Speaker 1:	I'd like to welcome you all to research plus pizza, a lunchtime lecture series brought to you by the University of Texas libraries and featuring research presentation by faculty from across the University. I hope you've had the chance to help yourself to the drinks and pizza, which are here courtesy ... The pizza is here courtesy of our generous program supporter Austins Pizza, which has been underwriting this program for two years now.
	We'd also like to know what you think about the program content and what we can do for you in terms of future content. If you're sitting in the center chair section, you probably are sitting near one of these half sheet feedback forms. If you're over at the tables, there may be one on your table. Or if it's not, it's on these little wooden sections here. At the end of the center aisle ... We'd very much like to know what you think of today's program.
	Also, we'd like to know if there is research that you know of going on here at the University that you'd like to see presented in whatever the future research plus pizza programs because we are looking for content for the spring. Do let us know that. Because today's program is going to be recorded, we'd appreciate it if you'd raise your hand to ask a question so that I can come to you with this microphone. So that we can get it on the podcast.
	Also, our presenter is going to speak on his subject for a while. Then the questions will come after his comments. If you'll hold your questions until after his comments, and then raise your hand, I'll bring you the microphone.
	It takes a lot of people to make this program happen every month. I'd just like to recognize them here and thank them all, and especially our presenter Dr. Robert Young. He works in the fields of urban planning, sustainable economic development and urban ecology. His research centers on the planning, governance, and financing of metropolitan green infrastructure and on economic development initiatives for sustainable cities and regions.
	He recently co-founded the University of Oregon's sustainable cities initiative. Describe by the New York Times in Fortune Magazine, respectively, as perhaps the most comprehensive effort by a US University to infuse sustainability into its curricula and community outreach. And addressing and catalyzing change across all issues that impinge upon sustainability.
	Dr. Young served as an advisor to governors Ted Kulongoski and John Kitzhaber of Oregon on issues of sustainable economic development. He also founded American soil incorporated as successful large scale New Jersey composting company. Described in the Wall Street Journal as the future of organic resource's management.
	Dr. Young's most recent academic publications include articles in the Journal of the American Planning Association, Urban Forestry and Urban Greening, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Urban Ecosystems, as well as a chapter in the book Garden cities to Green Cities, published by Johns Hopkins University Press.
	He teaches the courses Green Cities and Sustainability history and practice. Please welcome, Dr. Robert Young.
Dr. Young:	All right. Thank you for coming. I have to talks here this week, you're the first. This one I'm not afraid of. Then on Friday, I have to give a presentation on Canada to my sons kindergarten class. And that one I'm really, really afraid of because they kind of know a little bit of where you guys are coming from. After many years of public education, you've been taught to sit quietly and listen, or at least pretend to listen.
	Whereas the kindergartners have not had enough electrical shocks yet to teach them to sit quietly in the chair. For you, maybe I'm interesting, and maybe I'm not. For the kindergartners it's like, be interesting or die. There you go. Thanks for coming.
	I am relatively new to the University of Texas, I came here last year as a professor. Prior to that I was at the University of Oregon. My professional aspiration is to be the first ambassador from the Republic of Texas to the Republic of Cascadia, should they ever break free from the United States.
	I want to do a couple things here. I want to briefly tell you a little bit about my research and what motivates that, in case any of you have a burning desire to know about that. Then I want to talk about what we did in Oregon with Sustainable Cities Initiative because I think it literally ... There is no other university in the world that has done what we did there to date. Although, there are many that are seizing on the example, one of which is the University of Texas in Austin, which is launching something called Texas City Lab, which was inspired by SCI. I want to talk to you a little bit about TCL.
	Then I just want to finish with your comments about the future of Austin, and the future of Texas and how it all ties together. We're going to do that in about 12 minutes. How's the sound? Is this good? I feel like I'm ready to go into space. T-minus 10, 9, 8 ...
	So, what I work on, there's the thing. I'm in the city planning department, community and regional planning department in the school of architecture. If you pick up pretty much almost any publication in that world, you will see in the opening one or two paragraphs some sort of wrap about how for the first time in human history, more than half of us live in cities.
	You know, at this point, I've read that so many times I don't even think about it that much. But, when you [inaudible 00:05:33] ... That's good. If you do reflect on it, it's a profound transformation. Even when my father, who is still alive and he'll [inaudible 00:05:42] as a kid. It was relatively rare for humans to live in cities.
	Thus, they had expressions like urbane. David Niven, the actor, he was urbane with the little mustache. How are you darling? I live in the city. Would you like to see one sometime? That sort of thing.
	Then there was the other side of city, which was a city slicker. Someone who was going to get advantage of you, someone who was real sharp because they were a unique human example. Now, that's where we all live. The big secret, of course, is ... This is where all Texas lives. In cities now, it's not out on the range all by yourself.
	The fact is, the crucible within which the future of our civilization of our species will be decided is no longer in the countryside. It's in cities. It's in what we do in cities. This is the arena, and this is the stage. This doesn't mean that what happens in the hinterland isn't important. But, frequently what happens in the hinterland is only important because of how it affects the cities. And the relationships between the cities and the countryside.
