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Sustainable Nation: Urban Design Patterns for the Future

Douglas Farr

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Farr, Douglas, author.

Title: Sustainable nation : urban design patterns for the future / by Douglas Farr.

Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., [2018] | Includes index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2017024943 (print) | LCCN 2017037603 (ebook) | ISBN 9781118417911 (pdf) | ISBN 9781118415351 (epub) | ISBN 9780470537176 (cloth)

Subjects: LCSH: Sustainable urban development. | City planning–Environmental aspects. | Urban ecology (Sociology) | Urban health.

Classification: LCC HT241 (ebook) | LCC HT241 .F37 2018 (print) | DDC 307.1/216–dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017024943

To the loving memory of my parents,
Edwin Allen Farr and Doris Ingrid Magnuson Farr.

Foreword

To understand human history, start with the street. In the pattern of cities is the story of civilization.

Cities and the vibrant academic, artistic, financial, and political cultures they contain are where many of history's great ideas, social movements, and revolutions have naturally emerged and blossomed over centuries.

But as human ideas and ideals have evolved, the development of the physical city itself has been less revolutionary and less recognized. When I visit and speak in a city, whether Santiago, Seattle, or Stockholm, I like to show people a picture of a local street that was taken a century ago. I take this grainy sepia or black-and-white street image from the Internet archives and line it up alongside a second, modern picture of that same street. Almost invariably, the side-by-side comparison shows how an early 20th-century street, formerly populated with people, horse-and-carriages, streetcars, and street vendors—and brimming with all kinds of possibilities—was utterly lost to the motor vehicle. Brick buildings have been replaced by steel skyscrapers, and streetcars have been supplanted by nondescript, black Ubers, but the people have virtually disappeared from the streets. Little by little, and then all at once in the mid-20th century, we ceded our cities to our vehicles, and it was barely noticed. We didn't merely forget what the street used to be, we even forgot to ask the question of what and who our cities should be built for. We lost the plot because we missed the pattern.

Patterns, by their very essence, are discernable only over time and with repetition, so they may have been there long before they are even detected, much less responded to. We tend not to notice change that occurs slowly, like the evolution of our physical cities. This slowness means that we tend not to recognize impending disaster. We can readily identify the signs of war, crisis, and social and political dissolution that have passed, but we can't see it when it is staring us in the face. Global climate change may be the ultimate example of this. All nations, peoples, and industries are vulnerable, yet we haven't sufficiently developed to the point of acting with the necessary urgency.

We are at a point of cultural self-awareness where we are not bound to merely identifying past patterns, but can consciously create new ones to avert catastrophe. Looking for new patterns isn't just a search for new behaviors, routines, and actions; it's a fundamental part of being human. It requires ascertaining where we are, where we want to be, and how we can get there.

So, what stands between us and a literal Sustainable Nation? Merely ourselves. Change requires first that we change our minds. If we put a fraction of the effort into reinventing the world that we do unconsciously re-creating and reinforcing what is already there, we can make fast progress.

By changing our thinking, we can look more expansively at the problems we're trying to solve. We don't just need driverless or fuel-efficient cars to save our cities, we need better designed cities so we don't need cars in the first place. We don't just need cleaner and healthier air, we need more inviting, active streets where people have healthier options for getting around using their own energy, reducing emissions in the process.

One feature that characterizes human progress is the act of attempting something that has never been tried before. Whether in science, literature, culture, or technology, we celebrate innovation. It is beyond time that we name it and celebrate its role in the well-designed city, for it is on cities' mutable but sturdy bedrock that a Sustainable Nation can be built.

Janette Sadik-Khan

Preface

An Epic Journey

“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town”

Leo Tolstoy1

For millennia, people have been inspired by stories of epic journeys that lead to a better future. Literature, from The Odyssey to The Hobbit, is filled with narratives of challenging quests and the range of motives for making them: for honor, adventure, or self-discovery. In real life, the campaigns that inspired our fastest societal change—Franklin Delano Roosevelt leading the U.S. to mobilize and prevail in World War II; Martin Luther King, Jr., fighting for civil rights; Earth Day leading to the environmental movement—were all framed as ambitious journeys, as campaigns to achieve a better world: rid of Hitler and war; with equal opportunity for all; and pollution-free. Big important ideas.

