Urban Living in California

C H A R L E S R E I T H As the world warms and becomes more populous and urban, more is expected from cityscapes.

Beyond aesthetics, urban ecosystems must provide benefits to residents such as shading against urban heat islands, improving air quality, abating floods, and securing local food sources. Other important objectives include accommodating wildlife, purifying runoff, and sequestering carbon to help prevent global warming. Virtually every urban environment, no matter how densely populated, can be optimized in terms of the ecological services it can provide. This becomes ever more important as cities expand, often at the expense of natural habitats that provide these essential services.

When landscapes are designed and installed as part of “high-performance infrastructure,” as architect Hillary Brown, executive director of New York City–based New Civic Works, calls it, urban ecosystems need to be established that will grow ever more functional over time and that will hold up to any disturbances that might be encountered. Many cities are threatened by earthquakes, tsunamis, ice storms, and various types of flooding and violent weather, which are predicted to increase as a consequence of climate change. Perhaps no combination of urban infrastructure and landscape can protect itself and its citizens from the most catastrophic scenarios, but much can be done to improve the resistance and resilience of urban ecosystems to a broad range of disturbances that, over time, are inevitable. The key is to plant a system that will protect the environment and provide as much stability as possible. For example, the misery experienced by post–Katrina New Orleans was exacerbated by pervasive failures in the urban ecosystem. The widespread dropping of the urban forest could almost be seen as a “betrayal,” with supposedly protective trees chopping roofs, downing power lines, and blocking streets. Many of the trees that should have served as protective sentinels against the wind instead fell because they were the wrong species, or were improperly installed, or were poorly maintained. Due to pervasive and lingering floodwaters, many of the trees that did not fall, especially magnolias, died from root suffocation or salt absorption.

However, it is important to point out that the calamity began before Katrina hit. It began with a massive failure of the external ecosystem, which had deteriorated because of shortsighted developmental activities. The multiple layers of defense in Louisiana’s wetlands— from the distant cheniers (oak-dappled coastal islands) to the bald cypress swamps to the vast inland marshes—had suffered chronic degradation due to river channelization, oil development, and various navigational naiveties. The failure of the natural ecosystem around New Orleans is worth noting because when functional urban ecosystems are designed, the encompassing natural ecology needs to be carefully examined for successful (and failing) soil/plant systems to emulate (and avoid); and to establish peripheral linkages—for instance, wildlife corridors and continuous riparian strands—that will weave the cityscape into nature.

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Prices post nearly a 10% decline from a year earlier and more than 15% from peak; lower prices lift September sales 5.3%. By Chris Isidore, CNNMoney.com senior writer October 26 2006: 1:48 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — New home prices took their biggest hit in more than 35 years in September, the government said Thursday, the latest sign that builders are struggling to unload a glut of unsold homes as the nation’s real estate market cools.

The lower prices may have worked, as the annual pace of new home sales climbed 5.3 percent to 1.08 million last month, according to the Census Bureau report. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast a reading of 1.05 million, which would have been flat with the initial August reading. But the median price of a new home tumbled 9.7 percent from a year earlier to $217,100. It was the sharpest drop since December 1970, when prices posted an 11.2 percent decline, and was the fourth largest year-over-year decline on record.

Top 10 markets: Where to buy now The September price slump also marked a 9.3 percent decline from August and a 15.5 percent drop from the record high price of $257,700 posted in April of this year.

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Oct 2006

Marina Del Ray

By Kendra Todd

September 26, 2006, 1:00pm PDT

You can’t go anywhere without hearing people talk about “the real estate bubble.” Such talk drives me to distraction, and I’ll tell you why. It’s because there is no real estate bubble. Bubbles are for bathtubs.

Despite a thousand articles in Sunday newspaper real estate sections, the bubble is a myth. The real estate markets in many areas are going through a normal correction cycle. I’m going to tell you how to recognize the signs of a correction in your market, how you can avoid getting sucked into “bubble trouble” and how you can even benefit from the current environment.

POP GOES THE MARKET?

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