Planning Reports and Research Papers by ks3614

Short form articles: 1. “Home” for the Harvard Urban Review Can be retrieved at: http://harvardurbanreview.org/home-writing-place/

2. “The Beautiful Chaos” for the Harvard Urban Review Can be retrieved at: http://harvardurbanreview.org/the-beautiful-chaos/

3. “Matter and why it matters” for Urban Magazine, Columbia GSAPP Can be retrieved at: https://issuu.com/gsapp_hp/docs/emergence2020/s/10524148

4. “The in-crowd” for Urban Magazine, Columbia GSAPP Can be retrieved at: https://issuu.com/gsapp_hp/docs/vita_outlines_issu_singlepage_164e12306eace1

Web map narratives: 5. “Fare evasion policing” for Points Unknown: Cartographic Narratives, Columbia GSAPP Can be retrieved at: https://glitch.com/~fare-evasion-transit

Video-graphic content : 1. “Observing Indifference on New York’s 1 line” for Narrative Urbanism, Columbia GSAPP Can be retrieved at: https://youtu.be/osHI47yuTyY

Chinatown: Reimagining Open Space Columbia GSAPP ▪ Fall 2018 ▪ Planning Methods Final Paper

Jacey Chon Aline Estefam Shoshana Sheinfeld Kirthana Sudhakar Rawnak Zaman

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Table of Contents History and Background of Manhattan’s Chinatown

Defining the Problem

Methodological Approach

Data Collection and Analysis

Final Recommendations

Conclusion

Bibliography

Appendix

I. Preliminary Survey

II. Interview Guide

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History and Background of Manhattan’s Chinatown America’s Chinatowns emerged out of policies enforced by the federal government following the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which suspended labor immigration from China (National Archives). This law, the iterations of which persisted for a further 61 years, restricted Chinese immigrants’ access to the labor market and perpetuated discrimination. In response— and by necessity—they developed their own governing associations and informal economies (Kwong, 1987, p. 13-14; p. 81-82). The earliest Chinese community in Manhattan settled in the Five Points neighborhood on the Lower East Side before the Civil War (Steinberg, 2014). Five Points, which was near present-day Columbus Park, was then considered the “most notorious neighborhood in nineteenth century America… renowned for jam-packed, filthy tenements, garbage-covered streets, prostitution, gambling, violence, drunkenness, and abject poverty” (Anbinder, 2001, p. 1). Even so, from the 1820s on, the neighborhood attracted diverse groups; in addition to the Chinese, there were Irish, Italian, German, and Eastern European immigrants as well as African Americans (Anbinder, p. 1). During New York City’s economic decline in the 1960s, Chinese investors purchased vacated businesses and tenements and Chinatown expanded (Kwong, p. 49). By the 1970s, about sixty buildings in the heart of historic Chinatown—around Mott, Pell, and Doyers Streets—were owned by several family associations (Tabor, 2015; Ngu, 2016). Chinese-owned businesses were sustained by the neighborhood’s labor demand (Kwong, p. 30-32). The garment industry’s main labor force shifted from Italian and Eastern European women, who were retiring, to Chinese women, who were willing to work for cheap wages (Kwong, p. 30). Women increasingly began frequenting local restaurants while the increasing popularity of Chinese cuisine nationwide also spawned new food establishments (Kwong, p. 33-35). The availability of service jobs in Manhattan's Chinatown attracted more lower-income Chinese immigrants than in other Chinatowns across the country (Kwong, p. 40).

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Nom Wah Tea Parlour, est. 1920 / K.S. Sept 22, 2018

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Mott Street in the heart of Chinatown / Sept. 22, 2018

Per New York City’s current neighborhood tabulation areas (NTAs), present-day Chinatown is located between Centre and Norfolk Streets, with East Houston Street to the north and Brooklyn Bridge to the south (NYC Planning, 2017). 59% of Chinatown residents identify as Asian, followed by 25% White, 9% ‘Other’ and 7% Black. Of the Asian population, 91% are Chinese. A little over half the population is foreign born, of which 73% were born in China. 67% speak a language other than English at home, with Chinese (which, in the U.S. Census American Community Survey, includes Mandarin and Cantonese) being the most widely spoken at 75% (U.S Census Bureau, 2012-16). Chinatown, like many neighborhoods in New York City, is contending with demographic and economic changes. The average median income is approximately $45,000; about one-fourth of residents live below the poverty level (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012-16). Tract 25 (east of Pearl Street and including NYCHA housing developments) has the lowest median income at $16,324 while Tract 30.01 (bordering the East Village and Lower East Side neighborhoods) has the highest at $71,591 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012-16; NYCHA, n.d.). Chinatown’s Community Board 3 (CB 3) attributes the growing income gap to neighborhood change indicators, longtime resident displacement, and a mismatch between a rapidly rising median asking rent and largely static incomes (CB 3, 2017).

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Rent constitutes a tremendous burden on many residents. Of the 19,941 housing units in Chinatown, 93% of them are renter-occupied (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012-16). Despite gross rent being significantly lower compared to the rest of New York City, 45.1% of residents still spend at least 35% of their household income on rent (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012-16). Since 2010, the median asking rent in the neighborhood has increased by about 20% (Furman Center, 2018).

In addition, rising property values threaten lower-income residents in particular

(Savitch-Lew, 2015). Government-subsidized housing comprises a portion of the housing stock; the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (2018) highlights 1,156 subsidized units as “at-risk.” In the event of a rent hike, those least able to afford it risk displacement.

NYC Dept. of Planning Population Factfinder (2017)

Columbus Park / R.Z. Sept. 22, 2018

Defining the Problem 17% of Chinatown residents are ages 65 or older. Of the 26% of the population living below the poverty level, more than half of them are seniors (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012-16). Though this statistic resembles the citywide trend, Chinatown seniors’ circumstances may be exacerbated by a number of factors, from housing and mobility to language barriers. In their FY2019 District Needs Statement, CB 3 stated the importance of having sufficient resources for seniors and highlighted one local senior center, BRC Senior Services Center, where the majority of the seniors are women over 75, some of whom expressed feelings of isolation due to 4

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language barriers or distance from family. 40% of Asian American elders, at one point, have reported experiencing symptoms of depression (AAFNY, n.d.). % Seniors Per Census Tract in Lower Manhattan

NYC Planning (2018), U.S. Census (2017), ACS 2012-16 Table S0101.

Although NYC offers more resources for seniors—from senior centers to programs—than any other U.S. city, it must grapple with rising demand (CUF, 2013). Affordable housing for seniors in particular is in short supply; at Hong Ning, a low-income housing complex for seniors in Chinatown, a single vacancy can receive from 5,000 to 10,000 applications (Li, 2018). The City attempts to serve seniors who live on a fixed income with the Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption (SCRIE) program, but only seniors living in rent-stabilized housing are eligible to participate (CUF, 2013). One community organization, Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE), that assists low-income Chinatown residents with housing applications reported a demand for the service beyond what was in their capacity to provide (Hobbs, 2017). AAFE, which also provides other services, could only accommodate three days per week. This experience is echoed by the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, a community group

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in Chinatown that was established in 1883. This organization also identified funding as an issue, stating that they stopped requesting funding from the City because the amount awarded “was not worth the amount it cost to apply” (Runice, 2017). According to the Center for an Urban Future (2013), citywide 92% of Chinese seniors speak English ‘less than very well.’ The median age of New York’s immigration population is 14 years higher than that of the native-born population; immigrants over the age of 65 who are less familiar or unfamiliar with English are often unable to access essential services because of the language barrier (CUF, 2013). Additionally, since 2003, Chinese immigrant populations in Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods, as well as Manhattan’s Murray Hill, have risen, with Chinatown’s falling behind Bensonhurst and Sunset Park in Brooklyn, and Flushing in Queens (NYC Planning, 2013, p. 68). This may contribute to the fraying of a social and support network that is integral to Chinese seniors. Mobility and accessibility are another consideration. A study by Molteni and Sassi (2018) identified features of public space that were unsuitable for older residents: lack of rest stops, no restrooms, insufficient lighting, and paths that are not easily accessible. Chinatown has a central green space in Columbus Park, which is used for a variety of activities, such as Tai Chi, basketball, soccer, and Chinese chess or card games. Notably, many regulars commute to the park from the outer boroughs and New Jersey (NYC Parks; Place Matters) . For a park that sees so much use, in the event that the space is inaccessible or clear access is impeded, senior residents who cannot travel far lack sufficient alternatives. Many senior residents in Chinatown experience vulnerabilities in their economic and social circumstances; socioeconomic forces like affordable housing stock and changing demographics place particular burden on the neighborhood’s senior population. Yen et al. (2012) found that older adults value social connectedness, mobility, and active lifestyles, all of which contribute to their well-being. Therefore, we chose to focus on these areas in the context of Chinatown’s built environment and whether it meets seniors’ needs.

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Methodological Approach We undertook an embedded, mixed-methods approach in order to understand the resource needs of senior residents in Chinatown. Per Creswell (2017), an embedded mixed-methods design combines quantitative and qualitative methods within each tier of investigation (p. 67-68). After conducting ‘on the street’ interviews and observational surveying, we identified senior centers as a conduit through which seniors access services. Of the four types of interviews—informal, unstructured, semi-structured, and structured—we conducted semi-structured interviews, in which the research question is known but the answer is open-ended (Handwerker, 2002). As our research question focuses on difficult-to-reach population, we intended to utilize the snowball sampling technique. In this technique, the interviewee, using their social network connections, refers the researcher to another subject, who connects the researcher to yet another subject and so on. This model is based on the precept that the target population is connected in some way and that finding one subject will enable the researcher to find others with whom to conduct further study (Atkinson & Flint, 2001). In addition to the utilization of snowball sampling, the research design included a yes/no (binary) survey to identify the interviewees’ most urgent concerns and allow them the opportunity to explain their answers.1 During the surveying phase, we encountered a challenge to communication; some of the people we approached expressed that they had limited English proficiency, while no one on our team spoke Mandarin or Cantonese (Cantonese in particular is most widely spoken in Chinatown (Chen, n.d.)). Upon narrowing our research focus to seniors’ use of Chinatown’s built environment, we sought to use senior centers as facilitators to help us better connect with interviewees and, as mentioned earlier, allow us to utilize the snowball technique. One of the challenges of the snowball technique, according to Atkinson and Flint, is in identifying and establishing contact with the initial subject. We encountered this challenge as well; of the four senior centers in the neighborhood that we contacted, only one responded to our inquiries. Ultimately, we were able to conduct six extensive interviews: three semi-structured interviews

Please see Appendix 1 for the questionnaire. 7

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with individuals affiliated with the senior center, two semi-structured interviews with Columbus Park users, and one unstructured interview with a member of the local business community. (To respect their privacy, we have chosen to keep their identities anonymous.) In sum, we were limited by language barriers, the inefficacy of our intended snowball technique, and the non-random nature and limited quantity of our interviews.

Data Collection and Analysis In the course of our research we made six site visits during over three months. Prior to narrowing down seniors as the focus demographic, we conducted 12 exploratory surveys with employees of local businesses. Five respondents did not live in Chinatown but rather came from an outer borough to work in the neighborhood. Although several respondents characterized their customers as mostly being of Chinese descent, Chinatown’s role as a tourist destination was also acknowledged; in the cases of the restaurants in particular, tourists contributed to weekend traffic. This became theme in our interviews, wherein Chinatown is not necessarily the place of residence for many who frequent the neighborhood. A security guard at Kimlau Square, a small plaza in the commercial center of Chinatown, observed that the users of the space were mostly of Chinese descent; most were locals while others arrived by public transportation. Several respondents also noted that people have started to move out because of housing costs. None of the respondents reported engaging in community participation. These preliminary survey responses complemented our background research on the socioeconomic dynamics of the neighborhood, namely the effects of rising rent and the duality of Chinatown as a place of commerce and a place of residency. “This neighborhood is very convenient. We get everything we need within two or three blocks. There are many doctors and grocery stores in the area. We come to the park everyday; it’s important to exercise.” Interviews with two Columbus Park goers demonstrate the role that the park plays for the community, particularly the senior community. The interviewees, an elderly couple, were longtime residents of Chinatown who primarily used the exterior of the park for exercise almost 8

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daily and liked to take in the park atmosphere. They characterized the park as being in good condition, walkable, and safe. They expressed appreciation at having everything they need within a one-mile radius, including doctors, as well as a desire for more greenery and shade. They also alluded to the plurality exists not only across communities but within communities as well. One of the interviewees shared that he came to the United States at age 16, managed to finish his schooling, and worked as an engineer. He observed that his experience had differed from that of many Chinatown residents his age, acknowledging that when he was young, it was hard for most Chinese immigrants to attain education. The park was a commonality between himself and other residents. “The libraries are good. They often hold activities and invite the parents with their kids. The parks are of more diversity. Some people sing songs, some play cards… I think the parks are kind of complex… there’s rubbish and some strange people who are not doing normal activities… [but] If we want to walk, we go to the park. We know some of the elderly go the park every morning and evening for exercise.” Interviews with two seniors at the Chinatown Senior Citizen Center, which is located on the northeast side across from Columbus Park, demonstrated the role of senior centers in fostering social life and offering resources. Both seniors have lived in their respective neighborhoods—Chinatown and the Lower East Side—for over 40 years and started coming to the senior center after retirement. The seniors appreciated the activities offered, from learning English to handcrafting, and shared that their chorus group is occasionally invited to perform at the local library. They expressed difficulty in getting around some places in the neighborhood because of poor roads, traffic congestion, and insufficient lighting and suggested that Columbus Park, though sometimes unkempt, is where they go to practice for performances or take a walk. According to the program contact at the senior center, about 500 seniors from all five boroughs attend the center from Monday through Friday. In addition to activities for the seniors, the Center assists seniors with obtaining welfare services like food stamps, housing applications, and case assistance.

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“There are senior centers where people have developed a sense of community with other seniors. There’s cooperation and community so they return… C olumbus Park is the pressure release of the senior center.”

Our final interview was with a member of the community, age 63, whose family had owned a business in Chinatown for several generations. He himself is a third-generation Chinese-American, and described how the neighborhood changed over the years as the garment industry started outsourcing and Chinatown began welcoming a younger demographic with different schedules and shopping habits. With regard to older residents of Chinatown, he said that many of those who have since moved to the outer boroughs return to grocery shop and visit family and friends. He linked this to the heritage of Chinatown and its long history as the oldest Chinatown on the East Coast and noted that the park offered seniors an open space in which to socialize in a neighborhood consisting mostly of enclosed spaces. The major themes of these interviews—plurality within the community, and especially within the Chinese immigrant community; the enclosed nature of the built environment in Chinatown; and the social network that senior centers provide—were echoed in a separate informal interview with a city employee who has knowledge of the community district. A study on social services for older immigrants (1983) identified Chinese immigrants as peer-group-oriented with a penchant for participating in their communities or Chinese associations (Cheung, 1989, p. 458). From our interviews we came to understand that Columbus Park had multiple uses not only for the whole community, but for seniors in particular as a place to socialize and exercise. The park also serves as a medium for outreach. During our first site visit to Columbus Park, a community group held an information session aimed at helping families navigate language and cultural barriers, especially between the younger and older generations. During brief, informal interviews conducted at the time, people expressed having limited interaction with City institutions and groups like community boards, which they attributed to the language barrier.

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Site Observations Columbus Park is located just southwest of the Chinatown Senior Citizen Center where conducted interviews. Over the course of three months, we visited Columbus Park to conduct observations three times at different times of the day and different days of the week. Columbus Park appeared to be a lively hub of community activity, with people congregating to engage in a range of activities. As noted in the map below, the park is compartmentalized according to use. Specifically, there is a soccer field, a basketball court, and volleyball courts, as well as a playground and some open space for mixed use. The seniors typically tend to occupy the north side of the park, where the pavilion and plaza are located. During our morning visits, we observed people practicing tai chi and swordplay on one side of the pavilion while the other side was occupied by the homeless. Adjacent to the pavilion, seniors gather in the plaza to engage in a variety of social activities, including playing cards, mahjong, or music; singing; and conversation.

NYC Planning (2018), NYC Dept of IT & Telecommunications (2016; 2018)

Plan of Columbus Park Ben Wei (2012)

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Final Recommendations As the global population ages (Arts and Health, n.d.), a greater emphasis has been placed on the senior population. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Aging and Life Course program endorses urban planning as an effective means of promoting elderly resiliency by focusing on ‘active aging,’ whereby cities are designed such that the elderly are active and engaged in a way that accommodates independence. In NYC, the Mayor’s Office, City Council, and the New York Academy of Medicine co-created the program Age Friendly New York City in 2007. This program promotes changes in the built environment to enhance elder resiliency (Netherland, 2011). The program aims to develop strategies that optimize the social, physical, and economic participation of seniors in the city (New York Academy of Medicine, n.d.). Specific measures proposed by the program include the addition of public seating throughout public spaces and additional recreational and cultural programming curated for the elderly population (New York Academy of Medicine, n.d.). Many proposals which consider the elderly are related to the connectivity and accessibility of public spaces. We did not identify any glaring accessibility issues in Columbus Park. On the contrary, we found the park to be extensively accessible for seniors. During our site visits, seniors navigated the park on foot, with walkers, or using wheelchairs with seeming ease. Further, during the interviews we conducted, no one mentioned difficulties in accessibility within the park. One recurring theme throughout most of our interviews was the importance of leisure and arts activities in the park. Consequently, we decided to focus on these areas for our proposals, operating under the notion that arts and cultural activities are fundamental to seniors’ physical and mental health and quality of life. We drew upon work that has been done in Vancouver, Canada. Vancouver developed the Arts and Health: Healthy Aging Through Arts project for seniors, which proposed a cohesive calendar for organizing arts and cultural programming in the city (Arts and Health, n.d.). Vancouver partnered with the University of British Columbia for a three-year period, during which they sponsored workshops and focus groups. With the help of artists and community organizations, they held weekly workshops for

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artists, hosted two annual arts events, organized local exhibitions, curated a year-end exhibition, and continually offered professional development opportunities (Arts and Health, n.d.). A major finding of these efforts was that cultural activities increased the seniors’ sense of belonging and community and had a positive impact on their health. Some seniors reported a reduction in chronic pain while many also grew increasingly confident in their capacity to continue learning. The project also changed the way the community felt about and engaged with seniors (Arts and Health, n.d.). We subsequently formed a recommendation for the physical site that can be approached in two different ways: the construction of a multi-use platform in Columbus Park or revitalization of the existing pavilion. Although the park is extensively used for arts and cultural activities, performances are mainly conducted at benches. We therefore propose to increase available space for arts and cultural activities to take place. The pavilion in Columbus Park has been a dominating structure for over 100 years. The historic building had fallen out of use for over 30 years before being reopened in 2007 and is nowadays used primarily as shelter by the homeless (Shapiro, 2007). Despite efforts at restoring activity in the previously-neglected site, the area remained underutilized after restoration (Friends of Columbus Park, n.d.). Therefore, we also consider increasing activity in the area as a means to revitalize the pavilion and increase use and cohesiveness in this community space. We also drew from an example put forth by the city of São Paulo, Brazil. The city developed the Centro Aberto (Open Center) experience, which demonstrated how the construction of space for arts performances can change the dynamics of space. This program specifically managed to change the core characteristics of abandoned spaces through the construction of decks and other festival-space. City Hall was able to construct a wooden deck in the city center in a space previously only occupied by homeless people through a Public-Private Partnership. In the first months, they proposed cultural programming to activate the space, such as open-door movies, musical performances, and open-door games. The trial period was a success, and the City managed to transform the previously degraded space in the city center through the construction of a multi-use platform and activation through a calendar of events (Prefeitura Municipal de São Paulo, n.d.). 13

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To maintain activation of Columbus Park as a public space, we suggest incorporating the seniors, who are a primary constituency of the park. Programming within the park would be developed in order to promote community social cohesion and engage seniors from the neighborhood’s various senior centers in joint activity. Such programming could also be a part of the NYC Arts Cultural Guide for Seniors (NYC-Arts, n.d.), which consists of an online database of cultural and arts activities for seniors. The site also offers discounted tickets and memberships at a number of museums, including the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA), the Chinese Institute, and the New York Chinese Cultural Center. Our proposed Columbus Park calendar would include additional events aimed at engaging this cohort. While our proposal is based at Columbus Park, it can be scaled up to revitalize other green areas, such as the nearby Sara D. Roosevelt Park. We opted to direct our efforts on Columbus Park due to its centrality to Chinatown, cultural significance, and local affection for and dependence of it as a community landmark.

Left: A rendering of a possible park event calendar

We do not anticipate requiring significant capital investments to fund our proposed projects. As demonstrated by other New York City park projects, like the Kossuth Playground in the Bronx, there are several means by which to fund small-scale interventions in parks (Friends 14

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of Mosholu Parkland, 2016). For example, Capacity Funding offers up to $3,000 for park projects and funds things like events, tools, websites, and outreach materials (City Parks Foundation, n.d.). A number of private companies also provide fiscal support to parks, such as the Altman Foundation, TD Bank, The Greenpoint Community Environmental Fund, the MJS Foundation, and Columbia University, with grants provided up to $15,000 (City Parks Foundation, n.d.). Public investment, through community board advocacy and other sources, is also a possibility. For example, one advocacy step recommended by People Make Parks, an organization in the city that helps communities design their own parks, is writing to elected officials to petition for funding. Officials who can be petitioned include New York City council members, borough presidents, the mayor, state assembly members, and state senators (People Make Parks, n.d.).

Conclusion Columbus Park, due to its proximity to the center of Chinatown, is an important public park that serves as a community gathering space and has cultural and historic significance. The neighborhood’s unique qualities as a cultural landmark attracts tourists and New Yorkers alike. Throughout our research of the neighborhood, which has been undergoing economic and demographic changes, we identified seniors as a particularly vulnerable population, warranting additional investigation of the neighborhood’s impact on their well-being and possible interventions. To that end, we made two recommendations to support seniors in Chinatown while enhancing community cohesion, centered around Columbus Park. The first proposal reimagines underutilized space in the park, increasing open space in a community where it is sorely lacking. This reimagining would be achieved via regular cultural programming in the space. The second proposal is more social in nature, whereby programming is developed specifically with seniors in mind, in a way that engages seniors from the neighborhood’s various senior centers. Ultimately, the goal is for Columbus Park to continue thriving as a vibrant facet of community activity.

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Place Matters. (n.d.). Columbus Park. Retrieved on 2018 Nov 19 from https://www.placematters.net/ node/1117. Prefeitura Municipal de São Paulo (2015). Centro Aberto. Retrieved from https://gestaourbana.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/projetos-urbanos/centro-aberto/. Project for Public Spaces (2002). Hall of Shame Archive: Columbus Park Pavilion. Retrieved from https://www.pps.org/places/columbus-park-pavilion. Rodriguez, C. (2018, Sept). Chinatown residents condemn plans to build a new jail in Lower Manhattan. The Gothamist. Retrieved from http://gothamist.com/2018/09/13/chinatown_jail_rikers_protest. php. Runice, A. (2017). As New York’s Asian-American Population Grows, Government Grants Lag Behind. NBC News. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/new-york-s-asianamerican-population-grows-government-grants-lag-n720861. Savitch-Lew, A. (2015). Chinatown Zoning Plan Meets Resistance in de Blasio Administration. City Limits. Retrieved on 2018 Nov 18 from https://citylimits.org/2015/09/15/chinatown-zoning-planmeets-resistance-in-de-blasio-administration/. Shapiro, J. (2007). Park pavillion reopens 110 later… in Chinatown. Retrieved from http://thevillager.com/villager_236/parkpavilionreopens.html. Steinberg, A. (2014, June 5). Notes from the Tenement: The Lower East Side and Chinatown. Tenement Museum. Retrieved from https://tenement.org/blog/the-lower-east-side-and-chinatown/. Tabor, N. (2015, Sept 24). How Has Chinatown Stayed Chinatown? New York Magazine, Daily Intelligencer. Retrieved from http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/09/how-has-chinatown- stayed-chinatown.html. Taplin, D., Scheld, S., & Low S.M. (2002). Rapid Ethnographic Assessment in Urban Parks: A case study of Independence National Historical Park. Human Organization, Society for Applied Anthropology, 61(1), 80-93. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.17730/humo.61.1.6ayvl8t0ae kf8vm. University College Dublin. [UCD - University College Dublin]. (2014, April 24). On how I approach strangers in the street | Humans of New York creator Brandon Stanton [Video file]. Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPxzlGPrM3A. U.S. Census Bureau. (2017). 2012-16 American Community Survey: 5-Year estimates, Housing Tenure (Table K202502). American Fact Finder. Generated by team on 2018 Sept 14 from http://factfinder.census.gov. U.S. Census Bureau. (2017). 2012-16 American Community Survey: 5-Year estimates, Income in the Past 12 Months (Table S1901). American Fact Finder. Generated by team on 2018 Sept 14 from http://factfinder.census.gov. U.S. Census Bureau. (2017). 2012-16 American Community Survey: 5-Year estimates, Poverty (Table B17001). Generated by team on 2018 Sept 14 from http://factfinder.census.gov. 18

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U.S. Census Bureau. (2017). 2012-16 American Community Survey: 5 years estimates, Race (Table B0200). American Fact Finder. Generated by team on 2018 Sept 14 from http://factfinder.census.gov. U.S. Census Bureau. (2017). 2012-16 American Community Survey: 5-Year estimates, Total Population (Table B01003). Generated by team on 2018 Sept 14 from http://factfinder.census.gov. U.S. Census Bureau. (2017). 2012-16 American Community Survey: 5-Year estimates, Unemployment (Table S2301). Generated by team on 2018 Sept 14 from http://factfinder.census.gov. Yen, I. H., Shim, J. K., Martinez, A. D., & Barker, J. C. (2012). Older people and social connectedness: how place and activities keep people engaged. Journal of Aging Research, 2012, 139523. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3261464/.

