"Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change" by Reid Ewing, Keith Bartholomew, Steve Winkelman, Jerry Walters and Don Chen; Urban Land Institute; 170 pages; $40.

OK, we all (mostly) are on board on this global warming thing: We're into recycling, conservation and carbon footprint reduction.

But now comes the hard part, according to a team of experts assembled by the Urban Land Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank: to examine how reducing America's carbon dioxide levels to pre-1990 levels can actually meet 2030 and 2050 deadlines.

The answer is: not without a lot of changes in lifestyle and development patterns.

In a slim book packed with college-level mathematical analysis, the five authors said that even if vehicle emissions are reduced as required, vehicle miles traveled will offset those gains.

"Population growth has been responsible for only a quarter of the increase in vehicle miles driven over the last couple of decades," the authors say. "A larger share of the increase can be traced to the effects of a changing built environment, namely to longer trips and people driving alone."

But it isn't too late to reverse course. Based on the finding that people living in "compact" regions - higher density, walkable and transit-served neighborhoods - drive 25 percent less than in traditional suburban areas, the authors argue that future growth can be redesigned to minimize driving and global warming.

Looking nearly 50 years from now, Arthur "Chris" Nelson at Virginia Tech is cited as predicting that a U.S. population growth to 420 million will require 89 million new or replaced homes and 190 billion square feet of new offices, institutions, stores and other nonresidential buildings.

"If Nelson's forecasts are correct," the authors conclude, "two-thirds of development on the ground in 2050 will be built between 2007 and then (2050). Pursuing smart growth is a low-cost climate change strategy, because it involves shifting investments that have to be made anyway."

To implement a new urban policy will require many policy changes at every level of government, leading, the experts hope, to societal changes and new eco-habits.

At the federal level, with a new administration taking office next year, timing is perfect for what the authors call a "Green-TEA Transportation Act." TEA is the acronym for the 1991 transportation efficiency act. The next transportation authorization bill is needed in 2009 and these are some of the changes it should include, according to the book:

- Establish a "national transportation system administration" to build a national high-speed rail network similar to that in Europe.

- Change funding formulas to give equal weight to transit and highways and give top priority to fixing existing infrastructure rather than building new roads and bridges.

- Add "climate performance" standards to economic and transportation factors used in awarding grants.

At the state level, funding formulas should factor in greenhouse gas and vehicle-miles-traveled reduction targets; sidewalks and bike lanes would be required on all new and reconstructed streets and highways in a concept called "complete streets"; and regional funding policies could involve transfer of development rights and calculate the global warming effects of development as a way to save farmlands from being overtaken by sprawl.

Besides policy changes, the book discusses new taxes, including a "carbon impact fee" for new development.

But where the dust will fly is at the city and county level, where key land-use decisions are made.

The authors call for changes in zoning and development regulations; channeled growth plans to infill and redevelopment sites; and more work force housing - priced to meet the needs of the working poor and middle class - in any large-scale residential or commercial development.

In some cities, sincere attempts to build more compactly almost always run up against neighborhood opposition, because of fears of increased traffic, crowding and crime.

The answer to this NIMBYism - "not in my back yard" thinking - does not receive much ink in this Urban Land Institute book. There is only one paragraph on Page 153 that addresses this problem:

"Successful planning requires the meaningful engagement of people who live and work in the affected community. Meaningful public engagement requires that planners and decision makers actively seek out public input early in the planning process, well before threshold questions are framed or alternatives crafted. When residents are engaged in the planning process from the beginning and know that their concerns and ideas are being considered, they are more likely to support new development. Visioning processes and design charrettes are two popular techniques that localities have used in recent years to engage citizens."

Nice words but, even when developers and architects go the extra mile, opponents fling angry words in public meetings and threaten lawsuits and political retribution. Perhaps ULI should follow up the "Growing Cooler" volume with "Cooler Heads," a study of recently successful developer-neighborhood workouts and lessons learned from confrontations that killed good ideas.

- Roger M. Showley

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