	The cities are a major, major place of whatever revolutions will occur in our society. My research focuses on that. I have a background, as you noted, in the private sector and in the public sector. Now I'm in academia.
	In academia coming out of the public and private sector, my main interests are, how do we make this transition? We already know a lot about solar panels. We already know a lot about how to keep water clean. We already know a bunch of the stuff. Not that there was more to learn, we have a tremendous body of knowledge on that. What we don't have so much knowledge on, is how to make that transition.
	One of the things I present to my classes, is readings on solar energy. They date from the 1870s, and the 1890s. Did you know that ancient Rome, the Roman Empire had solar access legislation. You couldn't block the solar game to another building. So, thousands of years some of these ideas have been around.
	Now, we're in this crux where we have to make this transition. My research is a lot about how do we get the governance, how do we get the information flows, how do we get the politics right to make these things happen? I'll give you one example since we don't have all day. Which is, I did a study of nine cities in the United States that have decided to plant a million or more trees in their cities to increase the canopy cover, and reduce urban [inaudible 00:08:07] effect. 
	I went around, I interviewed everyone in these cities that pertained to these programs. I wrote it up. It got published in the Journal in American Planting Association, which is sort of the journal of record in my field, which was great.
	A short while after that, I got a call from one of the mayor of Los Angeles Chief of Staff, asked me to come to LA. I came to LA, it was the night before they were going to shut down the Occupy encampment in LA. I saw some news people there. 
	I said, "When are the police going to come?" They said, "The eviction-ers, at sun down." I said, "So, they're going to come at 4:00 in the morning right?" He says, "Yep, 4:00 in the morning."
	I went back to my hotel room, went to sleep. Set my alarm for 3:45, my alarm went off at 3:45. I get up, I threw back the curtains, looked out the window. And sure enough, boom. Here comes the cops to clear out Occupy at 4:00 AM.
	Anyways, that next morning, I went down and met with the mayor. He was tired because he'd been up all night with the Occupy issue, he was backing away from their million trees thing. They asked me to present my research, which I did. He's sort of listening, he's firing a lot of questions at me.
	He suddenly turns to someone he says, "Where's Dale such and such. Well, get her in here." She was in charge of public relations. He said, "Get her in here. This is fairly interesting."
	I thought, "Coming from the mayor of LA, I will take fairly interesting. And I will run with it." The idea, this is, to me ... It's what I'm trying to do. When I was in Oregon, I wrote a paper about Oregon's economy, which I won't get into the details of. It's in Second Review right now, the journal. The governor of Oregon, John Kitzhaber, got wind of this research. Asked me to meet him.
	This is why you got to have your elevator speech down, this is why you got to do your readings. Right? And said, "Tell me about Oregon's economy." So, for 12 minutes I was like, "Well, blah, blah, blah." He cuts me off. He says, "You know, I've lived here for years and years I could never do what you just did. I want you to write my economic development platform."
	I took that research, and that research is now the existing economic development policy in the state of Oregon. These are my little Holy Grails, is to do this research, do it rigorously, academically, search for truth, justice. And the global interdisciplinary, multi-cultural way. Which has replaced the American way, recently.
	Then translate that into actual, on the ground policy and impact with states, with cities, with regions. That's what I do. It's mostly around green infrastructure, sustainable regional economic development. Just the whole notion of green cities in general. Come take my class.
	When I was in Oregon, I was there for four and a half years as a professor. We would sit around, and now the average journal article is read by seven people. Okay? Now, occasionally you get a journal article that goes viral and 3,000 people read it.
	But, most of them are at about seven people. If you subtract the authors partner, and their mother, it's read by five people. It doesn't get out there, there's great research, doesn't get out there. We're in Oregon, we're sitting around one day as professors. We're sort of shooting the breeze and we said, "This is ridiculous. This is great stuff we've got to get out there." We created the sustainable cities initiative. It was my only experience of what it's like to be in the Beatles because we wrote all these applications for grants that all got denied. 
	One day, we just said, "Screw it. Let's just do this thing." We got in touch with an alumnus who was a city manager of the fourth largest city in Oregon. That's the fourth largest city in Oregon, that means about 12 people live there. No, it's actually a relatively decent sized town.
	We launched sustainable cities initiative. We went into the city and we said, "What issues do you need looked into to become a more sustainable city?" It was a wide range. We need to design new types of street lights, we need to work on this new development of 17,000 households to make it more economically feasible. All this stuff, any range you want on that.
	Then I went around, I went to the law department, the business school, the planing department, political science, the art department. And found professors with classes that were just sort of an abstract class. Write me a paper at the end of the term. You'll write it, I'll read it, maybe. Then your mom will read it, maybe. And that's it.
	Instead of that, saying, "I want you to do ... With these people, I want you to do research on this issue for this city and meet with the city officials. And produce something that's of high quality." We got 30 classes engaged in this. It was a great thing because it was a year long.