In the U.S. today, as well as several other leading democracies, it can be hard to identify any journey worth taking. Facts no longer matter. “Balanced” journalists hand the microphone to science skeptics of all persuasions: to climate change, to evolution, and to the Big Bang. Want a debate on the theory of gravity? “There's this guy . . .” Our sped-up, media-obsessed times feature 24/7 news feeds, talking heads on split screens, and an amplified us-vs.-them divide. The message is all noise and no signal. It denies us the basic facts to frame a clarifying debate.

Headlines skew our reality, framing both the importance of the big, sensational, and rare event as well as the irrelevance of the everyday and routine. Global terrorism and local shootings get the bold print. Polls and surveys report state and national trends,2 struggling to communicate how these forces are playing out in our daily lives. Human-interest stories still get their cameo: the rare local hero choosing to do the right thing in these jaded times. This wall-to-wall media free-for-all can make us feel powerless and frustrated and without either common ground or common interests to advance. It can work to diminish the value of everyday activities and the value of a virtuous life lived locally. It nudges us to retreat and disengage, and threatens to put our country on a downward spiral.

But under the surface, I believe that Americans are ready to devote themselves to a greater good, to a journey: a nonpartisan campaign to rebuild our torn fabric. We are hungry for a group undertaking, larger than the individual, where cooperation and interdependence are essential to its success. The mission has to be worthy, above reproach, and based on our professed shared values. That common denominator is the first phrase of the U.S. Constitution:

“We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union . . .”3

The epic journey proposed here requires no actual travel. It is a national “staycation,” a journey of local and personal transformation, an appeal to apply our better selves to the opportunities to make each and every one of our communities more “perfect.”

It starts by allowing ourselves to tune out the timewasting static of digital media, to focus our attention solely on the well-being of the places we reside and the people we share them with. The focus is on local, rather than national, action. The talking heads we most need are not on TV; they are neighbors talking across thresholds and fences.

It advances as we permit ourselves to feel passionately about seeing our own communities as a mirror of a greater and better society, and by investing the love necessary to elevate them to align with our highest ideals.

It intensifies as we shake off our fears and unmute ourselves—on carbon dependence, on inequities, and on not having the answers—and let this work help to define who we are. Should we choose to join this epic journey, as many have done before us, we—along with the people and places around us—will be transformed for the better.

It plays out in neighborhoods, the theaters of daily life, rather than on the national stage. Were Sustainable Nation to call for a national plan to do anything, it would not work. Our long-held rights—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—give us an independent spirit and a reluctance to be told what to do, especially at the national level. Yet, in the absence of a forward-looking plan, the business-as-usual scenario becomes our national plan by default. Achieving national goals by promoting more perfection locally is our best path forward.

It takes us back to our evolutionary roots of clans, tribes, and villages banded together to survive and prosper. Community building is a muscle that has become weak through disuse. The historic challenges we face offer an opportunity to use our democratic freedoms of speech and expression to deliver a preferred future ahead of schedule.

This Historic Opportunity

The story of human civilization is a long, erratic march of progress. If we start the clock of civilization with the societies of Mesopotamia and Egypt in the year 3,100 BCE (Before Common Era),4 it has taken us civilized humans 204 25-year generations5 of trial and error to build the world of today. Ancient life was hard. Our ancestors endured natural disasters—famines, droughts, and plagues—and then inflicted other types of disasters on themselves in the form of slavery, war, and genocide. The pace of progress was slow, uneven, and unpredictable due to their ignorance about how to do better.

The pace of progress picked up when the invention of the scientific method made possible the discovery of the laws of nature, and later the laws of mankind. Using data-based insights, societies began to make informed policies and investments to improve the rudimentary building blocks of well-being, formally referred to as the public health, safety, and welfare. This bettered the human condition and clarified our interdependence with the natural world. Now fast-forward.

Figure describes a history of civilization.

