Scaling the Summit
It takes a village to heal a County.
That’s why the Los Angeles County Chief Sustainability Office just convened its annual Cities Summit for local government leaders who manage resilience initiatives for the region’s 88 municipalities. More than four dozen changemakers attended the December event at the Public Works headquarters in Alhambra, representing cities from Manhattan Beach to Temple City.
Supervisor Lindsey Horvath welcomed delegates with opening remarks that focused on how the County can best prepare for the worsening impacts of climate change. Noting that temperatures in her district reached 121 degrees last year, she lamented that nearly 1/3 of County residents lack access to adequate cooling.
Horvath’s office is working closely with the Sustainability Office as we craft a detailed Heat Action Plan for L.A. County. Among other priorities, it would outline codes to set maximum temperature limits for all residential units.
Horvath also highlighted the need for greater urgency in preparing for the inevitable effects of sea-level rise in our region. California could lose 70% of its beaches by 2100 if we fail to prepare, some studies predict.
Nature-based solutions, such as living shorelines, can both stem erosion and flooding while increasing biodiversity, she said. These initiatives can also help protect public health by keeping harmful bacteria out of the sea and away from beachgoers.
Climate impacts also dominated a lively roundtable discussion incisively moderated by Erin Stone, a journalist who covers local environmental issues for LAist. The panel featured cross-sector insights from Deana Carr, director of the California Energy Commission's Reliability, Renewable Energy and Decarbonization Incentives Division; Jamiah Hargins, founder of urban farming nonprofit Crop Swap LA; and Dr. Kelly Turner, a heat-equity expert who serves as the associate director of UCLA’s Luskin School of Innovation.
When asked what “sustainability” means to them, the panelists offered personal takes. Hargins said it means showing leadership and making resilience a visual and everyday habit. Crop Swap consciously plants neighborhood gardens in front yards, not back yards, to increase visibility and community buy-in.
Kelly adheres to the mantra that sustainability is not an end goal. Being resilient simply means “tilting toward the right direction.” She then shifted the conversation to a broader discussion focusing on extreme heat and the unique challenges facing greater L.A.
She noted that heat negatively impacts all aspects of daily life: Kids soccer games being cancelled, families unable to sleep, classrooms too stuffy to learn, stifling public transit and workplaces not working at full productivity.
Two levers can effect change – public policy at a macro-level and street-level changes in a given neighborhood, she said. And solutions must encompass both indoor and outdoor cooling, from public shade structures to revised business codes. Luskin will be working on both types of resilience initiatives with roughly 30 cities in the next two years.
Government can enact policies that might lead to 10-degree systemic changes regionwide. But residents don’t experience heat over a whole region, she argued. We feel it in microclimates – in our home, in our neighborhood.
She encouraged decision-makers to take a sector-by-sector approach, noting that a city might enact codes that dictate an 83-degree threshold for indoor workers but a 75-degree limit for classrooms to encourage best learning.
Hargins deftly interjected to note that “heat” is listed first in dictionaries as a verb, not a noun. It’s constantly in flux and part of natural systems that are always changing.
As such, he lamented governmental units that implement one-off resilience initiatives without ongoing support. He cited the familiar community garden at a neighborhood school, planted with seed money and good intentions but ultimately left to wither quickly.
Instead, cities should invest in self-sustaining, multi-benefit projects. As an example, he cited his recent work to install community gardens at a 90-person affordable housing project. Residents are trained to care for the garden as part of their tenancy, earning both food and job skills.
Hargins pivoted to encouraging a more decentralized approach to infrastructure, one that encourages and incentivizes self-reliance. He wants residents to collect and reuse water on their properties, while meeting their energy needs by harnessing solar power on site.
In his model, families could become more resilient and economically sound by investing in in systems that could collect up to 20,000 gallons annually – water to be used in the home, growing food and even “sold” via insurance to neighbors in need.
The California Energy Commission’s Carrillo moved the conversation to how to best help cities decarbonize their public buildings and homes, which account for 20% of the state’s greenhouse gases.
The first step, she said, is getting new technologies into hands of residents. In the past, solar “went to the rich first, as a shiny cool thing for the well-to-do.” That left vulnerable communities behind, she said.
Her office works on several equitable decarbonization programs. Low- and zero-interest loans are available to help property owners to retrofit buildings in low-income areas. Incentives support the construction of all-electric new housing, both deed-restricted and free market.
The office also makes direct grants to cities to help them build EV charging stations. It also funds community-based organizations that go door-to-door and figure out how homes can be retrofitted in disadvantaged communities.
The Summit closed with a series of moderated breakout groups, in which city leaders met in clusters of four to share best practices and challenges on various sustainability issues, including energy, extreme heat, urban greening, water, and transportation.
As an example, representatives from San Fernando discussed their efforts to encourage groundwater infiltration, while Calabasas shared programs designed to protect open space amid ongoing development. In another breakout group, Paramount highlighted the importance of partnerships and community engagement in the development of its urban forest management plan. Glendale shared various ideas for supporting alternative modes of travel, such as rebates for e-bikes and on-demand micro-transit services.
“We are so grateful to our city partners for taking the time to spend this day with us sharing their priorities and discussing strategies to meet our shared goals,” said Rita Kampalath, the Chief Sustainability Officer for Los Angeles County. “We can’t meet the ambitious goals in the OurCounty plan without this collaboration, and our hope is that this conversation was just the first of an ongoing regional discussion to create momentum towards our vision for a resilient Los Angeles for all communities.”