	I would do a planning class, then it would pass it off to a law school class. Who would then do the legal structure around the plans that I had developed. Then they would pass it off to a business school class that would do the financial bounding and arrangements to make it set. At the end of the year, I could hand it to the city. "Here's the plan, here's the regulatory legal framework, and here's the financial structure you need to make this occur."
	Then, what we would do is we would pick the best student out of every class and say, "We're going to pay you edit the final work. So that we didn't just hand in a bunch of papers with different fonts and un-edited, and not spell checks and stuff these people. We handed them professional quality stuff that the students got paid to put into that level.
	We did this for the first city and it just exploded. So, we went from a zero budget organization to a million dollar organization in three years. That million dollars came not from the large just of the University, it came from communities in Oregon, which is not a rich state that were so desperate for planting capacity that they were more than willing to cobble together some federal grants, some money of their own, some state grants, and provide $300, $400, $500,000 dollars for us to go out and do this work.
	Private sector got upset. They said, "You're taking our jobs away." We said, "No, we're not taking your jobs away because we are, after all, just students. The people working. They're not going to produce a finish architectural schemata of the new city hall. What they are going to do is bump up the quality of the eventual RFP. 
	So that when that request for public proposal comes to your architecture firm, it's going to be a much higher level of quality. You might actually get to do the kind of work you actually want to do because we will have raised the bar, we will have brought up the game.
	That was what we triggered off with FCI. It has just rolled, we've all conferences. I'm no longer at the University of Oregon. Faculty have come from all over the country to learn about the SCI model and see if it can be applied where they are. Texas City Lab, which is just kicking off now, out of community regional planning program. But, keep in mind, SCI came out of the planning in architecture school but it included departments all over the university.
	Texas City Lab is the same way. It's being born out of the school of architecture. But, it's going to include departments all around the university. So, if you're in arts and sciences, or mechanical engineering, or computer sciences, you can tie into this. It gives you real portfolio stuff when you go for the job.
	My crew did a report that one ... The American Planning Association, special achievement award for what we accomplished by using deep ecology for large scale development that was going to be happening in Springfield, Oregon.
	It can bring you accolades, it can give you portfolio stuff, but it does real work for real communities. Texas City Lab is right now negotiating with a city in Texas to be the first test city to do this. There's a warp that Texans don't like planting. American's don't like planting, it's very unmanly. 
	You know, when I go to planing school, I always put on a bra because it's very unmanly. We go to planing school, I got to put on my female [inaudible 00:15:40] because it's feminine or something. Which is, of course, ridiculous. There's traffic signals all over Texas, that's a form of planning. There are side walks in many communities, there's zoning. You can't put a tannery next to an elementary school, there's planning all over this state and there's growth all over the state of Texas. 
	Texas is booming, as you all know. Austin, I believe, is the fastest growing city in the United States right now and close behind it are Houston and San Antonio, and other parts of the state. Texas is also rapidly becoming the most urbanized state in the nation. As a result, there's a tremendous need for a long term look at where Texas is going to be.
	I want to just close with a couple comments, then we'll go to Q&A. I was at a conference, a national planning conference. I got to chatting with ... You know, you just start talking to somebody. You don't know who they are, you're just chatting with them. He says, "So, you're Robert Young. You used to be at the University of Oregon didn't you?" 
	I said, "Yeah." He says, "You got a Texas thing going on right now." I said, "I'm at the University of Texas in Austin." He said, "What do you think of that?" I said, "It's a great university. Going from the U of O to UT, is like stepping off a fishing boat onto a battle ship. This is an amazing place. It's like, we want to end world hunger. Boom, and it's over.
	Now, we want to go to Mars. Boom, and you're in Mars. We want to take millions of people and sell them in a state which has almost no water and top soil, boom. There it is. It's the Texas way, right? It's a great place to be in that regard.
	But, I said, "It's got a world of hurt coming down the road in terms of water, and in terms of agriculture, in terms of depleted assets, in terms of traffic problems, sprawl. They don't have urban growth boundaries like Oregon, they don't have the adequate bicycle infrastructure like Oregon. They don't have agricultural protection clauses as strong as Oregon."
	"In short, if Texas doesn't watch out, Texas is going to be the Detroit of the future." He said, "That's an interesting phrase. I'm the editor in Chief with Cornell University Press. Would you write a book with that title?" I said, "Well, I just moved to Texas. I don't know if I want to make that many enemies that quickly. I turned down the offer."
	But, the point is this. That Texas ... A lot of my friends here, "You're moving to Texas." You know. Texas is the spear point of where this country is headed. Absolutely, no doubt. The Battle of Waterloo may have been won on the playing fields of [inaudible 00:18:02] as General Wellington said. 
	But, the Battle of the United States will be won on the playing fields of Texas. Whichever way this state goes in terms of how it handles its natural resources, its human resources, and its political disposition will determine in color this country for the next half century. In the same way that Massachusets says it's time to ... New York, and it's time to Virginia, and it's time to ... Now it's Texas' moment.
