Like many coastal cities, Miami is facing a climate future that is already here. Even without a major storm, seawater has been washing over the streets and bubbling up from bathtub drains, a harbinger of what’s to come when a projected two feet of sea-level rise invades the low-lying, porous land of South Florida by mid-century.

The threat is not going unanswered. Based in no small part on the experience of dealing with the region’s notorious hurricanes, planners and political leaders in the metropolitan region have a good idea of what’s necessary to build resilience: a combination of hard barriers and green infrastructure, including the restoration of natural systems to absorb and distribute the inundation.

Two years ago, voters approved a $400 million Miami Forever Bond to help pay for a “stronger, more resilient future,” distributing the money across five categories: flood prevention, parks, roadways, public safety, and affordable housing. Special emphasis has gone to protecting lower-income neighborhoods, as well as the city’s legendary luxury beachfront properties. That juxtaposition—between Little Havana inland, for example, and the ritzy condominium towers of Brickell Bay Drive—has prompted consideration of how the funding could be augmented by those who can afford it most.

At Brickell Bay Drive, which is routinely flooded, a proposed park and seawall redesign incorporating green space and stormwater remediation—which is estimated to cost up to $35 million—will help keep water away from some of the city’s most iconic residential towers. The skyline will soon include two 1,000-foot luxury twin towers that will be the tallest on the East Coast south of New York City, made possible by changes in height restrictions. As such wildly successful private real estate development becomes the primary beneficiary of taxpayer- funded resilience infrastructure, officials are weighing how the private sector might play a greater role in financing the green scheme.

Jane Gilbert, chief resilience officer at Miami’s Office of Resilience and Sustainability, says when it comes to paying for resilience, all options are on the table—including land value capture, also known as land value return, a financing mechanism that recovers a portion of taxpayer-funded investments associated with increases in land values. A mounting body of evidence suggests a clear tie between green infrastructure and increased property values; and indeed, resilience infrastructure won’t just enhance property values, like parks or transit stations have been shown to do. It will allow private developments to continue to exist in the first place.

“Could we do value capture for properties just outside the [proposed] park? Maybe,” Gilbert said. “We’re going to look at every financing vehicle we can.”

Just as climate change is inspiring new paradigms in insurance, home finance, agriculture, transportation, and so many other sectors, it is forcing cities to revisit the fundamental relationship between the infrastructure that government is providing and the real estate that is being protected. The magnitude of the task—communities around the world are spending an estimated $25 billion per year on green infrastructure— necessitates a search for additional funding.

No Choice But to Invest

The relationship between government-provided infrastructure and the private sector has had a long history. Landowners, commerce, and industry have enjoyed most of the benefits of canals, railroads, bridges and tunnels, roadways, and many other facilities since the republic began investing in infrastructure in a meaningful way. Investments in infrastructure have also surged at key moments when cities have faced major problems like disease, overcrowding, and congestion.

By the end of the 19th century, cities were growing fast and trying to accommodate industry and a steady influx of immigrants. “It forced the need to invest,” said Alex Krieger, professor of urban design at Harvard University, principal at architecture and planning firm NBBJ, and author of City on a Hill: Urban Idealism in America from the Puritans to the Present (Belknap Press 2019).

“Boston had to build a subway system because it was facing utter congestion, horse manure in the streets, and a city doubling in size,” he said. The same was true for local projects most residents now consider part of the landscape, like the Charles River dam; the infilling of the city’s Back Bay, now a bustling residential and commercial district; and the creation of Frederick Law Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace, which was designed primarily as a sanitation and flood-control system, as well as a park. “The fear was that things would become completely dysfunctional and unmanageable,” Krieger said. “Things were closer to the boiling point and there was no choice but to invest.”

Cities are at a similar moment today, amid the growing recognition of the havoc that climate change is wreaking. Just as filling in mud flats made Back Bay possible, resilience infrastructure is the key to future urban development—and arguably plays an even greater enabling role, as the climate stakes get ever higher.

The current crisis does not want for solutions. Many of the systems and approaches for dealing with sea-level rise and storm surge are close at hand, according to Billy Fleming, director of The McHarg Center at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the editors of the new Lincoln Institute of Land Policy book Design with Nature Now (Steiner et al. 2019). Fleming helped curate the 25 green and blue infrastructure projects showcased in the book, which honors the ecological design tenets of pioneering landscape architect Ian McHarg.

The interventions featured in the book include a New York City landfill transformed into a park, a wetland in China constructed to filter pollution from a planned city of 50,000 people, and a proposal for built landforms in coastal Norfolk, Virginia, that would absorb stormwater and tides. The fundamental concept behind this approach to resilience, cultivated by the Dutch in particular over the centuries, is to blend dikes, berms, barriers, and floodgates—the “hard” or “gray” infrastructure designed to keep water out—with “soft” systems that replicate nature and let water in, to be absorbed and distributed.

The projects in the book and others like them reflect design innovation, experimentation, and some trial and error, and can serve as prototypes for different urban conditions, Fleming said. But in addition to municipal commitments, they need a higher-level organizational framework so successful green infrastructure systems can be scaled up and implemented—on a par with preparing for war, building the interstate highway system, or sending a man to the moon.

“It’s a national problem that needs a national-scale mobilization,” he said. Federal agencies like the Army Corps of Engineers, he said, will have to be set up to administer and fund the best solutions for climate adaptation.

There is always more innovating to do, just as NASA constantly improved the design of its rockets. But the basic engineering solutions, Fleming suggests, are ready to be implemented. To extend the metaphor, green infrastructure solutions are like the aircraft carriers and bombers needed for World War II: proven in terms of getting the job done, they simply needed to be built and deployed. The matter of funding was an assumption in the case of preparing for war; it just hasn’t been resolved in the case of battling climate change.

“If we decided tomorrow that this was as real a problem as cholera was in the 1870s, we would find the money,” said Harvard’s Krieger. “A consensus will only come out of a collectively understood crisis.”

