Modeshift

Among the priority hazards of joining capital and technology the way we do in the 21st Century is that it can blow up the ordinary and familiar — a farm, for instance — into shapes and sizes that are extraordinary. That is what’s happening in Michigan and in many other states in animal agriculture. American meat, poultry, and milk, increasingly, are produced on immense sites that have come to be known as “factory farms.” For those who haven’t followed this development, one problem is that confining huge numbers of animals produces quantities of manure that often exceed the levels of raw sewage produced by major cities.  A second problem is that neither the federal government nor the states require modern waste water pollution controls. Owners of factory farms, several of them multi-billion dollar food companies, have convinced state legislators they are mere farmers, unable to afford the settling basins, digesters, and filtration equipment that municipalities have used for years to clean their waste water. Instead they generally dump manure into smelly lagoons that inevitably leak and pollute the nearest stream or lake. 

In this edition of Flip, Mode Shift’s spotlight of useful applications of Internet technology, we draw your attention to the interactive Factory Farm Map, which details how many factory farms there are in the United States, and does so state by state, county by county, and sector by sector. The map, for example, can show you have many factory dairy farms there are in Barry County, Michigan (3), the number of factory hog farms in Allegan County (38), and how many cattle operations exist in Huron County (13). The Factory Farm Map is a genuine breakthrough in data gathering and presentation for a sector of the agriculture industry that is deserving of the pubic attention it is starting to attract. 

My organization, the Michigan Land Use Institute, has been interested in factory farms  since our founding in 1995.  Patty Cantrell, who wrote “Hog Wars,” a first-of -its-kind report on the subject while working for the Missouri Rural Crisis Center early in her career, brought that expertise to Michigan in 1998 and helped build the statewide campaign to limit the expansion of factory farms. Three years ago, Stephanie Rudolph, an intern from Haverford College then and now a graduate fellow at the Institute, reported on the worst of all factory farm polluters in Michigan, the Vreba-Hoff dairy farms of Hillsdale County. In 2004, Governor Jennifer M. Granholm’s administration brought sanctions against the farm that have curtailed pollution.  

The Factory Farm Map was produced by Food and Water Watch, a non-profit healthy food organization founded last year in Washington. The New York Times this morning noted the map’s contribution to the public interest in an editorial: “It’s important to read this map not as a static record of farm sites or a mere inventory of animals,” the paper said. “It is really a map of overwhelming change and conflict. It raises two of the fundamental questions facing American agriculture. Do we pursue the logic of industrialism to its limits in a biological landscape? And how badly will doing so harm the landscape, the people who live in it and the democracy with which they govern themselves?”

The New York Times, my favorite newspaper, today published on its Web site a very useful and remarkably up to date online interactive map and directory of building permits issued by New York City. The building permit feature is a collaboration between New York City, the Times, and Google and represents another vivid display of the Internet’s capacity to store, organize, and disseminate useful land use and economc data in a way never possible previously.

I can imagine all sorts of intriguing uses for this data by realtors, builders, homeowners, economic development specialists, marketers and the like. Knowing what’s being built and where is among the most authentic gauges of a community’s well-being. But as a writer and researcher who uses building permit numbers and trends to measure whether development patterns are changing in communities, this new tool is just going to save loads of time and add immeasurably to the quality of my reporting once it’s applied to more places than New York.

Used to be that acquiring building permit information was an exercise in tedium. I once spent hours in the county clerk’s office in Manistee County, Michigan, poring over monthly building permit surveys from every township and municipality. The surveys, on plain white paper, were generally filled in by hand. More recently, regional councils of government collected the county and township building permit data, and published online summaries that provided raw numbers but not locations. Generally the most recent data was months old.

The New York City building permit data is up to date through the end of June, includes summaries of each permit, and is displayed on a map that gives actual locations. I’ve not encountered a more accurate and timely assessment of such a basic measure of economic activity and housing preferences. Neat stuff.

CLEVELAND — I.M. Pei’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a masterpiece of glass and steel on Lake Erie,  is a great pyramid playbox for people who love the music, the messages that changed the world, and the men and women of my generation who, unlike nearly all of us,  lived as far out on on the creative edge as it is possible to be. A lot of the very best didn’t dwell there long. 

This weekend I visited the Hall for the first time and came away impressed by two ideas, the first structured by the museum, the other a chance discovery. The museum’s message masters sought, and largely made the case that the titans of rock and roll — Elvis, Chuck Berry, Mick, Aretha, Marvin, Paul, John, and Jim Morrison — were just as intent on assessing the world, making social statements, as they were on fame and money. The Hall’s videographers and film producers consistently stressed the connections between the political and cultural upheaval of the second half of the 20th century — the Vietnam War, civil rights, feminism, environmentalism, free love, drugs, violence, the crumbling of social formalities — to the music, which formed a universally accepted soundtrack to the era.  