	If it continues on with the type of growth that is has, at this point, with an unthinking level of growth. Or where the amounting of planning is pointed to in Austin, which is a mess. Right? Then Texas has no long-term future. If Texas, on the other hand, does what Texas does best, which is get serious about issues, grab them by the horns and change the national consensus around them.
	Then Texas will be the leader of a new United States. With a particularly good formal barbecue to go along with it. That's where Texas City Lab I think is a very interesting point coming out now, at this time in Texas' history.
	That's why, I personally, am thrilled to be a professor at the University of Texas. Thank you very much. I've prepared very deeply for this talk.
Speaker 1:	Dr. Young will take your questions now. If you'll just raise your hand, I'll bring the microphone to you.
Dr. Young:	Yes sir.
Male Audience:	Hi. I went to UT back in the late '60s, early '70s. But I'm just working back here and now cam to visit. I, last night, missed my turn off Mopac. It took me an hour, an hour, to get home. Just a traffic nightmare.
	I'm just wondering how that fits into sustainable Austin.
Dr. Young:	Right. I think the city now has the third worst traffic in the United States, that's what I've been hearing. It's extremely bad. I live in Hide Park, I walk to work. I intentionally bought there, it was more expensive a house but my transportation is no longer a factor. I just come and go.
	One of the things that a lot of economic development people make a mistake around is they think of economic development around consumption and around production. That's economic development. Transportation is an ancillary thing that happens externally to it. Clearly, it's an absolute part of the efficiency of your production.
	This is the genius of what's going on with the growth boundaries in Oregon. Even the state planning that's happening in places like New Jersey, which is not known for it's bucolic green cities. When they've run the numbers on it, they've found that the savings in terms of tax base and lost work time, goes into the billions of dollars.
	This is something that I think needs to happen, because there needs to be a cultural change, especially in places like Texas. But, elsewhere in the United States, which is the, "We don't get into those kind of regulations because we believe in efficiency, and production, and economic development and growth. That's where the money comes from." 
	What I say is that, "You grow in the manner we're growing now, you become an army camped far from its base of supply. You become very vulnerable. Ask Napoleon during his invasion of Moscow. If the long supply line was a good idea. Right?"
	What places like Austin, and places around the United States, not just Texas are doing is that they're giving very little thought to where their production and their affordability of housing goes, and the planning around the housing and what the footprint is. The result, they're building in a tremendous overhead cost that the only way it stays hidden, is if you constantly have the through put of new dollars.
	But, the minute that goes away, the water goes down. And all the inequities appear. You take a city like Denver that was the it city in the '70s. Or a city like Atlanta, that was the it city in the '80s. They just went willy-nilly with the growth. But, the minute the growth machine shifted to a new city, then all of the social dysfunctionality, and the costs associated with that type of design came home to roost on those cities.
	Detroit is a great example. Built around the automobile. And now they're the first major city in the US to be going into bankruptcy. 
	If, from my perspective, you're talking about real growth, real development, real wealth retention then issues like that become vital. Because Austin, Texas ... Texas may produce oil, but Austin, Texas doesn't produce much oil. Every dollar spent on extra gas, every dollar spend on auto parts is just leaving the local economy.
	That's where myself and my colleagues really attack that question. Is transportation as an efficiency, and also one that creates inequity because there's a phrase, drive until you qualify. You can't afford to live in Downtown Austin? Just keep driving out of town until you quality for a mortgage or rental. Then you live out there and try to get back and forth.
	The thing to fight with that, in short is this notion that any control of that will somehow impair economic growth. It's actually putting those regulations on ... I meant to turn that off before I came here. I'm sorry. Go away. Is getting control on that so that we actually have long-term wealth development in the city. 
	Yes sir.
Male Audience:	What would be an example of a regulation that ... You know, to address that?
Dr. Young:	To create that?
Male Audience:	To address the ... What you [crosstalk 00:23:51]-
Dr. Young:	Well, let me just take ... It doesn't have to be some [inaudible 00:23:55] Oregon thing. It can be something as simple as Hyde Park, Texas. Hyde Park neighborhood right here in Austin, which was planning in the 1880s along speedway, with the trolley line. Wonderful amenities, urban forest, parkland, swimming pool. And just quick shot to downtown by mass transit.
	As a result, the property values are much higher there than they are in adjoining neighborhoods right in that area because of the intentional planning. But ... Right. 
Male Audience:	[inaudible 00:24:28].
Dr. Young:	Well, what you can ... I mean, there are many things. Right? But, one example is what we did in New Jersey. I was on the New Jersey state planning commission. I was a representative in the department of commerce on the state planning commission. What we did was we looked at the transit infrastructure of the state. New Jersey is all about transportation. Right?
	As Ben Franklin said, it's a barrel with holes in both ends. Philadelphia and New York, and everything is just draining into those cities. We said, "Okay, here's the transportation infrastructure." Let's identify areas where we want to concentrate growth, that will have access to high quality transit. And with options other than the automobile. 