A Generational Timeline of Civilization. Copyright Farr Associates

There has never been a better time, on average, to be alive than today.6 More people live longer, are less poor, are better fed, are better educated, and in better health than at any time in human history. But these benefits are not evenly distributed. There are enormous gaps between the haves and have-nots both nationally and globally.

wick•ed prob•lem noun a problem with incomplete, contradictory, or changing requirements7

We know this because for the first time in history, the information revolution has made us aware of the living conditions worldwide, revealing a humanitarian crisis of unmet human potential. Add to this the two wicked problems of surging population and climate change (Chapter 1). Individually, any of these three challenges would be daunting; put together, this confluence of humanitarian, population, and climate crises appears overwhelming and seems hopeless. In the face of the data, it is hard not to conclude that we are totally screwed. But taking a step back shows that there is another way of looking at it.

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

—Rahm Emanuel8

Sustainable Nation embraces the idea that the humanitarian, population, and climate crises are three facets of one interrelated human existential challenge, one with impossibly short deadlines. Billions of human beings are poor, uneducated, in poor health, and face bleak lives. They, their children, and their grandchildren deserve better. Global population is expected to exceed 9.7 billion people by 2050,9 stressing the earth—s carrying capacity. And to avoid increasing temperatures on earth by 2°C, most unextracted fossil fuels must stay in the ground: a pivot to a noncarbon economy that must take place by 2050.

The vision of Sustainable Nation is to accelerate the pace of progress of human civilization to create an equitable and sustainable world in four generations. Humans struggle to care about future abstractions—but if we set our deadline at 100 years, a baby born today will be alive to see the change. This is a story we can all connect to, and is the reason why we should care.

“May our children's children be friends.”

—Clay Bradley10

lo•cal ac•tor noun an individual, with or without an official role, who is passionate about improving his or her community

The core strategy of Sustainable Nation is the perfection of the design and governance of all neighborhoods in the United States and beyond to make them unique exemplars of community and sustainability. Under this strategy, local actors will pursue a new vision of health, safety, and welfare—a new common good—and in so doing, will seek to reverse three harmful and “wicked” national trends: obesity, carbon pollution, and sprawl. In the mantra of the 1960s, “Think globally, act locally.”11

And welcome home.

Endnotes

Acknowledgments

Writing a book while running a design practice (Farr Associates) and chairing a national board (CNU) takes a dedicated team. My wife, Gail Niemann, has now twice put up with my every-10-year let's-make-us-crazy need to write a book. I thank her for her grounding presence and critical listening over the nearly two-year period when she would have much preferred that we were out having fun.

This book would not have happened without the fiery intelligence of Sydney Blankers VanKuren. Syd went from being my star graduate student to running our sustainable urbanist enterprise in no time flat. She was a perfect collaborator and a sunny and disciplined researcher and editor, sustaining a can-do, California optimism even as the number of contributing authors ballooned to over 70. She was also impatient, driven, and on occasion bossy; an ideal skillset for managing a distracted author. As further proof of Syd's capacity to multitask, in the time it took to write and edit this book, Syd got married and gave birth.

The design patterns that comprise the bulk of the book are curated distillations of the work and ideas of dozens of my heroes. I remain starstruck by the individual brilliance of the contributors and am awed by the synergies between their collective work. It was a joy working to develop the patterns. The creative process started with a conversation outlining the broad (frankly vague) themes of the book. The contributors (often with a team) would describe their work, while Syd and I would lay in wait for pattern phrasing to materialize. I would translate our interpretation into a digital cartoon of a book spread showing graphics, paragraph titles, and word counts. The authors then made their powerful magic, doing the impossibly hard work of condensing careers full of insights into far too little real estate. I owe them each my sincere and humble thanks. Christopher Alexander, and his seminal work A Pattern Language, was an ever-present north star.

My talent trust was wide and deep. I owe thanks to the CNU Board, for alpha-testing some of the change-related ideas herein; to Jennifer Hurley, for her insights on the theory of change; and to Scott Bernstein, for introducing me to practice networks. My friends Andres Duany, Jacky Grimshaw, Rick Moser, Robin Rather, Janette Sadik-Khan, Dr. Emily Talen, and Laura Toups delivered straight talk at just the right times to avert numerous self-created disasters. Thanks to Peter Calthorpe for his insights on building heights in Asia and to Dr. Nanette Benbow for her insights on structural interventions in public health. Thanks to NYCDOT for permitting use of the images from Street Fight. The graphics troika of Kareeshma Ali, Matt McGrane, and Kelly Moynihan shaped the book's bright palette, graphic clarity, and overall aesthetic; Christina Bader provided her revered soft-touch edits; Tim Kirkby patiently iterated diagrams of urban form; Olivia Dorow Hovland critically researched dozens of case studies; and Stephanie Gough imbued the book's many charts, graphs, and art pages with an elegant beauty.