That differs, substantially I think, from the operating principles of modern pop music stars whose top priority is commercial success and celebrity, and whose interest in social ideas is a second thought, if it occurs at all. My 18-year-old daughter made this same point when she noted how much people really loved the rock and rollers of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. ”It isn’t the same now,” she said.   

The other idea came serendipitously. In the dark of the museum’s ground floor, a sizeable permanent exhibit was devoted to John Lennon. And right there, in a glass case directly below the white satin and gold braided coat he wore on the cover of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was the original of one of rock’s singular anthems: Lennon’s hand-written manuscript of “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.” 

For a writer who earns his keep using words to describe ideas, who’s been a Beatles lover since the first grade, and mourned Lennon’s murder in New York in 1980, reading the faded block print words, written in blue ink on a plain white sheet of paper, was one of the most compelling moments of intellectual kinship I’ve ever felt.

The margins contained the modest edits and changes that Lennon made in the text. The title was underlined and written in all capital letters at the top of the page. The verses stood in their original order:

Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain
Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies,
Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers,
That grow so incredibly high.

You could see the clarity of Lennon’s intelligence in a song that formalized and explored the drug-floated experience of the time, a song that is arguably the best on “Sgt. Pepper,” an album that four years ago Rolling Stone magazine said occupied the #1 spot on the list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.”

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame holds countless such personal moments for people born near and after World War Two. Cleveland, which spent $65 million in taxpayer funds to lure the Hall of Fame to its lakeshore, made an astute investment in its economy and quality of life. The Hall of Fame could be renamed the Boomer Museum. The building’s six floors were like a national tribal gathering, with elders guiding their tattooe’d young through the foreign emotional geography of protest, love, and experimentation. 

The Hall holds the touchstone ideas, the memories, the icons, and the playlist of a generation that altered the world in ways that are still coming to be understood. In April I wrote that Earth Day ought to be called Boomer Day because it represents one of the Baby Boom’s quintessential contributions. The music celebrated in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is another.

The Canadian province of Ontario, which lies across Lake Huron from Michigan, and is home to about the same number of people (10.3 million there, 10 million here), has supported one of the planet’s active conversations on the ties between a strong economy and a clean environment. Much of the dialogue centers of global climate change and the province’s coal-fired power plants, one of which, the Nanticoke plant on Lake Erie, is among the largest on the continent and each year pours thousands of tons of sulfur, mercury, nitrogen, and oxides on New York and New England.  

Four years ago, when he was running on the Liberal Party ticket for provincial Premier, Dalton McGuinty promised to shutter Ontario’s five coal-powered generating stations by 2007 in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels and comply with the Kyoto protocols. Premier McGuinty suggested replacing the power — coal burning plants accounted for 24 percent of the province’s electricity production – with a combination of hydro, wind and other renewables, and generating new commerce and jobs. Roughly 45 percent of the province’s electricity is produced from nuclear energy generated by 10 reactors housed at three enormous plants, according to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. 

Though Premier McGuinty succeeded in 2005 in closing the Lakeview coal-fired plant in Mississauga – and demolishing it with explosives on June 28, 2007 — he missed the 2007 deadline for the other four.  Last month, as another electrion approached, he announced in Toronto that wouldn’t happen again. His government just approved a regulation that requires all of the province’s coal-powered generating stations to close by 2014.  ”There is only one place in the world that is phasing out coal-fired generation and we’re doing that right here in Ontario,” he said.

It’s important to note that as coal is phased out as a fuel source in Ontario, the province’s economy is surging because of a new green, clean, land-conserving, transit-focused economic strategy. The provincial government announced last month a $17.5 billion program to expand Toronto’s commuter and light rail rapid transit system by nearly 600 miles. The provincial unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been in more than 30 years. More than 1 million acres of open space are being conserved and set aside in the Toronto suburbs to slow sprawl and improve the quality of life.

Now let’s turn to Michigan, which is representative of the economic conditions in all of the Great Lakes states and is slipping to the back of the American economic pack according to most economic and quality of life measures. Let’s talk just about coal-fired generating stations. Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Wisconsin have the highest concentration of coal-fired power plants in the nation and produce one-fifth of the carbon dioxide emissions, according to the Department of Energy. These states also have among them the highest rates of unemployment, lowest rates of job growth, highest rates of outward migration by young people, and Michigan has the largest state budget deficit in the nation.

Is there a relationship between a region’s decline and the fact that it generates most of its power from a dirty 19th century boiler technology and an 18th century fuel source?  It’s not just the practice of making power from coal, it’s the moribund thinking. Michigan spends $18 billion on energy every year, most of it importing fuel — coal, oil, natural gas, uranium — from outside the state.

