Climate change
unfolds as the largest game changer our city faces in terms of how we live and
move. We witness an ever more massive
reordering of our civilization as we move deeper into the age of climate
change. The policies and infrastructure
that the City puts in place today will have a large impact on how well
Knoxville weathers the worsening storms of climate change.
Future plans need
to focus both on reducing our carbon emissions and to adapting to the
all-encompassing effects of climate change.
If we imagine the future will resemble the past, then we dangerously
ignore the reality of climate change and put ever more people in harm’s way. It
is critically important that we align our zoning map with Transit Oriented
Development so that the City has the bone structure we need to move us toward a
zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Zoning codes
do affect our community’s carbon emissions.
Compact neighborhoods typically generate 20-40% less vehicle
travel per capita than conventional, lower-density neighborhoods. An EPA found travel to a building often
uses as much energy as is consumed in the building. Residents reduce total
building and transportation energy consumption 64% by living in an attached
energy efficient (green) home in an urban location, and by 75% by living in a
multifamily energy efficient home, compared with the same household living in a
typical detached single-family house in an auto-dependent suburb. Housing
location and type have greater impacts on total energy use than do vehicle or
home energy efficiency.
Transit
Oriented Development has many other benefits besides climate mitigation: affordable housing, strong transit systems,
vibrant communities, and attraction of talent.
Transforming the way our City develops is a long-term enterprise, but
removing the zoning barriers to multifamily housing by right and Transit
Oriented Development opens the way for these infrastructural changes to occur
so that we may reap the benefits.
Good news is that
many within the city, especially our mobility agencies, understand and value
transit-oriented development. Increasing
density along all of our transit corridors, as pictured by KAT in its comments,
is the important step that only Recode Knoxville can take. Coupled with city investments to make these
same areas more equitable, walkable and bikable will both reduce carbon
emissions and prepare our city for a climate changing world.