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Appendix I. Preliminary Survey Preliminary Survey of Employees at Local Businesses (October 14, 2018) Respondent (self-identified)

Workplace

Place of Residence

Primary Mode of Transport

Walking

Customers/Tourists

Neighborhood Observations/Participation

Most local; tourists on weekends

Not interested in politics nor has time to participate

Female, Mid-40s, of Chinese descent

Cafe

Chinatown

Female, Mid-40s, of Chinese descent

Cafe

Queens Mass transit (moved from Chinatown)

Majority are of Chinese descent

Not interested in participating

Male, 60s, of Chinese descent

News stand

Chinatown

Walking

Different groups arrive on foot or via subway; no tourists.

A lot of his family and friends live here so he likes it; never thought about participating

Female, Mid-20

Restaurant

Brooklyn

Mass transit

Different groups arrive by subway; a lot of tourists on weekends, lines are out the door.

Fairly new to neighborhood; thinks it’s not easy to get here (accessibility)

Male, 30s, of Chinese descent

Restaurant

Queens

Mass transit

Majority are of Chinese descent; tourists on weekends; tend arrive via subway

Doesn’t have time to participate; he likes the neighborhood because people have a similar background (Chinese)

Male, 40s

Security at Kimlau Square

Queens

Mass transit

Those who use the space tend to be of Chinese descent; mostly local, some arrive by mass transit

People take care of the space, keeping it clean, etc.; has not participated within the community here but has in his own neighborhood

Male, 40s, of Chinese descent

Cafe

Chinatown

Walking

Mostly locals; tourists are always in the area

It’s more crowded on weekends; tourists have been increasing; some friends & colleagues moved away because of housing prices; this is only neighborhood he knows in NY; he’s considered 20

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participating but hasn’t done so; would like to see the characteristics of the neighborhood maintained Female, Mid-50s, of Chinese descent

Cafe

Chinatown

Walking

Locals; tourists always welcome

Where she lives and works; witnessed people moving out (esp. given rising cost of housing); doesn’t have time to participate in community

Male, 50s, of Chinese descent

Mini-market

Queens

Mass transit

Customers are of Chinese descent; tourists come from all over the city

People are leaving b/c of high cost of housing; likes neighborhood b/c family is here; main proposalslower rents, more housing availability

Female, Mid-40s, of Chinese descent

Mini-market

Chinatown

Mass transit

Majority are of Chinese descent; arrive by public transit; there are also tourists

Complained about construction in the neighborhood but feels too powerless to do anything

Female, Mid-20s, of Chinese descent

Restaurant

Chinatown

Walking

Majority are of Chinese descent; tourists on weekends

Influx of people from other areas; would like to participate in community but never did; not involved in politics, but says more housing could be good

Male, Mid-40s, of Chinese descent

Ice cream shop

Local

Walking/ mass transit

Locals, tourists

None

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II. Interview Guide Personal Data: Please tell us a bit about yourself to help us better understand this neighborhood. Residential status:

[ ] Homeowner (in Chinatown) [ ] Not a resident

You have resided here for: [ ] 0-5 years

[ ] 6-10 years

[ ] Renter [ ] Not a resident but own property [ ] 11-20 years

[ ] Other:___

1. Public Spaces Do you often utilize parks, recreational areas, like libraries or cafes and other public spaces in the neighborhood? [ ] Yes

[ ] No

Comments: _________________________________________

Where/What do you use these spaces for? [Exercise? Cultural programming?] What is the condition of those areas? Why? [ ] Good [ ] Average [ ] Bad 2. Connectivity How easy is it to use public transportation, within and outside Chinatown? [ ] Difficult [ ] Medium [ ] Easy [ ] I don’t travel outside Chinatown Why? ________________________________________________________________________ 3. Mobility Do you have difficulties in walking on the sidewalk or crossing the street? [ ] Yes [ ] No

Comments: ________________________________________________

Are there places to stop and rest during your walks? [ ] Yes [ ] No

Comments: ________________________________________________

On hot days, are there enough roads that offer shade? [ ] Yes [ ] No 4. Security Do you feel safe in this neighborhood? Do you feel that there is sufficient street lighting? [ ] Yes [ ] No [ ] Neutral Comments: ____________________________________________________________________ 22

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5. Housing Do you like living in this neighborhood? Why? [rent, accessibility, size, security] [ ] Yes

[ ] No

Comments: __________________________________________

6. If you could change or improve anything in Chinatown, what would that be? 7. How long have you been coming to this senior center? What’s your favorite thing about the senior center?

Resources used in constructing these interview questions: Taplin, D., Scheld, S., & Low S.M. (2002). Rapid ethnographic assessment in urban parks: a case study of Independence National Historical Park. Human Organization, Society for Applied Anthropology, 61(1): 80-93. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.17730/humo.61.1.6ayvl8t0aekf 8vm. University College Dublin. (2014, April 24). On how I approach strangers in the street: Humans of New York creator Brandon Stanton [Video file]. Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPxzlGPrM3A.

Academic Year 2019-20

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GSAPP URBAN PLANNING THESIS GUIDELINES

FOOD AND FARMING IN HAWAII

A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of Architecture, Planning and Preservation COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Science in Urban Planning

by Kirthana Sudhakar May 2020

Food and Farming in Hawaii A study of the obstacles to establishing resilient systems of local food production in Hawaii

Author: Kirthana Sudhakar

Advisor: Moira O’Neill Hutson Reader: Kazuki Sakamoto

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify existing obstacles to establishing resilient systems of food production in Hawaii, and to determine what some of the best practices in planning would be to address the same. The obstacles identified, have been bucketed widely into three categories, namely, obstacles related to land-use; policy related obstacles; and systemic issues. The methodology employed was primarily in-depth semi-structured interviews, respondents were selected through the snowball technique. This was accompanied by an online survey to determine respondent’s food habits and preferences, here, the respondents were selected again through the snowball technique. The third element was mapping of data using the mapping tool ArcGIS, to determine the degree to which land-use related obstacles relate to the research. The literature indicated that the three most significant obstacles were the military land holdings, the Jones Act and large-scale crop monocultures. However, the findings indicate that invasive species and pests, the lack of labor and the high cost of land are the three most considerable obstacles to be tackled.

iii

II.

Acknowledgements

I would like to give a heartfelt thanks to all of the people who helped me get through this thesis. First to my thesis advisor and reader, Professor Moira O’Neill Hutson and Professor Kazuki Sakamoto. Next, I would like to thanks Akila and Eugene, who not only housed me during my stay in Hawaii, but also offered unlimited advice and support. To my dear friend Tony for housing me as well during my stay. A big thanks to all of the interview respondents especially those who stayed in touch and provided me with endless input throughout the process! To my survey respondents, many of you wish to remain anonymous, however I’d like to extend a big thanks to you all. Finally, a big thanks to my mother, father and brother who were a pillar of support throughout my education. My aunt and uncle who were kind enough to house me during the coronavirus outbreak of 2020.

III.

Table of Contents

Abstract.......................................................................................................................................... iii

II.

Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................iv

III.

Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... v

IV.

List of figures .................................................................................................................................vi

Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1

VI.

Key Terms ....................................................................................................................................... 5

VII.

Thesis Aim ...................................................................................................................................... 8

VIII.

Literature Review ......................................................................................................................... 11 Theme 1: Obstacles related to land use ..................................................................................... 11

7.1

Military land holdings ............................................................................................................. 11

7.2

Large-scale crop Monocultures .............................................................................................. 13

7.3

Land ownership under the bishop trust and the Kamehameha schools ......................... 13

7.4

Shrinking agricultural lands ................................................................................................... 14 Theme 2: Policy-Related Obstacles ............................................................................................ 17

7.5

The Jones Act ............................................................................................................................ 17

7.6

Restrictions attached to land leases ....................................................................................... 19

7.7

Challenges in establishing local food supply and the midday meal program ................ 21 Theme 3: Systemic issues ............................................................................................................ 23

7.8

Invasive species and pests ...................................................................................................... 23

7.9

Lack of labor ............................................................................................................................. 24

7.10

Cost of land, implements and fertilizers ............................................................................... 26

7.11

Low cost of food in competing markets................................................................................ 28

IX.

Methodological Approach .......................................................................................................... 32

Findings ......................................................................................................................................... 32 Chapter 1: Obstacles related to land-use .................................................................................. 35 10.1

The impacts of large-scale crop monocultures .................................................................... 35

10.2

Government land ownership ................................................................................................. 39

10.3

Land ownership under the Bishop trust and the Kamehameha schools ......................... 42

10.4

Shrinking agricultural lands ................................................................................................... 47 Chapter 2: Policy related Obstacles ........................................................................................... 50 v

10.5

The Jones Act ............................................................................................................................ 50

10.6

Restrictions attached to land leases ....................................................................................... 54

10.7

Challenges in establishing local food supply and the midday meal program ................ 57

Chapter 3: Systemic issues .............................................................................................................. 63 10.8

Invasive species and pests ...................................................................................................... 63

10.9

Lack of labor ............................................................................................................................. 66

10.10 Low cost of food in competing markets................................................................................ 69 XI.

Discussion ..................................................................................................................................... 74

XII.

Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 74

XIII.

Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 74

IV.

List of figures

Figure 1: Shrinking Agricultural Lands, created by Kirthana Sudhakar, 2020, data source: Hawaii State office of Planning, Hawaii Statewide GIS Program. Retrieved from http://geoportal.hawaii.gov/ ............................................................................................................... 16 Figure 2a: Source: Arita, S., Naomasa, E., & Leung, P. (2012). Comparison of cost structure and economic performance of Hawaii and US mainland farms. .............................................................. 27 Figure 3b: Source: Arita, S., Naomasa, E., & Leung, P. (2012). Comparison of cost structure and economic performance of Hawaii and US mainland farms. .............................................................. 28 Figure 4: U.S. consumption of papayas. Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census (2000); Hawaii Agricultural Statistics Service (annual) ................................................................................................. 30 Figure 5: Proportion of small to large scale farming operations, created by Kirthana Sudhakar, 2020, data source: Hawaii State office of Planning, Hawaii Statewide GIS Program. Retrieved from http://geoportal.hawaii.gov/ ...................................................................................................... 35 Figure 6: Government Owned Lands, created by Kirthana Sudhakar, 2020, data source: Hawaii State office of Planning, Hawaii Statewide GIS Program. Retrieved from http://geoportal.hawaii.gov/ ............................................................................................................... 40 Figure 7: Shrinking Agricultural Lands, created by Kirthana Sudhakar, 2020, data source: Hawaii State office of Planning, Hawaii Statewide GIS Program. Retrieved from http://geoportal.hawaii.gov/ ........... 48 Figure 8: Food Preferences: Local v/s imported produce .................................................................. 57

Introduction

This research is aimed at identifying the most significant obstacles to establishing resilient systems of food production in Hawaii. Further, it aims at identifying some of the best practices in the field of planning to tackle the same. For the sake of clarity, the findings have been classified widely under obstacles related to land use; policy related obstacles and systemic issues. Hawaii is a particularly pertinent site for study for a few reasons. The first is that the island is a state of the United States, however is geographically non-contiguous and isolated. Further, the island currently imports over 85% of it’s produce (Island of Hawaii Whole System Project Phase I Report, March 2007). These two conditions in combination with each other lead to a uniquely vulnerable situation that Hawaiians must contend with. To further exacerbate the vulnerability, according to interview respondent 6, the island usually only has a 5 to 7-day supply of food. The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency recommends that all citizens have a 14-day supply in the case of an emergency (http://dod.hawaii.gov/hiema/). Thus, given the findings in the literature, this region in particular would benefit dramatically from the adoption of local systems of food production and consumption, especially considering that the region is prone to natural disasters such are floods and volcanic eruptions. The above factors fueled my interest in the topic, and they were furthered when I learned that the region also experiences a high incidence of food insecurity according to Azizi Fardkhales’s research on “Food security and self-sufficiency” (Dec 2019). The literature also revealed that maritime law such as the Jones Act that has been in place since 1789 (Lewis, Justin, 2013) causes the cost of produce to be inflated by an estimated 61% (Lewis, Justin, 2013). The simple act of growing food locally, at a small-scale, and utilizing mixed cropping, might prove to be the tonic to reversing some of the ills in the systems of food production and

distribution in the region of Hawaii. While repealing policies in place since 1789 and the reclaiming of land from the stronghold of the military might seem like endeavors beyond our realm of influence, the simple act of creating self-sustaining loops of production and consumption, might well be the answer to reversing some of the ill effects of the existing system of food production and distribution, such as cost inflation and poor food quality. According to the paper, “Completing the picture: How the circular economy tackles climate change” by the Ellen Mac Arthur Foundation: This paper further finds that the circular economy has the potential to increase resilience to the physical effects of climate change. For example, in keeping materials in use, businesses can decouple economic activity from the consumption of raw materials vulnerable to climate risks, and therefore build greater flexibility. In the food system, regenerative agriculture improves the health of soil leading, for instance, to its greater capacity to absorb and retain water, increasing resilience against both intense rainfall and drought. In this way simple interventions prove to tackle several issues at once, in the above example, establishing regenerative systems of agriculture, improves the health of the soil, which can then provide higher levels of rainwater retention, and increase resilience against both intense rainfall and drought. All of these issues remained unsolved through the previously applied methods of inorganic farming and large-scale crop monocultures. The study will have a specific focus on the capacity for localized food systems. The Ellen Macarthur foundation defines the circular economy in the following terms: It will require moving away from today’s ‘take-make-waste’ linear model towards an economy that is regenerative by design. In such an economy, natural systems are regenerated, energy is from renewable sources, materials are safe and increasingly from renewable sources, and waste is avoided through the superior design of materials, products, and business models. 2

The cost of food in the region has seen inflation over time in a disproportionate manner to some of it’s mainland counterparts. Justin Lewis in his paper, “Veiled Waters: Examining the Jones Act's Consumer Welfare Effect” (2013), states: My principal finding indicates that, without the Jones Act in place, coastal water transport in the United States would be approximately 61% cheaper and that consumers using these services would stand to gain a minimum of $578 million annually in economic benefit. The state’s geographical positioning, paired with existing practices and barriers, have caused the price of basic necessities such as food to inflate in the region. Local food systems offer opportunities to address food insecurity. At the local level this would mean that it could be advantageous for Hawaiians to adopt small-scale local systems of food production both in urban and rural settings. These could range from small-scale land holdings, to community gardens and further, to modular units at the level of the home or office, manifested as urban gardens. As I will illustrate through this research, there are several key players who have a stake in this issue. For the sake of clarity, I have bucketed the key stakeholders into the same three categories as the research buckets. Some of the key stakeholders related to land-use issues are the federal Government, the state Government, the military, the bishop trust and large-scale farmers. Under systemic related obstacles, some of the key stakeholders are distributors, consumers, farm laborers, small and medium scale farmers. Finally, under the policy-related obstacles, the key stakeholders are commercial shippers, the Hawaii department of Agriculture, the department of education (DOE) and the DOE’s school food services branch. I have created a diagram for the sake of clarity.

VI. 1.

Key Terms

Agricultural Labor- According to NAL dictionary (2019), agricultural labor is

defined as people gainfully employed by a farm operator to assist with the farm work, including regular, seasonal, local, migratory, full-time or part-time employment. The term is also used for agricultural workers, farm workers, and farmworkers. In this dissertation, the term worker or labor also includes non-paid agricultural workers such as volunteers but also people in training such as interns and apprentices. 2.

Alternative Farming- According to the National Agricultural Library dictionary

(NAL, 2019) alternative farming is production methods other than energy- and chemical intensive one-crop (monoculture) farming. Alternatives include using animal and green manure rather than chemical fertilizers, integrated pest management instead of chemical pesticides, reduced tillage, crop rotation (especially with legumes to add nitrogen), alternative crops, or diversification of the farm enterprise. Alternative farming is used as an overarching term for many other more specific concepts that are defined below. These include community food systems, community food security, small-scale farms, beginner farmer, new farmer, and community supported agriculture. 3.

Ecological Resilience- According to the NAL thesaurus, ecological resilience is

the level of disturbance that an ecosystem can undergo without crossing a threshold to a situation with different structure or outputs. Resilience depends on ecological dynamics as well as the organizational and institutional capacity to understand, manage, and respond to these dynamics. 4.

Food Insecurity- Food insecurity is defined as having little to no access to fresh,

healthy, affordable, or culturally relevant food (Kent, 2016).

Local Food Systems- The NAL thesaurus defines local food systems as

collaborative efforts that integrate food production, processing, marketing/distribution and consumption within a given geographical area, place or community. Local food systems may also be characterized by certain market and non-market distribution channels: farm direct marketing channels including farmer's markets, community supported agriculture (CSA), farm-to-institution programs; community and home gardening; and gleaning programs. 6.

Resilience- The Oxford English dictionary defines the term resilience as the

capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness. In the context of this research I refer to resilient systems of food production. To define the term resilient systems of food production, within the scope of this research I am referring to systems of food production and consumption that have the required resilience to provide for the population of the region during times of natural disaster such as floods, earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. In addition, these systems must be able to whether the test of time, and have the longevity to provide for the region over time. 7.

Small Farms- According to NAL dictionary (2019) small farms are defined as

farms with less than $250,000 gross receipts annually, on which day-to-day labor and management are provided by the farmer and/or the farm family that owns the production or owns, or leases, the productive assets. In 2017, about 95% of all Hawaii’s farmers earned less than $250,000 per year (USDA NASS, 2017). Within the purview of this research, I have also added the parameter that a small farm is below 300 acres in area. 8.

Sustainable Agriculture- According to NAL dictionary (2019), sustainable

agriculture is an integrated system of plant and animal production practices having a

site-specific application that will, over the long-term— (A) satisfy human food and fiber needs; (B) enhance environmental quality and the natural resource base upon which the agriculture economy depends; (C) make the most efficient use of nonrenewable resources and on-farm resources and integrate, where appropriate, natural biological cycles and controls; (D) sustain the economic viability of farm operations; and (E) enhance the quality of life for farmers and society as a whole. The term is also used for regenerative agriculture, regenerative farming, sustainable agricultural production, sustainable animal production, sustainable crop production, sustainable dairy farming, sustainable farming, sustainable livestock production, sustainable plant and animal production.

VII.

Thesis Aim

One may then ask, why Hawaii? There are a few reasons why the region is an ideal case study. The first is that it is non-contiguous and geographically isolated. This means that in the case of an emergency, the island is completely dependent on external supply as there is hardly any local production. During a disaster such as a hurricane, when the port’s infrastructure get’s damaged, this sets the island back even further. To take the case of Oahu, summarizing from an interview with respondent 6, a researcher: So, the way that the food system struggles here is that we’re importing overwhelming majority of the food. Most of the food comes in on shipping containers, primarily from California, they come in through the port of Honolulu, it very temporarily stays in warehouses in the port of Honolulu, and then it’s onto the shelf and Safeway, Foodland and all of the other grocery retail. There’s not commercial food storage here, it’s very short term. So, the idea is there’s no standing inventory. So, the food that stored in Hawaii is basically in a warehouse for a period of time. And that’s literally for days at a time and then its sold, there is no commercial food storage in the state. It’s constantly floating, there’s no idle emergency function at all. I know who all the main commercial shippers are. What’s estimated, and if you speak to D he’ll tell you this, if you look at the population and the amount of food supply we have on the shelves, it’s about a 5, no more than 7 day supply of food.

If there's an event, like a hurricane and this is what these guys look at studying? When a hurricane begins to approach area with critical infrastructure like the port of Honolulu or Georgia, they start to shut down the port, because elements of that infrastructure is brittle, and the whole thing will collapse if they don’t do some degree of assembly to make it more structurally sound so they actually can get the ships out of the port, they take them out to sea, so if a hurricane

hits, all of the ships don’t sink in the port, and then block the ability of goods being offloaded onto the port. And then they shut down elements of the port, but all the while they’re already burning into the 5-day supply of food, several days in advance of the hurricane hitting, so if we have the 5day supply of food, they’re shutting everything down 2 days in advance. So, then you have a 3day supply of food at best. The second reason is that the region is unique in the sense that there are an estimated 7000 small farms in Hawaii and a large percentage of agricultural production is from small farms. However, the majority of produce consumed on the island (over 85%) comes from imports (Island of Hawaii Whole System Project Phase I Report, March 2007). I would like to study the reasons for this occurrence. The third reason is that maritime laws such as the Jones Act, when applied to Hawaii, amplify the effects of cost inflation due to the geographic isolation of the region. The institution of maritime law as a protective measure for domestic shipping, has a long history in the United States. This dates back to 1789, when the first session of Congress imposed duties and taxes on foreign built, foreign flag ships engaged in U.S. Atlantic coast trade. Post-World War I, under an 1817 Act Concerning Navigation within the United States, a law required that domestic shipping be conducted only with U.S. flagged vessels. Essentially, only U.S. built ships could be flagged, and so, by implication, the Act barred foreign competition. Iterations of this law have been restated through the course of history, with updates and addendums. Thus, the cost of food coming in from the mainland is quite cost inflated, disadvantaging island-dwellers. This then leads to the fourth reason why the study is important, food insecurity in Hawaii. Drawing from Azizi Fardkhales’s research on “Food security and self-sufficiency” (Dec 2019): Indigenous Peoples of what is now the U.S. include American Indians, Alaska Indigenous Peoples, and Indigenous Peoples of Hawaii. The Waianae Coast has the largest concentration of

Indigenous Hawaiians; 22.5% of people are Indigenous Hawaiians compared to 6% for all of Hawaii; 55.7% of people are Indigenous Hawaiian alone or in combination with 1 or more other races compared to 19% for all of Hawaii (UH Manoa, 2003). Compared to Caucasians in Hawaii, Indigenous Hawaiians experience excess deaths from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, infant mortality, and accidents (Heckler, 1985). In 2003, UH Manoa reported an annual income of $13,027 for residents on the Waianae Coast; in other words, the average person earns $80 above the monthly the U.S. poverty level. In the same year, every third child was born into poverty. (UH Manoa, 2003). Food insecurity is well documented on the Waianae Coast. More than 50% of residents are SNAP recipients (UH Manoa, 2003). Low-income regions tend to be void of stores that sell affordable and healthy fresh food (Minaker et al., 2011). The last statement is true for the Waianae region where more people suffer from food insecurity, which, is defined as having little to no access to fresh, healthy, affordable, or culturally relevant food, than in the rest of Hawaii (Kent, 2016). The exorbitant price of food and cost of living on Oahu only compounds the issue of food insecurity (Kent, 2016); in Waianae 33% of people live in households that are considered food insecure and, among ethnicities, Indigenous Hawaiian families have the lowest average family income (Baket et. Al., 2001). Considering the realities of food insecurity, I would like to provide some insight into some of the obstacles in the way of establishing resilient systems of local food production in Hawaii. In doing so, it would provide farmers, policy-makers and planners the required knowledge to create holistic, resilient and effective systems of food production. These systems could ensure that food is abundant, production is long-term, the primary source of food production is local and most importantly affordable to all.

VIII.

Literature Review

For ease of understanding, obstacles emerging from the literature review were bucketed under three major thematic headings. Theme 1: Obstacles related to land use

7.1

Military land holdings Historically the island of Hawaii has seen large scale possession of land under the

military. These holdings comprise a variety of scales and functionalities, but often have the effect of bringing some degree of disruption to the traditional way of life for Hawaiians. Catherine Lutz, in her book, “The bases of empire: The global struggle against US military posts” (2009), states: The bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, provided the justification and opportunity for the military to finally bring Hawaii under military discipline (Anthony 1955). Plans for concentration camps and martial law which had been in the works for years, were implemented. Large tracts of land were also seized through presidential executive orders, swelling military land holdings to its peak of 600,000 acres in 1944. Today the U.S. Department of defense continues to hold onto large tracts of land in the name of military requirements. Over the years, the presence of the military has become such a regularized way of life for Hawaiians, that it is now difficult to divorce the adverse effects of the holdings from the advantages. For many locals, the military has come to imply a source of much needed employment, the only other steady source being the tourism industry (Lutz, 2009). According to the U.S. department of defense, the combined services in 2004 had 161 military installations in Hawaii, (Four large, four medium and 153 small installations), covering 6 percent of its total land area. On Oahu, the most densely populated island, the military controls

fully 22 percent of the island. The military also controls vast stretches of ocean, including 210,000 square miles of ocean military operating areas and 58,599 square miles of special use airspace around the Hawaiian archipelago. The cost of land in Hawaii is high, making it almost impossible for the citizen earning an average wage to own a home on the island. On densely populated islands such as Oahu, the scarcity of available land is a huge contributing factor to the escalating prices. Drawing from Catherine Lutz’s book, “The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle against U.S. Military Posts”, 2010: During World War 2, the military seized vast tracts of land for it’s operations, which resulted in the alienation of Kanaka Maoli from their ancestral lands, the loss of subsistence and cultural resources, and the contamination of air, land and water with toxic waste, unexploded ordnance, and radiation. Militarization greatly accelerated the dispossession of Hawaiian lands. In 1898, the United States seized nearly 1.8 million acres of former national and crown lands of the Kingdom of Hawaii, existing in a kind of legal limbo, these so-called “ceded lands” are held in quasi trust status by the federal government and the state. In 1959 when Hawaii was admitted as a U.S. State, the military retained control of approximately 180,000 acres of “ceded lands” while the rest reverted to the state as trustee (Miyahira 1981-82). Approximately 30,000 acres returned to the state were simultaneously leased back to the military for 65 years (Rohrer 1987). In most cases the rent paid by the military was one dollar for the term of the lease. Today the “ceded land” makes up approximately 54 percent of the military controlled land. Today the military has a very notable presence in Hawaii, alongside the tourism industry, it is the second largest employer on the island. As stated above, the Kanaka Maoli have seen a great divide and sense of separation from the loss of their ancestral lands.