I want to thank my three editors at John Wiley and Sons: Helen Ealing Castle, for her steady hand and keen insights; and Amanda Shettleton and Margaret Cummins, for nudging us over the finish line.

Part One
Our Default World
Fearful

Photograph depicting a satellite view of the earth captured during night.

“You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.”

—Marie Curie1

This chapter provides the starting point for Sustainable Nation: a distilled, but not simplified, snapshot of the issues and opportunities the world and the country now face. Using the tight editorial focus of Sustainable Nation to filter our now-daily information overload, this chapter summarizes and frames the data and emotions of many of today's biggest issues in just 22 pages.

The exhibits are organized into global and national threats, barriers, and progress, and grow in relevance and emotional impact with each additional spread. The findings provide a remarkably complete picture of the threats we face, the barriers to overcoming them, and our progress to date. These overlapping and contradictory findings fight one another for primacy and urgency, putting one's mind on high alert in search of productive next steps.

The Tocqueville Effect: Social frustration increases as social conditions improve.

One nondata anomaly bears highlighting: although the world is far from perfect, there is no better time to be alive than today. Incredible progress has been made on seemingly unsolvable global problems such as poverty, disease, and even climate change. Despite this progress (some would say because of our progress), we are less satisfied with where we stand. All of this points to the importance of individuals coming to terms with and understanding where we are—not as a record of deficiencies, but as the dynamic starting point for all that follows.

Endnotes

References

  1. Chapter cover image: Free-Photos via Pixabay.com/ Creative Commons CC0

Civilization Timeline

  1. The World Bank. (2016). World Development Indicators. Life expectancy at birth, total (years). http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN; accessed August 31, 2016.
  2. Ancient History Encyclopedia. (n.d.). www.ancient.eu/.
  3. A&E Networks. (n.d.). History.com.
  4. Wikipedia. (n.d.). www.wikipedia.org/.

Global Threats

Average Lifespan

  1. The World Bank. (2016). World Development Indicators. Life expectancy at birth, total (years). http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN; accessed August 31, 2016.

Poverty Data

  1. The World Bank. (2016). World Development Indicators. Poverty headcount ratio at $1.90 a day (2011 PPP) (% of population). http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.DDAY; accessed August 31, 2016.

Gender Inequality Index

  1. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). (2015). UNDP Human Development Reports 2015. Table 5: Gender Inequality Index. http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/GII; accessed June 21, 2017.

    The Gender Inequality Index is a composite measure reflecting inequality in achievement between women and men as measured by maternal mortality ratio (deaths per 100,000 live births); adolescent birth rate (births per 1,000 women ages 15–19); share of seats in government/parliament (percent held by women); population (percent) ages 25 and older with at least some secondary education; and labor force participation rate (percent ages 15 and older).

Atmospheric Content

  1. NASA. (2013). The relentless rise of carbon dioxide (NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology). http://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/24/; accessed June 21, 2017.

Climate Refugees

  1. Kreft, Sonke, David Exkstein, Lukas Dorsch, and Lidia Fischer (2015, November). Global Climate Risk Index 2016: Who suffers most from extreme weather events? Weather-related loss events in 2014 and 1995–2014. www.germanwatch.org/en/cri; accessed June 21, 2017.

Threatened Species

  1. IUCN. (2016). The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, Version 2017-1: Table 5. Threatened species in each country (totals by taxonomic group). www.iucnredlist.org/about/summary-statistics#Tables_5_6 and http://cmsdocs.s3.amazonaws.com/summarystats/2017-1_Summary_Stats_Page_Documents/2017_1_RL_Stats_Table_5.pdf; accessed June 22, 2017.

National Threats

Public Trust

  1. Pew Research Center. (2015, November 23). American National Election Studies. Table 5A.1 Trust the Federal Government: 1958–2012. www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/1-trust-in-government-1958-2015/; accessed June 27, 2017.
  2. American National Election Studies (ANES). (n.d.). www.electionstudies.org/studypages/download/datacenter_all_NoData.php; accessed June 27, 2017.