An Approach with Multiple Benefits

The traditional means of financing infrastructure is centered around borrowing at the federal, state, and local levels. As federal funding generally has waned, some cities have explored new bonding mechanisms that clarify how investments in sustainability will pay dividends in the future. In Washington, DC, a green bonds program provides capital for riverways and stormwater and sewage manage­ment based on the measurable performance such efforts produce. The inaugural $350 million issuance, in 2014, was the nation’s first municipal century bond—a 100-year duration—and has become popular for its stability and greater yield.

The rationale for that approach is inherent in the Environmental Impact Bond, which, according to the financial firm Quantified Ventures, provides up-front capital from private investors for environmental projects, either to pilot a new approach whose performance is viewed as uncertain or to scale up a solution that has been tested in a pilot program.

While the most cautious investors view green infrastructure as new and unproven, in fact it is extraordinarily potent. “Green infrastructure delivers multiple benefits to society, including environmental, economic, and health outcomes,” said Eric Letsinger, founder of Quantified Ventures, which focuses on projects with positive social and environmental impact.

Green infrastructure practices can produce positive health outcomes, for example, that translate to reduced costs to local health systems and plans. Letsinger said involving other sectors in paying for resilience would address the “wrong pockets” problem—the economics scenario where one entity bears the cost of an investment that generates benefits for others—that has “historically limited green infrastruc­ture economic beneficiaries, like health part­ners, from paying their share of the implementation costs.”

Similarly, some of the biggest economic beneficiaries are private land and property owners. A 2017 report published by the Urban Land Institute quantified how water management mechanisms using green infrastructure can create value for real estate projects by improving operational efficiency as well as serving as an attractive amenity. One of the key takeaways was that natural resilience systems can enhance financial viability (Burgess 2017).

“We found many examples of thoughtful incorporation of green infrastructure that led to increased property values,” said Katharine Burgess, ULI’s Urban Resilience Program vice president. Green infrastructure, she said, can pay off in terms of operational cost savings. It can be integrated into placemaking and design, contrib­uting amenity and market value, and can provide an ancillary benefit of freeing up developable land to increase yield.

A new matrix for risk assessment and due diligence in real estate, indeed, has climate change at its center. Another ULI survey of investors and developers concluded that factors like climate risk and vulnerability to flooding had become increasingly important for those considering developing, purchasing, or investing in property (Burgess and Rapoport 2019). “It’s definitely a changing atmosphere,” Burgess said.

The bottom line for the development community seems to be what is widely intuitive­ly understood: higher, protected ground is more valuable ground.

“At the end of the day, this isn’t about building codes or insurance or technology—it’s about land use,” and the hazards, shocks, and stresses related to the serviceability of land, said Harvard University professor Jesse Keenan, who led research showing lower-elevation properties in the Miami area gained value at a much slower rate than those places that were high and dry (Keenan 2018).

Keenan coined the term “climate gentrification” to describe how inland neighborhoods in the city, like Little Haiti have become suddenly sought-after. In the absence of resilience infrastructure to protect against rising seas, land that is higher than Miami’s average of six-feet above sea-level is naturally seen as a place of refuge.

Public-Private Collaboration

Is there a way to quantify the benefits of green infrastructure to spread out the responsibility of paying for it? Miami is not the only city giving the concept serious consideration. In Boston, planners have commissioned a study on a section of East Boston waterfront that includes the “potential for value capture from new waterfront development to fund resiliency infrastructure based upon existing and potential future uses” (BPDA 2018).

The study area includes a long stretch of developable land that will be rezoned from industrial and maritime use, ushering in mixed-use development with greater height and density—but that is also directly in the path of anticipated future flooding. “It’s a discussion of equity . . . [potentially having] developers help pay for infrastructure that not only protects them, but also inland,” said Richard McGuinness, deputy director for climate and environmental planning at the Boston Planning and Development Agency, the city’s planning office.

A more modest version of public-private collaboration is unfolding at the Gillette head­quarters alongside Fort Point Channel in Boston, where the company is preparing to provide the right of way for a flood barrier to be funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The project costs will be augmented by funds from the city’s capital budget that have been dedicated to resilience. Ultimately the company’s gesture is an act of self-preservation—the razor factory is right at the water’s edge—but city officials are encouraged by the recognition that building resilience requires businesses and government to work in sync.

Other metropolitan regions in the United States are also exploring how green infrastructure creates value, and they’re creatively harnessing that power. In Pittsburgh, a portion of some 10,000 vacant and tax-delinquent parcels are set for green makeovers—urban farms, community gardens, pocket parks and the like—that could be financed through transfer of development rights. The approach ensures that the parcels aren’t taken off the tax rolls because the development rights will get used in other areas planned for infill redevelopment. At the same time, the parks and community gardens will enhance property values in once-blighted areas, said Roy Kraynyk, a vice president at Allegheny Land Trust (Kraynyk 2017).

Meanwhile, research in South America suggests that well-established land value capture mechanisms in Colombia—which have long been used to support more traditional infrastructure projects related to housing and transit—could feasibly be put into use for resilience. A team of researchers led by Stelios Grafakos, principal economist at the Global Green Growth Institute, assessed the impact of green infrastructure on land values along a river project in Santiago de Cali, Colombia, known as the CAU Cañaveralejo (Grafakos 2019).

The hedonic pricing model the team devel­oped, aided by GIS analysis, “quantitatively demonstrates a useful increase in land values attributable to capital investments in resilience and risk reduction. . . . Land value increases are attributable to investments in resilience measures such as the implementation of sustainable urban drainage systems, green corridors for flood management, restoration of natural floodplains, and multifunctional public space for recreation and stormwater manage­ment.”

All told, the project has resulted in an overall increase in values of $2.2 million across 48 blocks in nine neighborhoods, a boost of about 7 percent. The work, which is still underway, includes tree planting, green spaces, and bicycle and pedestrian pathways.

