| January 20, 2006 Anchorage In the Year 2030 by Brian Yanity, insurgent49 
Now is the time for the citizens of Anchorage to get organized on the
grassroots level. We are at an important crossroads in our city's
history.For example, The Long-Range Transportation Plan (LRTP) is supposed to guide Anchorage development until 2025. How these next two decades will transpire is up to us. We must decide for ourselves what is most important: the raw amount of economic production going on, or our quality of life? Or, can both coexist in the future? Urban planning needs to reflect the fact that Anchorage is a city, not a suburb or a small town. The planning of our city should take the long view that urban life will have to become more concentrated and mixed in the decades ahead. Additionally, Anchorage needs to embrace its unique natural setting, not fight against it. We should think about our geographic luck: maybe being ‘hemmed in’ by the beautiful Chugach Range and Cook Inlet isn’t such a bad thing after all. If we were a “plains city” like Denver or Dallas, wasteful suburban sprawl would continue to the horizon in all directions. Finite resources are a reality, and land in the Municipality of Anchorage is no exception. Anchorage is also a sub-Arctic northern city, and needs unique public infrastructure to reflect this fact, such as heated bus shelters. The best cities are at home with their natural landscape. The Citizens Transportation Plan, released May 23, 2005 by the Anchorage Citizens Coalition, located at www.accalaska.org, can help make these dreams a reality. These types of visions for urban planning are hardly new. The earliest recorded city plan is that of Miletus, Greece, and dates from the fourth century B.C.E. Also, the remnants of planned cities dating back to 2600 B.C.E. have been found in the Indus Valley. Ebenezer Howard, an influential British urban planner, started the Garden City movement in the 1890s as a reaction to the awful conditions found in 19th century industrial cities. In 1899, Howard founded the Garden City Association to promote his ideas. His book Garden Cities of To-Morrow, published in 1902, offered a vision of cities free of slums and enjoying the benefits of town and country life. The towns would be largely independent, and would be managed and financed by the citizens who had an economic interest in them. The Green Belt suburbs around cities in the U.K. built in the 1960s followed this design philosophy. Howard’s book called for the creation of new suburban towns of limited size, planned in advance, and surrounded by a permanent belt of agricultural land. Howard believed that such Garden Cities were the perfect blend of city and nature. “Town and country,” wrote Howard, “must be married, and out of this union will spring a new life, a new hope, a new civilization.” However, Howard was more a designer and architect than a progressive social analyst. The great social critic and technology historian Lewis Mumford wrote the influential book The City in History, published in 1961 on the eve of the modern environmental movement. In his book, Mumford discusses how urban planning should emphasize ‘an organic relationship between people and their living spaces’. Mumford also argues for comprehensive regional planning of both urban and suburban zones as well as the rural areas surrounding them. Today, the New Urbanism and “smart growth” movements continue this tradition of rational, conscious urban and regional planning. More information about these present-day urban planning movements can be found on the websites of organizations such as the Congress for the New Urbanism, located at www.cnu.org, Smart Growth America, at www.smartgrowthamerica.org, and the University of Maryland’s National Center for Smart Growth, at www.smartgrowth.umd.edu. For Anchorage’s future, we need urban planning that is both socially and environmentally conscious. Our city has a unique opportunity to blend city and wilderness into a new synthesis the world has never seen. The Year 2030 Fast-forward to the year 2030 for a splash
of optimistic science fiction. The story below is a work of fiction
intended to stoke the collective imaginations of the citizens of
Anchorage, and is not intended to be prediction of things to come.