    Note: These data are in response to the following survey question: “How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right—just about always, most of the time or only some of the time?”

Fear of Others

  1. Ledbetter, S. (2015, October 13). America's Top Fears 2015. The Chapman University Survey of American Fears, Wave 2. https://blogs.chapman.edu/wilkinson/2015/10/13/americas-top-fears-2015/; accessed June 27, 2017.

Screen Time

  1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2015). ATUS Table A-1: Civilian noninstitutional population age 15 and over. The American Time Use Survey (ATUS) 2003–2015. www.bls.gov/tus/#tables; accessed June 22, 2017.

    Note: Leisure time is defined as religious and spiritual activities, volunteering (organizational and civic activities), socializing and communicating, relaxing and leisure (minus watching television), arts and entertainment (other than sports), and sports, exercise, and recreation. Screen time is defined as watching television and household and personal e-mail and messages.

Minority Poverty

  1. U.S. Census Bureau. (2016). Historical Poverty Tables: People & Families—1959–2015. Table 2. Poverty Status of People by Family Relationship, Race, and Hispanic Origin: 1959 to 2015. www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-poverty-people.html (last updated September 1, 2016); accessed June 22, 2017.

Social/Upward Mobility

  1. Chetty, Raj, David Grusky, Maximilian Hell, Nathaniel Hendren, Robert Manduca, and Jimmy Narang (2014). Where is the land of opportunity? The geography of intergenerational mobility in the United States. www.equality-of-opportunity.org/papers/abs_mobility_paper.pdf. accessed 12/20/16.

    Note: Each cell reports the percentage of children with family income in the quintile given by the row conditional on having parents with family income in the quintile given by the column for children in the 1980–85 birth cohorts. See notes to Table I for income and sample definitions. See Table II for an analogous transition matrix constructed using the 1980–1982 figures.

Healthcare Expenses

  1. Executive Office of the President, Council of Economic Advisers. (2009, June). the Economic Case for Health Care Reform. www.rila.org/news/pblccomments/health%20care%20public%20documents/whitehouseeconomiccaseforhealthreformstudy.pdf. Accessed July 31, 2017. The chart on p. xx of this book is a reproduction of Figure 3 (p. 5) of this report.

Global Barriers

Fragile States

  1. The Fund for Peace. (2016). Fragile States Index 2016. http://library.fundforpeace.org/fsi16-report. accessed June 22, 2017.Reproduced with permission from J.J. Messner.

Corruption

  1. Transparency International. (2015). Corruption perceptions index. www.transparency.org/cpi2015; accessed June 22, 2017.Recreated from Transparency International, licensed under CC-BY-ND 4.0.

Literacy

  1. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). (2016). UNESCO eAtlas of Literacy. Education Indicator: Adult literacy rate, population 15+ years, both sexes (%). Accessed Oct. 5, 2016. Reproduced based on UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), http://on.unesco.org/literacy-map. http://tellmaps.com/uis/literacy/#!/tellmap/-601865091; accessed June 24, 2017.
  2. PBS. POV: World literacy rates by country. www.pbs.org/pov/biblioburro/photo-gallery-map-world-literacy/v

Infrastructure

  1. Schwab, K. (2011). The Global Competitiveness Report 2011–2012. Table 5: The Global Competitiveness Index 2011–2012: Basic requirements. Copyright World Economic Forum. www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GCR_Report_2011–12.pdf.

Global Population

  1. The World Bank. (2016). World DataBank: Health nutrition and population statistics: Population estimates and projections. http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=Health%20Nutrition%20and%20Population%20Statistics:%20Population%20estimates%20and%20projections#; accessed June 27, 2017.

Carbon Assets

  1. Carbon Tracker Initiative and The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. (2013). Unburnable carbon 2013: Wasted capital and stranded assets. www.carbontracker.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Unburnable-Carbon-2-Web-Version.pdf; accessed June 27, 2017.

    Note: P1 indicates reserves with high certainty.