One of the paper’s coauthors takes the concept a step further, suggesting that green infrastructure’s most tangible benefit may be that it protects against loss. “Financing urban climate adaptation through land value capture, in some respects, requires an inversion of the fundamental premise of the concept: rather than creating value, investments in adaptation serve to preserve value that would otherwise be diminished or paid,” said James Kostaras, senior fellow at the Institute for International Urban Development.

In that framework, Kostaras suggests, “some increment of the land value that is being preserved and protected by climate adaptation interventions is mobilized as a source of funding to mitigate the impact of flooding and other climate-driven events.”

Properties in Miami that flood or sit near roads that flood have already lost $125 million in value since 2005, according to research compiled in the online Flood IQ education initiative. Future losses will easily double that amount in the next 15 years, and that projection doesn’t include any new properties that become at risk from now through 2033 (First Street).

Seen another way, new private development in any area that is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change creates a burden for the public, because of the people and property in need of protection. As such, private-sector contribu­tions to green infrastructure are more akin to developer extractions or impact fees, which have been charged to builders of conventional suburban development for decades to help pay for the extension of utilities to previously undeveloped areas.

News Ways to Pay for Innovation

In the reconsideration of the relationship between public investments and private development, resilience infrastructure may well become the most critical of city services, alongside police or fire protection, or water, sewer, and power facilities. Keeping water at bay has acquired an outsized importance. “There’s a centrality to it,” said Enrique Silva, director of International and Institute-Wide Initiatives at the Lincoln Institute.

Measuring the benefits of that infrastruc­ture will be complex, Silva said. In most land value capture mechanisms, the impact of public investments is measured in a more linear fashion; for example, the land value “uplift” within a half-mile radius of a new transit station. With green infrastructure, the land value impact is spread across a larger ecosys­tem, potentially producing significant variation in terms of assigning financial obligations. Do the properties closest to the intervention benefit most, or do those a mile down the rivershed enjoy the protections just as much? Or should all land and property within a special “resilience district” be treated the same?

“One could argue it’s less complex with a new metro line,” Silva said. Governments, he said, will “have to make that call—defining the catchment area.”

For others, it’s an open question that natural systems are such a singular driver of increased property values. Miami developer David Martin, principal at the Terra Group, said he would like to see a “fixed funding source for infrastructure that’s not relying on macroeconomic forces that go up and down.” In his view, resilience infra­structure is one of several factors determining land value—others being things like low interest rates or the quality of the local school system.

Such calibrations are an indication of the hard work ahead, but the impetus to find new ways of financing climate action will remain strong. “The infrastructure funding challenges that local governments face are just too great to solve through business-as-usual solutions,” said Letsinger, from Quantified Ventures. “They’ll need to innovate their way up this mountain, and if we’re going to expect them to innovate, then we’ve got to give them new ways to pay for innovation.”

Letsinger and others emphasize both the urgency of building climate resilience and the real-time availability of solutions. “We don’t need to wait,” he said. “Cities now have the tools, the means, and the access to capital today to advance the resilience projects that they need.”

Calculating the Value of Green Infrastructure

Fundamentally a stormwater management tool, green infrastructure also “creates amenities that can raise property values and provide health benefits,” said Robin Hacke, executive director of the Center for Community Investment (CCI) at the Lincoln Institute. CCI works with cities including Miami, Milwaukee, and Seattle to identify and secure funding for resilience projects including green infrastructure and afforda­ble housing. Hacke said land value capture is a “promising approach” that has been part of those conversations. Such discus­sions will likely gain momentum, as a growing body of research indicates that green infrastructure increases value:

• “In Boston, the 1330 Boylston complex . . . saw rent increases of $300 to $500 per month for units overlooking a $112,500 green roof, soon netting about $120,000 a year” (Burgess 2017).
• “High quality green environments can contribute to . . . rental uplifts of up to 20 percent” (UKGBC 2015).
• “. . . the assessed property values of the Menomonee Valley industrial proper­ties were 5.8 percent higher than they otherwise would have been without green infrastructure” (Madison 2013).
• “Hedonic studies show that a reduced risk of flooding can result in a 2 percent to 8 percent increase in property values” (Clements 2013).

With such data emerging, cities seeking buy-in from developers may find that they’re standing on firmer ground. But Hacke offered a word of caution: as values rise, so does the risk of displacement. Cities must prioritize affordability, she said, and invest in projects that “protect the commu­nity’s ability to remain in place.”

References

Bennett, Genevieve and Franziska Ruef. 2016. Alliances for Green Infrastructure: State of Watershed Investment 2016. Washington, DC: Forest Trends’ Ecosystem Marketplace (December). https://www.forest-trends.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/2016SOWIReport121416.pdf.

BPDA (Boston Planning and Development Agency). 2018. “Implementing District-Scale Solutions for East Boston: Climate Resiliency Financing and Funding Models.” http://www.bostonplans.org/work-with-us/procurement/rfp-listing-page?id=162.

Burgess, Katharine and Elizabeth Rapoport. 2019. Climate Risk and Real Estate Decision-Making. Washington, DC: Urban Land Institute. https://europe.uli.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/127/2019/02/ULI_Heitlman_Climate_Risk_Report_February_2019.pdf.

Burgess, Katharine. 2017. Harvesting the Value of Water: Stormwater, Green Infrastructure, and Real Estate. Washington, DC: Urban Land Institute. https://uli.org/wp-content/uploads/ULI-Documents/HarvestingtheValueofWater.pdf.

City of Miami. 2019. “Parks and Open Spaces.” https://www.miamigov.com/Government/ClimateReadyMiami/Parks-and-Open-Spaces.

Clements, Janet, and Alexis St. Juliana. 2013. The Green Edge: How Commercial Property Investment in Green Infrastructure Supports Value. New York, NY: Natural Resources Defense Council. https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/commercial-value-green-infrastructure-report.pdf.

First Street Foundation. “Flood IQ.” https://floodiq.com.

Germán, Lourdes, and Allison Ehrich Bernstein. 2018. “Land Value Capture: Tools to Finance Our Urban Future.” Policy Brief. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Groves, David G., Debra Knopman, Neil Berg, Craig A. Bond, James Syme, and Robert J. Lempert. 2018. Adapting Land Use and Water Management Plans to a Changing Climate in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties, Florida. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1932.html.