7.2

Large-Scale Crop Monocultures This brings us to the third factor affecting food and farming in Hawaii, which is the

large-scale crop monocultures on the island. The film “Island Earth” brings to light some of the aggressive practices at play in Hawaii’s farming industry. Some of these include the large-scale production of cash crops, which are primarily used for the purposes of export. And the over-use of pesticides and fungicides among other chemicals to sustain the large-scale production of crops. Often-times lands are even abandoned once the nutrients have been leached from the topsoil and the land is deemed unusable. Based on the existing research, I believe that local, small scale farms are the way forward. They imply the maximum degree of resiliency since they can survive blight and disease through crop hardiness and variety. The aspect of large-scale land usage and inflation of land prices will be dealt with in the second and third parts of my research.

7.3

Land ownership under the Bishop trust and the Kamehameha schools The Bishop trust is a charitable trust formed on August 1st 1895, under very unique

circumstances. The trust was created by Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the last direct descendant of Kamehameha I, the 18th-century king who had unified the islands. The Princess married an American adventurer and banker named Charles Bishop against her family’s wishes. When she died, she left more than 400,000 acres of royal lands in trust to create a school. Thus, was born the family of schools known as the Kamehameha schools. The Bishop trust owns large tracts of land, amounting to approximately 8% of the land in Hawaii (Todd S. Purdum, 1999). The wealth of the trust is now valued at over $6 billion total (Todd S. Purdum),

all for the benefit of the Kamehameha schools, a 3,000 student institution for boys and girls in the lush landscape of Hawaii. The trust was originally created to benefit Hawaiians, a population whose numbers had dwindled drastically on account of diseases brought in by white settlers. However, she did not explicitly specify that the school should give preference to native children. Even so, preferential treatment has been the practice of the admissions team for about 115 years. This is a practice that has sparked much debate over the decades. For most of the history of the trust, the estate had been land-rich and cash-poor, but in the early 1980’s the United States Supreme Court upheld a state law that forced the trust to sell off land to homeowners who had leased it for years (Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff, 467 U.S. 229 (1984)), this generated a large amount of income for the trust.

7.4

Shrinking agricultural lands On Kahului, Maui and other Hawaiian Islands, large tracts of farmland lie fallow, now

proof of the death of Hawaii’s once thriving plantation era. The last of the plantations met their end around 2016 when the state’s last remaining sugar grower shut down a 146-year-old operation. The sugar and pineapple plantations were once the state’s major economic driver, However, today these lands are not redeveloping to accommodate diversified agriculture. As evidenced by the map in figure 4, Hawaii’s total land use for agricultural production has shrunk by approximately 68 percent. This data is sourced from the Hawaii State office of Planning, Hawaii Statewide GIS Program and corroborated by the University of Hawaii. Currently the seed corn industry dominates the state’s agricultural land use, followed by commercial forestry and macadamia nuts. But none of these crops, even when all the crops

cultivated are combined, comes close to filling the economic and land use void created by the loss of sugar and pineapple. Department of Agriculture Director Scott Enright says: "There are tens of thousands of acres of good ag land, at least, currently sitting fallow in Hawaii, where we have some of the most expensive land in the world, at the same time, we've got a group of farmers who are aging out of the business. The next generation is coming in and finding if you're going to try and start up a farm when you're a 20-something with no track record, the banks aren't going to lend to you. That's a problem for us." Some areas of agricultural land have been sold and redeveloped under residential or commercial use, researchers fear that Hawaii’s agrarian past could be lost to a more urban future (based on interview response). In 1980, Hawaii hosted 14 sugar and 4 pineapple plantations that farmed more than 300,000 acres. In 2017, the two crops account for less than 5,000 acres (Lyte, 2017). When referencing the map in figure 4 comparing the total areas under cultivation, the sum for 2015 is 913,237.68 acres which is 43.77% less than the 1978-80 sum of 1,624,191.096 acres. Looking at the mean farm size, the mean size for 2015 is 181.77 acres, which is a whopping 76.19% less than the 1978-80 mean size of 763.61 acres. In figure 4, the non-agricultural lands are seen in brown, the agricultural lands for the year 2015 are seen in green, which are overlaid on the agricultural lands for the period 1978-80, seen in yellow. Hence the lands seen in yellow are effectively the amount by which the agricultural lands have shrunk. Judging from the map, it is clear to see the staggering shrinkage of land under cultivation in the period between 1978 and 2015.

Figure 1: Shrinking Agricultural Lands, created by Kirthana Sudhakar, 2020, data source: Hawaii State office of Planning, Hawaii Statewide GIS Program. Retrieved from http://geoportal.hawaii.gov/

Theme 2: Policy related obstacles

7.5

The Jones Act The institution of maritime law as a protective measure for domestic shipping, has a

long history in the United States. This dates back to 1789, when the first session of Congress imposed duties and taxes on foreign built, foreign flag ships engaged in U.S. Atlantic coast trade. Post-World War I, under an 1817 Act Concerning Navigation within the United States, the law required that domestic shipping be conducted only with U.S. flagged vessels. Essentially, only U.S. built ships could be flagged, and so, by implication, the Act barred foreign competition. Iterations of this law have been restated through the course of history, with updates and addendums. Hence, although we know of the Jones Act or Merchant Marine Act was enacted in 1920, this policy has in fact, influenced global economy for over two centuries. The Jones Act requires that all waterborne shipping between points in the United States, be carried by vessels built in the United States and owned and operated by Americans. The Act deals with “Cabotage”, which refers to the transport of goods or passengers between two places in the same country by a transport operator from another country. A 1986 study by Jackson McKetta addressed speculation that the Jones act has particularly harmful effects to non-Contiguous states such as Alaska and Hawaii, which rely heavily on expensive cabotage services to import most of their consumption and capital goods. In recent times, the act has become a particular point of contention with regard to restrictions imposed on the economies of the United States territories such as Guam and Puerto Rico. In Justin Lewis’s paper titled “Veiled Waters: Examining the Jones Act’s Consumer Welfare Effect”, the author proceeds to estimate how the price range of domestic cabotage

services would differ if the Jones Act were not in place. He adopts the method of “shadow pricing” which simulates the removal of the Jones Act compliance costs, while adopting measures of market elasticities from the international trade commission’s Computable General Equilibrium Model. The findings indicate that without the Jones Act in place, coastal water transport in the United States would be approximately 61% cheaper, and that consumers using these services would stand to gain a minimum of approximately $578 million annually, in economic benefit. With respect to Hawaii, a 1988 General Accounting Office publication shows that an average Hawaiian family pays between $1,921 and $4,821 more than its mainland counterpart (Oyedemi, W. O. (2011). Cabotage regulations and the challenges of outer continental shelf development in the United States. Hous. J. Int'l L., 34, 607.). Representative Gene Ward of Hawaii claimed that Hawaii residents subsidize the Jones Act by about $1 billion per year; and because of the high price of goods due to the Act, this amounts to about $3,000 per household in the state (Frittelli, J. (2013). The Jones Act: An Overview. CRS Report RS21566, 8.). The Deepwater spill disaster of April 2010, spurred by the failure of a blowout preventer, causing a bubble gas leak to ignite an oil rig, resulting in an explosion that killed 11 crew members and left 17 others injured. Many believed that restrictions imposed by the Jones act, delayed the rescue and disaster management efforts significantly, which might otherwise have been attended to by Belgian, Dutch or other European vessels (Lewis 2013). In 2017, hurricane Maria caused widespread damage to Puerto Rico, here too, the efforts towards disaster relief were delayed due to the regulations mandated by the Jones Act. On September 28th, President Trump temporarily waived the Act towards relief efforts.

While the Jones act may have been intended as a protective tariff, today, the Act has served to prevent the development of competitive trade, and has inflated the cost of living, and especially of basic amenities such as food, in U.S. territories and non-contiguous regions. The need for secure ship-building establishments, is one that might have been instrumental in keeping this policy firmly in place today. A second, often undiscussed purpose, is to protect American sovereignty over maritime commerce. These interests include, crude oil from California, grain from the Midwest, iron ore from Michigan and Minnesota, refined petroleum from the East, to name a few (Frittelli, July 8, 2003). Hawaii has come to depend solely on American vessels in order fulfill all of its material needs, including all food and supplies. Today Hawaii has an ethnically diverse population for several reasons such as Western contact, colonization, immigration and tourism, and so, the region has seen a growing diversity of local cultural expressions (Lutz, 2009). This diversity, often entails cultural appropriation, meaning that the definition of words such as “local” and “traditional” acquire a fluid meaning. In light of the shift in food habits created by imported food, it becomes valuable to examine the progression of Hawaiian food traditions. Historically, the culture placed value on the concept of coexistence with nature as a way of life, and towards fulfilling nutritional, well-being and communal needs. Locals often struggle with the reality of prioritizing food affordability as a deterministic factor in food choice, this was clearly displayed in the results of the online survey conducted.

7.6

Restrictions attached to land leases Under the State of Hawaii’s Agricultural resource management division, one may apply

for “Ag Lots”, by filling out an expression of interest. The site states that filling out a form will ensure that the individual gets notified when any agricultural lots become available. While this

system appears simple enough on the surface, the process is more convoluted than it first seems. To begin with, while the system of providing long-term leases at an affordable cost seems promising, as the website to book leases indicates, currently there are no leases available on any island in Hawaii. Which then brings us to the general lease conditions on the Agricultural parks. To excerpt from the general lease conditions: The lessee shall utilize the Agricultural Park lot only for the purposes specified in the lease, in accordance with a plan of development and utilization which, in the cases of original lessees of the Agricultural Park lots, shall be submitted for the administrator’s approval prior to the issuance of the lease. The lessee shall not modify or deviate from the plan without approval of the Department and any unapproved modification or deviation from the plan may be cause for the termination of the lease. Thus, indicating that it is not permitted to build a residence of any kind on the land. This type of restriction is far from ideal for several reasons. To begin with, farmers must commute long distances to reach their farms. This is because it is difficult to be able to find a rental home that the new farmer can afford to rent in close proximity to the farm. Hence there is a heavy time cost to this mandate. Second, agriculture as a practice is a heavily labor and time intensive process. Hence missing out on the opportunity to live and work on the farm has heavy implications in terms of reduced productivity for farmers. Third, agricultural theft is a big problem and reality for Hawaiian farmers, hence the costliest aspect of this mandate is not being able to ensure the security of the farm, which would require farmers and laborers to live on the farm. Drawing from a Hawaii News Now article, “New farmers face obstacles to landing agricultural leases”, a farmer laments: "Living on the farm land is, I think, one of the main things that Hawaii has gotten away from and that's posting a big obstacle to starting up farming."

7.7

Challenges in establishing local food supply and the midday meal program A recent opinion editorial by Sandra Lee Kunimoto, chairperson of the Hawai‘i Board of

Agriculture, summarized the benefits of “buying local”: “Purchasing locally grown produce keeps the money flowing through our community. When you purchase foods grown elsewhere, you are supporting agribusinesses in other areas. Also, the nutritional content of locally grown foods is often higher, since many vegetables begin to lose their nutritional value after they are picked.” (The Honolulu Advertiser, August 14, 2008) Additionally, consuming and producing more locally grown foods may decrease the “food miles” involved in transporting foods and thus may conserve energy and reduce our carbon footprint. Hawaii, has only one school district which includes all 255 regular public schools throughout the Hawaiian Islands. The Hawaii Department of Education (DOE) ranks as the ninth largest school district in the nation, based on 2012-2013 school year enrollment figures, and is the only Statewide school district in the country. Hawaii also has 34 public charter schools and approximately 100 independent schools, most of which offer food service to their students. The DOE’s School Food Services Branch (SFSB) is the only authority for all regular public schools in Hawai‘i managing school food. SFSB feeds about 100,000 students and school staff every day. Assuming 1.2lbs per meal, this translates to 120,000lbs of food each day. To promote efficiency, the DOE has generally sought school food contractors that can supply the entire district with a given item or category of items. While efficient, this approach constrains the DOE’s ability to procure local food, as local food production levels generally cannot support procurement for the entire district.

Demand for local food in Hawaii exceeds supply. Hawaii imports approximately 85 percent of the food consumed throughout the islands, according to estimates by the Rocky Mountain Institute (Island of Hawaii Whole System Project Phase I Report, March 2007). Food distributors interviewed by The Kohala Center have reported that papaya is one of the few local crops available year-round. It is unlikely that any farm in Hawaii could consistently supply enough of a single crop for the entire school district or that local food distributors could consistently aggregate a sufficient quantity of local crops to supply the entire district.

Theme 3: Systemic issues

7.8

Invasive species and pests The ecosystems of Hawaii and other Pacific islands have been greatly affected by

invasive species, and ongoing deliberate plant introductions make it likely that additional pest plants will become established. To provide some context on the matter of invasive species and pests from Kimberly Burnett’s “Prevention, Eradication, and Containment of Invasive Species: Illustrations from Hawaii”: Hawaiian ecosystems provide excellent grounds for studying the economic consequences of ecological change due to invasive species for several reasons. These ecosystems developed in relative isolation, and before human-aided transport, species had to traverse approximately 3,000 miles of ocean desert in any direction before reaching the islands and becoming established. Human manipulations, including purposeful and accidental introductions, which began only with the arrival of Polynesians around the fourth century AD, are fairly well identified and understood. The limited geographical scale and incomplete biota (e.g., the only pre-contact mammal present in Hawaii was a bat, now extinct) render ecological changes both visible and potentially severe. Under such isolated conditions, adaptive radiation has generated unique biodiversity in the flora and fauna that is particularly fragile and susceptible to biological invasion. Fruit flies are among the most economically important pests, attacking soft fruits worldwide (White and Elson-Harris,1992). Of the fruit flies, four species in particular have been devastating Hawaiian agriculture for over 100 years by infesting more than 400 different host plants. These fruit flies include the Mediterranean fruit fly or medfly, the melon fly, the Oriental fruit fly and the Malaysian fruit fly.

These fruit flies cause damage in three ways in particular; they jeopardize the development of a diversified tropical fruit and vegetable industry; they require that commercial fruits undergo quarantine treatment prior to export; they provide a breeding reservoir for their introduction into other parts of the world due to unprecedented travel and trade between countries. Finally, the widespread importation of fresh produce into Hawai‘i greatly increases the risk of introducing harmful invasive pests that could unleash devastating effects on the islands’ agricultural economy and their fragile ecosystems. The unwelcome introduction of fruit flies, miconia trees, coqui frogs, red fire ants and varroa mites have severe consequences beyond agriculture and require hundreds of millions in public dollars to fund eradication or containment programs.

7.9

Lack of Labor According to the United states department of agriculture, the average wage paid to

agricultural labor during the reference week of January 6-12, 2013 was estimated at $14.84 an hour; down $0.21 from the estimated wage rate in January 2012. In the second quarter of 2013, the wage rate decreased further to an average of $14.72 an hour. The United States Department of Agriculture attributes the drop in wage rates to the current status of the job market, and agricultural producers opting to hire more contract labor instead of maintaining workers on their payroll. The same reason was cited for the drop in hired agricultural work force over the same period. The hired agricultural workforce was estimated at 6,200 workers during the week of January 6-12, 2013, and 6,000 workers during the reference week of April 7-13th, 2013. These totals correspond to a decrease of 100 workers in January, and 500 workers in April from the estimated number of agriculture workers in Hawaii during the respective reference weeks a

year ago. The estimated number of sugarcane and pineapple workers in January 2013 was estimated at 800 workers, up 50 workers or 7 percent as compared to the previous January. This number of sugarcane and pineapple workers remained steady at 800 workers through April 2013. In January 2013, all other (diversified agriculture) hired workers decreased by 150 workers or 3 percent compared to January a year ago. During the second quarter of 2013, the number of workers hired in diversified agriculture industries declined by 200 workers or 4 percent compared to January 2013. Drawing from Azizi Fardkhales’s research on “Food security and self-sufficiency”: During 2014 to 2016, the author worked with a local farm operation called Naked Cow Dairy in Waianae, Oahu and attended a weekly farmers market in Pearl Ridge. Several relationships formed with farmers at the market led to their participation in interviews. On average the farmers had 3.8 acres in production and often extra land that was not in production. The median farm size was 3 acres in production. The smallest farm was less than ½ acre in production and the largest farmer had ten acres in production. About 75% of farmers had private ownership of the lands they operated on, four of the remaining five farmers operated on privately leased land and one farmer had a public lease. Farmers had operated 7.8 years on average and 5 years median. The longest operation was thirty years and the shortest was less than one year. All but three farms had operated less than ten year and thus 84% of the farmers are considered beginning farmers with less than 10 years in operation at the time of the interview. Almost 90% of farmers were new farmers in that they had not had parents who were farmers or any family or plantation legacy of farming. About 95% of farmers operated with volunteers and interns either from outside the farm or unpaid help from within the family. Intern programs including stipends were often developed by farmers as an extension to existing volunteer programs for volunteers from outside the farms. Some farmers had these programs alongside paid labor; only 58% of farmers

operated with paid labor. Almost a third of farmers had non-profit organization and several more had plans of incorporating non-profit status in the future. About 37% of farmers had received grants and in some cases they were not non-profit operations. Cases such as these make it clear that it is not financially rewarding to work as an agricultural laborer. This is one of the reasons why there are fewer takers as time goes by. Internship programs are common, but do not solve the problem of transience of labor. Another common occurrence, as gleaned from interviews with farmers, is the practice of homestay labor. This practice involves the reimbursement of labor by providing residence on the property of the farm. While providing a stop-cap solution, none of these options encourage long term labor agreements. Perhaps a good option would be to have a good amount of funding from the government set aside in the form of a provident fund, perhaps, for agricultural labor.

7.10

Cost of Land, implements and fertilizers The high cost of land has always been a constraint to the expansion of Hawaii’s

agricultural industry. On the islands, approximately 50% of the land under agricultural use is owned by the farm operator, while the remaining 50% of the total acres farmed are operated on rented property. In order to assess the issue, I have sourced charts from Shawn Arita’s paper Comparison of Cost Structure and Economic Performance of Hawaii and U.S. Mainland Farms. In figures 1a and 1b below, the land value and rental rate per acre across different farm sizes in terms of acreage is broken down. The data shows that the value of Hawaii’s agricultural real estate is significantly higher than U.S. Mainland farms across all farm sizes. The differences in land rental rates are significantly smaller.

As seen in figure 1, the findings suggest that while Hawaii’s rental rates are significantly higher for small sized farms of 1-9 acres ($375/acre for Hawaii vs. $256/acre for U.S. Mainland), for larger farms of 2,000 plus acres they are actually lower ($22/acre vs. $28/acre). The average rate across all rented agricultural land, for U.S. mainland and Hawaii are approximately the same, ($37.4/acre for Hawaii vs. $37.3 acre for the U.S. Mainland). This evening out is possibly due to the much larger proportion of lands rented by 1,000 plus acre farms on the U.S. mainland. Without counting the smaller-sized farms, the similar land rental rates found for Hawaii are rather surprising, considering the significantly higher value assigned. This implies that land might not be a significant cost constraint for Hawaii farmers. However, it is very important tot note that large land leases are not accessible or affordable for new farmers. Hence if cheap rental rates are not accessible to new farmers or others wishing to expand, the costs may not comprehensively reflect the relative differences. Implements and fertilizers that must be imported are also much higher than their mainland counterparts. More to be covered on this in the findings section.

Figure 2a: Source: Arita, S., Naomasa, E., & Leung, P. (2012). Comparison of cost structure and economic performance of Hawaii and US mainland farms.

Figure 3b: Source: Arita, S., Naomasa, E., & Leung, P. (2012). Comparison of cost structure and economic performance of Hawaii and US mainland farms.

7.11

Low cost of food in competing markets To illustrate this point, I will use the case of papayas. Besides pineapples, Hawaii’s fruit

industry produces bananas, papayas, avocados, guavas, and other specialty fruit including lychees, mangoes, rambutans and starfruits. Papayas account for 56% of the non-pineapple fruit industry (Hawaii agricultural statistics service 2000). Enthusiasts of diversified agriculture view papaya exports as the next big potential market to promote. Papayas have been grown commercially in Hawaii for quite some time, however, they became an export industry only in the 1960’s, with a focus on the U.S. mainland. Papaya production grew steadily year by year until the mid-1980s when a number of problems in Hawaii, including adverse weather, a shipping constraint and a viral disease, threatened the industry. While Hawaii’s farmers were battling the ring spot outbreak and were embroiled in the irradiation controversy, the popularity of papayas on the U.S. mainland continuously grew

throughout the 1990s. The consumption of papayas increased from 19,500 metric tons in 1991 to more than 79,000 metric tons in 1999. During this time period the papaya imports skyrocketed. Today the U.S. is the biggest importer of fresh papayas in the global market. Giant food corporations such as Dole and Del Monte Fresh, have listed papayas among their products, however these papayas come primarily from Mexico and to a lesser degree from Central America and Brazil. Brazil’s papaya exports more than doubled, and Brazil is now the main supplier of fresh papayas to the European Union (led by the Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and Germany). In 2000, Brazil and Mexico were the two largest exporters of papaya in the global market, their joint outputs amounting to more than 80,000 metric tons (Suryanata 2002). Equipped with newly discovered disease resistant papayas and a new fruit-treatment facility, Hawaii papaya growers are now ready to expand their production to out-of-state markets. However, they are presented with an economic landscape that has completely restructured in the past decade. As recently as 1980, papayas in the U.S. market came exclusively from Hawaii. However, today, Hawaiian papayas account only for 14 percent of the papaya market on the U.S. mainland. The same pattern followed in Japan, the primary export market for Hawaii, where the Philippines has become Hawaii’s largest competitor.

Figure 4: U.S. consumption of papayas. Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census (2000); Hawaii Agricultural Statistics Service (annual)

This tough market competition, in combination with the increase in papaya production has forced Hawaii growers to drastically lower prices. In 1998, the average farm price for papayas was $1.21 per kilogram, by January 2001, it was $0.46 per kilogram, which amounts to a 60% reduction in two years (Hawaii Agricultural Statistics Service 2001). Many would be under the impression that Hawaiian papayas, developed by scientists at the University of Hawaii, are far superior to the quality of the varieties grown in Mexico or Brazil. These varieties such as Kapoho Solo, Sunrise, Sunup, and most recently Rainbow, incorporate such elements as color, size, texture, and sugar content that cater to the tastes of the average American consumer. However, the most critical problem still remains that the quality of any fresh fruit or vegetable depends on how much it is handled and distributed between the farm and the ultimate consumer. In this respect, Hawaiian growers are at a particular disadvantage compared to the vertically integrated networks of giant food companies. Policies such as the

Jones act, make it difficult to establish efficient networks of distribution. Consumers preference the corporate standards of quality, far higher than the regional or varietal identity, effectively disadvantaging Hawaii’s papayas in the marketplace.

IX.

Methodological Approach

In order to conduct my research, I have utilized the following methodological approaches: 1. The use of ArcGis and land-use map-based analysis to perform a spatial analysis of the following factors: -

Proportion of small to large scale farming operations: For the purposes of this research, on an area-wise basis, small farms have been defined as farms below an area of 300 acres. This map displays that although there are over 4800 small farms, of a total of 5024 farms, the acreage of small farms is 121,546.06 acres, of a total agricultural acreage of 913,237.68 acres. In other words, while small farm operations comprise a mere 13.31% of all farm acreage, they comprise 95.5% of the total number of operations.

Government-owned lands: Judging by the data from the Hawaii Statewide GIS Program, the area under publicly owned land amounts to 2,144,102.54 acres while the total acreage of the islands is 4,121,389.98 acres. This indicates that the total land under Government ownership is at 52.02% of all land.

Land ownership under the Bishop trust and the Kamehameha schools: Determining the land ownership under the Bishop Trust was a challenge, as I could not find any indicators either in the literature or the databases. It is unclear whether the Hawaii Statewide GIS Program database includes these lands under the category of Government Owned lands: “state DHHL”. Which would indicate that they are categorized under the Hawaiian Homelands. However, this seems unlikely, and further it is not possible to determine exact ownership under these broader categories, so it is impossible to actually evaluate which lands belong to the trust. 32

Shrinking Agricultural lands: When referencing the map in figure 4 comparing the total areas under cultivation, the sum for 2015 is 913,237.68 acres which is 43.77% less than the 1978-80 sum of 1,624,191.096 acres. Looking at the mean farm size, the mean size for 2015 is 181.77 acres, which is a considerable 76.19% less than the 197880 mean size of 763.61 acres.

The proportion of land utilized by the military: This topic posed a challenge in terms of the availability of data that would indicate the amount of acreage under the use of the military. There was scarce data about the exact amount of land under military use although there are many sources in the literature that cite this as an obstruction to land availability.

2. The method of in-depth semi-structured interviews was used to determine local opinions on the various obstacles to establishing resilient systems of food production. In this case respondents were carefully selected through the method of snowball sampling. It was important that all of the interviewees were somehow directly associated with the process of food production. Hence, I selected farmers and researchers, who were actively engaged in finding ways of improving food supply in Hawaii. The sample size for the interviews was 8 respondents. The questions for the interviews were based on an interview script and the last question in the script dealt with what the respondents could identify as the top obstacles to farming in Hawaii. Much of the discussion is based on the answers to this question. 3. The method of online surveys was used to glean the food-based preferences of locals. The sample size for the online interviews is 17 respondents. The method of snowball sampling was used in order to identify respondents. 33

This data would help to establish the food and dietary preferences of the locals in contrast to the food that is easily available for consumption. In so doing, I would like to drive home the point that the food that is freely available for consumption does not match the preferences of the local palette, and that the preferred foods should be made more easily available at a lower price. The surveys also contain qualitative material such as the opinions of local farmers and influencers who have faced food or farming-based struggles in the area. The interviews will then tie into a narrative of the research, to allow me to gain insight into the opinions of locals. Two important findings were that 100% of respondents preferred to consume local produce if the option was available. 88% of respondents indicated that they would definitely like to grow their own food if they had access to the facilities, 12% indicating that they might like to grow their own food, 0% responded that they would not like to.

Findings

Chapter 1: Obstacles related to land-use 10.1

The impacts of large-scale crop monocultures With over 4800 small farms (less than 300 acres) in Hawaii, by number, the small-scale

farms far outnumber the medium and large-scale farms, as of 2015 the total number of farms was at 5024. However, in terms of acreage, the large-scale farms far outnumber the small-scale operations, as evidenced by figure 5. In the figure, the patches illustrated in yellow indicate farms below the size of 300 acres, and the green patches indicate farms over the size of 300 acres. The total acreage of farms below the size of 300 acres was 121,546.06 acres, whereas the total acreage of all farms was 913,237.68 acres.