Shane Lopez, an energy researcher and senior at the University of Michigan who’s working with us this summer at the Michigan Land Use Institue, prepared a grounding memorandum that found the state’s 15 coal-powered plants larger than 100 megawatts, and five that produce under 100 megawatts, provide 65 percent of Michigan’s energy. According to a 2006 national energy efficiency scorecard, Michigan ranks 33rd among states. Vermont, Connecticut, and California were national leaders, and not surprisingly their economies are much stronger. Shane also found compelling documentation, including a 2001 study by the Regional Economics Application Laboratory at  the University of Illinois, that a concerted state project to boost energy efficiency and renewable energy would produce 38,000 new jobs in Michigan and increase the gross state product by $3.4 billion annually by 2020.

Michigan, though, is having none of this. At the moment state officials are poised to begin reviewing applications to build two and perhaps three new coal-generating power plants — Rogers City on Lake Huron, and Midland are sites that have been publicly announced. Governor Jennifer M. Granholm, a Democrat, has said little to date about the projects though her aides have privately said the governor is committed to “going anywhere and doing anything”  to generate new jobs. Governor Granholm proposed the 21st Century Energy Plan for Michigan in January.  It recommends spending $68 million a year for energy efficiency improvements. The administration and the Legislature blame the state budget deficit for preventing them from investing in the program.

The 21st Century Energy Plan also calls for generating Michigan’s electricity from coal. Late last month, the state Department of Environmental Quality issued a statement that said it would require new plants to meet tougher emissions and operating standards. 

BLISS TOWNSHIP – There are a few things that Michigan still does very well. Its three big universities — Michigan, Michigan State, Wayne State – and network of smaller public colleges and universities, are terrific. Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, and Traverse City compare with anyplace in America as great places to live and do business. And we have Blissfest, the affirming, heartening folk/blues/acoustic music festival founded in 1981, and ever since has held the second weekend in July, on a stretch of grass and woods in northern Emmet County, as the place to be in the upper Midwest. 

Three elements come together each summer that elevate the festival to a transcendant experience. The first is talent. I dance and listen and think how deep the country is in skill and intelligence and grace, especially among its young. We send a second rate mind to the White House and keep him there for eight years. Our popular icons of the moment are Paris Hilton and the $10 million People Magazine photo of Brad and Angelina’s baby. But Blissfest is a fresh reminder that our very best people are doing something much more worthwhile, including the poets and singers and musicians who play here each summer.

The second element is the festive, gentle, smiling, appreciative people who show up to listen. In a crowded, frantic, time-pinched world people look for touchstones and community. That’s why Facebook, and Myspace, and motorcycle clubs, and churches, and all the other places that people connect are so eagerly sought. Community has largely departed the traditional spaces it once occupied in America, particularly neighborhoods. People are moving too fast, working too hard to stay even.

But it’s reassembled in new places. And for the 6,000 or so people who spend the weekend camping in Blissfest’s pasture and forest, listening to great music, dancing , eating good food, and reacquainting, this music festival is a true community. The last time I spoke to my friends Keith Breuker and Chandra Demers was a year ago at Blissfest. The longest conversations I have all year long with a whole bunch of other people I know in Michigan occur at Blissfest. I spent good time this weekend with Charles Griffith, my friend and colleague who directs the auto project at the Ecology Center, Ann Arbor’s capable and effective environmental organization. I hadn’t seen him since last year at Blissfest.

The third element is hope. On Sunday, nothern Michigan showed us blue sky and warming sun all day like only she can. So many people, essentially strangers, gather on 40 acres of northern Michigan for three days of music, fun, food, and dance. Children run in little packs and their parents don’t worry. Young people laugh and carry on in a way that is entirely engaging. People share and invite and seek each other’s company. It makes you think that somewhere, sometime down the road that things will get better.  

There still isn’t much to be happy about when it comes to the political conversation in Lansing, our state capital. Though she won more than 50 counties in the 2006 election, more than any Democrat running for any state office in Michigan history – she also delivered a Democratic-led  House;  Republicans hold the state Senate by a slim majority – Michigan’s governor hasn’t done anything with her influence.

Politics is a full contact body sport.  Ms. Granholm, though, has spent more than four years convinced that politics is a courteous waltz. And the more she dances, the further Michigan slips. In an era defined by educational achievement, Michigan drains resources from its public  schools and universities, yet battles to retain the same number of incarcerated state prisoners at more than $30,000 each a year. In an age when more miles of rapid transit determines regional and state economic health, Michigan is doing nothing — repeat nothing — to help the Detroit region actually use the $100 million set aside by Congress to build a starter heavy commuter rail line between Detroit and Ann Arbor. And in a century when clean, renewable energy is the order of the day, Michigan state government and the governor’s office appears more than pleased to foster the development of two new power plants that use 19th century technology and an 18th century fuel source — coal.