Grafakos, Stelios, Alexandra Tsatsou, Luca D’Acci, James Kostaras, Adriana Lopez, Nohemi Ramirez and Barbara Summers. 2019. “Exploring the Use of Land Value Capture Instruments for Green Resilient Infrastructure Benefits: A Framework Applied in Cali, Colombia.” Working paper. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Keenan, Jesse M., Thomas Hill, and Anurag Gumber. 2018. “Climate Gentrification: From Theory to Empiricism in Miami-Dade County, Florida.” Environmental Research Letters 13 (5). https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabb32.

Kraynyk, Roy. 2017. “Using Transfer Development Rights to Facilitate and Sustain Community Green Space and Gardens.” White paper. Pittsburgh, PA: Allegheny Land Trust (September). https://alleghenylandtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/20170919_TDRWhitepaperv2.0.pdf.

Krieger, Alex. 2019. City on a Hill: Urban Idealism in America from the Puritans to the Present. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Levy, David, and Rebecca Herst. 2018. Financing Climate Resilience: Mobilizing Resources and Incentives to Protect Boston from Climate Risks. Boston, MA: University of Massachusetts Sustainable Solutions Lab (April). https://www.umb.edu/editor_uploads/images/centers_institutes/sustainable_solutions_lab/Financing_Climate_Resilience_April_2018.pdf.

Madison, Catherine. 2013. Impact of Green Infrastructure on Property Values within the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District Planning Area. Milwaukee, WI: University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Center for Economic Development (May). https://dc.uwm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1015&context=ced_pubs.

Martin, David. 2018. “A Road Map to Regional Resiliency: Solving Climate Change with Capitalism.” Miami Herald, December 16. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article223094850.html.

Morrison, Jim. 2019. “Who Will Pay for the Huge Costs of Holding Back Rising Seas?” Yale Environment 360, August 5. https://e360.yale.edu/features/who-will-pay-for-the-huge-costs-of-holding-back-rising-seas.

Steiner, Frederick, Billy Fleming, Karen M’Closkey, and Richard Weller. 2019. Design with Nature Now. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

UKGBC (UK Green Building Council). 2015. Demystifying Green Infrastructure. London: UK Green Building Council (February). https://www.ukgbc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Demystifying-Green-Infrastructure-report-FINAL.pdf.

ULI (Urban Land Institute Advisory Services Panel). 2019. Waterfront Resilience, Miami, Florida: A ULI Advisory Services Panel Report. Washington, DC: Urban Land Institute (June). https://americas.uli.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/ULI-Documents/ULI-ASP_Report_Miami_FINAL.pdf.

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and a contributing editor to Land Lines.

Photographs (in order of appearance):

The Miami waterfront is a highly developed area vulnerable to flooding and sea-level rise. Credit: Gunther Hagleitner via Flickr CC BY 2.0.

A team of researchers explored the connections between green infrastructure and land value in Cali, Colombia, concluding that “land value increases are attributable to investments in resilience measures.” Credit: “Exploring the Use of Land Value Capture Instruments for Green Resilient Infrastructure Benefits: A Framework Applied in Cali, Colombia.” Stelios Grafakos et al. 2019.

As a rule, 12-acre development projects don’t tend to receive national or international attention. But that hasn’t been the case for Quayside, a parcel off Lake Ontario in Toronto. Two years ago, Waterfront Toronto—the government entity overseeing the redevelopment and reconfiguration of a larger swath of real estate along the Don River that includes Quayside—brought in Sidewalk Labs as a private partner. A subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, Sidewalk Labs pledged to invest $50 million in the endeavor. The company seemed an ideal choice to help make Quayside a kind of prototype “smart city” neighborhood, and produced ambitious plans.

It also produced no small amount of controversy, and at times it has appeared that the entire partnership might implode. That threat seems to have passed, at least temporarily. All the friction has had an unexpected result: Quayside could prove to be a much more valuable prototype for smart city planning than originally imagined.

That’s not because of what has been built (which is, to date, nothing), but rather because of the way its bumpy ride has clarified the core smart-city issues that need to be resolved before any building can happen—not just in Toronto, but in any urban area. While it’s hard to find an example of a smart city project that’s quite as comprehensive as Quayside aims to be, there are many playing out on a more limited scale, from Kansas City’s “smart city corridor” effort centered on a two-mile streetcar line to the LinkNYC program (also from Sidewalk Labs) replacing pay phones in New York City with WiFi-enabled kiosks.

The biggest issue needing resolution may be privacy. That may seem intuitive, and Sidewalk Labs itself professed to be aware of, and sensitive to, privacy concerns in its initial proposal. That proposal included plenty of the sort of tech-forward ideas you’d expect from a Google-connected entity, from heated bike lanes to autonomous delivery robots. Many of the proposed elements relied upon sophisticated sensors to collect data and guide efficiency in everything from trash collection to traffic to lighting.

While Sidewalk’s proposal addressed privacy, the company was apparently caught off guard when it was criticized for leaving too much discretion to private-sector tech vendors. Among those unimpressed: former Ontario privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian, a prominent privacy advocate Sidewalk had added to its advisory board who promptly resigned from that role.

Cavoukian, now the executive director of the privacy-focused Global Privacy & Security by Design Centre consultancy, explains that she recognizes the potential value of data collection for shaping a neighborhood or a city. But she believes, in essence, that in the context of the “smart” city, securing privacy is a planning-level decision better left to the public sector. “The technology, the sensors, will be on 24-seven,” she says. “There’s no opportunity for people to consent or revoke consent. They have no choice.”