Figure 5: Proportion of small to large scale farming operations, created by Kirthana Sudhakar, 2020, data source: Hawaii State office of Planning, Hawaii Statewide GIS Program. Retrieved from http://geoportal.hawaii.gov/

Hence, while small-scale farms comprise 95.5% of the total number of operations, they cover a mere 13.31% of the acreage of all farms. This establishes a number of issues that are pitted against the development of local networks of food production. This is because most large farms cater to the export market alone, producing items such as sugarcane, coffee, macadamia nuts and papaya. To quote from an interview with respondent 6, a Professor and food systems researcher: “I’ll provide you with a little bit of context if that’s helpful, Hawaii is in this sort of post plantation arguably it’s been roughly 150 to 200 years since the pineapple sugarcane and other plantations. There hasn’t been any other structure to agriculture in our tradition that people remember. And so, it’s difficult for smaller scale more diversified food producers here to gain a foothold and achieve economic viability. Now the few large-scale crop producers are doing really well. But there’s an estimated 7000 small farms in Hawaii, and most of them are coffee farms producing very small incomes for the family, and producing very small scale produce for the market. So, the diversified agriculture is burdened by the very high cost of production compared to the mainland, primarily California. So, the food system of Hawaii is mainly focused around export driven produce such as sugarcane coffee mac nuts, maybe a few other crops. Biotech seed is a major export. The most valuable crop in Hawaii is transgenic corn seeds. And that’s kinda shifting. And its number one still though. A major part of the biotech industry is that they sell the seed corn to you know the other parts of the world that grow it out for all the other products that come from it. So anyway, the food system has gotten very much focused on export commodities. And because of the high cost of production, the imports are probably at about 90% of the total food consumed. High levels of food imports is the tendency, and the way that they’re brought into Hawaii is through the port of Honolulu. On massive shipping containers from Matson. So, the way that the food system struggles here is that we’re importing overwhelming

majority of the food. Most of the food comes in on shipping containers, primarily from California, they come in through the port of Honolulu, it very temporarily stays in warehouses in the port of Honolulu, and then it’s onto the shelf and safeway foodland and all of the other grocery retail. There’s not commercial food storage here, it’s very short term. So, the idea is there’s no standing inventory.” In discussion with researcher and farmer, interview respondent 5, more was revealed about the dismal state of the soils because of the leaching caused by pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides. This is another huge issue with the cultivation of lands over 300 acres. The land cannot be tended to manually and is usually treated chemically in lieu of manual labor and organic fertilizers. To quote from the interview: Well, I mean there's probably like a grocery store and their schools and it's not a large population. And it was all sugar. And then it was in what? I'm sorry, it was pineapple. The whole Island was pineapple, but pineapple has gone too, because we can't produce pineapples as cheaply as third world countries can. So, all of that, all of the sugar, pineapple and, and those lands that were vast tracts on every Island. Um, they are not just good farmland. The amount of chemicals that were put on those soils for many, many, many, many, many years, those soils have to be remediated and there has never been any work done on that. Um, by the university. No one has said, Oh, maybe we should look at this. What can we do to pull the arsenic out of the soil in this whole area? Because arsenic is the one that's really high, especially on this Island. They would spray it from the air as an herbicide. So, the lands that you do have are degraded, but they could be brought back. You take work. But it could happen, especially if there was incentive and interest in bringing back these lands and like the County, you know, the County could have sold off those lands. They got vast tracks of lands and instead they just, you know, they sold the Kamehameha schools because it was the

easiest thing to do. Subdividing a piece and putting it in a road and a water system and electricity. It was just like too much for them. They're not planners and not architects. They're not, we don't have people like you, the County, looking at this as an opportunity. In addition, currently Government subsidies favor large-scale farms over small-scale farms in terms of providing subsidies. Excerpting from respondent 5’s interview: Most of our farms are small. They're one to nine acres. But then one big farm throws the whole thing off. If you look at the, what do they call it, the median or my statistics days. But yeah, I think between 80 and 90% of the farms in Hawaii are small. Okay. Yeah, I think that would be pretty easy to corroborate with USDA statistics. So, so since we know that that's true yet the policies at the legislative level are favoring only the big farms in terms of subsidies. Taking into consideration all of the above information including the mismanagement of soils, the indiscriminate spraying of pesticides and fungicides, and the focus exclusively on cultivation for the export market, I believe that it would be best for the state of Hawaii to make the shift to small to medium scale, locally focused, mixed cropping. Of course, it might be unrealistic to anticipate that this shift may happen with 100% of the agricultural land, however it would be wise to incentivize small to medium scale farming through policy, tax and other incentives. Talking about the challenges faced especially by medium scale farmers, we have an excerpt from an interview with respondent 4, a researcher: In a sense, going back to small scale farming can be very challenging in these conditions, right? Certainly, well in a sense small holder umm taking sort of a try-it -all sort of an end of the 19th century analysis, peasant farmers at the time, would self- exploit. So small holders because they’re not necessarily capitalist farmers, continue to exploit themselves in the system, when the budget gets tight. But with capitalist operations, commercial operations, they just shut down. So,

from having this landscape of many small operations will probably continue to persist in this new marketplace flooded with foreign capital backed local food. But the ones that are going to face most challenges are the currently larger scale operations here, that are an order of magnitude larger than all of the small holders, but an order of magnitude smaller than these new wave foreign investors. This alludes to the challenges that medium-scale farmers are likely to face in the future from “new-wave” large-scale farmers fueled by foreign investment. The risk here is of these interests completely overtaking the market and effectively killing off small and medium-scale operations.

10.2

Government land ownership

On inspection of figure 6, one begins to notice that the land under the ownership of the Government in Hawaii is considerable. Judging by the data from the Hawaii Statewide GIS Program, the area under publicly owned land amounts to 2,144,102.54 acres while the total acreage of the islands is 4,121,389.98 acres. This indicates that the total land under Government ownership amounts to 52.02%.

Figure 6: Government Owned Lands, created by Kirthana Sudhakar, 2020, data source: Hawaii State office of Planning, Hawaii Statewide GIS Program. Retrieved from http://geoportal.hawaii.gov/

While most of the land under county federal and state ownership has been outside of public reach, the Hawaiian Homelands (indicated in yellow in fig. 6) have been under contention since 1920. The Hawaiian homelands were first established after Captain Cook’s arrival in 1778. When Cook arrived, ruling chiefs held lands in trust for the use of their subjects. These chiefs then made temporary land grants to lesser chiefs who then made land grants to land managers, who then made grants to commoners to farm the lands. In 1848 a land reform act along with Government land sales soon provided many hundreds of Hawaiian chiefs with an alienable title to about 1.9 million acres. By 1893 individual Hawaiians had abandoned, sold or otherwise lost all lands but 369,000 acres (Louis

A. Rose and Sumner J. La Croix, 1995). This decline in land ownership is also in part due to the transfer of acreage to the Bishop Estate (see section 7.4). By 1919, Hawaiians owned only 9.8% of the value of assessed real property. The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act (HHCA) was enacted by the President of the United States in 1921. Through the act over 203,000 acres of public lands (ceded by the Republic of Hawaii to the U.S. Government in 1898 along with 1.2 million additional acres) was to be held in trust under the control of the Hawaiian Homes commission. This commission comprised the Governor of the territory of Hawaii and his appointees. The commission’s task was to lease the lands as homesteads to Native Hawaiian applicants for a term of 99 years at $1 per year. As per subsequent changes in the program, homesteading is no longer allowed. It is illegal to have any program on these lands that does not align with the primary land use (agricultural). This makes it very difficult for farmers to tend to their land (see section 7.7). In addition, the lands under the trust are not being distributed among needy Hawaiians. Rather only limited parcels are currently being offered out under temporary leases, and the leases must expire for new farmers to have access to agricultural leases through ‘ag parks’. While vast tracts of Government owned land fall under the ceded lands and the Hawaiian Home lands, these lands are not actively being used for agricultural development. This unused, negates the very reason for which the lands were meant to be put to use. The lands were given in trust to the Government, to be distributed among needy Hawaiians. In addition, the military land holdings on the island are vast. For the purpose of this research it was not possible for me to obtain data as per the exact locations and acreage of military land holdings. However, it is important to keep in mind that this is an issue all the same. Drawing from respondent 5’s interview:

Definitely, the military controls more than any of us realize here. Yes, exactly. Um, and my thinking is, is it really required to have that much land under military holdings? I mean, I don't think that it's going to change in the sense that it's too valuable. The Island is too valuable a stronghold for the military too. But I think it's just a lot of land. The land they own on this Island though, people wouldn't live there. Okay. It's up by the mountains between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea at and around the 4,000-foot level. It's all rock, you know, it's all lava flows and um, cold and wet. And I mean the trees only grow really small. And so, the military doesn't really control a lot of land around the edges. While the interviewee has been an immensely valuable source, I cannot say that I fully agree with her estimation that the military controls mostly land that would be unusable for the purpose of agriculture. Especially on the island of Oahu, the military still has ownership over prime lands on the island. However, it has been a challenge to ascertain what lands are currently under the control of the military.

10.3

Land ownership under the Bishop trust and the Kamehameha schools

As detailed in section 7.4, the Bishop trust was formed on August 1st 1895, when Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop bequeathed 400,000 acres of royal lands in trust to Charles Bishop to create a school. Today, years after the decision to entrust the lands, the lands themselves, often fertile and arable, lie in disuse, fallow. In conversation with respondent 5, I learnt more about the trust:

The land they own on this Island though, people wouldn't live there. Okay. It's up in the mountains between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea at and around the 4,000-foot level. It's all rock, you know, it's all lava flows and um, cold and wet. And I mean the trees only grow really small.

And so, the military doesn't really control a lot of land around the edges. That's more controlled by Kamehameha schools. They control almost 500,000 acres on the island of the best farmland. Q: Kamehameha schools? Kamehameha schools. So that is the crown lands. Yeah. Or what they call ceeded lands. And the crown lands that came down through the queen and, um, those lands were, were put in trust to, and the profits from them would be the education of Hawaiian children. So, Kamehameha schools has schools on Oahu. They have a school here on the other side of the Island, a big school and one on Maui. And then they have lots of preschools and that they're at pretty much a $10 billion nonprofit. So, I don't, I don't know how it all works. Okay. But they also don't pay the same amount of land taxes that the rest of us do because if they did, we would be wealthy. Q: So, this is a government-controlled organization? or is it a separate organization? It’s totally separate.Yeah. It probably has a profit for profit arm and a nonprofit arm. And um, they have holdings all over the United States land and shopping malls and yeah, they're a huge corporation. And you know, the last time they leased farm land here in Kona was in 1980 they opened up one little street, it was like a street that came up and a culdesac. So, it was like dead end on both sides. And around the outside were five-acre parcels. So, there was maybe, I don't know, 12, five-acre parcels in the subdivision. And that was the last time they have ever opened anything. So that's a long time to not open up your farmland. That's right. Yeah. And the state doesn't really develop ag parks. Um, the ag parks here were developed 30 years ago. Probably. It's gotten expensive to develop things, especially if you have to put in infrastructure, roads and water and yeah, I'm not really sure what the answer to this is, but, but I think, you know, if, if there was more, if there was more of an emergency, then there might be more interest from our

decision makers to see what they could do to support this. Because after reading these documents that you have on your proposal I mean going back and looking at when they tried to break up, you know, Kamehameha schools or when they tried to, um, wrestle away and condemn land so that it could be resold to smaller and smaller parcels that they were not able to do that, that right. So, it's not like it wasn't tried, it was tried, it hasn't been tried and kind of modern history, that was quite a long time ago. I can't remember the date, but fifties may, something around in there. So, nothing has been tried since then. I mean, the people who live with just below me, the walls, they own the land all the way to the ocean. Okay. It's like $7,000. Is it ancestral? Then it came to them through their family. And if you go back and back and back, all of the people, a lot of the people right around me here were missionary families. So going back to the early, early times, so maybe 17 hundreds, then, um, the missionaries came from the U S here to first colonize us and you know, to bring the heathens, the good word. Right. And, um, but then they were, they became close to the King. And then in the great Mahali Mahalia, um, 1879, 59, 79, I forget the, and when the King distributed, he, he took his lands and gave them out to his friends. Then they were, they received one of those. And, and what it was, is this, have you heard this word? ahupuaha okay, so I'm like the missionary family across the street. They received this whole, uh, uh, ahupuaha of cavanui in the 18 hundreds on the King. And so, they, over time have sold off some of it. And then a lot of it has gone to family members. So, a lot of people around me are a part of the same family. And remind me what it means. It means that, um, well it's a land division, a land division, one of the many land divisions and it's also a designation of the um, taxation system. Okay. So that once a year during Maka Hickey, which is now when the Hawaiians would, they got four months off, can you imagine having four months?

Ah, they’re So lucky they got four months off and all the copu system of all the things they couldn't do because there were so much, they couldn't do, could do, couldn't do whatever those, um, the capo system was relaxed and there was easting and games and things performance. And so, during that time that would be a procession of the chiefs of the different districts around the Island and they would collect their taxes at the [inaudible] Ahu meaning the altar puaha meaning the pig. So, you could give them a pig or you could give them some of your, what you grew or, yeah. Is that still in place though? Not for long. But that sort of determines how land is distributed. It's, it was probably, yeah. Because of the great mahele when it happened then these ahupuaha went to different families. And a lot of that land is still in the families. But then it also like on Oahu you've got the five families that overthrew the Hawaiian government. So, you've got the sugar magnets and the, you know the castles and the cooks and the Athertons and the, so there's five different families and they received land too and they still have their land. So, you've still got the land. It's in the big five, they call them the big five. And then the um, whoever were the recipients of the Kings gifts. So, there's a lot of Royal lands that's usable but not being used. Cause no one's D, you know, they're just kind of waiting to develop because they know if they wait land will become more expensive and then they can't get more money for it. Yeah. It's just business sense. But the government doesn't have a way to sort of take control of that. They tried that, right? They tried that with those two different, the case with, um, what was that called? Midkiff. I think that was successful. They were successful in that one case. Respondent 5: I don't think so. Not really. Because otherwise we would, there would be, it would be different today. I mean these lands are still in the hands of the large land owners who have not

been forced under any kind of public law to offer their lands for sale. I mean it seems like if they wanted to, they could make so much money, but you know, it's like, so a lot of this Island was in sugar cane. Right. Until, because that, that's the other problem, did respondent 6 talk about the plantation system. No, no, because I know, right. So, I mean, the basis of agriculture for Hawaii is you have the Hawaiian agriculture where, where you have almost as many people as live here today. Back then, like in the 16 hundreds probably before. Um, so many of them died off from diseases that came in with foreigners, but, and they were, you know, they were food self-sufficient for a very large population. But then after that came in the plantation systems, so in, in the sugar. And so then you had all of these people, immigrants coming from, especially Asian countries to be the workers on the lands and Chinese and Japanese and Filipinos and um, they all came and it was a rough life. It was not easy to work on the sugarcane in the fields. And then when sugar went out because it just, we couldn't compete with other third world countries on the open market and for sugar. I mean it just wasn't viable. Even with the subsidies that the federal government was giving our sugar companies, they couldn't stay in business. I think the last one closed in 98. Okay. So maybe 20 years ago. And so there was vast tracks of land on the, especially on the other side of the Island that was all in sugar cane. And when Houma Chui sugar closed, which was a very large a sugar company on the other side, they had a lot of back taxes that they couldn't pay. And so after going through the courts, um, the court ruled that the County of Hawaii could receive all those lands, all the lands in lieu of the baptizes for the state. And the County was given the choice to sell, assign, lease, give away whatever, all those lands. And they didn't do anything with it. They sat on the lands for about the first 10 years after that judgment was made. And then the, the idea came in to put in the, um, eucalyptus trees and make

eucalyptus tree plantations on that land. And so, the County put up parcels for sale, but they were huge parcels and the only person who could afford to buy them was Kamehameha schools. So, Kamehameha schools owned most of the farm land there. And when they got the rest of it from the County, because they could afford to buy these large parcels, then they started putting in these 400,000 acres over there. And now in eucalyptus, the reason they did it was to have the industry of making plywood with a veneer on top. But the um, the funders of the, um, plants of the manufacturing plants at the last minute after the lands had been purchased and the baby trees had been put in, all of the, um, funders pulled out. So now you had 400,000 acres of trees and no industry, nothing to do with them. Today vast tracts of land lie unused, under the ownership of the Bishop Trust. Several Hawaiians pay the price for this, as there is less available land. This then translates into the inflation in cost of the available lands.

10.4

Shrinking Agricultural lands

When referencing the map in figure 4 comparing the total areas under cultivation, the sum for 2015 is 913,237.68 acres which is 43.77% less than the 1978-80 sum of 1,624,191.096 acres. Looking at the mean farm size, the mean size for 2015 is 181.77 acres, which is 76.19% less than the 1978-80 mean size of 763.61 acres. In figure 4, the non-agricultural lands are seen in brown, the agricultural lands for the year 2015 are seen in green, which are overlaid on the agricultural lands for the period 1978-80, seen in yellow. Hence the lands seen in yellow are effectively the amount by which the agricultural lands have shrunk. Judging from the map, it is clear to see the staggering shrinkage of land under cultivation in the period between 1978 and 2015.

Figure 7: Shrinking Agricultural Lands, created by Kirthana Sudhakar, 2020, data source: Hawaii State office of Planning, Hawaii Statewide GIS Program. Retrieved from http://geoportal.hawaii.gov/

While there is some consensus over the fact that agricultural land must be preserved, the more contentious point of discussion is whether it is better to have small to medium scale establishments or to have large scale establishments. While I am of the opinion that small and medium scale farms are favorable as they encourage practices such as intensive mixed cropping, permaculture and organic farming, this might not be the norm. During the interview with respondent 4, a researcher, a different viewpoint was expressed which I found to be quite interesting: I guess that, I felt like for a long time, my work in permaculture focused on the site, the farm, the house the school the particular community, and obviously integrated with the neighborhood

community, how do you interface, but there wasn’t as much consideration about how the broader systems interacted. And I feel like now, oftentimes there’s almost an active ignorance as to how the remainder of the world functions, right? I know how to make a bunch of toilets, but it wasn’t as familiar with how municipal waste water systems function, and there your understanding becomes incomplete. So, after my masters, my attention shifted more from Urban planning to a broader development, zoning, agricultural land-use, zoning lots. You know on the island of Oahu, when large agricultural parcels get taken out of use, and cut into smaller and smaller pieces, often for residential use, it becomes impossible to ever put them back together again to a productive landscape, they just become agricultural lands that are used for residents and only have residential uses, and so in that way, the large monoculture operations here, seeds for example, function as a land protection mechanism, in pretty much every case that these large plantations have shut down, the ag land is not used for large agricultural operation, and gets chopped up into small pieces and sold off for housing, kind of creating housing out of the agricultural land stock. It’s certainly not my preferred type of production, or use, but it’s at least banking the land, and ensuring that it’ll be used for agriculture first, atleast there’s possibility of it being used for agriculture in the future. This conversation really opened up my eyes to the reality that large agricultural lands act as an effective was to essentially provide a mechanism for land banking. Resultantly, saving the land from fragmentation and encroachment by other uses such as residential or commercial use. In practice I would say that the idea of having a mixture of small, medium and large scale farming establishments provides a great balance whereby the small and medium scale farms, when interspersed with larger farms are effectively provided with protection from encroachment or dissolution through sale.

Chapter 2: Policy related Obstacles 10.5

The Jones Act As detailed in section 7.1, the Jones Act has been active in one form or another since

1817. Post-World War I, under an 1817 Act Concerning Navigation within the United States, the law required that domestic shipping be conducted only with U.S. flagged vessels. Essentially, only U.S. built ships could be flagged, and so, by implication, the Act barred foreign competition. Iterations of this law have been restated through the course of history, with updates and addendums. Hence, although we know of the Jones Act or Merchant Marine Act was enacted in 1920, this policy has in fact, influenced global economy for over two centuries. Through interviews with farmers and researchers I was able to get more insight into how the Act affects local farming practices. In conversation with respondent 7, a farmer, I learned how the act affects the cost of everyday implements for farmers: Q: The Jones act, that's what brought me to Hawaii, actually when I found out about it, I was quite shocked because it restricts the, amount of trade that Hawaii can do with other countries. What is your opinion on the same? I mean, this is a palette here of plastic owls just used a week just testing how the chickens react to these plastic solar owls at squawk and move their head to ship This pallet here is $1,000 to ship it from, from China to here, from China to LA is $300. That's the Jones act. So it's the whole thing is absurd, and we get some of the best shipping rates in the world because I have these incriminating pictures of the owner and the shipping company coming to my third birthday party. You know, we go back a long time, so we get really good rates, but it's still, it's absurd. You know, I think politicians are just waking up to it just as the, the economics, despite what the media says and uh, are, are pretty bad. Q: Well, what do you see as some of the biggest obstacles are to local farming?

Yeah, well the Jones act is, is definitely one because of the cost of inputs of, of to get fertilizers and to get the equipment, to get pots. Um, there's a lopper of big orange handled actually the black handle or the one next to it, it's $180 here or the pickers are $180 here. They’re $27 in Japan. So by the time you get them here with the cost of shipping, they have to sell them for $180 and some places where usually they work on a 30% markup. Some places still want to work on a hundred percent markup, especially the small local stores because that's what they need to survive too. And the farmers, because they're not, they weren't born into farming. Most of them, most of them came here and retired or they got blinded by the lure of Kona coffee and um, they, they don't follow cost of production or they don't understand the amount of labor that it takes to be sustainable and in farming. And so that whole cost of production thing, that's an obstacle. But for me, it's just buying supplies are so much more here. I mean, when I go shopping, I shop in Japan. Everybody knows your plants are so expensive, much cheaper than Hawaii for those types of things. So, we were talking about the cost of trees, which was something that we could actually do something about. So, the cost of trees being 65 or $85 here, what do you think they'd be in an economy like Japan for let's say a grafted orange tree? I have no idea. $7, $3 Philippines or Malaysia, 75 cents in India at the nursery. Some trees are more, but that's the average, especially for Jackfruit, um, which is getting popular worldwide now. So, it's um, being able to supply things, produce locally. So, we have to learn how to maybe utilizing the ocean to come up with more fertilizers or our own rather than having to import bag of fertilizer from Japan and paying three times more because of the Jones act for it. Then they have the pay in California. In this way, they cost of all implements, tools, fertilizers and pesticides, is exponentially increased. This causes an inflation in the costs of operation, and finally to the cost of produce. However, there were some respondents who were skeptical about whether having the act

revoked would have any effect at all. In conversation with respondent 3, I was exposed to a differing point of view: So, the Jones act, so, okay, let's say tomorrow they got rid of the Jones act. Okay, so who brings all our food to Hawaii Matson? So, at the moment, Matson brings all the food to Hawaii and they own zillions of boats. So how will that change the cost of food? They own the boats. So, until they build new boats, I don't see it costing more money. I just don't see it affecting our price of food at any time soon cause I'm not sure anybody could get into the market. Since Matson has the market covered. I mean, yeah, I guess if somebody had way cheaper prices maybe, but I don't know the way Hawaii works. I'm not believing it would work, but that's okay. The Jones act thing isn't as big and I don't believe it because I don't think it would, I don't think our food would go down by 60% not even close. I mean in California right now I can go to a health food store and pretty much buy the food at mostly about not that much more. Don't that much cheaper than here in Hawaii. Well not 60% the Jones act does apply to the mainland as well. I know people want to get rid of the Jones Act. I'm just not 100% convinced it's going to change. I mean, I'm not opposed to getting rid of it, but you know, it's there to preach. Obviously, it's there to protect American shipbuilders but are they even that many American ship builders left that are, but then struggling to match the price to costs that are offered by Japan and China, right? Yeah. Well, okay. So, if they get rid of the jones act, I just don't see a whole lot of other shippers coming in that quickly. I think it would take a long time for it to sort of trickle down to us. Other experts are unsure about how much of a price differential the act actually creates. This estimation is particularly difficult to make, as detailed in section 7.1, Justin Lewis in his paper “veiled waters” estimates this figure through the method of shadow pricing. He claims

that the price of goods would be approximately 61% cheaper without the Jones Act in place. In conversation with another expert, the respondent is surprised on hearing this projection: Q: As far as the Jones act goes, do you believe that it affects the cost of produce on the Island? Yeah, so I think really, it’s the same, and the reason I say that is because there’s not really a resource that looks into the price differential with the Jones act in place. So the link that I sent you for the paper? So that was the first study I saw where people actually came up with a percentage. What I can also say, is generally speaking, I don’t think there’s a lot of disagreement that the jones Act causes some sort of price differential. What the author of the empiro study finds that there is some price difference, but in terms of quantifying it I have not personally seen much literature on this. I think everyone can agree that the Jones act adds costs to shipping, but in terms of how much that is, I really don’t know. The hard part of an economist studying the Jones Act, is what does it actually look to have a situation where the Jones Act is not in place. It’s been in place for such a long time. Q: yeah. Yeah. It's been in place in some forms in the, um, eighteen hundreds, I think, um, before that? 1920. It has all sorts of restrictions in place. congressional research service. Okay. If you haven't seen that paper, you should definitely look into it. Q: I also came across this paper that did a shadow study, which means it compared the prices on the mainland to the prices on Hawaii. And he concluded that there was a 60% inflation, of cost, which is really high. Yeah. Yeah. You say 16%?

K: Six zero, 60% Of shoot. I mean I don’t know if that sounds right to me! In this way when respondents are made aware that it is possible that they are paying close to 60% higher for their products with the Jones Act in place, it seems as though there are far less amenable to the Act. This would quite possibly go unnoticed if the prices of items on the island were affordable, but this is hardly the case.