	Then, if you want to go outside of this, Governor Glendening did this in Maryland as well. He said, "Look, you want to build out, way out beyond West Hills, God bless you and good luck. If you want any subsidies from the municipality of the state to put in your sewer, and put in your sidewalks, and put in your curbs, you're on your own because we don't want to incur the tax base expense because suburbs don't pay for themselves in taxes of that. If you want to go do it, go do it. It's the free market. You are free to go engage in that market.
	But, don't come around and ask us for a subsidy that then becomes a perpetual public sector subsidy to support your sub-development, which you grab the money from and go. But, if you want that public private support, then you come into these areas.
	Well then the counter argument is, Christ. Think of the density. You're building Queens, New York right next to beautiful Austin. We don't want that kind of density. It's ugly, it's terrible. It can be.
	Like anything. You can do it stupid or you can do it well. There's a professor at the University of Oregon, I encourage you to look at his work. Brooke Miller. Wonderful guy. 
	His objective is, how do we increase human density in neighborhoods, and biodiversity density? How do we make them greener than they were before, and have more people in there than there were before. He works with the colleges, and does wonderful stuff. He works a lot with Metro Portland. I had a little altar to Brooke, I make little worshiping motions in front of it because he does such good work.
	We can actually make the cities more diverse, more dense, and better functioning from a social and ecological perspective. It's very doable. That would be an example, you figure out where you want it to go based on transportation options. Then you only do public probate in those areas. Then you put ramifications around it so that it retains beauty, and ecological functionality.
	Yes.
Female Audience:	A number of researchers that UT has said that Austin might be the most racially segregated city in the United States. As we're experiencing more urbanization and more growth, we're starting to see a lot of those disparities and access to resources.
	How do you think that the Texas City Lab could address this issue of social equity?
Dr. Young:	Yep. That's a really important point because you can't have an ecological city that's a socially unjust city. The reason for that is what happens, one of the reasons, many reasons. One of the reasons is, is happening in East Austin right now. Where the value of the land goes up, so the taxes go up. Even if you own your house in East Austin and have lived there 20 years, your taxes drive you out because you can't cover the taxes because you're on a fixed income, or a low income, or a median income.
	Even if you've bought it, and paid it off to the bank. You still don't have control over that and you can be pushed out. Where do you get pushed out? You get pushed out the Pflugerville, you get pushed out to the outlining areas.
	If you are still involved in the working community, or just want to come downtown now there's an additional energy cost of you coming downtown. It becomes a green ... We talked about this, the eco districts, which is the new thing in Portland. 
	It's a new form of white people went out to the suburbs, and let everybody pour into the city. Now, we kind of want to go back to urban life. We're going to go back in, we're going to push all the minorities and low income people back into the periphery. You have to secure the land base in order to do that.
	Some people are talking about dropping I-35 below grade, and letting the great land rush into East Austin begin. My question is always like, "Okay, that's fine. But, what are you going to do to secure equity there?" Well, there's grassroots things you can do. Like community land trusts, where you can get land out of the speculative market.
	But, this is a place where the government has to have a roll. Didn't use to have economics department and political science departments back in the old days. They had one department, it was called, political economy. There was no economics without politics, there is no politics without economics. It is political economy.
	You can never address an economic question without simultaneously addressing the political question, and vice versa for economics. When you go in and do that type of upgrades in a neighborhood, you also have to put controls over the type of development that can happen there to secure people in their place there. You also have to invest in affordability. It's getting to the point in Austin, now, where people are spending as much on housing as they are on transportation because it's turning into a perfect storm.
	Yes, Austin becomes a hip, wonderful, lovely city. And you don't even have to do it racially, not necessarily for whites. But, for people who can afford it regardless of their race and color. Diversity becomes a bunch of well-off people having a good time instead of a diversity of class and ethnic mixes.
	This is the leg on the stool that is always lost in sustainability. People say, "What is sustainability?" Sustainability is equity, economics, and ecology. It's the three E's. But, if you look at almost all of the sustainability [inaudible 00:30:01], they will talk to you about return investment, and economic efficiency. They'll talk about ecological efficiency, and at the very end there will be a thing about equity.
	When I worked as the Head of the Office Sustainability for the governor of New Jersey, New Jersey 18th largest economy in the world. Right? Big place, economically.
	I worked for Christine Todd Whitman, first female governor of New Jersey and a Republican. We put together a report on sustainability, I was the director of the office of sustainability. I put that definition in. Environment, economics, and equity.
	She read it, and her chief of staff said, "Take the line equity out." I said, "I can't. It's the UN definition of sustainability. It's the United Nations. Do you want the black helicopters to come here?" She said, "What is this? The communist manifesto? Take it out." 
	That's the kind of reaction against the equity issue. It's one that requires a lot of organizing. I'll use one example that's being lost right now in Austin, a tremendous opportunity is being lost in Austin. There's a big brew ha-ha going on right now about urban farms over in East Austin. There are folks in East Austin, well motivated I'm sure, frequently not listened to I am also sure. We're saying, "This is another white land ground. This is about gentrification." 