She specifically advocates what she terms a “privacy by design” strategy, which “scrubs” data at the point of collection. For instance: Cameras or sensors gathering traffic data might also pick up license plate numbers. If Cavoukian and other privacy advocates have their way, that level of personal data would simply not be collected. “You still have the value rendered from the [aggregate] data,” she says. “But you don’t have the privacy risks because you’ve de-identified the data.” The essence of the privacy by design idea is that it privileges the public interest over private use of data; Cavoukian has pointed to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation—which strictly protects individual privacy and has forced even the biggest tech players to adjust since its implementation in 2018—as a model.

Sidewalk Labs proposed gathering wide swaths of data in a kind of “trust,” with private vendors encouraged to anonymize data. To critics like Cavoukian, this delayed privacy decisions until too late in the process: post-planning, post-implementation, less a baseline than an afterthought. One poll found that 60 percent of Toronto residents who were aware of the plan didn’t trust Sidewalk’s data collection. The two sides are still working out details, but have agreed for now that sensor-gathered data will be treated as a public asset, not a private one. (Sidewalk Labs did not respond to an interview request.)

The Toronto proposal was controversial for other reasons. Notably, it sought oversight of much more than the original 12-acre parcel, dangling the possibility of locating a new Google Canadian headquarters along the city’s waterfront as part of a scheme that would give Sidewalk latitude over 190 acres of potentially lucrative properties. This proposal was turned back, but spurred a useful debate about smart cities and equity.

Jennifer Clark, a professor and head of the City and Regional Planning Section at the Knowlton School of Architecture in the College of Engineering at the Ohio State University, has studied smart city efforts around the world, and is the author of Uneven Innovation: The Work of Smart Cities, forthcoming from Columbia University Press in February 2020. As she explains, technology businesses and government or planning entities come to these collaborations with distinct perspectives. Enterprises like Sidewalk Labs that are devoted to new city technologies, she says, “come from a particular orientation of thinking about who the ‘user’ is. They’re very much thinking through a consumer model, with users and consumers as essentially the same thing. That’s not how planners think about it in cities. Users are citizens.”

Similarly, companies designing the technology meant to make a city “smart” are looking for a revenue model that will not just fund a given project, but can ultimately prove profitable—which guides the nature of their prototyping products and services that might be applied elsewhere. Clark points out that a seldom-discussed element of the smart city phenomenon is its “uneven implementation.” Quayside and the wider waterfront redevelopment it is part of are expected to result in high-value properties, used and frequented by a demographic attractive to businesses.

“There’s an assumption that if you do these urban development districts, you’re experimenting on the model, you get the model right and then you do broad deployment, so that there’s equity,” Clark says. But frequently, in practice, “there is no path to that.” Whatever innovations emerge tend to recur in demographically similar contexts.

What often underlies this dynamic is a kind of power mismatch. The private side of a development partnership is often richly funded, in a position to offer financial incentives, and thus to essentially dictate terms; the public side may have fewer resources, and less sophistication about assessing or fully deploying cutting-edge technology. But in this case, Clark notes, the Quayside story (which she addresses in her book) may be a bit different.

“Toronto has a history of community organizing and community development,” she notes. “And the community organizations there have a sophisticated understanding of the data collection practices that were proposed.” Thus the privacy pushback, and how it gets resolved, might prove to be the real lasting payoff, especially if it’s resolved in a way others can emulate.

A replicable model, one that offers guidelines for both technology and the rules that technology must play by, is essentially the outcome that Cavoukian wants. She is now working with Waterfront Toronto, and explicitly hopes that Quayside—with either Sidewalk Labs or new partners—can become a rejoinder to the surveillance-oriented versions of the smart city that are taking shape in tech-advanced urban areas from Shanghai to Dubai.

“We want to be the first to show how you could do this and put that out as a model,” she says. “We want a smart city of privacy.”

Rob Walker is a journalist covering design, technology, and other subjects. His book The Art of Noticing was published in May 2019. 

Photograph: Rendering of an interior pedestrian walkway at Quayside. Credit: Picture Plane for Heatherwick Studio for Sidewalk Labs.

En 1879, una delegación de funcionarios de Detroit tomó un barco a vapor y cruzó el lago Erie hacia Cleveland; allí, examinó el primer alumbrado eléctrico de la nación. Tres semanas antes, el inventor e ingeniero Charles Brush había encendido el interruptor de una decena de “lámparas de arco” en una plaza pública. “La mayoría de las personas quedaron deslumbradas”, informó el diario Plain Dealer de Cleveland, “tanto por la novedad como por el fulgor de la escena”.

Detroit enseguida adoptó la nueva tecnología de iluminación, al igual que otras ciudades importantes, como San Francisco y Boston. En otros lugares, como la propia Cleveland de Brush, los dirigentes debatían si debían cambiar las lámparas de gas (y seguían discutiendo este punto unos años más tarde, cuando Brush contrató a John C. Lincoln, colega inventor de Cleveland, para que trabajara en su empresa; este último terminó por fundar Lincoln Electric Company y la Fundación Lincoln, que evolucionó hasta convertirse en el Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo).

Con el tiempo, por supuesto, el alumbrado eléctrico se expandió por doquier. Durante el s. XX, la tecnología de alumbrado evolucionó de forma gradual: las varillas de carbono en las lámparas de Brush dieron paso a los focos incandescentes de Thomas Edison, y luego a los focos de mercurio y sodio. Más o menos en la última década, esa evolución se aceleró radicalmente, gracias a dos desarrollos. El primero es el surgimiento de los diodos fotoemisores (LED, por su sigla en inglés), que ofrecen importantes ahorros en energía. El segundo es el estallido más reciente de interés por equipar al alumbrado con tecnologías de “ciudad inteligente” que van mucho más allá de la iluminación: piense en cualquier cosa, desde cámaras de seguridad hasta puntos de acceso a wifi.

Todo esto enfatiza, a la vez que complica, la función del alumbrado en la planificación y el uso del suelo, que se suele ignorar. “El sistema de alumbrado público respalda la seguridad del tránsito y de los peatones, y sirve para que la gente se sienta segura en las ciudades que pueden tener mucha delincuencia”, dice Beau Taylor, director ejecutivo de la Autoridad de Alumbrado Público de Detroit (PLA, por su sigla en inglés).

