Editor's Note: Alex Wallace is an on-call GIS (Geographic Information Systems) support staff member for Parametrix. He recently attended the APA conference in Vancouver, Washington as a Northwest Hub reporter. Over the coming days, Alex will provide his take-aways from some of the presentations at the conference.
The APA Conference in Vancouver, Washington on November 12th and 13th included 27 presentations by many planners on many different planning topics. During these presentations, sustainability was a dominant theme. In an effort to adjust and improve existing planning practices in the face of the economic downturn, planners are focusing their efforts on seeking alternative ways to create and sustain an urban way of life with decreasing revenue sources. The presentations discussed in this and future articles will examine alternative and sustainable planning tools and their future application on a larger scale.
Fiscal Reality and the GMA: A Sustainable Return on Investment (SROI) Tool
This presentation started with a question by Philip Wuest, Principal Transportation Planner for the City of Vancouver: “How do we plan effectively under the Growth Management Act?”
Vancouver’s Comprehensive Plan seeks to address Growth Management Act (GMA) requirements through public workshops, transportation system inventory, and by identifying deficiencies in the network. Wuest described the Comprehensive Plan as a stool held up by three legs: level of service (LOS), land use growth and development, and capital funding. Due to difficulties stemming from a decreased tax base, planning revenue for long-term transportation projects will be cut, maintenance will be deferred, and incremental investments concurrent with growth will be lost. The result is a structural deficit where both LOS and capital funding are compromised leaving the land use growth and development leg unbalanced. Wuest ended his presentation by discussing a solution that would adjust Vancouver’s Comprehensive Plan toward a smaller project list and develop value-based system to address LOS.
As a way to help projects get off the ground, Moderator Jeannie Renne-Malone of HDR pointed out that federal funding is being directed to sustainability projects. Stimulus funding in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants (EECBGs) is being used to create incentives to encourage sustainable development.
HDR’s Sustainable Return On Investment (SROI) tool seeks to give leverage to projects competing for stimulus funding by including in the cost calculation the ‘triple bottom line’ of social, economic, and environmental costs. As described by Stephane Larocque, leader of HDR’s SROI Program, the SROI tool measures these costs by attributing a monetized value to social and environmental costs through risk analysis and stakeholder agreements. Social and environmental externalities, such as employee safety and greenhouse gases, are given a full range of values via risk analysis to be used to generate consensus among stakeholders in determining the value attributed to these non-cash elements.
The SROI tool has been used by both public and private clients including the U.S. Army in construction of the Fort Belvoir Community Hospital in Virginia (see photo above), and John Hopkins University in order to further its campus-wide sustainability initiative. Larocque used John Hopkins as an example for financial return using the SROI tool. There, greening of the campus by improving energy and maintenance efficiencies had an estimated eight year financial payback. Applying the triple bottom line of SROI reduced the payback period to two years after considering environmental and social elements monetized, such as tons of CO2 saved and jobs created.
As a tool, SROI helps projects receive funding by giving proof of social and environmental benefits in monetary terms, as well as the external and internal approval of those calculated benefits from stakeholders involved.
Alex Wallace is currently working as an on-call GIS (Geographic Information Systems) support staff member for Parametrix, volunteering as an intern for Cascade Land Conservancy’s Community Stewards Program, and working for Bartell Drugs in the U-District. He is interested in land use issues and engaging neighborhoods through the Community Stewards Program to participate in the planning process. Alex can be contacted at alex.s.wallace@gmail.com.