	Trust me, all the urban farms over the 50 years could happen in Austin and they're not going to be what's behind the real loss of equity in the low income communities in our neighborhood. It's about a certain type of development going into that. It's very little to do with urban farming, but they're grabbing at that straw.
	Instead of building the difficult coalition between the environmental faction in Oregon, and the people of color and low income faction in Austin. You put those two together, you have a dynamite coalition that can accomplish a lot.
	But, when the low income folks, and the ethnic folks, and the farmers are all fighting each other than the developers are laughing on the side. You go about that. That was really dangerous, but it didn't happen. Now we can go ahead and do what we're doing.
	How do you think we got growth boundaries in Oregon? We got growth boundaries in Oregon because people started coming up from California, and building their little mansions out in the countryside. And the timber industry said, "Jesus, if they do this, it's going to drive up our taxes. We need low taxes to make lumber work."
	The environmentalists said, "We want wilderness." So, the industry got together with environmentalists and said, "Let's make a coalition and get land use. Best land use in the country." That opportunity is being missed in Austin right now because the farmers are too caught up in their own heads, and low income people are too caught up in being beaten up and looking for somebody to strike back at. Instead of building that coalition, and going after the real issue, which is development that doesn't take equity into account.
Male Audience:	If you're going to change three things in Austin given the list that you just gave us to make Austin more sustainable, what would you change? And why?
Dr. Young:	I would change my looks. Three things I would change in Austin. I would have serious land use ... When I say serious land use, every body ... You know, anti-business. I would say to them, there's one person in this room that's pro-business, I think it's mean because you let it go the way it's going, you got a ... The Kiplinger Letter came out and said, "Austin, it's the best business market for the next 10 years." Because they know. Kiplinger is not stupid, they know 10 years at this pace and it's going to be a nightmare. Then capital will go elsewhere.
	I would say, "Good solid land use that will allow this city to maintain it's integrity, and harvest that wealth for a long-time to come." Second thing would be, a serious commitment to alternative transportation in this town. I just got a brand new dual-frame bicycle to ride my bicycle to school. I rode my daughter to school every day in New Jersey. It's still in a box in my living room because ... I will say it publicly. 
	I am afraid to put it together because I can just imagine getting aced on the way to school. If it was just me, it would be like, "Long winded professor dies in bicycling accident. Big deal." But, then my daughter is going to be on the back end of that bicycle. That's a hell of a responsibility.
	Serious transportation for pedestrians and bicyclists to be able to get around this city. It don't snow here, you can do stuff with bicycles. That would be second thing. The third thing would be ... I said land use, but I meant more like the sprawl on that one. It was a serious equity land use because this place, in many ways can be ... It's like Boston. You cross a line everybody is over here, everybody is over here. Don't tell me how quaint it is on the other side of the line. You've got to go over there for dinner sometime, it's really fun. Those people live in the city, they build this city as much as we do. Maybe more so. They're citizens there. Those are three.
	Land use decisions go on at multiple levels. For instance, there's been public meetings recently around code. They're updating the building codes. Now, building codes can have a lot do to with where you put what and where. There's that component. 
	Land use happens when you redo ... Like, when they did the Imagine Austin plan. That's a comprehensive plan, but it has components of land use in it. It also can happen in transportation. There's about seven master plans in Austin right now. Transportation, solid waste, open space, comprehensive. Many of them because land is the base upon what you build or move things around have a land use component in them. If you go to a department of transportation, and most states and cities say, we don't do land use. We do transportation. Transportation is the key to unlock the land use. 
	I up and quote the Antonio Banderas movies of Zorro, when he says, "Don't go looking for enemies. They'll come into your own life soon enough." You can go to any planning process in the state, and you will find a serious aspect of land use engaged in that.
	[inaudible 00:36:23].
Male Audience:	When I think about sustainability for Austin, I often find Austin in my mind as a metropolitan area, or a long, long corridor along I-35. I'm curious if you have suggestions about consolidation politically of municipalities or any approaches to dealing with the political fragmentation.
Dr. Young:	Well, this is the lost Holy Grail of planning, which is regional planning. The city of New York went after it in the '20s. And as often is the case, chickened out. We can't do that. Well, New York would look very, very different if they had regionally planted and maintained belts of open space and affordability and that sort of thing. It would be a very different city. It would be a world class city.
	Now it's a world class city because of the type of people that are there. But, not the configuration of the city itself. There are very few places that have achieved it, those that have, have had some very positive results. The best example I can have in North America would be Toronto. Toronto decided to do regional planning.
	One of the things they did was, and I've driven through it many times. They created a huge agricultural belt around the city to create some kind of coherence between the hinterland and the city itself. But, this is extremely difficult to come by. It's not just Texas.
	I mean, New Jersey has got a very strong and local municipality, jurisdictions, that sort of thing. It's extremely hard to come by. It's remarkably rewarding when you can get communities to coordinate like that. Been very, very, very difficult.
	What has been talked about here is looking not just as metro Austin, which I agree with you is a way to think about it. But, to look at the Texas triangle. Right? Which is the three major cities that Austin is a part of. Then, to start talking to the federal government about the types of money they're putting into transportation and housing, into solid places, management. Those sort of things. 