10.6

Restrictions attached to land leases As detailed in section 7.7, one may apply for agricultural leases under the State of

Hawaii’s Agricultural resource management division. However, these leases, otherwise known as ‘Ag Lots’ may serve only the purposes of agriculture, thus making it illegal to build a house on this leased land. Several new farmers lament this conditional land lease as this causes great inconvenience for three main reasons. To begin with, farmers must often commute long distances to reach their farms. Hence there is a heavy time cost to this mandate. Second, agriculture as a practice is a heavily labor and time intensive process. Hence missing out on the opportunity to live and work on the farm has heavy implications in terms of reduced productivity for farmers. Third, agricultural theft is a big problem and reality for Hawaiian farmers, hence the costliest aspect of this mandate is not being able to ensure the security of the farm, which would require farmers and laborers to live on the farm. In order to provide more detail as to the practical aspects of this land lease, I talked to several farmers. On this topic, unlike some of the other topics, all of the farmers were

unanimous in the opinion that this is an impracticable mandate. The following is respondent 3, a farmer’s opinion on the issue: Land is expensive in Hawaii. We also have one other thing that's really, I think an easily solvable one, but it doesn't, they don't seem to want to do this. So, our state department of agriculture has agricultural leases, so they lease land out to people that want to farm. And it's absolutely against the rules for you to build a house on it. So, I've, you know, you've never been a farmer, I'm assuming. So, you know, you might not understand that you can't have two places you can't like pay rent here and farm over here. I mean, you need to be on your farm, you need to be there to do the work, and for security because there's a lot of farm theft besides, so you don't want to have a farm that's sitting exposed where someone can just come and steal the agricultural crop because that's big. Um, meth, the ice, we call it ice here, but the, you know what? Meth is a huge problem in Hawaii. Well it was a huge problem in the early 2000s and then it kinda got better and it's back again. And it's really problematic. And those people, you know, when you're on meth, you can stay up all night cause it's, you know, it's a speed and you don't, you don't, you're not afraid. You're very bold and daring. You know, you're not, you're not really realistic about fear. You know, they don't, they have no fear. And so they'll just go to some farm and like harvest everybody's fruits or vegetables in the middle of the night, if they're not around or if there's not a dog, you know, something. So, there's a lot of ag theft, a lot of ag theft. It's big. It's a problem that's really hard to solve. You know, the passing these laws about it. And I'm like, yeah, I mean it's just going to happen. And what are the police gonna do? you tell the police? Yeah, I don't, I don't see a lot of solutions to ag theft other than being on the farm and having like video cameras, and you know, whatever, whatever you can have, you know? But yeah, it's real problematic ag theft, but, but this thing of not being able to live on an agricultural lease, cause there's a lot of young people that would like to have those leases, but then they have to find another place to live,

you know? And if they would let, if they would just kind of let them build, you know, couldn't be, they're always so worried about, you know, you building something substandard, you know, or that isn't like a big mini mansion or whatever. You know, let people build mini homes, um, farms. So what, get the, keep the land in agriculture, you know, cause if you don't keep it in agriculture, what happens to it becomes houses. It's happening all over the country. It's happening everywhere in the United States. All ag land is being turned into houses now shrinking and shrinking and shrinking and uh, yeah. Agricultural theft seems to be a major concern for small to medium-scale farmers, who rely heavily on the security of their modest harvests. Especially with crops such as coffee, vanilla and macadamia nuts, which demand premium prices in the market and involve labor intensive processing, agricultural theft can be devastating to farmers. Respondent 5, a farmer explains some of the possible fears attached to allowing for homes to be built on agricultural land leaseholds. In addition, she provides innovative solutions that may be written into building codes within the policy, to safeguard against the abuse of this provision: The County is in charge of, um, codes for building on their Island. So, each Island has a little bit different building code. So, they would have to change their building codes to allow for, um, perhaps smaller dwellings that, um, could be off the grid or, you know, some different interesting ways of getting utilities too and water too. I mean, there, there's a lot of people on the silent that are off the grid, so they have their own electrical systems. They have their own water catchment systems, so there's no Wells, but they're catching water from the rain and then filtering it for drinking and use. And so, I mean, there, there are ways, but we just have to change our codes and the counties have been reluctant to do that thinking that people will abuse, abuse this, that instead of it being used for agricultural housing, it'll be used for, um, low cost housing.

In this way, intricately crafted policy can allow for more humane conditions for farmers, and also, importantly, it would serve to encourage new farmers to take up the profession in more numbers, which is what the state is in need of.

10.7

Challenges in establishing local food supply and the midday meal program

As detailed in section 7.8, there are several benefits to consuming local produce. Some of these include enriching the local community, thus strengthening local economies, in addition the nutritional content of local foods is higher, since many vegetables begin to lose their nutritional value after they are picked, consuming local may also decrease the “food miles” involved in transporting food, thus conserving energy and reducing our carbon footprint. When referring to figure 7, it becomes evident from the online survey as well, that people yearn to consume and support local food and growers. With the application of tags such as “locally grown organic” and “personally grown or wild harvested”, an overwhelming 100% preferred some form of locally grown food.

Figure 8: Food Preferences: Local v/s imported produce

However, some anticipate that the preference of the term “local” could lead to other problematic consequences in the future. Respondent 4, a researcher, anticipates that the future for Hawaii will bring with it a flood of large agricultural investments from foreign investors: And beyond that, I can tell you a little bit about what my research work is on now. My work is to document this wave of agricultural interest by foreign investors, they’re starting production systems at a magnitude of order larger than any of the existing operations in place. They’re going to flood the marketplace, with surplus value. Even though we’ll have geographically local food, the surplus we’ll be accruing through investment capital. Oprah is selling vegetables on Maui. And so, what Hawaii faces is this gradual use of the term “local” where people assume that buying local supports small farms, when in fact the operations that come in are run on lands owned by the richest man in Iowa. We’re going to have the local food, but it’s not going to be really supporting the people we think it’s supporting. Q: In a sense, going back to small scale farming can be very challenging in these conditions, right? Certainly, well in a sense small holders umm taking sort of a try-it -all sort of an end of the 19th century analysis, peasant farmers at the time, would self- exploit. So small holders because they’re not necessarily capitalist farmers, continue to exploit themselves in the system, when the budget gets tight. But with capitalist operations, commercial operations, they just shut down. So, from having this landscape of many small operations will probably continue to persist in this new marketplace flooded with foreign capital backed local food. But the ones that are going to face most challenges are the currently larger scale operations here, that are an order of magnitude larger than all of the small holders, but an order of magnitude smaller than these new wave foreign investors.

In this way, it becomes imperative to find innovative ways to support small and medium-scale farmers. Farmer and activist, respondent 5, suggests changes in policy that would make it possible for local farmers to participate in the supply of school midday meals. As detailed in section 7.8, Hawaii, has only one school district which includes all 255 regular public schools throughout the Hawaiian Islands. Hawaii also has 34 public charter schools and approximately 100 independent schools, most of which offer food service to their students. The Department of Education’s School Food Services Branch (SFSB) is the only authority for all regular public schools in Hawai‘i managing school food. SFSB feeds about 100,000 students and school staff every day. Assuming 1.2lbs per meal, this translates to 120,000lbs of food each day. To promote efficiency, the DOE has generally sought school food contractors that can supply the entire district with a given item or category of items. While efficient, this approach constrains the DOE’s ability to procure local food, as local food production levels generally cannot support procurement for the entire district. and the farm to school piece. See, because that's the other part of it. So, farm to school is changing the food in a cafeteria. In Hawaii we have only one school district. Oh, that's very unusual. K: The whole of Hawaii? Oh, okay. It's as big as probably New York city. More than that. Probably. So. So Hawaii has one school district, Washington DC has one school district. Oh, same amount of schools. 255 in DC or here it's very similar. it has some advantages and lots of problems. It's centralized in Oahu. And so, changing the food system in the cafeteria where the children are eating and introducing locally produced foods into that, into the menu system has been incredibly hard. Mainly because as you have found out, we don't produce very much food here. And the department, the school food services branch of department of education has had a really hard time working with the USDA to create contracts.

They do it in all other States. I don't know why we can't do it here, but you know, you contract with the farmer, we need this many pounds of lettuce at these dates and we will pay this much and you deliver it here and you sign the contract and we pay you. I mean it's done all over the United States. That's how this farm to school program is, is growing. And the farm to school program is so important because it's re-localizing agriculture. . I was just working yesterday with a woman, a woman who started an Ulu, the breadfruit cooperative on this Island. The reason she did that was to increase bread fruit production to the point where then she could be on the department of education menu cycle. So they have a five week cycle. Every school in the whole state eats the same thing at the same time. Oh my gosh. There's no local local aggregation. So, everything has to come from Honolulu and the way that they have been doing it and still are there. Right. They’re just beginning to make these contracts? So, I was telling you about the way that they had been doing it in the past is they would put out a contract for let's say lettuce and you needed to provide enough lettuce for 100,000 lunches a day. Oh my God. For 255 schools. Oh my God. Well, nobody can do that. Not one single farm. Not any of our farms. Not even the biggest. Larry, Jeff guys, sugar land, not even sugar land. No one was able to do that. So, they were like, Oh, okay, well we'll just give from the mainland. So, they were bringing in everything that was on our menu into Honolulu and because we couldn't have that many fresh things because it's too costly and it's just so then everything was frozen. So, then you know like in the school kitchen, like in one corner you've got a big walk in freezer and in the other corner you've got to walk in refrigerator, you walk into your refrigerator, there's like nothing there. Maybe maybe some onions or potatoes or something like that. And over on the freezer section, even math boxes to the ceiling, tater tots and chicken mc nuggets that we're going to be microwave and serve to the children. And that's what we've been doing this whole time. And that's why we pass the farm to school bill in 2015 I mean it was amazing that

the legislature passed our bill creating a farm to school program and the department of ag with a coordinator. But it could drive the agricultural industry here. I mean, it could be like, we're doing this for our kids. On this Island, the children and our schools get 50 over 50% of their calories at school every day. Their total calories. So, school food is important. You know, there's, um, our free and reduced, uh, programs that we have in school, food through the USDA. This is, we have a lot of schools on our Island that are 100% free and reduced. And the way you become a, a child that receives a free or reduced meal is that your parents, their combined salaries have to be 29,000 or less. You can't live on this island for $29,000 a year. It's just not possible. So now we've got a majority of our schools where the kids are receiving free and reduced. And so, our population here on this Island is getting poorer. Farmer and activist, respondent 3, talks about the importance of tax credit to local farmers, and is up-in-arms over the fact that the department of agriculture does not take the time to publicize these tax credits: I've been sending out these big blast emails about a meeting. So I'm the president of the Hawaii organic farmers association and we got a grant from the state department of agriculture to go around the state and inform these certified organic farmers that there's this amazing tax credit on the state level and the department of taxation and the department of agriculture, which are kind of working together in administering this tax credit. They didn't tell anybody about it. I didn't tell anybody that. Nobody even knew it was being implemented. I knew when they passed the law four years ago at the legislature, we were excited and I kept calling the legislator, the guy who introduced the bill. I kept calling his office. I'm like, when is this going to come into effect? He never called me back and then I find out a year ago that it's been, it's been in effect for two years and so I call this woman Sh heard, she's the, she's in the marketing branch at the department of

agriculture in Honolulu. Lappin she is of all the people in the, in the Hawaii department of agriculture, she probably knows the most about what organic farmers do. And she helped us with all sorts of different cost shares and stuff. So, she's probably the friendliest two organic farmers in the state. And I found out about this credit, it was too late to take it for 200 2018 when I found out about it. In fact, I lost $2,000 I would have $2,000 in my pocket if I had known about this credit cause that's how much state income tax I paid. So, I call her up. I said Sh, cause she's really good at informing the farmer. She sends out, she sends out 20 emails a day, any, any ag thing she gets, she sends it out to all the farmers. Really great. Sounds like Sh, why don't you tell us about this tax credit, the organic tax credit. And she says organic tax credit. She didn't know she works in the ag department. So, she said, you know, Una, they didn't want you to know. Clearly, they didn't want us to know, even though they budgeted $2 million a year to get this tax credit to organic farmers. So that in its sense in a sense is a subsidy organic local farmer, which is great. Um, I totally agree. We should have some subsidies. And I'm really big on carbon farming. Respondent 3 is not alone in pressing for awareness about tax credit. Several farmers such as respondents 7 and 5 agree. Other farmers such as respondent 2, lament about the heavy taxes, such as the state GE tax that farmers exclusively from the state of Hawaii must pay: Q: What are the challenges to this type of farming Off the top of my head the Hawaii GE tax. In the state of Hawaii, all people need to pay .4% of their income as GE tax straight to the state. A tax for the privilege of doing business in Hawaii. Every dollar you make, you have to pay a tax on it. For small struggling businesses this is what we’re struggling with. As evidenced by the conversation, this is of especial inconvenience to new and small to medium scale farmers, but essentially deters agriculture.

Chapter 3: Systemic issues 10.8

Invasive species and pests

In Hawaii imports account for approximately 85 percent of the food consumed throughout the islands, according to estimates by the Rocky Mountain Institute (Island of Hawaii Whole System Project Phase I Report, March 2007). Next to seed corn, the plant nursery industry is a thriving industry. Most of the plants sold are imported to Hawaii, and often bring with them a host of invasive species. Farmers often cite invasive species and pasts as the number one obstacle to establishing successful food systems. Respondent 2 is a farmer who runs a medium scale farm of about 20 acres. She is emphatic is citing invasive coffee berry borers as the number two challenge to farming, after the GE tax. Respondent 3 goes into some detail about the Poona nursery industry and pests known as the Austrailian Longhorn beetle, the Kochi frog and fire ants: So, the number one agricultural crop in the state is the seed corn companies that they have the highest value. Although we think it's rather overstated because they don't actually sell it here. They sell that corn, that corn is sold on the mainland. So, it's very overstated because they're going with the value of the crop way down the line. Anyway, they claim they're the number one. Number two is the nursery industry. So, Poona, which is where the land is super, super cheap, or the lava flow. Last year you knew about that, right? Where the lava flow last year Poona is the home of the nursery industry, so just miles and miles and miles of the, the shade houses with the black shade cloth and little plants inside, to sell to home Depot or whoever, you know, or to landscapers or whatever, you know, lots and lots and lots and lots of, lots of little plants and unfortunately they don't start them from their own little seeds or their own little cuttings. They import them. So, even though they quote unquote INSPECT know they don't inspect every

everyone, they're going to it probably just pull a sample out and inspect. So, Poona consequently is where is the gateway for every single invasive species we've gotten in the last 30 years. They all come into the nursery industry, do the importation of plants. This is our biggest, to me, this is our biggest thing. This is a worst thing that's happening, that's happened in the last 20 years and, and it's going to impact agriculture. So, we got the Kochi frog, they got the little fire ant, which is just devastating. It's not the fire and they have on the line. It's much, much, much worse. Um, I got the semis slug, which brings the rat lung worm disease. They got the, uh, there's a new one. There's a new one that could very well wipe out my chocolate and breadfruit trees, which are two of the biggest new up and coming food crops. It's called the Australian Longhorn beetle. Oh, we just keep getting new ones all the time and pretty soon we're not gonna be able to grow anything. It's really problematic. That to me, to me it's the number one issue. But anyway, I think though, I'd say those, well, yeah, the invasive species thing in Hawaii is the worst, in my opinion. That's the worst thing. That's the thing that's going to kill us all or not kill us. But I mean, that's going to kill agriculture. Respondent 5 illuminates this topic further as she discusses the diseases brought in from the mainland that destroy corn crops, and a new invasive species known as the avocado lacewing beetle: Q: So, I was talking to respondent 3 and she, her primary concern was in the importation of invasive species. Do you think the field trials could be, have something to do with that? No, no. Some of the corn varieties that they brought in here from the mainland had diseases that we had not seen before. So especially the corn blights, there's an, there's a whole bunch of different ones. And so, you know, they would start growing in a certain area and then everyone around them would get this corn disease that they'd never seen before from bringing in varieties

that had the disease from the mainland. Um, we have a great, or had a great corn breeding program at the university of Hawaii, but they didn't want to use those varieties, um, to experiment with. So they brought in their own varieties and in some cases it was a disaster. But as far as invasive species, they come into the containers. The number of containers that come into Hawaii every day is astounding. I forget how many thousands. Yeah. Because I think about 60% of our, more than that, 80% of the food Mmm. That is consumed on the Island comes in on or more. Yeah. Or more. And um, pretty much everything we use comes down from somewhere else either. So, I mean, a lot of the containers, they're not just offloaded in Honolulu, they're also off put on smaller ships and come over here and offloaded here too. And then their truck to places all over the place. So like Walmart here, I mean, sometimes like in the holiday season, in the Walmart parking lot, there'll be 50 containers sitting there that they've offloaded that you know, into their stores. And there's, we don't have any, any way of looking at what's in these containers. So, and we just got a new invasive species yesterday. Yes. Yeah. The department of agriculture is saying we've never seen before. The avocado lacewing beetle that eats the avocado trees. Okay. I'm somewhere from Florida. Okay. Where did, how did that get in and no one knows it doesn't come in with tourists. It doesn't come in and suitcases, it doesn't come in airplanes. Um, he comes in with all of the goods that we ship in cause we, we make so little of our needs here that we just end up shipping in things from all over the world. It's a problem. The more, the more we can manufacture, recycle, use, grow, the healthier this land will be, the less we bring in, the healthier it will be. In this way, we find that the issue of encouraging local production is closely intertwined with that of warding off invasive species. Invasive species cannot be tackled unless Hawaii makes the concerted effort to grow and consume local produce. There is an overwhelming 100% preference for locally grown produce (fig. 7), however this needs to be reflected in the provision

of government incentives for local growers, and the commercial preferencing of local produce in supermarkets.

10.9

Lack of labor

As discussed in section 7.6, according to findings recorded by the USDA, there has been a steady drop in wages over the years, this drop in wages corresponds to the drop in the number of people employed as agricultural labor over the years. When corroborating the literature with interviewees, several concerns were revealed about the lack of high-quality agricultural labor, and of the challenges faced by farmers as they struggle to pay the market rate for labor. As detailed in section 7.6, several farmers resort to crafting homestay programs, where the labor is given room and board in exchange for working on the land. This is a system that is illegal in states such as California, but remains a grey are in Hawaii. Labor's a big deal. Labor's a big problem. So that's why I use like tank work, exchange, woof kind of volunteer ish labor. So the people that come to my farm that I have a house, I let them live in, I buy all their food for them and I pay them to pay coffee just because I want the best. And you know, I give them probably the best deal that there is because most people just do a straight work exchange where you, you work a certain amount of hours and you just get room and board. But I also pay them. They (farmers in Hawaii) retire, they've got a pension or a five oh oneK or you know, 401k or you know, they, they're, they're, they're independently wealthy. When they bought the coffee farm because they thought it was a romantic idea, kind of like buying a winery or something. So, you

got a lot of independent, you've got a lot of um, gentleman, farmer types. Nobody really wants to pick their own coffee. It's a lot of work. It's a tremendous amount of work. So, they bring in a crew and for about the last 35 years, the crews have been Latino. My friend Bob Wrigley was the first one to bring Latinos over here in the early eighties. Started with Nicaragua, because we didn't have Latino farm workers here at that time. And um, so they've been coming here a long time, some legal, some illegal, you know, and a lot of them has settled here and raised their families. And um, but you know, in the last three years with the immigration crackdown, we have less, less and less pickers. There's less and less. There's less and less labor and there's more and more people planting like big farms, big coffee, 100 acres, 200 acres. Super imbalanced between production and labor. Um, last two years, I know there've been a lot of farms that didn't get their coffee even picked cause there was no one to do it. So, the guys that are here, there's very few of them. And instead of picking the only the red beans, which is what we do, which means we have to go through a farm way more times, the guys that come through your farm, they're doing a lot of just stripping right down the brand. So, they're getting the ripe ones. Cause coffee goes from green to yellow to pink to red. So, they’re getting, the red ones, but they're getting a lot of the half ripe ones too because they're in a hurry. There's so few of them and there's so much coffee to fake that they can't come to your farm very often. So, they have to pick this stuff. That's what we call half ripe. It's not as good because if you measure the sugar, the brix content of a fully red bean, it's a higher Brix content than an orange bean or a pink bean, you know, I mean not, it's very logical. We all know that our riper fruit is sweeter than an unripe fruit. And it's just so, it's not rocket science. It's really just, you know, well, we're lucky because we're a small, we're very small, so we're like a little boutique farm. Every little thing we do, we get to do with like intense detail because we don't have a lot. But if you're a real big farm, you know, so yeah, labor is a big problem. Real big problem.

Recently, the government has begun to crackdown on the use of illegal immigrants as farm labor. This essentially protects laborers from being exploited by farmers, and also serves to ensure that the market rate wage is paid to labor. More about this topic is discussed in conversation with respondent 5: So, the legislature will buy a large parcel of land and then create small farm leases on it. And really the only people that are interested in those leases are, um, immigrants who the state is not happy with how they farm because they're used to farming from wherever they come from. They don't speak English. They, they're used to farming in ways that are, um, they think are too toxic for here. And so there has been a lot of problems finding young farmers and beginning farmers. They don't want to go on these lands, these state lands over there. So, it's, they have tried to buy some parcels and create leaseholds and it actually hasn't worked. and then, and then you've got the labor problem. You know, Hawaii was, um, at the, the federal, um, justice, the justice department at the federal level came into Hawaii maybe four years ago and was going to indict all of the large land on all the large farms. There's only maybe three or four, but they were going to indict them all because their labor was being brought in from Thailand. People's, um, passports were being taken from them. They were being forced to live in containers. They weren't given their passports back. Um, they were kind of like slaves actually. And when that whole thing got exposed a few years ago, it was so interesting. It's like this is, this is what it takes to produce food in Hawaii. We have to do; we have to treat our workers like this in order to have food on our table. This isn't right. And in the end, the governor pretty much, or somebody, I think it was Barack Obama actually being from Hawaii, that somebody got to the justice department and they ended up not indicting these farms. They told them don't do it anymore and we'll let you go this time. But labor is a huge problem here. Again, no housing, a worker housing that is because we don't have worker housing policies, protocols,

um, and laws at the County levels for that kind of housing. And this is something that has been talked about here since I can remember. The lack of enthusiastic high-quality labor is not one that can be solved easily. It is not quite as simple as creating government subsidies for agricultural labor, as it would be impossible for the government to subsidize all agricultural labor. Perhaps farmers such as respondent 2 have stumbled upon a feasible solution by allowing for labor to become equal partners in the farming operation, thus effectively giving individuals a huge incentive to work hard and innovatively quest after sustainable agricultural solutions. There is no labor, nobody wants to do the work, everyone wants good wholesome food. I am first and foremost a father, and then a farmer. Matt (one of the partners at the farm) was a farmer who was working on a farm that was blown up by a volcano (Covered with lava), so he came to work with us. He has IT experience, solar experience. You have to be a mechanic to be a farmer. So, Matt has been a really really important addition to the practice.

10.10

Low cost of food in competing markets

In section 7.10 we look at the reasons why the papaya industry in Hawaii, has been challenged by competing markets. Oftentimes Hawaiian fruits are handled by several middlemen before they reach the consumer, unlike produce sold by large corporations which have tighter supply-chain operations. Hence, they command a lower price when they reach the end user, which ultimately often does not cover the costs associated with production. This is where competing markets, such as farms on the U.S. mainland have an advantage, as produce does not have to be transported long distances to reach the end market. This is farmer respondent 5’s take on globalization: 69

Globalization has done a good job. Right. I mean, globalization has said you don't really need to anymore. Take care of yourself. Whoever can produce something for the lowest cost, that's what you should buy. We'll bring it in from other countries and then you, you can, you know, be better for you. It'll cost less, but that's not really true. It can't be. Respondent 7, a farmer, talks about the reasons why Hawaii is unable to compete with markets like Brazil and India: So, we have um, uh, influx of retired people moving to Hawaii who they may like the idea of having their name on a bag of coffee that they sell and, but they don't do, uh, do anything about it. They can't, it's not sustainable for them. So, some of them were here for five years and then they leave all their dotcom money's gone. They don't understand cost of production, which is a pet peeve of mine. I mean, I don't go to farmer's markets because I wind up yelling at everybody. You can't sell six Meyer lemons for a dollar when it costs you 27 cents to produce one based on $12 an hour labor. When we did the studies, now it's $15 an hour, which is still not a lot, but that's they, they just don't, don't get it. It's too cheap. Yeah, they're selling them too cheap, yeah. I mean when you see, you can't compare our structure in India structure obviously, but I talked to the coffee growers in Wayanad and they complained about, you know, the cost of labor going up to $4 an hour. Well if agriculture labor, and it was $4 an hour in India, they took out a hundred thousand acres of cashew trees on a border area, Kerala and Karnataka, um, because they couldn't compete with Brazil because they paid $4 a day. And between Mumbai and Poona they took out all the orchids on the, on the top row. The Southern road is all the Bollywood studios, but on the top road used to be all orchids. And they took those out because they couldn't compete with Thailand and pays, you know, $4 a week or some, something like that. And so, when I have to take the experiences

that I learned in India and Japan, where I studied and try to apply them here to help farmers with sustainability. Within the local market in Hawaii, respondent 7 talks about the preferencing of imported produce by supermarkets and the end consumer, hence imported produce commands a higher price. It was since October, 1908. Uh, California complained about possible fruit flies getting in, in Hawaii and there are approved treatments. There's a new one that's only two years old. Percenting only one type of avocado to specific States within, you know, a four-month range. But your portrait, it has to be inspected, you have to have traps, the packing house has to be special packing house. There's only two of them. and it's not worth it. And why would we? if you look at the USDA statistics, we grow and sell a million pounds of avocados locally and we import 4 million pounds. We import 22 million pounds of oranges. I have no idea why we even import bananas and papaya and things that grow wild here along the, along the road. But it's just part of the problem is if you, if you look at the wholesale price list from the wholesalers, what they're willing to pay and sell local produce for and what they're willing to pay and sell imported produce before. Well, I'll just give you an example. So the one wholesaler will pay farmers 60 anywhere between 60 cents and a dollar for avocados that are sold for a $1.49 for imported avocados, they pay a $1.45 and sell them for $3.99 so you're making two and a half times more money off the imports than you do off the local. Like you go into the grocery store and you see, Oh, these are the California oranges, Mexican avocados. You know, they may have some local stuff, then it's in the back corner. Respondent 7 also looks at the relationship between higher rates of local produce and the Jones Act, touting the Act as a reason for inflated prices.