It is for these reasons and more that at least one of the state’s prosperouos regions — Grand Rapids — has largely decided to avoid state government officials and political leaders to advance new economic development strategies that are producing jobs, higher incomes, an enhanced quality of life, and real prospects for its citizens in this century. 

I spent the day in Grand Rapids last week and every time I go I find something new and impressive. This time I discovered a medical and biological research construction boom had overtaken Health Hill on the city’s north end. From the summit of the hill, and stretching roughly half a mile in both directions along Michigan Street, a stunning array of buildings is under construction, reflecting a commitment of nearly $1 billion by the area’s prominent families and medical institutions. There are a new medical school, a children’s hospital, a biomedical research center, a cancer treatment center, and two medical treatment and office buildings. All told the buildings will cover 1.2 million square feet.

By 2010, when construction is completed, those buildings, several designed by world-renowned architects, will provide enough space to treat thousands of people a day and employ 5,000 people, 2,500 more jobs than exist now on Health Hill. Grand Rapids may be executing the largest biomedical and patient care construction project in the United States at the moment. I could find only two other projects of near the same magnitude – one at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, which is building a $450 million hospital that is part of a 20-year $2.5 billion medical campus construction program, and a $160 million building that was just finished by the Oregon Health and Sciences University in Portland, the first of three big buildings it plans to construct in the city’s new South Waterfront section.  

In essence, Grand Rapids has developed its next big new strategic economic thought around biological research and medicine, focusing on patient care and cancer research. A city that was founded on cutting down trees, later developed furniture, evolved into manufacturing, has found a way to shed its rust belt image by developing new means to treat the sick and prevent disease. My colleague at the Michigan Land Use Institute, Andy Guy, has written about Grand Rapids’ ascent more expertly than any journalist in Michigan.  

 A last thought. Grand Rapids accomplished this feat by joining the vast wealth of its industrial families, many of them ideological conservatives, with the progressive ideas of its city government, neighborhood organizations, non-profit civic groups, and academic institutions. Partisanship wasn’t an issue. Neither was ideology. Collaboration in a collaborative century was the watch word. Big ideas were hatched and are being achieved.

Grand Rapids is little more than an hour’s drive to Lansing. You wonder why the smart people there are having such a hard time with this.

Illinois, our neighbor to the west, has been doing a lot of things right of late for its residents, environment, and economy. It makes a Michigan resident a bit jealous. The Center for Neighborhood Technology and Bethel New Life, for example, convinced the Chicago Transit Authority to rebuild rather than tear down the elevated Green Line in the 1990s, helping to promote the revival of the city’s West Side. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley turned a tree-planting campaign into a full-fledged green economic development strategy that not only helped Chicago become, arguably, the most beautiful city in America but also among its fastest growing and most prosperous. Lots of great Chicago organizations were involved included the Metropolitan Planning Council and its A list dynamic leader, Mary Sue Barrett (see pix).

Now comes the state General Assembly and state Senate, which last month approved The Green Neighborhood Grant Act, an experimental economic incentive to encourage developers to build healthy, energy efficient, environmentally sustainable, walkable, beautifully designed new neighborhoods. In becoming the first state to approve a LEED-ND incentive package Illinois had some very big 21st century ideas in mind, according to Mandy Burrell, the communications associate at the Metropolitan Planning Council.

Ms. Burrell told me that the Legislature is seeking next year to provide three builders of sustainable LEED-ND developments grants of up to 1.5 percent of their total cost. Of the three projects that qualify for the grants not more than one can come from Chicago. Legislators expect to encourage the construction of 300 new households in Illinois, said Ms. Burrell, and more than $944,400 could be redirected annually into the state’s economy because of the money that home owners will save in energy and vehicle expenses alone because of where they live. 

Other interesting forecasts:

• A family living in a LEED-ND certified neighborhood stands to cut annual costs by $3,148, due to savings from their well-designed, energy-efficient homes, the easier access they have to transit, jobs, schools, and recreation - meaning they won’t spend nearly as much money on cars. 
• LEED certified developers also earn more for their homes, and buyers gain higher resale premiums, according to a number of studies and realty assessments.

Jennifer Henry, who manages the LEED-ND project for the U.S. Green Building Council, said she knows of no state other than Illinois that has adopted  publicly financed incentives for LEED-ND. And while the pilot project is small, the consequences can be huge.

You may recall that the LEED idea itself, promoting better design through environmental sensitivity and energy efficiency started small. But in certifiying standards for green design LEED had the effect of creating a market that never existed previously. The LEED idea is now written into zoning standards and building codes. Cities, like Chicago, compete to be the place that has the most LEED-certified buildings. Neighborhoods that promote walking rather than riding, energy efficiency rather than profligacy, healthy living rather than conventional toxic design just make sense in a world of higher expenses and scarcer resources, space, energy, and time. And Illinois, right here in the economically scarred upper Midwest, was the first to get there.  Nice work Illinois.