	Also, into open space acquisition. Where's the great national park in Texas, it's in Big Bend. It's pretty far away. Yet, here's all this urban concentration that has nothing within a six hour drive of it. Right? 
	Looking at that level of coordination. It would take a real [inaudible 00:38:42] Hughie Long, Fredrick, Franklin Roosevelt. It takes someone with a lot more political juice than I have to pull that one off. We go dig up Barber Jordan, bring her back.
Male Audience:	A couple months ago I read an article in the paper about South Congress and the food trailers there are being moved out to make room for a hotel. I remember the article said something to the effect of, "It's kind of ironic because the hotels are serving people who are attracted to South Congress in part because of the food trailers." 
	I kind of thought it was a micro-cause for Austin being the battle grounds between people who live here in development.
Dr. Young:	Yep.
Male Audience:	I was curious if you were familiar how Boston has the B note, I think Santa Fe also has a local currency and where you feel that could come into sustainable cities.
Dr. Young:	Ithaca HOURS, where I got my PhD at Cornell. And Ithaca HOURS was launched by Paul Glover who is a wonderful grad students activist who lives in Philadelphia now, wonderful guy. Even Ivan [inaudible 00:40:00] has a nice piece called, the future history of Los Angeles, which he wrote. Which is really fun to read.
	I think local currencies have a role. They're actually considered by the FDR administration for the Tennessee Valley authority, that that area of Appalachia would have its own currency to try to keep the capital circulating in that region. I think there's a lot of stuff like that that has merit. I personally involve myself in it sometimes. 
	But, I would say we've kind of reached the point now not to denigrate that stuff, because it's important. We've also reached the time in our social history where we need to grow up. Where we need to have city hall doing the right thing instead of well intentioned grass roots people off to the side doing a micro good thing. Not that I'm against micro good things, and a lot of things grow and evolve out of that. I'm not putting it down.
	But, I'm saying we got to do the hard work. Nobody likes to do hard work anymore, right? Everybody likes to be busy, and aired, and frayed. But, the hard work of building the types of coalitions I was talking about, about reaching across the people that we're uncomfortable with, finding mutual beneficial space that we can agree to work on at this time. And not have to have everything perfect in their politically correct view, in our politically correct view, and mesh. To be adults about it and build real coalitions, to build really long-term economies to where we live.
	It's fine if we do local currency, and if we do a community garden or a pilot project to the [inaudible 00:41:35] project to that. We've lived in the age of the pilot project. We need to get beyond that now, and live in the age of what just happened in New York City. It's going to be a great test case. They got a new mayor, a very, very progressive mayor, largest city in the United States. See what he can do there.
	We need, I think, to transition because otherwise places like Austin, Atlanta that was a sleepy little southern town, great place to move to, it's not a nightmare. Denver is blown to pieces. We need to get control to build a coalition, a new growth coalition that actually believes in long-term wealth. Actually believes in retaining the quality of the community. That can't be done by having an opinion, or having a blog, or going to see a Micheal Moore movie.
	That's stuff we have to do, in the old days, organize. And getting to know people, and having real solidarity with what they need to accomplish.
Male Audience:	What recommendations or advice would you give to a student wanting to get involved with sustainable initiatives?
Dr. Young:	Well, with Texas City Lab, find the folks at Texas City Lab and see if you can get your course involved, or courses involved. Get your professor connected up with TCL would be a good thing at the university level. On a broader level, the good thing about sustainability is it's a mile wide, and an inch deep. There's a million organizations out there that are working on stuff. And Austin has them, has a plethora of groups working on that stuff.
	What you do is you pick something that you have a personal fire about. Whether it's equity and affordability, open space, urban farming, transportation, housing. Renewable energy. And just connect up with those guys, and just start working with them. One of the things that's interesting about the United States, this comes back to the idea of making money. Let's all go out and make a lot of money, shall we? Together.
	The way we make money in the United States, you don't make money in the United States by opening a pizza parlor. That's how you make a living. But, you don't make money doing that. You make a living doing that.
	The way we make money in the United States is we transition our infrastructure. We go from Indian paths, to dirt roads. We go from dirt roads to canals, we go from canals to railroads. We go from railroads to high ways, we go from high ways to jet planes, we go from jet planes to the internet. We go from wood to coal, coal to oil. Oil to renewables. That's how we make money.
	When an infrastructure turns over, that's when people make big money. If you look at the foundations in the United States, or the banks, the melon bank. Right? JP Morgan, you look at those. You'll generally find that that family was somehow intimately involved in at least one of those major infrastructure ships. They generally happen in a sequence. 
	You get a shift in energy, a shift in transportation, and a shift in production. What's happening interestingly now, with the sustainability, is you're getting in ... You have an across the board demand for the complete remaking of all about infrastructures. Transportation, food production, energy production, housing.
	We have to re-tool the whole thing to make it work. You can pick the thing that's your passion, and then position yourself on that curve and it will work out for you. Let me give you one example from my own life.
