Congo Street Initiative, Dallas, TX. Courtesy of Congo Street Initiative

As an architect and advocate for better urban environments, I am excited about my new role as director of the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence at the Bruner Foundation (Cambridge, MA). The biennial award, founded in 1987 by architect and adaptive reuse pioneer Simeon Bruner, recognizes places distinguished by innovative design and their social, economic, and environmental contributions to the urban environment. To date, the RBA has recognized 67 projects and awarded $1.2 million to support urban initiatives.

In the world of U.S. design competitions, the RBA is unique. We ask our applicants to submit detailed written analyses of their projects—from multiple perspectives—along with descriptive images. And entries must have been in operation long enough to demonstrate their impact on their communities. Our  selection process includes intensive site visits to our finalists’ projects to help us fully understand how their places work.

Inspiration Kitchens, Chicago, IL. Courtesy of Inspiration Kitchens

The RBA selection committee meets twice: first to select five finalists and again to select the Gold Medal winner. Assembled anew for each award cycle, the committee comprises six urban experts including a mayor, design and development professionals, and a past award winner. This year’s group includes mayor Mick Cornett of Oklahoma City, planner Ann Coulter from Chattanooga, landscape architect Walter Hood from Hood Studio in Oakland, architect Cathy Simon from Perkins+Will in San Francisco, Metropolis Editor-in-Chief Susan S. Szenasy, and Jane Werner, executive director of the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, the 2007 Gold Medal winner. The committee reviewed 90 applications from 31 states and the District of Columbia to choose the 2013 five finalists. Collectively, the projects they chose represent a diversity of creative, collaborative approaches and scales in tackling significant urban challenges:

• Congo Street Initiative - Dallas, TX - submitted by buildingcommunityWORKSHOP
  The sustainable rehabilitation of five houses and street infrastructure along with construction of a new home that provided transitional housing, in collaboration with resident families
• Inspiration Kitchens – Chicago, IL – submitted by Inspiration Corporation
  An 80-seat restaurant providing free meals to working poor families and market-rate meals to the public as well as workforce training and placement
• Louisville Waterfront Park – Louisville, KY – submitted by Louisville Waterfront Development Corporation
  An 82-acre urban park developed over more than two decades that reconnects the city with the Ohio River
• The Steel Yard - Providence, RI – submitted by Klopfer Martin Design Group
  The redevelopment of an abandoned, historic steel fabrication facility into a campus for arts education, workforce training, and small-scale manufacturing
• Via Verde - Bronx, NY – submitted by Jonathan Rose Companies and Phipps Houses
  A 222-unit, LEED Gold certified, affordable housing development in the Bronx designed as a model for healthy and sustainable urban living

Louisville Waterfront Park, Louisville, KY. Courtesy of Louisville Waterfront Park

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When you compare those states that consume the most energy with those that consume the least, something jumps out at you. The states topping the list in terms of BTU per year are also the most populated states in the country: CA, TX, NY, FL, IL, PA and OH. This pattern holds true at the other end of the spectrum; the states with the least energy consumption are also the least populated. Vermont, the state with the smallest amount of energy used per year, has just over 60,000 more people than Wyoming, the least populated state in the U.S.

The energy behavior of states is complex and can’t be over-simplified. There’s the amount of industry and manufacturing within a state’s borders, the dispersion of its population, the number of structures and size of buildings, the total energy efficiencies embraced, and the age of the things that use energy like people, buildings, and technologies. In large part, most of these items are constants. They use the same amount of energy, day after day and month after month, with a slow decline in effectiveness over the years (usually more like decades).

However, this is not the case with buildings.  Buildings use energy differently each day and each month. This is a factor of weather, temperature, humidity, building type, spaces, and occupancy. The weather varies dramatically as you go from region to region, as well as from season to season within each state. This is where the energy consumption of the states and their populations begins to breakdown.  Look at BTU per person (AKA energy intensity) and the story looks completely different.

Texas and California are both gigantic states in terms of energy use and population, but of the two, Texas ranks in the top 10 (or top 47 for that matter) in terms of energy consumption per person. California ranks below Vermont. Although the state of New York holds the country’s third largest population, the energy consumed per capita ranks 50th of the 51, beating out only by Rhode Island. The question is, Why? And more importantly, can this investigation provide a radically different strategy for energy reduction in the U.S.?

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