National Barriers

National Fuel Tax

  1. U.S. Department of Transportation. (2015). Highway Statistics 2014—Federal Tax Rates on Motor Fuels and Lubricating Oil (Table FE-101A). www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2014/fe101a.cfm. Last modified December 18, 2015, accessed June 27, 2017.
  2. U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). (2017). Frequently Asked Questions: How much tax do we pay on a gallon of gasoline and diesel fuel? www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=10&t=10; last updated February 28, 2017; accessed June 27, 2017.
  3. Pomerleau, K. (2015, March 3). How high are other nations' gas taxes? The Tax Foundation Tax Policy Blog. https://taxfoundation.org/how-high-are-other-nations-gas-taxes/; accessed June 27, 2017.

Corn Subsidies

  1. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. (2016). Feed grains database. https://data.ers.usda.gov/FEED-GRAINS-custom-query.aspx#ResultsPanel; ;ast updated June 12, 2017. Accessed June 27, 2017.

Infrastructure Investment

  1. White House, Office of Management and Budget. (2016). Historical Tables: Table 9.3. Major Physical Capital Investment Outlays in Percentage Terms: 1940–2018.www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals; accessed June 27, 2017.
  2. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. (n.d.). Economic Research & Data. Selected Interest Rates (Daily)—H.15. Historical Data: Federal funds (effective) annual. www.federalreserve.gov/releases/H15/default.htm. Last updated June 27, 2017; accessed June 27, 2017.

Overconsumption

  1. Calculated for new single- and multi-family houses completed; data from U.S. Census Bureau:
  2. U.S. Census Bureau, American FactFinder. (n.d.). Selected population profile in the United States: 2015American Community Survey 1-year estimates (Table S0201). https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk; accessed June 27, 2017.
  3. U.S. Census Bureau. (2015). Characteristics of New Housing, Current Construction Reports, 1977–1999: Table 17 or 18: Characteristics of Units in Multifamily Buildings by Region. www.census.gov/construction/chars/historical_data/; accessed July 31, 2017.
  4. U.S. Census Bureau. (n.d.). Characteristics of new housing completed. www.census.gov/construction/chars/completed.html; and www.census.gov/construction/chars/mfu.html; accessed June 27, 2017.
  5. U.S. Census Bureau. (2015). Current Population Survey: HH-6. Average population per household and family: 1940 to present. www.census.gov/population/socdemo/hh-fam/tabHH-6.pdf; accessed June 27, 2017.

Trash

  1. U.S. Environment Protection Agency. (2015, June 15). Advancing sustainable materials management: Facts and figures report. www.epa.gov/smm/advancing-sustainable-materials-management-facts-and-figures-report; accessed June 27, 2017.

Material Culture

  1. Helliwell, J., Layard, R., and Sachs, J. (2016). World happiness report 2016, update (Vol. I). New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network. http://worldhappiness.report/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/03/HR-V1_web.pdf; accessed June 27, 2017.

Global Progress

Millennium Development Goals

  1. United Nations. (2015). The Millennium Development Goals Report 2015, by DPI. www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/MDG/english/UNDP_MDG_Report_2015.pdf; accessed July 31, 2017.
  2. Note: Statistics from the report are © 2015 United Nations. Reprinted with the permission of the United Nations.
  3. Note: Icons are © 2000 UNDP. Reprinted with permission of United Nations Development Programme.

Paris Pledges

  1. Jeffery, L., et al. (2015, December 8). Climate Action Tracker: 2.7°C is not enough—we can get lower (Climate Action Tracker Update). http://climateactiontracker.org/assets/publications/briefing_papers/CAT_Temp_Update_COP21.pdf. accessed June 27, 2017.

    Note: INDCs are intended nationally determined contributions.

Photovoltaic (Pv) Costs

  1. Parker, M. et al. (2014, April 4). “Bernstein Energy & Power Blast: Equal and Opposite… If Solar Wins, Who Loses?” http://reneweconomy.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Bernstein-solar.pdf, accessed June 27, 2017.
  2. Wiser, R., and Bolinger, M. (2016, August). 2015 Wind technologies marketing report. U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy. https://emp.lbl.gov/sites/all/files/2015-windtechreport.final_.pdf; accessed June 27, 2017.

Electric Car Costs

  1. Donohoo-Vallett, P. (2016, September). The future arrives for five clean energy technologies—2016 update. U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy. https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2016/09/f33/Revolutiona%CC%82%E2%82%ACNow%202016%20Report_2.pdf; accessed June 27, 2017.