By 2030, the vast majority of oil and gas fields, in both Alaska and the U.S. as a whole, have been exhausted. Many places in the Southern half of the contiguous 48 states, such as Houston, New Orleans, Atlanta, Phoenix and Los Angeles, are now losing population due to global warming, drought, smog and other forms of pollution. Alaska, now with two million people, has become a lifeboat for Americans fleeing the “Sunbelt.” One million of these people live in the 100-square-mile Anchorage Bowl, giving it an average population density of about 10,000 people per square mile. At the same time, space devoted to parks and open space has increased, since the city is proud of its “Noah’s Ark” duty to the rest of the nation, and the world. Quality of life is valued as a means to attract high-skill, high-wage industries. China has surpassed the United States as the world’s premier superpower by 2030, with India and the European Union also advancing in economic and strategic status. Overall, this has been good for Alaska, since it is the part of North America closest to Asia. The U.S. suffered a drawn out, humiliating defeat in the military battle to secure Middle Eastern and Asian fossil energy supplies in the first decade of the 21st century. Both China and India have begun to get along better with the nations with the largest oil reserves, and U.S. hegemony over Middle Eastern oil supplies eventually crumbled. The majority of tourists to Alaska now are from Asia, particularly China, and Asian capital is heavily invested in Alaska. The oil and gas industry has been successfully nationalized during the 2020s, or entirely taken over by the state government of Alaska, due to declining output. Like the venerable Alaska Marine Highway System, the industry could not have profitable otherwise. Only after the oil and gas industry had fallen from dominance was the full potential of Alaska’s natural resources realized. Transportation and Urban Development Transportation in 2030 does more than move people and goods; it also determines land use patterns, environmental quality, and, therefore, quality of life. With the end of cheap oil, low-density suburban development around the U.S. has begun to be abandoned. For most people, driving 40 miles to work lost its appeal when the price of gasoline hit $10 a gallon. Most of the strip malls throughout Anchorage, but especially in midtown, have been bulldozed. Their cheap 1970s-80s ‘boom-time’ construction was not meant to last anyway, and new natural open spaces and parks have been developed where they once stood. New freeway projects have been built in the past two decades, but not to the extent originally planned back in 2005. Diesel and gasoline-powered vehicles are almost history, and private vehicles fueled by hydrogen and electricity make up less than 5% of the ten million passenger-trips daily in the Anchorage Bowl. Alaskans finally realized that the use of private automobiles as the prime mode of urban transportation was destructive, outdated, and unnecessary. And, with deceased used of private automobiles, less land area is needed for parking spaces, and traffic gridlock during rush hour is now a rarity. Transportation planning has shifted from serving suburban commuters to inner-city and neighborhood transportation, due to the understanding that the choice of different transportation options directly translates to the true freedom to move around the city. Compact land development, combined with frequent transit service, has made Anchorage one of the most livable cities in the world. Pedestrian-friendly development now rules the day, and the city now boasts transit stops and sidewalks specially-designed for winter conditions. Pedestrian-only sections have even been established in both Downtown and Midtown Anchorage. Bicycle transportation is also common, and an extensive network of bike trails in Anchorage is constantly being expanded. The overall energy efficiency of the Anchorage transportation system has greatly improved. Electric cars and trains dominate surface transport with streetcars, electric buses, and maglev monorails accounting for the majority of Anchorage passenger-trips. The first rapid transit line installed was an above-ground maglev train connecting the airport to Spenard, Downtown, the U-Med district and Far North Bicentennial Park. By the year 2033, a rapid transit station will be located within a half mile of any point in the Anchorage Bowl, including access to popular recreation sites such as Chugach State Park, Kincaid Park, and Point Woronzof. World class transit centers now exist in South Anchorage, Girdwood, Eagle River, Chugiak, Wasilla, and Palmer. It is finally understood that transit-oriented development helps not only with Anchorage’s renewable energy goals, but also the city’s goals of reducing its air pollution. Air quality in the Anchorage area has improved due to decreased fossil fuel use.  Conceptual plan
for Anchorage urban rapid transit system
(light rail, elevated monorail, electric streetcar, etc.)  Conceptual plan
for Anchorage-area commuter rail system