Más de un siglo después de instalar esas innovadoras lámparas de arco, básicamente, Detroit se vio obligada a volver a asumir la vanguardia de la iluminación. Hacia 2014, cerca del 40 por ciento o más de las 88.000 lámparas de sodio habían dejado de funcionar en algún momento. La infraestructura lumínica de la ciudad, que ocupa 360 kilómetros cuadrados, se había diseñado para una ciudad próspera de 2 millones de habitantes en el s. XX. Esto se tornó imposible de mantener.

Un bono de US$ 185 millones financió 65.000 lámparas LED nuevas; así, Detroit fue la primera ciudad grande de los Estados Unidos en pasarse a las LED. El objetivo de esta renovación no fue simplemente cambiar focos. Las luces de LED son diferentes: un foco de sodio produce luz que disminuye gradualmente, mientras que las LED producen un haz más directo que es dos veces más brillante, y la población de Detroit disminuyó, por lo que los planificadores tuvieron que instalar postes nuevos con una configuración actualizada.

Hoy, el organismo dice que los costos energéticos asociados a las nuevas luces son alrededor de la mitad de lo que habrían sido con luces convencionales. Y un análisis de Detroit Greenways Coalition, un grupo de políticas e interés, indicó que “los accidentes fatales con peatones en zonas oscuras y sin iluminación disminuyeron drásticamente, de 24 en 2014 a apenas uno en 2017”, y concluyó que las nuevas luces eran el motivo principal de esto.

Estos son resultados importantes. Pero podría venir más: las nuevas farolas de Detroit están equipadas con dispositivos que se pueden modernizar para cumplir varias funciones “inteligentes”. Y esto nos lleva a la revolución tecnológica que se adjuntó al humilde alumbrado del pasado.

“Cuando usamos la palabra ‘inteligente’, quiere decir conectado”, dice Dominique Bonte, vicepresidente de la consultora ABI Research, cuyo pronóstico es que el mercado de alumbrado inteligente crecerá un 31 por ciento entre 2018 y 2026. Las luces que están conectadas por red, ya sea wifi o cable de fibra óptica, se pueden controlar o monitorear de forma remota. Estas conexiones también abren nuevas posibilidades, en particular debido a que en los próximos años se lanzará la tecnología de red celular más robusta conocida como 5G. “En el futuro, las farolas se pueden convertir más bien en centros o plataformas”, añade Bonte.

Austin Ashe, gerente general de ciudades inteligentes en Current, subsidiaria de GE, explicó a la publicación del área de ingeniería IEEE Spectrum que las farolas son ideales para cumplir esta función: “Tienen electricidad, están por todas partes y tienen la elevación perfecta: son altas como para cubrir un radio razonable, pero no tanto, para poder captar muchos datos importantes”.

Esta noción ya cautivó la imaginación de varias ciudades en todo el mundo: si las farolas ya están en cada cuadra, ¿por qué no pensar qué más pueden hacer?

Un estudio que llevó a cabo la empresa de investigación IoT Analytics estima que, en los próximos cinco años, la cantidad total de farolas conectadas en América del Norte llegará a los 14,4 millones, e indica que Miami es la ciudad con el despliegue más extenso de farolas conectadas con LED: casi 500.000. En los Ángeles, hay 165.000 farolas en red diseñadas para funcionar como una especie de espina dorsal en el desarrollo de otras tecnologías, como sensores detectores de sonidos que identifican disparos y otros ruidos. San Diego probó farolas equipadas con tecnología de vigilancia auditiva y visual, además de sensores que verifican la temperatura y la humedad. En Kansas City, una nueva línea céntrica de tranvía de 3,5 kilómetros tiene esparcidos puestos de wifi, sensores de tráfico y alumbrado de LED con cámaras de seguridad anexadas, y todo está vinculado con cable de fibra óptica. Y Cleveland se está lanzando a una labor por US$ 35 millones para reemplazar 61.000 dispositivos por farolas de LED inteligentes que admiten cámaras. En París, Madrid, Yakarta y otras ciudades de todo el mundo se están realizando labores similares.

Pero a medida que avanzan estos experimentos, empiezan a surgir inquietudes. La Unión Americana para las Libertades Civiles (ACLU) y otros organismos discrepan con la idea de que el alumbrado que admite cámaras observe todos los movimientos de las personas, y exigen que el gobierno supervise para garantizar que las “ciudades inteligentes” no se conviertan en “ciudades de vigilancia”. Mientras el entusiasmo municipal por las nuevas tecnologías deja rezagada a la normativa, algunos dirigentes sugieren precaución: “La tecnología avanza a un paso acelerado”, dijo un miembro del ayuntamiento de San Diego a Los Angeles Times. “Como funcionarios electos, no solo debemos seguir el ritmo de los crecientes desarrollos, sino también garantizar que se protejan los derechos y las libertades civiles de los residentes”.

Y luego están los factores económicos de todo esto. El alumbrado puede consumir hasta el 40 por ciento de las facturas de electricidad municipales, según indica el Departamento de Energía de EE.UU.; por lo tanto, las actualizaciones básicas de eficiencia suelen compensarse con el tiempo. Pero Bonte, de ABI, destaca que el rendimiento de las inversiones en proyectos más elaborados no siempre es claro, y pueden pasar décadas hasta que los beneficios se hagan realidad.

Con vistas al futuro, Taylor, de la PLA de Detroit, dice que su organismo está haciendo un seguimiento de los experimentos en curso en otras ciudades y participa en labores por descifrar qué productos o servicios inteligentes podrían beneficiar a la gente de Detroit de verdad. Si, por ejemplo, la ciudad decide agregar más wifi público en parques u otros espacios, readaptar el alumbrado es una opción. Pero eso está en el futuro. “La tecnología de ciudad inteligente es más bien un efecto multiplicador para un sistema de alumbrado público”, dice. “Nuestro enfoque principal fue volver a encender las luces”.