LEDs

  1. Donohoo-Vallett, P. (2016, September). The future arrives for five clean energy technologies—2016 update. U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy. https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2016/09/f33/Revolutiona%CC%82%E2%82%ACNow%202016%20Report_2.pdf; accessed June 27, 2017.

National Progress

Seat Belts

  1. 1979–1999 Observed Seat Belt Use Rates:
  2. Nichols, J. L., and Ledingham, K. A. (2008). The impact of legislation, enforcement, and sanctions on safety belt use (U.S. Transportation Research Board (TRB) National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 601. Project Number: 17–33). Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

    2000–2016 rates:

  3. U.S. Department of Transportation. (2016). Seat belt use in 2016—Overall results (Traffic Safety Facts Research Note, DOT HS 812 351). https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812351; accessed June 27, 2017.

Death by Fire/Smoking

  1. American Lung Association (ALA). (2011, July). Trends in Tobacco Use. Table 2: Cigarette Consumption, United States, 1900-2007. ALA Research and Program Services, Epidemiology and Statistics Unit. www.lung.org/assets/documents/research/tobacco-trend-report.pdf; accessed July 31, 2017.
  2. Hall, Jr., John R. (2011, March). Fatal Effects of Fire. National Center for Health Statistics. www.nfpa.org/news-and-research/fire-statistics-and-reports/fire-statistics/demographics-and-victim-patterns/fatal-effects-of-fire; accessed July 31, 2017.
  3. Note: E-Codes 890–899 (until 1998) and X-Codes 00–09 (1999 and after). Deaths are shown to the nearest ten.
  4. U.S. Fire Administration (USFA). (n.d.). Trends in fires, deaths, injuries and dollar loss. www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/#tab-2; accessed June 27, 2017.

ACA Uninsured

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2012). National Health Interview Survey, health insurance supplements (prior to 1997) and Family Core questionnaire (starting with 1997). Trends in Health Care Coverage and Insurance for 1968–2011: Table 1. Percentage of persons under age 65 with health insurance coverage, by coverage type, and without health insurance: United States, selected years 1968–2011. National Center for Health Statistics.www.cdc.gov/nchs/health_policy/trends_hc_1968_2011.htm#table01. Last updated Nov. 15, 2012.

  1. Cohen, R. A., M. E. Martinez, and E. P. Zammitti (2016, May). Health insurance coverage: Early release of estimates from the National Health Interview Survey, 2015. www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/earlyrelease/insur201605.pdf; accessed June 27, 2017.

CO2 Map Data

  1. Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT). (n.d.). CNT H+T Affordability Index. http://htaindex.cnt.org/map/; accessed July 31, 2017.
  2. Note: Maps are modified with permission from Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT). CNT H+T® Affordability Index, Copyright 2013–16 CNT. CNT bears no responsibility for the analyses or interpretations of the data presented here.

2030 Challenge

  1. Architecture 2030. (n.d.). U.S. Building Operations 2005–2030.
  2. Note: Reproduced with permission from Edward Mazria, Architecture 2030.

Vision Zero

  1. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. (2016). Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) encyclopedia. www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx/ (2014 data released April 22, 2016); accessed June 27, 2017.
  2. European Road Safety Observatory. (2005). SafetyNet: Building the European Road Safety Observatory, Workpackage 1—Task 3; Deliverable No 1: Annual Statistical Report 2004 [based on data from the CARE database], Tables 4 and 5. http://erso.swov.nl/safetynet/fixed/WP1/2004/Annual_Statistical_Report_2004.pdf/; accessed June 27, 2017.
  3. European Road Safety Observatory. (2008). SafetyNet: Building the European Road Safety Observatory. Workpackage 1—Task 3; Deliverable No: D 1.20: Annual Statistical Report 2008 [based on data from CARE / EC], Tables 2 and 4.. http://erso.swov.nl/safetynet/fixed/WP1/2008/SafetyNet%20Annual%20Statistical%20Report%202008.pdf; accessed June 27, 2017.
  4. European Commission, Directorate General for Transport. (2016, June). Annual Statistical Report 2016: European Commission, Annual Accident Report, Tables 2 and 4. http://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/pdf/statistics/dacota/asr2016.pdf; accessed June 27, 2017.
  5. The World Bank. (2016). World Development Indicators—Population, Total. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?locations=SE; accessed June 27, 2017.