(follows existing Alaska Railroad track) The city’s first “New Urbanist” developments, the Creekside Town Center in Muldoon and the Ship Creek-Mountain View Art District, have been a great success for more than 15 years. The Muldoon area even has its own park strip. All the inner-city neighborhoods are experiencing an economic and cultural renaissance. The cultural life has also been enriched by immigrants from all over the world, and Anchorage has finally become a truly cosmopolitan port city. Anchorage’s Green Energy Plan Luckily, the city’s citizens and government had the courage and the foresight to officially begin the Anchorage Green Energy Plan in 2008, as part of a statewide Alaska Energy Futures Trust funded by a statewide fossil-energy production tax. By the year 2030, the following clean energy developments had been completed: - Hydroelectric power production has greatly increased, not only from the relatively large facilities of Chakachamna Lake and the Susitna River, but also numerous smaller hydro plants closer to the city. The Susitna and Chackachamna hydroelectric projects were built on a smaller scale and with a lower impact than what was originally proposed in the 1970s and 80s. - Tidal energy production in upper Cook Inlet, with one of the world’s largest tidal power installations, produces electricity for surrounding regions. - Geothermal energy is produced in the Mt. Spurr area by the largest geothermal power facility in the U.S. - The Fire Island wind energy project, completed in 2009, has long paid for itself. Many other utility-scale wind power projects have been built across Alaska. - A methane gas power project has been installed at Anchorage’s municipal landfill. - Various measures have been taken to improve energy efficiency in Anchorage, including the reduction of private automobile use. Needless to say, the renewable energy industry in Alaska is thriving, and carbon taxes have been imposed on Alaska’s scant remaining production of oil, gas and coal. Other Promising Developments Agricultural land in Alaska is now considered highly valuable and is subject to strict zoning protection. Local, small-scale organic agriculture has enjoyed a renaissance in the Mat-Su valley. Unlike the New Deal colonists a hundred years earlier, this agricultural experiment has proven so successful that home construction has stopped completely in the Mat-Su Valley in order to protect valuable agricultural land. As a result, Alaska’s agricultural production has finally surpassed that of Rhode Island. The transportation industry continues to be important. The Knik Arm Bridge was never built, though the Knik Arm Ferry that connects downtown Anchorage to Port MacKenzie has proven a success. The ferry craft are electrically powered with onboard batteries, which are recharged at port on either side by tidal energy from Knik Arm itself. Both the Port of Anchorage and Port MacKenzie are thriving due to trade with Asia, especially China. Aircraft cargo movements to Asia through the Anchorage airport are also as high as ever. Free tuition has been introduced at the state University and Community College system, which now has more than 100,000 students. Higher taxes on oil and gas revenues imposed in the first decade of the 21st century helped build up the University of Alaska system as one of the nation’s finest. Investing oil and gas revenues directly into the university system was a wise investment for the future. For example, a world-class medical school at UAA now stands in between Providence Hospital and the Alaska Native Medical Center. Many young people moved to Alaska to attend the well-funded university system, and stayed here to contribute to Alaska’s unique quality of life. What Kind of Civilization Do We Want to Build? If aliens from another world came to Alaska a million years from now, after humankind had abandoned the Earth, what would they think of the ruins of Anchorage? They may say to themselves, “This city looks just like all the other toxic, sprawled-out places around the rest of this continent,” or, “Wow, these beings must have had something really special here.” What would you want them to think? I would want them to be impressed by a great civilization here in Alaska – greater than anything that Wally Hickel’s generation thought possible. After all, a truly Great Land deserves a truly great city. Brian Yanity is a graduate student at UAA, where he is president of the Palestine Club and the Sustainable Energy Society. Brian resides in an undisclosed location in Southcentral Alaska. He can be reached at byanity@insurgent49.com. |
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All Aboard City Assembly Resists Change, Democracy Public Power: An Alaskan Tradition Alaska Oil and the Middle East A Fuel tax To Fund People Mover Interview With Rich Seifert Dear Mayor Begich ... Another Alaska Is Possible Avoiding Left Wing Cliches Remember The Knik Arm Ferry? A Million Trips A Day The Rest Of America Upside Down World Alaskan In Palestine North To The Future Ten Reasons To Stop The Knik Arm Bridge Missing The Bus Interview With Evon Peter |
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2005
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Reserved. in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership. |
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