Yeah, well the Jones act is, is definitely one because of the cost of inputs of, of to get fertilizers and to get the equipment, to get pots. Um, there's a loppers of big orange handled actually the black handle or the one next to it, it's $180 here or the pickers are $180 here. They’re $27 in Japan. So, by the time you get them here with the cost of shipping, they have to sell them for $180 and some places where usually they work on a 30% markup. Some places still want to work on a hundred percent markup, especially the small local stores because that's what they need to survive too. And the farmers, because they're not, they weren't born into farming. Most of them, most of them came here and retired or they got blinded by the lure of Kona coffee and um, they, they don't follow cost of production or they don't understand the amount of labor that it takes to be sustainable and in farming. And so that whole cost of production thing, that's an obstacle. But for me, it's just buying supplies are so much more here. I mean, when I go shopping, I shop in Japan. Everybody knows your plants are so expensive, much cheaper than Hawaii for those types of things. So, we were talking about the cost of trees, which was something that we could actually do something about. So, the cost of trees being 65 or $85 here, what do you think they'd be in an economy like Japan for let's say a grafted orange tree? I have no idea. $7, $3 Philippines or Malaysia, 75 cents in India at the nursery. Some trees are more, but that's the average, especially for Jackfruit, um, which is getting popular worldwide now. So, it's um, being able to supply things, produce locally. So, we have to learn how to maybe utilizing the ocean to come up with more fertilizers or our own rather than having to import bag of fertilizer from Japan and paying three times more because of the Jones act for it. Then they have the pay in California. The interconnectedness of the inflated costs of Hawaiian produce, the high costs of land and labor and the Jones Act, cannot be denied. It is impossible to solve the problem of lowering costs of production without tackling these issues simultaneously. In this way, it becomes impossible to compete with markets that offer lower prices for the same goods. Perhaps the first

step is to focus on creating a local cycle of production and consumption, followed by looking to the Government for support through incentives and tax breaks.

XI.

Discussion

When comparing mt findings through the research with the literature review, there were several factors that remained consistent with the literature, however, the in-depth semistructured interviews, also revealed several new findings. Through the literature, three factors emerged as the top obstacles to establishing resilient food systems in Hawaii. The initial formulation of my thesis was thus centered around these three factors, namely the Jones Act, the impact of large-scale crop monocultures and the military land holdings. However, while interviewing farmers and researchers alike, the top three obstacles identified were the lack of labor, invasive species and pests and the cost of land. The latter, is then correlated to the Jones Act and the degree of land ownership under the Bishop Trust, the military, the Government, large scale crop monocultures and also the restrictions attached to land leases. The primary challenges in my research were the lack of available data on the land ownership under the military and the Bishop trust. In addition, interviewees were reluctant to discuss these two topics along with the Jones Act, often claiming that these were not in fact issues to contend with. However, when made aware of Justin Lewis’s research that indicates that the cost of produce is cost inflated by an approximated 61% with the Jones Act in place, respondents were far less amenable to the Act, or in some cases refused to believe that this could be a possibility. The purpose of this research is to shed light on the main obstacles to establishing resilient food systems such that new research may dive deeper into the topic and even discover more inventive means of overcoming these obstacles. In particular, the topics of the land

ownership under the Bishop trust, the military land holdings and the effects of the Jones Act, primarily require more quantitative and qualitative research in the area.

XII.

Conclusion

On embarking on this journey, and combing through the literature to construct my background research, it was not possible to fully comprehend how complex the issue really was. I imagined that understanding the obstacles to establishing resilient food and farming systems in Hawaii would be a fairly straightforward process. However, when I got to the stages to interpreting online survey data, conducting interviews and analyzing online GIS databases, that I began to understand how complex the issue really is. I hope that this research will further the efforts of Urban planners to push for more subsidies for farmers in Hawaii. Considering that vast tracts of land are under Government land ownership; perhaps urban planning professionals can begin to formulate action plans to make land available to farmers at a subsidized rate. In addition, during new zoning revisions, it would be advised that planning professionals remain cognizant of the reality that land under agricultural cultivation is shrinking, and thus allocate more land to the purpose of agriculture. Planning professionals in the Hawaii department of emergency management may find this research especially pertinent and use it as a document to inform efforts to create a more disaster resilient system of food production, which would be extremely advantageous in the event of a natural disaster. In terms of research efforts, researchers might use this paper to inform future research, especially related to the Jones Act, land ownership under the military and the Bishop trust and the impacts of large-scale crop monocultures. The thesis proposal identified three topics that I would dive deeper into exploring, these were, large-scale crop monocultures, the military presence on the island and the Jones Act. However, as I began to unravel more and more information through the research, the topic expanded vastly. The thesis now includes several obstacles to establishing resilient food

systems, and more importantly many of them are intertwined with one another, none can be dealt with in isolation. While all of the issues discussed in section 10 serve as obstacles to establishing resilient food systems on the island, through the research I learnt that farmers cite the lack of labor, invasive species and the high cost of land, as the top three barriers. Which is a contrast from the forerunners in the existing literature, which include the military presence, the Jones Act, the Bishop trust, and large-scale crop monocultures. In concluding there is wide consensus established during all three stages of the research, i.e., the background literature and mapping exercises, the online survey and the interviews, that the switch from consumption of imported produce to consumption and production of local produce will assuage a host of existing issues. This topic has not been listed as one of the obstacles, as it forms a thread that runs through the entire narrative. Hence, I would conclude, that establishing local supply and encouraging small to medium-scale mixed cropping, with a focus on organic farming and permaculture systems could pave the way for more successful farming operations on the island of Hawaii.

XIII.

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The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper Manhattan, New York Urban Planning Studio | Spring 2019 | GSAPP Columbia University Mariya Chekmarova, Christine Ghossoub, Kari Gao, Jake Golvin, Raissah Kouame, Lorraine Liao, Shiyu Ma, Kirthana Sudhakar, Da Wu, Zheng Xin, Xuantong Zhang Instructors: Ethel Sheffer & Sybil Wa TA: Magda Maaoui

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CONTENTS

Executive Summary

1. Introduction

1.1 The Supertalls Changing Manhattan’s Skyline 2. The Range of Issues

7 14

2.1 Research Scope

2.2 Supertall Attributes

2.3 Local Stakeholders

2.4 How Have Stakeholders Taken Action? 3. Our Findings and Recommendations

20 26

3.1 Capitalization of the Regulatory Framework

3.2 Urban Fabric and Built Environment

Appendix

a. Interviews

b. Shadow Studies

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Executive Summary Over the past decade, New York City has experienced a booming luxury condominium market. According to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), during the three-year forecast period of 2015-2018 there were 2,975 condominium units under construction in the Borough of Manhattan. Of these units, 57% were all expected to arrive on the market at a price of $1 million and above. Additionally, HUD reported a total of 40,550 “other vacant units that might return to the market” during this same time. While the majority of all new condominium construction is made up of properties worth over $1 million, a significant minority of 7% were expected to be listed at a value exceeding $4 million. One of these buildings set a new nationwide record for the most expensive residential property in the history of the United States of America. On January 23rd, the penthouse of 220 Central Park South was sold to hedge fund manager, Kenneth C. Griffin, for $238 million. This report, with its focus on a comprehensive documentation of the landscape of post-2010 luxury supertall residential development, seeks to provide a holistic overview of how these properties have been developed and how our client, the Office of the Borough President of Manhattan, can promote significant reforms to the existing regulatory framework. New York City is no stranger to tall buildings. Supertall buildings like the Empire State and the Chrysler Building are celebrated members of the iconic New York City skyline. However, with the proliferation of a new generation of super slender, tall and luxury residential buildings, it is our role as urban planners to assess the 4 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | Spring 2019

economic, environmental and urban design impacts that they produce. We analyzed twelve residential buildings clustered in four different neighborhoods across Manhattan: the Upper West Side, Central Park South, Lower Manhattan and Two Bridges. Our goal was to provide an in depth overview of the various impacts these structures have on the local community, economic development, zoning mechanisms and surrounding environment. Based on our research, we present several key reforms which can be pursued by local and statewide officials in mitigating any major externalities these supertall buildings may impose on the Borough of Manhattan. The planning process is an inclusive endeavour, so before producing final conclusions and recommendations we made a concerted effort to analyze the arguments from pro-development advocates like the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) as well the preservationists, such as the Municipal Art Society (MAS). Our final conclusion does not demand a moratorium on these buildings or advocate for the continued as-of-right development framework that the majority of these structures use to their advantage. Instead, we advocate for well balanced and justified reforms which, with the help of local professionals and advocacy groups, are incremental and necessary in order to enhance transparency and public participation. Therefore, our final recommendations provide an actionable pathway to sound and justified policies which, if enacted, can provide a more inclusive regulatory framework and seek to promote a future urban fabric which is evenly developed and informed by enhanced public review. Spring 2019 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | 5

1. Introduction 1.1 The Supertalls Changing Manhattan’s Skyline

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1.1 The Supertalls Changing Manhattan’s Skyline The classification of a supertall building, based on the Council of Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) is a height threshold of 984 feet (300 meters). By the year 2022, it is expected that twenty new commercial, residential, and mixed use supertalls will be completed throughout Manhattan. However, the scope of our analysis includes buildings from 650 feet and above, as we believed the height classification

is arbitrary and ineffective. The inclusion of buildings above 650 feet ensured a comparative analysis that clarified whether there was a significant difference between a building above and below the 984 foot height threshold. The mapped buildings in Figures 1 and 2, show that the phenomenon is occurring in districts where tall buildings are common due to zoning regulations.

Rising Supertalls in Manhattan

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Completed Supertalls The first post-2010 supertall building was the newly redeveloped One World Trade Center (285 Fulton St.), which topped out in 2013. It was soon followed by One57 (157 West 57th St.) which, completed in 2014, became the first supertall residential building in the history of New York City. As of today, One57 and 432 Park Avenue (completed in 2015) are the only occupied residential supertall buildings in Manhattan. Topped Out Supertalls The four supertalls that are topped out but are not yet occupied include three buildings in the Special Hudson Yards District. This special district was part of a large scale plan which included a rezoning allowing for high density commercial and residential development. The inclusion of a new subway line and open space were integral aspects of the redevelopment plan. Since this development is unlike the rest of residential supertalls, we excluded it from our overall analysis. However, the MoMa Expansion Tower (53 West 53rd St.) is part of the Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMa) expansion plan. It will provide 139 new luxury condominium units and an additional 50,000 square feet of publicly accessible gallery space on its ground floors. 8 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | Spring 2019

Under Construction Supertalls Two out of the three residential supertalls under construction will establish themselves as the highest in the entire borough of Manhattan. Steinway Tower (111 West 57th St.) which, through an adaptive reuse strategy, integrated the landmarked Steinway Hall as a podium for its base. It will rise to a total 1,428 feet in height and provide only 60 new condominium units. Central Park Tower (217 West 57th St.), once completed in 2019, will become New York City’s tallest residential building at 1,550 feet. The first residential supertall in the history of Lower Manhattan, 45 Broad Street will top out at 1,200 feet. It will provide 150 new condominium units and a new Nobu Hotel.

Proposed Supertalls In June 2017, following an extensive review through the city’s Uniform Land Use Procedure (ULURP), the City Planning Commission officially approved the Greater East Midtown zoning text amendment paving the way for an injection of new Class A office space to be developed within midtown. As a result, several supertall office buildings have been proposed in the area. The tallest tower currently proposed by Harry Macklowe (Macklowe Properties) is Tower Fifth. If built, this new commercial tower will be constructed directly across from St. Patrick’s Cathedral and top out at 1,556 feet, cementing itself as the tallest building in the history of New York City (by roof height).

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Figure 1: Ten Commercial Supertalls above 984 ft

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Figure 2: Ten Residential and Mixed-use Supertalls above 984 ft

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2. The Range of Issues 2.1 Research Scope 2.2 Supertall Attributes 2.3 Local Stakeholders 2.4 How Have Stakeholders Taken Action?

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2.1 Research Scope From their height, to their form, to the ways in which they embed themselves or not into the New York City urban fabric - the supertall is a new building typology that is dominating the planning scene as both an innovative and obstructive structure. Supertall buildings have been the subject of much debate, from the shadows that they are casting on Central Park, to the ultra-luxurious market that they cater to. Their rise is, in some cases, attributed to global market demands and advances in engineering design. Over the past five years, various opinions and conclusions on the impacts of supertall developments in New York City have been produced. Our scope aims to produce a more focused analysis of specific supertalls through four lenses. The majority of commercial supertalls are located in the newly established and planned Special Hudson Yards District, the newly rezoned East Midtown District and the Financial District. Meanwhile, residential supertalls are clustered around Central Park South, and new towers will soon be completed in Lower Manhattan. Additionally, the first ever residential supertall in Brooklyn, 9 Dekalb Avenue, was approved earlier

this year with JDS Development Group. Since they are a more recent phenomenon, we chose to focus our research on 12 residential and mixed use buildings in Manhattan, located on the Upper West Side, Central Park South, Lower Manhattan, and Two Bridges. We included 4 buildings below the height of 984 feet for a comparative analysis. With our subject of study narrowed down, we analyzed the impact of supertalls on the environment and urban fabric. The study also included an analysis of the regulatory mechanisms that supertalls abide by and the property taxes paid by the buildings. These four lenses make up a holistic analysis of the twelve buildings, allowing us to provide an objective overview of their effects and find realistic opportunities for reform. Our ultimate goal was to guide supertall development through an inclusive and transparent process that ensures a livable built environment. These two priorities have guided our research and formed the foundation of our final recommendations.

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Figure 3: 12 Residential and Mixed Use Buildings above 650’

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The 12 buildings served as our subjects of study.

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2.2 Supertall Attributes Since the buildings in our study area share the common factors of height and categorization of use, we analyzed their other attributes in order to expand the definition of a supertall.

Height Threshold

984 feet Used as a benchmark, our study included buildings above 650’. High slenderness ratio We’ve observed a high slenderness

Architectural Features

ratio that is exclusive to residential supertalls. The steinway tower, for example, has one of the highest slenderness ratios at 1:24. Mechanical floors The use of mechanical floors to increase the height of a building has been cited as loophole since developments like Central Park Tower use them excessively and above average height. It has also been the reason for a zoning text amendment that aims to close this loophole. Glass facades Most of the 12 supertalls we’ve studied use glass facades, which creates a signature look amongst the towers but has negative environmental impacts. High floor to ceiling heights These luxury towers contain above average floor to ceiling heights. In 432 Park Ave, they are 12.5 feet whereas typically residential buildings have a height of 9’

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Steinway Tower has a slenderness ratio of 1:24.

Central Park Tower has more than six mechanical voids.

Construction Technology

Stiffer frames Stiffer frames are required to support their slender forms. Special elevators and core design A central core design enables a single elevator shaft within the building. Fire safety The buildings take extra safety precautions with steel structures that act as fire retardants.

Frame and structure design of supertalls.

Geared towards a luxury market

Pricing & Market

The residential supertalls are built for the ultra-luxury market, with unit prices upwards of $120 million. Fewer units The buildings themselves have floor plans that consist of one to two units, contrary to the traditional floor plans that have many more.

Regulatory Mechanism

Fewer units in 432 Park Ave compared to traditional residential buildings.

Zoning Lot Mergers Increase the size of the lot and allow for more buildable floor area. FAR Bonuses An exchange where the developer provides public amenities in exchange for floor area. FAR bonuses of 432 Park Ave. Spring 2019 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | 17

2.3 Local Stakeholders While the stakeholders involved in the development process of supertall buildings are more extensive than this diagram covers, we distinguished the specific people and organizations that have a direct stake in the process into three categories: the community and advocacy groups, the developers (the private sector), and the government (the public sector). These stakeholders have different roles and motivations in the development process, and in effect, varying perspectives and opinions on the buildings. Through participant observation of local community board meetings, we were granted insight into a wide variety of opinions on the future of

supertall development, particularly their impact on local green and open space. This was in direct contrast to the viewpoint of several development companies who claim that the environmental impacts of supertall development do not have significant impacts on the local community. Lastly, through analysis of the three branches of both the statewide and municipal governments, we observed current legislation supporting the regulation of these developments. Our goal in including the perspectives of all three parties was to examine existing regulation and promote an actionable path forward for our client, the Manhattan Borough President, to take immediate measures in establishing further reforms.

Real Estate Developers The three main developers of residentation supertalls are: 1. Extell Development Company, developed the first residential Supertall in NYC and will now be completing the tallest residential supertall: Central Park Tower. 2. JDS Development Group is completing Steinway Tower and

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plans to begin construction of the first supertall residential development in the history of Brooklyn at 9 Dekalb Avenue. 3. Macklowe Properties developers of 432 Park Avenue and the planned Tower Fifth which will be the tallest building in the history of NYC.

City and State Government On the municipal level, we have emphasized the executive branch occupied by the Mayor, the legislative branch made up of 51 individual council members in charge of writing and passing new municipal laws and the advocate, our client, the Borough President of Manhattan. New York State Assemblymember Linda B. Rosenthal has a strong stance on further reforms pertaining to the regulation of mechanical space within buildings. New York State Senator Brad Hoylman has been highly involved in tax reform by enacting the ‘Progressive Mansion Tax’ included in the 2020 New York State Budget. Finally, Governor Andrew Cuomo has an interest in the legislation and fiscal effects of supertall developments.

Community Boards and Advocacy Groups The community boards that represent the areas where the 12 residential supertalls are located are CB1, 5 and 7. Alongside the three Manhattan Community Boards, several local advocacy groups have commented directly on the developments. The Real Estate Board of New York has advocated for mechanical voids as necessary aspects of supertall development. The Citizens Budget Commission has had a major stake in advocating for certain taxes that the city and state can enforce on these properties in order to increase economic development and tax revenue. Finally, neighborhood associations and preservation activists have argued for further restriction and increased community involvement in order to limit supertall development.

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Figure 4: Local Stakeholders

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2.4 How Have Stakeholders Taken Action? City and State Government Mechanical Voids Text Amendment The most contemporary issue, which was recently passed in a May 14th vote by the City Council is the Department of City Planning’s zoning text amendment on the restriction and regulation of mechanical voids to 25 vertical feet within all future buildings within New York City. We sat in on meetings for both Community Boards 5 and 7 during their review of the text amendment. The residents expressed that the regulation does not go far enough to close the loophole. When pressing the DCP for more stringent regulations, the DCP responded that over-regulation will harm the NYC economy. Developers believe that the use of large mechanical spaces are necessary not only in preventing the swaying effect of these tall buildings but can also reduce environmental impacts such as the structural voids within 432 Park Avenue which allow for the building to mitigate the wind tunnel effect produced by high winds.

“Artificially tall mechanical spaces that serve no purpose but to boost views of top-floor apartments violate the spirit of our zoning regulations.” -Mayor Bill de Blasio

Community Boards and Advocacy Groups “From what we understand of what’s been assembled, we don’t see how a 775-foot building is legal.” -Sean Khorsandi, Landmark West!

Real Estate Developers “Every mechanical floor, has equipment necessary for the building to function.” -Harry Macklowe “There is one void and everything else is truly necessary mechanical space, amenity space and highceiling retail space for the first Nordstrom in New York City.” -Gary Barnett

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Shift from the Pied-à-Terre Tax to the Progressive Mansion Tax Taxation and real estate tax reform is an issue which has been outlined as a priority by all members of the political spectrum. Both the pro-development REBNY and non-partisan CBC have advocated for the city and state to address this issue in a swift and productive manner. The issue of property tax reform has also been embraced by local lawmakers. With the Mayor and City Council Speaker Corey Johnson establishing the NYC Advisory Commission on Property Tax Reform. Established in May of last year this public body has yet to hold a single of its 10 public meetings. Along with transparency of zoning tools we hope that the Borough President can be informed from our analysis on this issue and press the local government to act expeditiously in addressing this concern.

Community Boards and Advocacy Groups “We are appreciative that State leaders did not move forward with a misguided recurring pied-a-terre tax that was not well-thought out and had the potential to have significant

adverse impacts on job creation and property tax revenues. An overhaul of the property tax system must be done thoughtfully.” -Real Estate Board of New York “It is true many of the homes that would be subject to a pied-à-terre tax are undertaxed due to New York City’s flawed property tax structure; however, the extensive disparities in that system should be addressed through comprehensive reform, not another piecemeal approach.” -Citizens Budget Commissions

City and State Government “To be the fairest big city, you need a fair tax system. For too long, New York City taxpayers have had to grapple with a property tax system that is too opaque, too complex, and just feels unfair. New Yorkers need property tax reform, and this advisory commission will put us on the road to achieve it.” -Mayor Bill de Blasio

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Environmental Impacts: Intermittent Shadow Effects The main environmental impact highlighted by local community boards is the Shadow impact of new luxury supertall residential development. This topic was a key and hotly contested debate of the ongoing “Accidental Skyline” report authored by the Municipal Art Society. Developers have a differing opinion and have made it clear that due to the high slenderness ratios of their new developments while the shadows cast may be longer they are skinnier and their narrow stature actually helps alleviate the severity of residential supertall shadow impacts.

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Community Boards and Advocacy Groups “Megatowers will wall off Central Park”; “Central Park is a front yard, not a backyard.” -Clayton Smith, Vice Chair of Community Board 5

Primary Real Estate Developers “...the building (One 57)’s slender frame and seasonal changes wouldn’t make the shadows a serious problem.”; “[The shadow] will only be for a few minutes.” -Gary Barnett, Extell Development

Urban Fabric: Neighborhood Impacts

Primary Real Estate Developers

In terms of the urban fabric, local community board members have argued that they feel disconnected from the development process and do not have a stake in determining what types of buildings are developed within their local communities. This sentiment was a major foundation of our analysis into the planning process and zoning tools which allow for maximization of building height and will be addressed in our final recommendation to the Borough President’s Office.

“The existing building was obsolete and had many maintenance problems. The bigger issue is how to deal with obsolete buildings in the city. It would be replaced with a tower that was twice the height and 25 percent larger, with two glass-walled apartments on most floors, almost all with park views.” -Veronica W. Hackett Managing Partner of the Clarett Group

Community Boards and Advocacy Groups “Across from a very beautiful cathedral that we very much cherish. Just imagine all of a sudden, you’re going to have an enormous glass tower that is going to be perched over there.” - Layla Law-Gisiko, Chair of Community Board 5

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3. Our Findings 3.1 Capitalization of the Regulatory Framework 3.2 Urban Fabric and Built Environment

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3.1 Capitalization of the Regulatory Framework

Zoning Mechanisms Most of the buildings in our study were developed as-of-right, and did not go through any kind of public review in order to obtain permits to build. This pro-development process enables the city to increase its commercial and residential housing stock to satisfy demand. The buildings in our study abide by the city’s strict and complex Zoning Resolution which governs land use and development. They go through the as-of-right process by submitting an application to the Department of Buildings for property development and include a ZD1 Zoning Diagram to show that the building is in compli-

ance with applicable zoning codes. It is usually the developer’s architect that submits the ZD1 and it is a DOB Plan Examiner, usually an architect, engineer, or urban planner, who approves the analysis. This procedure is discretionary but the documents are made available on the DOB website after they are approved and filed. In our study, we noticed that while supertalls comply with regulatory frameworks, they occasionally use mechanisms differently than their intended use. We identified two of these mechanisms that supertalls utilize to achieve their increased floor area because they are not only the most commonly used, but also have the potential for reform.

Development Process

Spring 2019 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | 27

Research Methodology To study how the 12 buildings complied with the zoning regulations, we analyzed their ZD1 Zoning Diagrams and Zoning Lot Descriptions from the Department of Finance. These two sets of documents provided details about the size of the zoning tax lot and the zoning lot mergers. In combination with other sources, such as news reports that were cross checked with official documents, we compiled the details of the processes the 12 buildings used in acquiring additional floor area. The acquisition of floor area is the main factor which enables these buildings to maximize their height therefore, this process played a guiding role in our attempts to recommend comprehensive reforms to existing zoning regulations . The most common mechanisms used in supertall development in order to achieve additional floor area are Zoning Lot Mergers and FAR Bonuses in exchange for public amenities.

ACRIS became a primary source for information regarding property documents.

BISWEB provided an overview of the property profile, including zoning lot mergers.

We utilized ZoLa to get official details about the buildings.

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Zoning Lot Mergers Zoning Lot Mergers combine contiguous tax lots within a block and allow for the free movement of floor area within the merged lot. ZLMs are filed with the DOB once two parties that own the two tax lots come to an agreement amongst themselves. ZLMs were introduced in the 1990’s, and were intended to preserve open space and landmarks. They were typically used for small transfers where one building was not using all of its allotted FAR and could transfer that floor area to an adjacent lot. We observed that some of the most controversial supertalls, such as Central Park Tower, Steinway Tower, and One57 utilized this mechanism to assemble larger zoning tax lots, and in effect, gain more floor area.

more than 10 lots. Some argue that the mechanism preserves the buildings in the zoning lots that were merged, but this also means that only a single developer has gathered the development rights for that entire zoning lot. In the future, the purchase of those unused development rights from that developer will be purchased at market rate, yielding them a significant profit. For example, in 2013 Vornado Realty Trust (who constructed 220 Central Park South) paid Extell Development Company $194 million for a parcel on 225 Central Park South which amounted to 137,000 zoning sq ft.