	Living in New Jersey, with a good liberal arts education. Which means I'm first in line at the unemployment office, right? But, I'm having great discussions with other liberal arts guys in the unemployment line. Right? 
	What do you think about Descartes? I don't know. I'm going to go buy a book about him as soon as I get my unemployment check. I looked at the trends and I said, "Okay. New Jersey, densest populated state in the Union. Highest per capita issue and some trash, and 30% of all the trash is crossing state lines for disposal, very expensive. Those lines are all matching."
	I said, "You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to start a composting company." I started company, I was a graduate student at Cornell University with more gumption than brains. I went down to this attorney, and I said, I want you to incorporate a company August 6th. That's when I did it. Hiroshima day. Don't you ... To incorporate a company for composting, and I'm going to call it American Soil Incorporated.
	He said, "Where is it? Where does it exist?" I said, "In my head." He said, "All right. I got a little black binder, with the official certificate, and the little stamping thing that comes along with it. I paid him $200 bucks, and now I had a company." 
	Then I started going to public hearings in New Jersey, I would go down for [inaudible 00:46:05] go to public hearings. I got to this one in Freehold, New Jersey. It's where Bruce Springsteen comes from. It's right on the edge of the urbanization coming down from New York City.
	They were talking about building an incinerator. I stood up at the public hearing and said, "You don't want to build a incinerator. You want to build composting facilities because 50% of what goes into an incinerator is compostable, you don't want to burn it." They said, "That's very interesting. Sit down." So, I sat down.
	I went back to the University, phone rang a couple weeks later. This gruff, "Is Robert Young there?" I said, "Yeah. This is him." "This is Tom Blandshed." I said, "Mr. Blandshed, how are you?" He says, "I own the largest non-mafia hauling company in the state of New Jersey."
	I said, "How do you do that?" "I'm a former US Marine." And I said, "Can I stand close to you then if we get involved in business?" He said, "I want you to come down and see me." I said, "Sure, thanks." I drove down from ... You know, graduate student, I drove down from New Jersey. Took me on a drive he goes, "I have an 18 acre parcel. I have a hauling company. I want you to put a composting site there, I'll lease you the site very cheap." 
	I said, "Sounds great." With no money, no business plan, no backing except for my little binder I started this company. Totally bootstrapped it. Built it up into the largest composting company this time in New Jersey, we did 35,000 tons of clean organic waste, non-sludge waste in a year.
	Produced top soil for all kinds of buyers, got written up in the Wall Street Journal. Replicated the consulting work all around and that's because I said the infrastructure and solid waste has go to change in New Jersey.
	Now, think about the United States. Think about the world because what starts here changes the world. You can quote me on that one. Next time you hear that, you say, "I know the guy who came up with that." Transportation of ... I have a student, John Zimmer. You can look it up. 
	L-Y-F-T, Lyft. He took my green cities class. He was the first in his class in the hotel school. Did you have a good evening? That's what they teach him to say that. Is there anything we can get you? 
	He was first in class hotel room. What do you talk about in hotels? You talk about occupancy. He's taking green cities, and I gave my lecture on transportation. That sequence I just told you. Paths to roads, roads to canals, canals to railroads, railroads to planes. What's next?
	He said, "Automobiles. Most automobiles have one occupant. That means there's an occupancy ratio of one to four in that vehicle. What if we could fill the rest of those seats? He started Zimride, which he sold to Enterprise. And then he just started Lyft, which is now in seven cities in the United States. He just got $75 million investment into their company.
	He is inventing a new type of transportation because something he got out of my class, but then he ran with. And translated that into real action. That I did it in solid waste, in one little instance. He is doing in transportation now in several cities. Energy.
	Transportation in all the other cities, solid waste in all the other cities, food production, housing. Anything you can lay your teeth into that you love and is your passion, you can either have a storied career, and grassroots advocacy, which is an honorable thing to do. You might end up being President of the United States some day if you're going to do community organizing or you might make some money. You might make more money than just making a living because the infrastructure has to shift in the country. It has to.
	Somebody is going to do it. As my dad once said, "Most people didn't know they needed to buy something until Americans showed up and said, 'You need to own this.'" It's in our DNA as Americans. We love to build things, and sell things, and change things. Welcome to Nirvana Mr. and Mrs. America. 
	You know, this is kind of nice but I'd like to change the color of the curtains. Right? We're always into changing stuff, we're very good at it. That whole infrastructure has go to shift. That's where the tides going to be, and it's going to be across the border. Next question.
	[inaudible 00:49:55].
Speaker 1:	Actually.
Dr. Young:	It's time to go home now.
Speaker 1:	Yeah, it is. But, we could be here all day. But, we can't be here all day unfortunately. Thank you all for coming out. Do fill out the half-sheet. It's either in your chair, or if you don't have one they're on the little wooden dividers here at the center aisles. There's pencils there too. We do want to know what you thought of the program, and what you think that we should do for future programs.
	Thanks very much to Dr. Robert Young.
Dr. Young:	Thank you.