Incluso ese enfoque, cauteloso en comparación, tuvo sus riesgos: en un desarrollo frustrante, la PLA descubrió que las luces suministradas por un proveedor se están quemando mucho más rápido de lo que deberían. Ahora la ciudad debe cambiarlas, con un costo de alrededor de US$ 9 millones, y demandó al proveedor.

Con razón Taylor parece contento de esperar y observar mientras los demás experimentan. Dado el ritmo de la tecnología, lo último que una ciudad quiere es tener que ajustar su sistema “inteligente” dentro de diez años. “No se trata de que todo quede hecho por adelantado”, dice. “Se trata de mantenernos abiertos a las opciones”.

Rob Walker es periodista; escribe sobre diseño, tecnología y otros temas. Su libro The Art of Noticing (El arte de darse cuenta) se publicó en mayo de 2019.

Fotografía: La nueva generación de alumbrado puede hacer de todo, desde verificar el clima hasta escuchar disparos. Muchos funcionarios de la ciudad lo consideran una bendición, pero algunas organizaciones de derechos civiles exigen normativas más estrictas. Crédito: Coolfire Solutions.

“Ojalá no supiera ahora lo que no sabía antes”.

Era un verso al pasar en la balada “Against the Wind” (“Contra el viento”) de Bob Seger de 1980, una reflexión sobre la inocencia y el remordimiento. Si bien le parecía que sonaba raro y no era gramaticalmente correcto, Seger lo conservó porque a sus allegados les gustaba. Desde entonces, el verso ha inspirado a otros artistas para hacer sus propias interpretaciones. A mí me inspira como invitación a aprender, ofrece un marco de reflexión acerca de las consecuencias impensadas y nos permite imaginar cómo podríamos haber actuado de otro modo. En particular, es relevante en el contexto de la crisis nacional actual de viviendas asequibles.

Desde la Gran Depresión, durante cuatro décadas, dirigí y estudié el uso de inversiones públicas, privadas y filantrópicas para producir viviendas asequibles y ofrecer un techo decente a familias de bajos ingresos. Se debatió una gran cantidad de ideas, y muchas se implementaron. La mayoría de las que se implementaron no dieron los resultados esperados, pero todas trajeron consecuencias impensadas. ¿Qué podemos aprender de estos tropiezos del s. XX? Y, más específicamente: ¿qué estamos dispuestos a aprender?

Hace más de ocho décadas, el gobierno federal lucha para cubrir los compromisos básicos contraídos en las Leyes de Vivienda de los EE.UU. de 1937 y 1949: “una vivienda decente y un ambiente adecuado de vida para todos los estadounidenses”. Las leyes consignaban importantes subsidios para construir nuevas viviendas públicas y erradicar los asentamientos informales. Prometían nuevos empleos, ciudades modernizadas y mejores viviendas para quienes las necesitaran. Dado que las Leyes de Vivienda sugerían beneficios para todos los ciudadanos, se ganaron un amplio apoyo del público.

Cuando llegó la hora de implementar, casi todas las autoridades de vivienda pública apuntaron a ofrecer viviendas a quienes estaban en la mitad inferior de la distribución de ingresos: una decisión políticamente popular. Para mantener la disponibilidad de viviendas nuevas, se establecieron alquileres que cubrirían los costos operativos de los edificios. Pero los costos operativos aumentaban a medida que los edificios envejecían, y los alquileres crecían a la par. Hacia fines de los 60, los inquilinos de ingresos más bajos se vieron sobrepasados por los precios: pagaban más del 60 por ciento de su ingreso para seguir teniendo un techo.

El senador Edward Brooke (republicano, por Massachusetts) remedió la situación: en 1969 propuso una enmienda a las Leyes de Vivienda que limitaba los alquileres al 25 por ciento de los ingresos de los inquilinos. El gobierno federal cubría los déficits operativos con subsidios. Para obtener un alquiler reducido, los inquilinos debían declarar sus ingresos. Pronto se hizo evidente que las viviendas públicas no servían para las familias más pobres, quienes tenían las mayores necesidades de vivienda. En 1981, el Congreso actuó de nuevo: reservó las viviendas públicas para familias que ganaban la mitad de la mediana de ingresos y reservó el 40 por ciento de las unidades para familias que ganaban menos del 30 por ciento de la mediana.

El deterioro de los edificios se aceleraba. Esto se debió a que los subsidios operativos federales no cubrían gastos de capital, y los sistemas principales (calefacción, iluminación, ascensores) empezaron a fallar. La austeridad fiscal federal de los 80 agravó los problemas, porque redujo los subsidios operativos. Hacia fines de esa década, la única respuesta razonable a la crisis nacional de viviendas públicas fue la demolición generalizada.

Al mismo tiempo que disminuían los subsidios y dejaba de haber viviendas antiguas disponibles, surgió un contrarrelato, en el cual se culpaba a los propios residentes. La “cultura de la pobreza” y la “indefensión aprendida” se convirtieron en los memes dominantes. Se veía a la pobreza como una enfermedad contagiosa, más que como un síntoma. Los pobres se convirtieron en chivos expiatorios convenientes que cargaban con la responsabilidad de que se rompiera su propio techo, como si se esperara que los inquilinos, pobres o no, se responsabilizaran de mantener sus edificios. Al concentrar a los pobres en las viviendas públicas, reforzábamos los malos hábitos y transmitíamos valores que perpetuaban la pobreza a lo largo de las generaciones. Otro meme dominante de los 80 apoyó este movimiento: los peligros del gobierno grande. Este relato contaba (y cuenta) que el gobierno grande era torpe e ineficaz; el deterioro de las viviendas públicas era culpa del gobierno.

Con los programas “HOPE” que surgieron luego (Vivienda y Oportunidades para Personas en Cualquier Lugar), se reemplazaron muchos proyectos de vivienda pública por desarrollos bajos de ingresos mixtos, que en general sustituían tres unidades demolidas con una asequible. Para estimular la producción adicional de viviendas de alquiler, el gobierno federal creó el crédito fiscal para viviendas de bajos ingresos (LIHTC) en 1986. El programa ofrecía a los inversionistas privados créditos fiscales por una década a cambio de adelantos en inversiones en patrimonio (que suele ser el dinero más difícil de encontrar) para producir viviendas. Los estados controlaban cómo se asignaban los créditos, y las normativas exigían una asequibilidad a largo plazo para las viviendas.