It is also important to note that while the size of the zoning lot for the building has increased, the actual floor plate remains small in order to make use of the floor area and maximize height. The diagrams pictured here show the number of zoning lots that were merged in order to increase the building’s floor area. Out of the twelve buildings we studied, eight utilized more than two ZLMs and four merged

Zoning Lot Merger

Spring 2019 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | 29

Total Lot Mergers Per Tower

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FAR Bonuses The city has adopted mechanisms that allow real estate developer’s to gain additional floor area by providing public amenities in exchange. This is a tradeoff which allows the city to gain necessary resources that the developer can provide out of pocket. Of the 12 supertalls, three utilized this mechanism to obtain additional floor area. Steinway Tower / 111 West 57th. St. JDS Development Group contributed $9 million to an affordable housing building at 211 West 28th Street in exchange for 20,002 sq. ft. of floor area. Together with The Witkoff Group, they subsidized 23 of the 37 units in the building. For JDS Development Group, the cost of additional square footage gained was $445 per square foot. 432 Park Ave. Macklowe Properties and CIM Group gained an additional 68,940 sq. ft. of floor area in exchange for a Privately Owned Public Space with a size of 6,134 sq. ft. While the public space is much needed in midtown, the building received eleven times the floor area it had provided as a park.

Affordable Housing at 211 West 28th. Street 45 Broad St. In exchange for two elevators at the Wall Street and Broad Street subway stops, 45 Broad Street will receive an additional 70,000 sq. ft. of floor area. The two elevators will ensure that the subway stops are ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant. With only a quarter of the city’s subway stops adhering to ADA accessibility, the MTA is struggling to make improvements to approximately 472 stations.

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Property Taxes and Economic Development

Economic Output of 432 Park Avenue Penthouse

The second sector in need of regulatory reform is New York City’s municipal property tax formula. Significant reforms have not taken place since 1993 and our research has indicated that the city needs to act quickly in promoting a more robust property tax formula in order to maximize economic development. Our research began by analyzing the economic development that these new structures promote on an individual unit basis, we then expanded this analysis to all six residential supertall’s located south of Central Park, and then provided an in depth analysis of how each local and statewide stakeholder has responded to these issues, concluding on how the Manhattan Borough President can press local officials to act in an expeditious manner.

In 2015, the penthouse of 432 Park Avenue was purchased by Saudi Arabian Prince Fawaz Alhokair for $95 million. The building and unit are not subscribed to any individual tax abatement or financial incentive. That being said, if the unit was taxed at the statewide average rate of 1.65% or even the citywide average rate of 0.8% it would produce an annual tax revenue of $15.675 million and $7.6 million respectively. However, after accessing its 2018 final property tax bill through the New York City Department of Finance’s (DOF) public records, we uncovered that it only produces $179,000 of annual tax revenue for the city. Therefore, it is taxed at an effective rate of only 0.00188%, a dimunation of approximately 538 times it original market value. This final rate is 425 times less than the average property tax rate of the four combined New York City property tax classes. $95 million Penthouse State Average $15.675 Million

City Average $7.6 Million Final Property Tax $79,000 32 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | Spring 2019

Billionaires’ Row Total Economic Development In order to examine total economic output and development on a larger scale, we expanded our study area to all six luxury residential buildings which occupy Billionaires’ Row (432 Park Avenue, 157 West 57th Street, 111 West 57th Street, 217 West 57th Street, 220 Central Park South and 53rd West 53rd Street). The current four pronged tax structure spreads the tax burden unevenly along all properties in the Department of Finance’s #2 Tax Class. It groups income producing properties (apartments which are rented and whose annual revenue is taxed) in the same tax class as non-income producing properties such as condominiums. Our analysis which included all 6 supertall residential buildings south of Central Park South, concluded that while the real market value for all six buildings is $16.66 billion the final aggregated property revenue in terms of annual economic development is limited to just $34.8 million. Our conclusions and the need for significant reform are echoed by all sides of the political, social and economic spectrum. Industry professionals which include the current President of REBNY, John Banks have

argued that property tax reform is necessary and “an overhaul of the property tax system must be done thoughtfully.” While the non-partisan Citizens Budget Commission (CBC) have voiced their displeasure in the past for the push for a pied-a-terre tax they were quoted as saying that “the extensive disparities in [the tax] system should be addressed through comprehensive reform, not another piecemeal approach.” Finally, even the Mayor and City Council Speaker Corey Johnson are on board for a property tax overhaul. In May of 2018, they introduced the NYC Advisory Commission on Property Tax Reform with the Mayor stating that “for too long, New York City taxpayers have had to grapple with a property tax system that is too opaque, too complex, and just feels unfair.” However, while the commission was implemented over a year ago they have yet to hold a single of their 10 public meetings. We strongly encourage the Manhattan Borough President to push the commission to begin the public meeting process immediately, so that local stakeholders and the community can approach the need for comprehensive property tax reform in a timely and transparent manner.

Three determining factors of property tax rate 1. Real Market 2. Estimated 3. Billable value Market Value Assessed Value

$16.66 Billion

$613.5 Million

$276.1 Million

4. Final Property Tax Revenue

$34.8 Million

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3.2 Urban Fabric and Built Environment A. Impacts of demolition and new construction Characterized by a process of demolition and construction, supertalls are formed through replacement and alteration of old building structures. In our study, over 20 buildings were demolished which had served a variety of diverse uses to make way for 12 new residential buildings which included luxury hotels and ground floor retail at their base. The first supertall residential development in the history of New York City, One57 (157 West 57th Street) was completed in 2014 by Extell Development Company and demolished over seven buildings with mixed uses in order to make way for a large building site. The new structure (whose penthouse was sold to Michael Dell of Dell Computers for $100.5 million) has a gross floor area of over 800,000 square feet, but only houses 94 condominium units as well as a 210 room Park Hyatt Hotel on its lower levels. The second residential supertall (432 Park Avenue) completed in 2015 owes its current building site to the historic Drake Hotel, which was purchased in 2006 for $440 million and demolished in 2007. Although

the hotel only consisted of 21 floors, it provided a significant number of rooms for its guests (495). The hotel was never landmarked, but over the years it played host to several celebrities which included Jimi Hendrix, Muhammad Ali, Led Zeppelin, Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland. Although 432 Park Avenue consists of a total of 88 floors (more than four times the Drake Hotel) it only provides 125 condominium apartments (four times less than the 495 rooms which were located at the previous hotel). While it was difficult to assemble the lot mergers necessary to maximize the height of these buildings, but because their demolition practices did not impede on any local landmarks it was relatively easy for demolition to take place in a cost effective and timely manner. However, two other developments within our analysis had the difficult task of either promoting the preservation of adjacent landmarked structures through adaptive reuse or by purchasing their air rights. Both of these actions significantly altered landmarked structures but neither of them required any special permit to be procured by local developers as they were not landmark transfers.

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For example, in 2013 the Landmark Preservation Commission (LPC) approved that Extell Development Company construct a cantilever over the adjacent landmarked Art Students League building on 57th street. While the regulatory framework requires that significant alterations require a vote by the LPC this process does not include a formal vote or consultation with the local community board. Voicing her opposition, Community Board 5 Chair Layla Law-Gisiko was quoted at the meeting that “all of our beloved buildings are going to be overshadowed by cantilevers.” A major factor which contributed to the Art Students League accepting the terms of the cantilever was the $31.8 million dollars Extell provided them in exchange for the right to cantilever over the building as well as purchasing over 6,000 square feet of their development rights through a zoning lot merger. The preservation of landmarks is not just limited to adjusting the environment around them (i.e. cantilever above their roof). Earlier that same month the LPC held a vote on a neighboring building now known as Steinway Tower (111 West 57th Street). Designed by SHoP Architects and developed by JDS Development Group, the Steinway Tower which will be the

second tallest and slimmest residential building in the history of New York City was granted permission to incorporate the historic landmarked Steinway & Sons piano shop into its base entrance. Once again the local community voiced their frustration that they did not have a say in the confirmation process arguing that “it is not appropriate to turn this landmark into a doorway for another building.” Additionally, there are concerns about the new building which will top out at 1,438 but will only consist of 60 luxury residential condominiums. Another major concern of demolition and new construction is the growing concern of food deserts throughout Manhattan. According to the New York Times, “between 2005 and 2015, the city lost around 8 percent of its greengrocers... about 300 such stores closed during that time, about a third of them in Manhattan.” In 2012 Extell Development Company purchased a local Pathmark Grocery store in the Two Bridges neighborhood of Manhattan for approximately $150 million. While the national affordable grocer filed for bankruptcy in 2015, Extell had completed demolition of the site in 2014, with a promise to the local community board that once

Spring 2019 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | 35

217 West 57 St. (Central Park Tower) Cantilevers over Art Students League

157 West 57 St. (One 57) 432 Park Avenue

7 Buildings

The Drake Hotel

111 West 57 (Steinway Tower) Steinway Hall

Buildings that were demolished or altered development was complete of both the new 847 foot tall One Manhattan Square and off-site affordable housing development 249 Cherry Street, that a new affordable grocer would be established in the ground floor of the new affordable housing complex. However, as closings now begin at the luxury development located

As it is located directly adjacent to several NYCHA public housing superblocks, neighborhood residents require a nearby grocer to meet the needs of the local community. However, One Manhattan Square does not just impede the local physical makeup of the urban fabric, but it also promotes a new wave of luxury

at 250 South Street (One Manhattan Square) no new affordable grocer has yet to be established. This new grocery store is necessary for the livability and affordability of the local neighborhood.

development in an area where most residents live below the national poverty level. This area of study was the subject of our case study into the urban design principles of the local Two Bridges neighborhood.

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York City’s Department of City Planning (DCP).

B. Urban Design Principles The urban design of a city weaves together elements of the buildings, public space, streets, transportation, and landscape into a coherent organized structure. It plays a critical role in shaping the public realm which encompasses the social and public experience of a city. However, urban design is sensitive to change and can raise contentious issues of equity and livability. With each new supertall development, the social, economic, and cultural dynamics of the built environment undergo immense transformations and reconfigure existing spatial relationships. Given the controversy of supertall developments in New York City, there is a growing concern for quality ground level urbanism. Questions of “value” and the change of space that a supertall development imposes on the neighborhood arise and should be analyzed through the lens of urban design principles set forth by New

According to the DCP, good urban design should have “a concern for the livability of the neighborhood.” They include principles of: • Place: create and reinforce a sense of place • Equity: open and accessible to everyone • Detail: pays attention to the details • Comfort: makes people feel good To study whether a proposed or constructed supertall meets the DCP’s urban design principles would require a case by case study on each neighborhood undergoing transformation from a new supertall development. In this report, the newly constructed supertall, One Manhattan Square in the neighborhood of Two Bridges (with Census Tracts 25, 6, and 8 taken into consideration) will be used as the case study to examine if the development embraces these principles.

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C. Two Bridges Neighborhood: A Case Study of Urban Design Principles and Supertall Developments 1. Overview The neighborhood of Two Bridges is situated in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, overlooking the East River towards Brooklyn and is nested between the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan Bridge. It is largely composed of NYCHA public housing projects with a community median income below the national poverty line. Equity, affordability, and accessibility of public amenities is especially crucial for urban vitality in this neighborhood. With the newly constructed One Manhattan

Square northeast of Manhattan Bridge at the intersection of Cherry St. and Pike Slip, the towering 847 feet residential supertall overlooks its surrounding NYCHA developments which rise at a comparatively low average height of 99 feet. The striking difference in building height puts One Manhattan Square at a different scale with the neighborhood and explicitly redefines the neighborhood character. It also challenges the equity of waterfront and cityscape views for residents in the surrounding NYCHA developments.

Neighborhood Character: Height of Buildings 38 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | Spring 2019

2. Public and Private Amenities Currently, the neighborhood offers many public amenities including playgrounds, parks, green space, community centers, and public schools. In comparison to a typical residential tower development, many supertall developments bring about their own, privatized amenities to the site. As part of its marketing strategy for luxury, supertall developments capitalize on the privilege of on site resources. In the case of One Manhattan Square, the private amenities offered to its residents include an underground parking garage, a fitness center, and a residents lounge. While the privatization of amenities may not take away from what is existing,

the design of these amenities are redefining the streetscape. They are spatially designed to corner off the streetscape scene so exclusivity and luxury is reserved. Outdoor terrace that capture vantage point views in One Manhattan Square are purposely elevated above ground level. The bordering walls disconnect residents from interacting with the bordering streets and disincentivize residents from interaction with the larger neighborhood. Furthermore, to give way for the construction of One Manhattan Square, a neighborhood grocery store was demolished. Although the developer promised to bring back a grocery store once construction was completed, there are still no definite plans for its return.

Neighborhood Demographics: Household Income Spring 2019 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | 39

Neighborhood Demographics: Household income

Public Amenities 40 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | Spring 2019

3. Street Design and Connectivity The street design between NYCHA developments are painted with green space and interwoven with paved pedestrian pathways that connects each development unit into small scale communities. Such pedestrian pathways allow for increased connectivity and offer a human scale street design. Vehicular access running on the outer frameworks of the pedestrian path ease the safety and help mitigate the risk of accidents with dedicated pedestrian walkways. Transit access is on average a 5-6 block walk in the neighborhood. Current subway lines connect the neighborhood with the Borough of Brooklyn through the F line which increases circulatory access across the East River and between boroughs. With the new development of One Manhattan Square providing an underground parking garage for its residents, the potential increase in car ownership threatens disruption of current traffic flow as well as demand for public transit accessibility in the area.

block which One Manhattan Square is developed on, there is a bike path running alongside vehicular pathways on Pike Slip drive that ultimately ends at the intersection of Pike Slip and South Street due to perpendicular traffic flow. Around the corners of Cherry Street, Frank T. Modica Way, and South Street, the sidewalks are protected with streetside parking that acts as a buffer between the pedestrian path and vehicular path. However, there is no connection or designated path for bikes along these three streets. To increase circulatory access and connectivity, bike paths are recommended to develop alongside sidewalks and between streetside parking so that there is an increase in transit options around the neighborhood for cyclists.

Looking at the ground level movement at all four corners of the Spring 2019 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | 41

Transit Access

Connectivity

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Connectivity: One Manhattan Square

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D. Sustainable Supertalls? We studied the environmental impacts of supertalls to determine how they affect their direct surroundings. Our research findings shaped some of our final recommendations that guide supertalls to ensure a livable built environment.

Why are Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) and Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) important for supertalls in NYC? Most of the developments in NYC such as the ones on Billionaires’ Row were approved as-of-right. However, an Environmental Impact Assessment is vital for many reasons. An Environmental Assessment (EA) determines whether or not a new project will potentially cause significant environmental effects. The issuing of an Environmental Impact Statement is decided by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) and its regulatory requirements are “more detailed and rigorous than the requirements for an Environmental Assessment.”1 1 “National Environmental Policy Act Review Process.” Retrieved from: https://www.epa.gov/nepa/national-environmental-policy-act-review-process

The technical analysis is based on the City Environmental Quality Review (CEQR) and considers three conditional categories: - Existing conditions - The No-Action scenario or the future conditions without the proposed projects - The With-Action scenario or future conditions with the proposed projects2 Some of the major concerns related to tall buildings that are addressed in the EIS are: 1. Wind Impacts 2. Shadow Impacts 3. Building Envelope Concerns 4. Sustainability Standards

2 Lago,a Marisa, (November 23, 2018), “Notice of Completion of The Final Environmental Impact Statement, Two Bridges LSRD”, Department of City Planning

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Wind concentration at ground level

1. Wind Analysis The impact of tall buildings on wind patterns is a common concern. The diagrams show three types of wind discomfort at the pedestrian level. A new project involving multiple tall buildings close to waterfront sites could lead to an increased ‘channelization’ or ‘downwash’ effect affecting pedestrian comfort and safety.

Wind downwash at the corner Factors requiring special attention in developments with multiple tall buildings are the exp osure of the location to high wind conditions, the size of the project, the number of buildings proposed, their size and orientation, and the surrounding pedestrian conditions.1

Accelerated flows between adjacent buildings

1 NYC.gov. (March 2014), “Chapter 10: Urban Design and Visual Resources, Pedestrian Wind Conditions”, CEQR Technical Manual Spring 2019 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | 45

We conducted a wind analysis on the Two Bridges Large Scale Residential Development (LSRD) and its immediate context including the One Manhattan Square building. The Two Bridges LSRD has three newly proposed (recently approved but currently contested in court) developments. We compared the wind conditions between two scenarios: a- Without One Manhattan Square and the three new developments (Figure 5) b- With One Manhattan Square and the three new developments (Figure 6) In the winter season, the wind speed could reach up to 10m/s at pedestrian level in the areas around One Manhattan Square and the three new tall developments. Figure X shows no red spots as opposed to Figure Y where many red regions

indicating high-speed wind are visible. This is an indication that the tall buildings, when completed, may cause wind tunnel effects around the Two Bridges LSRD site. This corroborates the importance of highlighting these effects in an EIS for similar developments. In the summer season, we can observe more blue regions around the tall buildings when comparing between Figures 5 and 6. A blue region indicates very low wind speed leading to a stagnant air effect. With the tall buildings completed, the Two Bridges LSRD site will experience a stagnant air effect around these developments. This effect would lead to a bad air quality around this area. Since the EIS does not take into account this effect in its section describing wind impacts, we recommend incorporating it there and requiring

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a wind analysis determining both potential conditions of wind tunnel effects and stagnant air effects from new tall developments.

Figure 6 - Wind Conditions With the Tall Buildings

Figure 5 - Wind Conditions Without the Tall Buildings

Winter Season

Summer Season

Winter Season

Summer Season The tall buildings increase the wind tunnel effects in the winter season and the stagnant air effects in the summer season at the pedestrian level around the Two Bridges Large Scale Residential Development site.

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2. Shadow Analysis Why Regulate Shadows? Sunlight and shadows affect people and their use of open space, with varying effects in different seasons. Sunlight can entice outdoor activities, support vegetation, and enhance architectural features. After a close study on New York City’s climate data, we observed that

whether there is direct solar radiation, the temperature is above the comfort threshold. During the winter season, the temperature is below the comfort threshold in regions inside or outside shadow area. Therefore, our shadow analysis mainly focuses on the shoulder months: March, April, and November. During these months, the shadows have the largest negative

during summer months, regardless of

impact on human comfort.

Enticing Outdoor Activities

Support Vegetation Growth

How To Evaluate Shadows? New York City’s City Environment Quality Review (CEQR) includes a chapter on shadow analysis, providing detailed guidelines to assess whether new structures will cast incremental shadows on sunlight sensitive resources, the significance of their shadow impact, and to provide potential mitigation strategies.

Enhance Architectural Features

- Incremental shadows: the additional shadows that a proposed building would cast on sunlight sensitive resources during the year. - Sunlight sensitive resources of concern: public open spaces, green streets, natural resources, and historical and cultural architectural features.

The shadow evaluation takes into

To evaluate shadow, CEQR suggests to first determine the longest shadow study area. A circular buffer with a

account:

radius equal to 4.3 times the height

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of the proposed building is traced. The top part within +108 degrees and -108 degrees from the North axis (shown in gray) is the study area.

CEQR Tier 1 screening method

Public Parks Public Parks in the affected areas Supertalls

Figure 7- Shadow study area of supertalls following the CEQR Tier 1 screening method

Figure 5 shows the shadow study area of the supertalls based on the CEQR method. The affected public open spaces within the buffer area are identified in dark green. The supertalls on Billionaires’ Row have the largest impact so we decided to focus our study on that. The five supertalls selected for our case study are Central Park Tower, 220 Central Park South, One 57, 111 W 57th St., and 432 Park Avenue. Two of them are under construction (almost topped out), and three of them have already been completed. None of them have gone through a CEQR shadow review before they were built. So instead of assessing the incremental shadow, we applied a similar ideology to evaluate how much shadow can be reduced if these supertalls are removed. We applied computational simulation tools to conduct the analysis. The visualizations show the aggregated shadows for each individual building in the nine tested days (the 5th, 15th, and 25th of March, April, and November). Spring 2019 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | 49

Supertalls are marked in red. The map shows the spatial proximity of the supertalls to the south of Central Park. In the detailed shadow analysis of each of the five buildings, the shades of gray indicate the average duration of shadows per day, measured in minutes.

Supertalls at Central Park South

As the results show, all of the supertalls have incremental shadows cast on Central Park. In terms of shadow size, 220 Central Park South and Central Park Tower have the largest coverage due to their close proximity to the park and their height. In terms of duration, most of the incremental shadows last 0-30 minutes per day.

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Tested months: March, April, November Tested dates: 5th, 15th, 25th (nine days in total) Tested hours: 7am - 6 pm Average duration of shadows per day (min) 0-15

45-60

15-30

60-75

30-45

75-90 90 and more

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For a more holistic approach, we tested all the 556 buildings around the south of Central Park instead of focusing on the supertalls alone. 29% of the buildings have incremental shadows cast on Central Park. Figure X shows the location of these buildings, their building profiles, and the level of their impact. The buildings are sorted by average duration of shadows per

day, measured in minutes. The red dashed lines mark the five supertalls on Billionaires’ Row. The takeaway from this analysis is that while building height is a major contributor to shadows, the distance from the park, the location of the buildings, and the bulky form of the building are also factors related to

Figure X - Shadows Casted by all 556 Buildings Around The South of Central Park 52 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | Spring 2019

incremental shadows. For example, the buildings that have the longest lasting shadows are the ones with a bulkier form. This is an indication that building form largely impacts shadow size. The perspective views shown at the bottom of the figure, when read from left to right, show that buildings that are closer to the

park tend to cast shadows for longer periods of time. Based on our analysis, we suggest that any proposed developments over 300 ft tall and within 500 ft from a public park should go through a shadow analysis and provide mitigation alternatives.

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3. Resilience to Flooding

In recent years, the reality and severity of flooding has been on display namely during superstorm Sandy when pre-storm preparations on the construction site of One World Trade Center could not withstand the floodwaters from the hurricane, causing large amounts of water to pour through into the building site. While there were emergency zoning text amendments following superstorm Sandy, critics argue that the regulations do not go far enough in mitigating risks. According to studies by the Department of City Planning, Superstorm Sandy flooded neighborhoods well beyond the 1% annual chance floodplain or the highrisk zone. The storm also hit almost half of the lots in the 0.2% annual chance floodplain or the moderate risk zone. This shows that this area is at risk today and will be at risk in the future.

Figure 8 - Flood Levels Projected For 2100

The Department of City Planning mentioned in their report on “Zoning for coastal flood resiliency” , which was published very recently, that

Source: NYC Flood Hazard Mapper

54 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | Spring 2019

Figure 9 - Flood Levels Projected For 2015 current zoning regulations need to be modified to also take into account future flood risk. The new zoning would improve resilience of all developments in the area at moderate risk of flooding. Four of the tall buildings that we studied are located in the current high-risk flooding area and some are proposed in the moderate risk flooding area. 247 Cherry Street is part of the Two Bridges Large Scale Residential Development that issued an Environmental Impact Statement. The latter offered

measures to mitigate flood risks for the new developments in this area. Some of the proposed techniques to mitigate flood risks are to elevate all residential units above flood levels projected for year 2100 and to locate the non-critical uses above the flood levels projected for 2050.

Source: NYC Flood Hazard Mapper Spring 2019 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | 55

4. Energy Efficiency

A building’s energy efficiency can be highly associated with its cooling and heating systems. The use of regular glass in the building’s envelope would require more energy to keep it warm and cool. A city study found that about 70 percent of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions came from buildings,

changes in the city’s new energy code to avoid the use of glass in new buildings. Nevertheless, city officials and developers are asking for more clarity on these changes. The use of glass does not necessarily need to be completely banned, there are other strategies to make a building more

and those with glass exteriors had the most impact. Most of the projects that we looked at have envelopes that are predominantly made of glass. Additionally, 129 buildings with glass curtain walls were constructed in the city since 2015, according to the Department of Buildings. Mayor de Blasio announced there will be

energy efficient. The use of a “highperformance glass” is one strategy.

56 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | Spring 2019

Building Envelope Concerns

“We are going to introduce legislation to ban the glass and steel skyscrapers that have contributed so much to global warming” -Mayor de Blasio City officials and developers are asking for more clarity on the legislation. The use of “high-performance” glass and other strategies could make an allglass building more energy efficient.

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5. Sustainability Standards The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standard is a green building rating system that is widely used worldwide. Our research revealed that most of the new tall developments in NYC that are certified are commercial and mixed-use. A smaller number of tall buildings in NYC that are LEED certified are residential. Most

which is the highest level of LEED. Some of the strategies used for energy conservation are the addition of an on-site natural gas-fueled power plant that provides 70% of the annual electrical power needs. Furthermore, 40% of the materials used for construction were regionally sourced “from within 500 miles of the project”, reducing the energy use

of the residential buildings that are not certified are turn-key projects where developers have less incentive to practice sustainability. Hudson Yards, which was planned as the largest LEED neighborhood in New York City, has mixed-use buildings. Moreover, the Bank of America tower is an example of a project that achieved the Platinum certification,

for transportation. Achieving such levels of sustainability for commercial and mixed-use buildings is a possibility. Therefore, incentivizing developers of residential projects to attain the same types of standards would help in reaching the city’s goals of accomplishing higher levels of sustainability.

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Appendix A. INTERVIEWS B. SHADOW STUDIES

60 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | Spring 2019

A. INTERVIEWS Kate Ascher - Former executive vice president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation

Q- Could you explain the manner in which real estate deals are made, the concept of Transferable Development Rights and the use of transit bonuses? Zoning lot mergers? Why does it take that long to assemble tax lots?

A-

The transfer of development rights

is prescribed by regulation, so it’s not subject to so much of the vagaries of Government action. So, for example, if you own two adjacent lots you can move development rights between them, or if there’s a historic building you could move development rights from them. So, it’s all prescribed within, essentially the zoning code. So, there isn’t much for me to say about that, other than when a developer is looking to build a very tall building, they are looking to amass enough of a footprint, with development rights on all lots, so that they can build a very tall building on a very small portion of it. You see, there is no height restriction in New York City, you can build as tall as you like, but you can only build on a quarter of the lot. So, you need to have a big lot, because if you have a building which isn’t pencil-

thin (like a lot of the residential buildings today), you have to have a building that is a generous size that somebody can live in, you need to have a lot that is much bigger. And that means that you have to assemble parcels one by one, until you have enough that it gives you enough floor area to move around. And that’s the mechanism by which it works here. The subway bonuses are something completely different and that is not a guarantee, you have to negotiate that with the MTA and the city. Because they need to have some sort of subway improvement that they want. If not, you don’t just get a subway bonus. You have to actually do something to either fix a station or maintain a station. There must be something that they need, and then you get a 20% bonus on the floor area. So, to make a very tall building, you want to try and assemble development rights and you want to get a subway bonus so you can add it on top of each other.

