growth zones in our country are at transit hubs and not in ranch-house tracts. If you see a developer singing the praises of the local trolley, follow that developer.

Saving and Gaining

If yesterday's Times' analysis bears out and most Americans come out of this recession saving more and spending less, then today's Times story about venture funds favoring energy efficiency deserves a serious read. The premise: startups can grow profitable by teaching people how to use their appliances more intelligently. The unstated corollary: the government should be the force nourishing the market for alternative energy. While we consumers learn how much we can control our carbon-burning habits, that is, we taxpayers should be investing in the power lines and computer code that make our energy menu greener and broader. In that spirit, I'm curious how the various sign-up programs around the country that let households choose renewable energy fare. If we're learning to take firmer care of what we already have, will that make it easier for the audacious or the affluent to help build a wiser energy system?

Green is all around

Notes from a work in progress:

The guys at Ford are retooling a mongo-sized factory to produce electric cars rather than trucks. Are they retooling the factory's air conditioning and lighting to waste less energy, too? Ford commissioned the River Rouge factory, a beacon of smart architecture, then went on making brain-in-zipper SUVs. A green building flails if its people and surroundings don't feel inspiration, connection and vigilance. So green thinking, as leaders like architect William McDonough and Big Apple sustainability czar Rohit Aggarwala have pointed out, envelops all thinking about justice and peace. Our greenest strategies involve people living close to each other, close to their food and close to modes of transit that they share. These strategies require good schools, safe streets, fun things to do and places to run around. So "environmentalism" ruts when you think of it as a lifestyle or a posture. It is a concern with all elements around us, most immediately with each other, and a commitment to make those elements as durable and fair as we know how. So:

Every decision of every business must factor in its cost to the health and future security of the people who buy from it. And every open palm from every source- including the guy on the oil rig saving a gimmicky no-carbon yacht crew- deserves respect. The relationship between immediate security and long-term sustainability is a lot more intimate than we reporters sometimes let on, and it's baked somewhere into the prices we pay for cars and oil and yachts. Or it should be.

Green shoots, green scores

Get your hands on the latest Architect's Newspaper and let me and my colleagues show you how multi-headed public agencies are stalling as they try to finance better public transit. Then consider the conventional wisdom roiling investors' minds, nugget-ized in an April 22 Deutsche Bank report that warned of $200 million in defaults on commercial losses this year. So if public transit money lies in a political snakepit and commercial landlords are looking at oblivion, where do we look for investment in replenishing our cities? Private, green-focused funds like that at the Jonathan Rose Companies look promising as models and as investments. I'll be following them in coming weeks.