From: Lee Farris <Lee@LeeFarris.net>
Date: Tuesday, January 28, 2020 at 11:59 AM
Subject: [ACN] Fwd: Wed 5:30, City task force to discuss new building rules to control urban heat island effects
Below is an email from Mike Nakagawa, one of the authors of the Climate Safety petition in 2017, which Cambridge Residents Alliance and many others strongly supported.
It sounds like the approach proposed by the city may have some problems, so it would be good if people can attend. You can review the presentation in advance, see link below. (Future meetings are listed below.)
A light dinner will be provided. Hope to see you there.
Lee
Begin forwarded message:
From: alewife-miken@usa.net
Subject: [ ECPT ] Wed 5:30, City task force to discuss new building rules to control urban heat island effects
Date: January 27, 2020 at 11:33:19 AM EST
To: "FPRA" <fresh-pond-residents-alliance@googlegroups.com>, "ECPT" <east-cambridge-planning-team@googlegroups.com>
Reply-To: miken@ieee.org
The long-awaited "Cool Factor" will be discussed at the Climate Resilience Zoning Task Force meeting on Wed, Jan 29 (5:30 at the Citywide Senior Center in Central Square, 806 Mass Ave). Public comment is at the end of the meeting.I encourage people to come out to discuss what will likely be part of future, exterior green building requirements. What started as a way to encourage sustainable, climate resilient, green infrastructure that would help protect our rapidly shrinking, protective tree canopy now seems to be very different from what was originally proposed in the Climate Safety Petition.
The City has managed to take an easy-to-understand tool that is implemented in Seattle and Washington, D.C. and made it hard to compare different sites. This Cambridge factor was based on a Green Factor/Green Area Ratio concept similar to our Floor Area Ratio used to evaluate building density. This Green ratio gives points for various landscaping elements on a site, adds up the points for a site, and divides by the lot size to give an idea of how green the whole site is.
The City's Cool Factor decided to only look at how green the required Open Space is. No Open Space is required in any of the Business and Industrial districts except Business A-3 and Industrial B-1. Of the city's 31 district definitions, only 7 have more than a 15% Open Space requirement, with no Office Districts among those 7. Less than half of the Residential Districts require more than 15%.
The major change in concept from Green to Cool was to give credit for non-"green" features that help mitigate the Urban Heat Island effects by solar reflection. Developers can get credits for white sidewalks, for example. And white canopies get the same credit as green roofs.
So instead of looking at how green a site is, we will now look at how cool just the open space portion is.
The City has published some documents, including a DRAFT OF THE PRESENTATION
Other task force documents are available at:
https://www.cambridgema.gov/CDD/Projects/Zoning/climateresiliencezoning#tabs-5
Including MINUTES FROM THE LAST MEETING in November.hope to see you there,
---mike...
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