Es importante mencionar que el programa LIHTC prometía superar las dos grandes fallas de las viviendas públicas. Al atraer inversiones privadas, las eficiencias del sector privado superarían la relación de dependencia con el ineficaz gobierno grande. Segundo, las decisiones de ubicación se delegarían a los gobiernos estatales y locales, que podrían asegurarse de que la producción de viviendas no concentraría la pobreza. Además, la competencia por los créditos fiscales reduciría el costo para los contribuyentes y, con el tiempo, el sector privado produciría viviendas asequibles sin necesitar subsidios.

Algunos expertos consideran que el programa LIHTC tuvo un éxito extraordinario. En el transcurso de tres décadas, se construyeron más de 2,5 millones de unidades de vivienda. Pero en ese período, perdimos más unidades asequibles del inventario nacional de las que se construyeron. Además, las rentabilidades prometidas del sector privado nunca se materializaron. Según el año y el mercado, el costo de producción estimado de unidades de LIHTC fue entre un 20 y un 50 por ciento superior que el de las unidades similares sin subsidios. Esto ni siquiera incluye los US$ 100 millones estimados por año para la administración del programa.

Los créditos fiscales para patrimonios de inversionistas privados llegaron a los contribuyentes en tasas de tarjeta de crédito. Y los costos aumentaron cuando el capital público estaba en el valor más barato. Durante la Gran Recesión, los créditos fiscales producían un promedio de ganancias después de impuestos del 12 al 14 por ciento para los inversionistas cuando la tasa de fondos federales era casi cero y la ganancia de Hacienda a 10 años era de cerca del 2 por ciento. El sector privado nunca dejó de depender de los subsidios. Hoy, prácticamente no hay producción de alquileres asequibles sin créditos fiscales. Por último, es decepcionante que se haya aceptado universalmente que la producción de viviendas con crédito fiscal exacerbó la concentración de la pobreza.

¿Cómo puede ser que el programa de producción de viviendas más grande de la historia de la nación, con amplio apoyo de ambos partidos, provoque tanta decepción? Hay muchas cosas de las que no sabía (y no sabíamos) antes, en 1999, en 1979 e incluso en 1949, que me gustaría no saber ahora.

Ojalá no supiera que, aunque seamos muy buenos para identificar grandes desafíos y anunciar respuestas ambiciosas, nuestro compromiso casi nunca sobrevive a los desafíos económicos. Ahora sabemos que solo construir viviendas asequibles no alcanza para ofrecer una vivienda decente y un ambiente adecuado de vida. Se necesita un modelo sostenible que mantenga los edificios, conserve la asequibilidad en el tiempo y construya donde lo necesitamos: cerca de empleos y escuelas buenos.

Ojalá no supiera que el apoyo político es efímero, y que la memoria no perdura. Garantizar que el poco subsidio que hay llegue a quienes más lo necesitan es razonable, pero solo si el subsidio se protege. Los más necesitados son políticamente débiles y es poco probable que obtengan apoyo para defender sus derechos. Y cuando intentan hacerlo, es fácil convertirlos en el chivo expiatorio.

Ojalá no supiera que gastamos decenas de millones de dólares para evaluar programas de viviendas, pero no aprendimos mucho. Contamos unidades, hicimos de cuenta que la cantidad producida es la única medida importante de impacto. Hace veinte años, una de cada cuatro familias que reunían los requisitos para recibir ayuda para la vivienda la recibían. Hoy, es una de cada cinco familias. Aunque según la creencia general los costos de vivienda que superan el 30 por ciento del ingreso son insostenibles para las familias, alrededor de la mitad de los inquilinos pagan más del 30 por ciento de su ingreso antes de impuestos para alquilar, y el 20 por ciento entrega más de la mitad de su ingreso.

¿Cuándo haremos un análisis sincero de ocho décadas de labores para dar un techo a nuestra gente? Debido a la complejidad de los desafíos en cuanto a las viviendas, es imposible aprender algo de las evaluaciones de los programas. Para aprender, debemos revelar los resultados esperados y comprometernos con ellos, compartir la lógica que guía nuestras acciones y conciliar lo que logramos en realidad con nuestras intenciones. Este es un modelo de aprendizaje que adoptamos en el Instituto Lincoln, y espero que se pueda aplicar más ampliamente a análisis de políticas en los sectores de vivienda, desarrollo comunitario y filantropía.

Ofrecer viviendas asequibles para todos no es tarea fácil. Las dolorosas verdades de ocho décadas de trabajo se ofrecen no como una acusación, sino como una invitación para aprender, y pensar y actuar de otro modo. Debemos intentar cosas nuevas y aprender de ellas. Esa innovación puede ser construir departamentos sobre bibliotecas públicas, una tendencia que exploramos en este número. Puede significar forjar asociaciones inesperadas, como están haciendo los servicios públicos y los defensores de viviendas en Seattle. Puede significar rematar derechos de desarrollo o aprovechar el valor del suelo de otro modo.

Deberíamos aspirar a las mismas ambiciones de los confiados gestores de políticas de 1949, que se comprometieron para proveer “una vivienda decente y un ambiente adecuado de vida para todos los estadounidenses”. Pero tendremos que intentar muchas cosas nuevas y aprender de nuestros errores. Y, si nos comprometemos a “buscar un techo una y otra vez”, como canta Seger en la misma canción, podríamos lograrlo.

¿Tiene un ejemplo propio de “ojalá no supiera ahora lo que no sabía antes”? ¿Una política o programa del que podríamos o deberíamos haber aprendido? Queremos destacar algunos en uno de los próximos números. Envíenos el suyo a publications@lincolninst.edu.