Spring 2019 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | 61

Q- There has been a lot of discussion during CB meetings about the shadow effects of tall buildings on parks and plazas. Could you give us an idea of how you feel about the shadows cast on public space in Manhattan? Also, how are are tall buildings designed to react to climate change in general?

A-

I don’t think that supertall buildings are doing a lot with shadows they are very very skinny. It’s almost not an issue. In terms of climate change, the supertall buildings are very light on the ground so I’m not sure how much they are contributing to urban heat effect, I don’t know that they have much to do in terms of flooding and everybody’s designing now so that they’re not vulnerable but all buildings are, it’s not just supertalls so there’s nothing specifically with supertalls. When a building is skinny it’s not casting a whole lot of a shadow, it is not staying in one place for very long whereas if you get a big building like a monolith building, potentially the shadow could be much bigger. I don’t think those are issues that are really super-relevant. Approvals for tall buildings go through city planning assessment and city planning looks at shadows. That’s one of the things that is analyzed in the land use review procedure and they have a way

each month of the year. They add it all up it’s mathematical and they determine percentages. If it is too much, the project is not approved and they require modifications. These buildings don’t go up as-of-right. To get the additional floor area, you have to get public approval and usually your building will be assessed for all of the impacts. It includes aspects other than shadows. People like to complain about shadows because it is what they can see and it does affect them but for most people, any building is going to block light and the air. It doesn’t have to be supertall, they’re not blocking much up there they’re blocking down here and that could be any other building. It’s part of living in the dense city. If there is anyone to rent and to buy the apartments, then there is a market for the developer to build.

of calculating the shadow effect and it looks at how much land is in the shadow, for how much time during the day, in 62 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | Spring 2019

Douglas Woodward - Senior Director of Real Estate & Chief Planning Officer Lincoln Center Development Project

Q-

What are some of the pros and cons of having an Environmental Assessment Statement for a project’s approval?

A-

The cost EAS/EIS have gotten very expensive for developers as they become more complicated EIS especially can cost millions of dollars. For supertall development most developers and the city are on the same page with EAS as the priority which takes less time and is more frequent in as-of-right and less difficult developments. The city wants less complications to get approval for tall buildings but the communities want more assessments dealing with shadows and wind impacts for tall buildings. The community is the strongest supporter of EIS which takes more time, includes the community on a larger scale and is more expensive adding more risk on the side of the developer.

Q-

Do you think the CEQR guidelines are enough to mitigate the negative impacts of supertalls (i.e. shadows, winds, views..) on public spaces and parks?

A-

CEQR guidelines were written to give policy makers guidelines to suggest

mitigations but that would not necessarily be the final decisions. The city Planning Commission and the BSA will make these decisions (for example they might say that something is already sufficiently mitigated or they can make it a unmitigatable impact). The CEQR is not in itself a decision-making document. I’m not sure if it’s strong enough for the supertalls. There were 4 supertalls that were built at a time before CEQR: the Twin Towers, WTC, the Chrysler building, and the Empire State building. At the time, people were so concerned about safety and environmental effects but now these buildings have become landmarks and they’re considered landmarks of New York. 432 Park Avenue good example of Supertall development for wind mitigation and clean design. It looks like the buildings that are much shorter…. Pedestrian level wind effects are a major design element which engineers and architects must assess before development takes place. Not as big of a problem in Manhattan as other boroughs which do not have such a high and dynamic skyline which lowers this effect.

Spring 2019 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | 63

Q-

Do you think public review is necessary for the approval of similar projects? What other supertall project proposals in NYC do you think should go through a public review process that have not?

A-

I worked on the other side of a building and against the development of a proposed 1000 ft tower in Sutton Place. The context is most important if you build residential supertalls in a neighborhood which already has heavy commercial tall building development it is not as big of a deal as the Sutton Place example where you have an out of context supertall next to much smaller brownstone residences. Fire safety is the main reason for these types of buildings to go through a different type of process than general tall buildings.

Q- In your opinion, is height the main issue for residents? Are context, zoning or bulk, orientation and intensive developments at close proximity to public amenities like parks of greater concern?

A-

The park issue doesn’t bother me if the shadow can be managed shadows which are skinny move very rapidly. Yes I think a shadow study should be done for each of these buildings that are built near parks but it seems unlikely that the shadow impact for the majority of these developments is significant. 64 | The Supertall: A New Kind of Skyscraper | Spring 2019

Douglas Woodward - Senior Director of Real Estate & Chief Planning Officer Lincoln Center Development Project

Q-

What are some of the pros and cons of having an Environmental Assessment Statement for a project’s approval?

A-

Q-

Do you think the CEQR guidelines are enough to mitigate the negative impacts of supertalls (i.e. shadows, winds, views..) on public spaces and parks?

A-

CEQR guidelines were written to give policy makers guidelines to suggest

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B. SHADOW STUDIES

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OBISPO 204 Havana, Cuba Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez Environmental Studies Center Columbia GSAPP Case Study 2019 1

Collaborators This report is the result of the professors and students of Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation working in collaboration with Architects and engineers in the Office of the Historian of the City of Havana and with representatives of the Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez on June 20th 2019 at FANJ Headquarters in Havana. All participants of the meeting are listed below: Project Team: MSc. Arq. Talia Quesada Campaña, arquitecta, proyectista general, Ing. Juan Luis Rousso Altuna, Ingeniero mecánico, RESTAURA Ing. Roberto Rodríguez Tamayo, Ingeniero eléctrico, RESTAURA Restaura Guests: Arq. Yeni Molina Saavedra, arquitecta, RESTAURA DSc. Arq. Dania González Couret, arquitecta, CUJAE FANJ: Liliana Núñez, President Yociel Marrero Lois Urgelles Gabriel Mayan Gabriela Rodríguez Columbia University: Prof. Belmont Freeman Prof. Michael Adlerstein Sara Almutlaq Andrés Álvarez-Dávila Joud Al Shdaifat Drew L Barnhart Caitlin Rudin Gardenhire Laura Ophélie Charlotte Garnier Andrew Keung (Editor and Layout) Kathleen Maloney Lo Kirthana Sudhakar Yasong Zhou 3

Preface

The Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez de la Naturaleza y el Hombre (FANJ) is Cuba’s premier environmental advo-cacy and education institute. The nongovernmental organization is recognized world-wide for its work to promote harmony between human society and the natural environment, particularly in the tropics. To advance its mission and expand its programming, the Cuban government has offered FANJ a historic, but deteriorated, building in the heart of Old Havana, a UNESCO World Heritage site, to renovate as a center for environmental education and train-ing. Consistent with FANJ’s principles, the group seeks to make this building renovation a showcase for maximally “green” building restoration. The Office of the Historian of the City of Havana, which directs all significant renova-tion work in the city center, and its design and construction arm RESTAURA, have proven expertise in the traditional trades of building restoration as well as advanced scientific preservation techniques, but lack experience with the most progressive strategies for environmental sustainability. For this reason, FANJ reached out to Columbia Univer-sity seeking collaboration on this building renovation project. Initial contact was made through the Columbia Univer-sity Cuba Project, which, under the direction of Dr. Margaret Crahan has long-standing relationships with FANJ, the University of Havana, and other entities in Cuba. Dr. Crahan, in turn, approached the Graduate School of Architec-ture, Planning and Preservation to take the lead on the project, with the support of University Provost John H. Coatsworth, GSAPP Dean Amale Andraos, and Historic Preservation Program Director Jorge Otero Pailos. Belmont Freeman, Adjunct Associate Professor of Historic Preservation Design and a scholar of Cuban architecture, was des-ignated the lead faculty member for the project, with the participation of Michael Adlerstein, Adjunct Professor of Sustainability Practice at GSAPP and former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations and Director of the United Nations Capital Master Plan.

From June 17 to 27, 2019, a delegation from Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, including Professors Freeman and Adlerstein and ten graduate students of architecture, urban plan-ning, and historic preservation traveled to Havana to meet and work with our collaborators at FANJ and the City Historian’s office. During our week in Havana, the GSAPP group toured the city in the company of local experts, to gain an understanding of the context of the project; surveyed and evaluated the building at calle Obispo No. 204; studied the schematic plans for the renovation; and participated in an all-day workshop at FANJ headquarters, brainstorming and sharing expertise and creative ideas, with a focus on the application of best practices of sustaina-bility. We are grateful to all of our collaborators in Havana; especially Liliana Núñez Velis, President of FANJ, and her colleagues at FANJ for their hospitality and organizational efforts, and to Arq. Talia Quesada Campaña, Project Archi-tect, for sharing her professional expertise and knowledge of the city and its preservation challenges. The following document is a report that includes a summary of the week’s work, an evaluation of the building from an environmental point of view, and specific recommendations for appropriate sustainability technologies that might be deployed in the building’s restoration. Depending on the ongoing direction and schedule for the building renovation established by FANJ and the Office of the City Historian, Professors Freeman and Adlerstein and other members of GSAPP and the Cuba Project look forward to continuing involvement in the project.

Belmont Freeman, FAIA Adjunct Associate Professor

Summary I am honored to have this opportunity, as a faculty member of Columbia University GSAPP, to collaborate with the Fundacion Antonio Nunez Jimennez de la Naturaleza y el Hombre (FANJ) in the development of a conceptual plan for the Obispo 204 project. The draft plan, already prepared by FANJ, reflects a sophisticated understanding of the natural compatibilities between historic preservation and sustainable design. In my former role as Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, I led the team that prepared such a plan for the recently completed renovation of UN headquarters in New York. The context of this project is very important. This building is one of thousands of potential restorations is this unique cultural resource - a beautiful Caribbean city, rich in architectural and human history, that has so far avoided the adverse impacts of the recent real estate boom that has altered so many historic Latin American cities. The intact mid and early 20th century historic structures in this UNESCO World Heritage Site, “Historic Havana”, represent an incredibly valuable resource, and I strongly commend the FANJ team for its initiative to implement the Obispo 204 project, as well as other recent restorations. This sustainable project, overlaid on a well-conceived city-wide preservation plan, is a wonderful example of the actions being taken globally by countries and cities to limit the impacts of climate change, consistent with the initiatives prescribed by the United Nations General Assembly. Their UN path towards Sustainable Development was successfully advanced recently with the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, which provided to the world the most ambitious development roadmap in history. Since then, the global community has started to committ to meet the challenges of our deteriorating climate, including plans for complex conversions away from carbon fuels, extraordinary mitigations of the rising oceans, and high technology solutions to move atmospheric carbon back to earth. The planning, construction and operations of buildings are one of the major sources of excess carbon, and the retrofit of inefficient buildings is the most sustainable and responsible strategy to provide shelter, rather than demolition and construction of new buildings. Most importantly, groups of concerned citizens, like the city of Havana, are doing the most important work of all – making their contribution to a greener planet by taking action, building by building. Only collective action will have the impact needed at this critical moment in our planet’s history. The leadership of Obispo 204, in the heart of “Old Havana” should be highly commended for their commitment to those international goals, and the robust and sophisticated advance planning already drafted.

The comments on the draft plan incorporate several broad areas of sustainability, as follows; Chapters 1 and 2 are two views of the critical energy issue. Chapter 1 explores the most direct approach – reduce the energy needs. This is the critical action an owner must consider first, and in this case the highly creative use of improvements to wind and air circulation is explored. The strong proposals of the draft plan are identified, enhanced and new concepts are discussed. Chapter 2 likewise looks at energy reduction, but by exploring alternative energy generation. On an isolated building the opportunities for generation are limited, and a wider level of cooperation among multiple buildings would allow for more efficiency due to the enlarged scale, but the approach is essential. Most people associate sustainable design with this concept. Chapter 3, rainwater capture, points out a sustainable solution to a local issue, where citywide water systems are over-stressed and individual efforts are essential. In this world of rising temperatures, capturing and constructively using all available water is essential but not often practiced. Chapter 4 focusses on reducing the energy footprint of the project. Like chapter 1, this step most projects do not even consider. Recycling materials already on the site, perhaps from earlier renovations, is a message to future users that the renovation was aware of previous energy investments and optimized their use. Chapter 5 discusses the opportunity to use landscape materials, greenery, to further insulate the interiors from the heat, and for improvement of the indoor, and neighborhood, air quality. This chapters underlines the role of this building within the community, providing a better environmental for people on the street. I whole-heartedly congratulate the architectural/engineering team that developed the draft document. Each chapter is creative, well-conceived, and a thoughtful composite of sophisticated knowledge of historic preservation and sustainability. And I extend the hand of friendship and partnership to FANJ from the UN community. As this project progresses, I would hope both Columbia University and the UN can continue to be helpful. Michael Adlerstein, FAIA Adjunct Professor, Columbia University GSAPP Assistant Secretary-General, United Nations (retired) 7

Contents Obispo 204

Energy Savings Strategies

Sources of Renewable Energy

Rainwater Capture

Reducing Ecological Footprint

Greenery for Insulation and Improved Air Quality

Obispo 204 10

Introduction Obispo 204 is a renovation project overseen by Architect Talia Quesada Campaña of Havana’s Office of the Historian. The building is located in the heart of charismatic old Havana, surrounded by historic structures, art galleries, museums, restaurants, and cultural sites.

image: from report prepared by Architect Talia Quesada Campaña, Office of the Historian, June 2019

The renovation of the building is divided into two separate projects. Half of the building, and focus of this report, is being repurposed as the Environmental Studies Center for the Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez de la Naturaleza y el Hombre. The other half is being adapted for residential use.

Obispo 204

image: model shows the amount of heat being absorbed by the roof; prepared by Talia

image:Photographs showing the condition of the site

The renovation encompases three floors and part of the roof. A key goal of the adaptive reuse is to showcase energy-saving and environmentally-conscious building strategies both to reduce the building’s carbon footprint and promote sustainability generally..These include the incorporation of natural ventilation to reduce cost and dependence on air conditioners; sources of renewable energy like solar panels; rainwater harvesting to limit dependence on groundwater; the conservation and reuse of as much interior material as possible; and the addition of a green roof and green wall for insulation and improved air quality. Once complete, the building will serve as an example of conservation and environmentally-conscious design, embodying the mission of the Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez de la Naturaleza y el Hombre to promote sustainability.

Obispo 204

I. Energy Savings Strategies 14

Ventilation Natural ventilation is a key component to a sustainable building, and one which FANJ should incorporate through their design strategy. Through conscious design decisions aimed to maximize the use of natural ventilation, mechanical ventilation will be necessary only during extremely hot months when internal thermal comfort could not just be achieved naturally. This will ultimately reduce the energy consumption of the building. We decided to explore a number of design strategies which could be incorporated at FANJ

There are three main benefits that we believe FANJ would experience with the careful implementation of natural ventilation. Firstly, natural ventilation reduces the amount and space of HVAC requirements needed to ventilate and cool an indoor space, in addition to the initial financial investment. We do not believe that natural ventilation will be sufficient to cool FANJ during extremely hot weather, thus there should be AC units for designated areas, vulnerable to heat. Secondly, by having a well designed natural ventilation system, there is less long term costs related to maintenance that need to be considered because the main form of cooling is natural. Finally, natural ventilation fosters a healthy work environment due to

the continuous circulation of fresh air that goes through the space. In order to gain the maximum benefits of natural ventilation, and actually achieve thermal comfort all year round (with the exception of summer months) decisions and exceptions need to be made based on strategies needed for a naturally ventilated scheme. We believe that thermal comfort at FANJ can only be achieved through a combination of natural ventilation and air management technologies which will be discussed below. However, having a combined ventilation system should not belittle the design strategies necessary for a natural ventilation scheme to be effective. If that is done, natural ventilation would not be as effective in months in which air technologies are necessary for thermal comfort, but because the natural ventilation scheme was not designed well inhabitants will always rather rely on air technologies. Thus, the key challenge is designing the space in a way that makes it comfortable and not reliant on air technologies. In other words, design the space as though natural ventilation is the only form of cooling.

Energy Savings Strategies

Natural Ventilation Scheme Cross ventilation is a natural technique that is very commonly known, and has been explored by the Project Architect Talia Quesada very well. However, since FANJ can have windows only on three sides of the building, due to the part wall between the FANJ space and the adjacent student residence, there will need to be both cross ventilation as well as single-sided ventilation. In order to maximize the effects of these two techniques, positioning windows are very critical. The size of the windows, then number of windows, where they are placed on each floor, how far each window is from the other, how high they are from the floor, and the actual dimensions of the windows are all decisions that greatly contribute to overall efficiency of natural ventilation. However, since adding windows on teh sheer facade on the wall facing the parking lot is not an option because of historic district proections, only the new patio that Talia proposes is possible. Thus, closely studying these design decisions in relation to the air flow and velocity will reveal critical information which will be extremely beneficial when it comes to achieving thermal comfort through natural techniques.

Factors to Consider In addition to the importance of decisions regarding the scale of the window, it is important to consider factors that are present at a much larger scale, some that are beyond the human control which would give a framework to design within. One main factor is understanding the wind direction and its velocity throughout the year, and most importantly its relationship to the site’s topography. This is important because it will allow us to determine if the Venturi/Bernoulli effect could happen in the FANJ building at a more constructed and engineered level, which will transform light winds into high winds by flowing through gaps and passes (due to the high pressure). This is also important because it will drive the design decisions related to the windows mentioned above. Additionally, it is important to consider the amount of open area and understand its contribution to the volume of air circulation. 16

Mixed Mode Ventilation

Energy comparison of mizing ventilation vs. natural ventilation strategies

As Talia explained in her research (heat plans), there are some areas on each floor that will receive a great amount of sun which will cause the interior space to heat up. We propose the implementation of mixed mode ventilation through the addition of ceiling fans. In comparison to AC, fans use up much less energy and have a very cooling effect. According to Ygrene Energy Fund, a clean energy financing company, “the average cost of running a ceiling fan is about one cent per hour - a fraction of the cost to run an air condition”. That is not to say that FANJ should not have AC units in the space, but rather have a fan to use the AC less, only in times when the weather is extremely hot. In times where the weather is slightly higher than usual, the fan will be sufficient to cool the space. ` The chart above is looking at heating, however, it is fair to assume that cooling would require just as much energy consumption as heating a very cold environment would. Thus, it can be deduced that mixing ventilation strategy is the more economically feasible. Many pieces of that puzzle need configuration, but it will be financially worthwhile in the long run. Energy Savings Strategies

Night Cooling This is a strategy that has historically been underutilized, however, it plays a significant role in achieving thermal comfort during the day time. Turning on the fan during the night time cools the building significantly more than it would during the day time. That is not only due to the absence of heat radiated from the sun, but it is also due to the lack of body heat humans naturally emit. Since the external temperature at night are lower, the temperature of the building’s fabric is reduced. By cooling the building at a high ventilation rate and with no solar heat gain at night, the building gets rid of the heat absorbed during the day time. As a result, the thermal mass can absorb the heat gains within the space during the daytime resulting in a cooler internal temperature The goal of night cooling is to take advantage of the cooler night temperatures and dissipate the heat out of the walls, floors, and other mass materials. This allows those heavy materials to cool and be ready by morning to maximize their capacity to absorb the load of heat from a new day.

Example temperature variation and natural ventilation strategy over the course of a day in a thermally massive office

As shown in the chart above, the goal is to have the thermal mass temperature to be at 26 degrees Celsius when external and internal temperatures are at their highest, to ensure thermal comfort. Thus a close study of the materials used for the building, and understanding each material’s thermal capacity, and how much night cooling is necessary to ensure that the thermal mass has reached its target level. Leon Glicksman, Ph.D., a professor of building technology and mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is researching “simple design and operating rules to help manage” natural ventilation and confirmed a crucial problem often done in night cooling. According to Glicksman, most building using fans to cool off the building in the night did not have real operating rules to when the fans begin cooling the thermal mass and for how long. During the research process, they found that the fans were not turned on long enough during the right time frame. Thus, Glicksman believes that turning on the fans at 8 p.m. is much more effective than waiting until midnight. To know how long the fans need to be on during the night varies from building to building, and the way to find out is to closely study the heat gains of the materials which make up the thermal mass of the building, doing so, one will know much night cooling is required to cease the heat gains of the thermal mass before the start of the next work day.

Energy Savings Strategies

II. Sources of Renewable Energy 20

Photovoltaic Cell Usage The use of photovoltaic cells to produce renewable energy is an effective strategy to decrease the building’s reliance on fossil fuels, showcasing the commitment of Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez to sustainability. Architect Talia Quesada Campaña’s current plans account for twenty-four solar panels, which will be placed on the tallest section of the multi-level roof,

covering roughly one-third of the total roof area. The angle and orientation of these panels have already been optimized to ensure their maximum efficiency given Havana’s latitude and climate. Semi-translucent solar canopies located above circulation spaces will further increase the roof’s potential to produce energy while also providing shaded areas for visitors.

A model of 204 Obispo Street showing both solar panels and solar canopies. Source: Talia Quesada Campaña

Sources of Renewable Energy

The use of photovoltaic systems at 204 Obispo Street is an excellent means of lowering energy costs and promoting sustainability. Due to its location in the tropics, Havana receives a high amount of solar irradiation, averaging between seven and eleven daily hours of sunshine depending on the month. The best way to estimate the potential for solar energy production at a given location is to calculate that area’s peak sun-hours, a standard for the measurement of average daily solar insolation equal to one-thousand watts per square meter over an hour expressed as kWh/m^2. In general, four hours of peak sun-hours per day are needed to make solar panels a worthwhile investment. According to data from the World Bank, Havana receives an average of 4.5 peak sun-hours daily, making it a highly suitable location for solar energy production. 22

Furthermore, in 2018, an average sixty-five by thirty-nine inch solar panel used for residential buildings was 18.7% efficient, producing 320 watts-hours of electricity per peak sun-hour. Given this rate of efficiency, twenty-four solar panels exposed to 4.5 peak sun-hours, would produce 34,560 watt-hours, or 34.56 kilowatt hours over the course of a day. For comparison, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that the average American household uses 10,399 kilowatt hours annually, which breaks down to about 28.5 kilowatt hours per day. While the actual efficiency of the solar panels will depend on the types of solar panels available in Cuba, as well as the budget of the Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez, it is clear that the twenty-four solar panels alone will be able to provide a substantial amount of energy.

The electricity produced by the solar panels and canopies is not only cleaner and more sustainable than nonrenewable alternatives; it is also cheaper. According to Daniel Stolik, a professor at the University of Havana, who specializes in photovoltaic energy, “producing a kilowatt (of electricity) from the sun costs six to seven U.S. cents, cheaper than with conventional fuel, which costs between 15 and 20 cents.” However to truly take advantage of the economic potential of solar panels, the Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez should consider connecting their photovoltaic system to the power grid. On March 23, 2018, the Cuban government put Law No. 345 into effect. With the goal of increasing the proportion of electricity generated by renewable resources to 24% by 2030, this legislation mandates that the Unión Eléctrica de Cuba (UNE), the state-owned power company, purchase the excess power created by generators using renewable resources. In other words, Sources of Renewable Energy

any electricity produced by the solar panels that is not used by Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez could be sold back to the power company, potentially providing additional financial resources for the foundation’s other initiatives. Beyond the obvious benefit of clean and inexpensive energy, photovoltaic cells also serve an important role as commonly-recognized symbols of sustainable design. The function of solar panels and their ability to reduce carbon emissions are widely understood, so their visibility in the plan for 204 Obispo Street offers the added benefit of promoting sustainable design more broadly and encouraging an appreciation of other sustainable initiatives among visitors to the center and passersby alike, further supporting the goals of Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez.

Vocational school with 113KW cells system, Austria. Source: “Tipi Di Impianto Fotovoltaico - Tebema: Tutto Sugli Impianti Fotovoltaici e Il Nuovo Conto Energia.

Given the advantages of generating solar energy, we believe that it would be beneficial to increase the size of the photovoltaic system. In the U.S., the solar panels alone usually account for only 30% of the cost of a photovoltaic system; the other 70% goes towards other parts of the system, permits, labor, and maintenance. While these ratios are likely different in Cuba, panels would still make up only a fraction of the total costs. Given the prices of other components of the photovoltaic system, increasing the number of panels connected to the system at the time of installation would increase the energy output per dollar invested, increasing their cost-effectiveness. In other words, coordination with other nearby sites for potential solar panel installation would make each individual project more efficient. Currently, Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez is involved in the renovation of only half of the building at 204 Obispo Street -- the other space within the building will be used for residential purposes. We propose that the teams working at both spaces coordinate with each other to expand the photovoltaic system to the other half of the building. This will benefit both parties, giving the residents of the other part of the building 24

access to inexpensive renewable energy and allowing the Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez to further its mission of promoting sustainability. Another means of expanding the photovoltaic system to increase the energy produced per dollar is to add solar panels to exterior walls. Exterior walls are the largest contact area with the sun of the building, and installing solar panels on the available area of the south and west facades on the upper floors could greatly increase the total panel area. Solar panels could be combined with the wall, or attached to the exterior wall surface as an accessory component, which can not only provide abundant energy for the building but also enrich the building facade with its natural texture and color, bringing unexpected effects to the appearance of the building (see Figure 3). Furthermore, solar panels that are visible from the street level could attract attention and curiosity, furthering the goal of the Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez to promote sustainability.

Existing plans for the building include plans to install a green wall on the west facade, which we support. However, should Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez decide to add solar panels to either wall in conjunction with or in place of the green walls, there are several ways to do so. The easiest way is to attach solar panels directly to the exterior walls of the building, but since the back of the light collector is close to the envelope, this would make heat dissipation through the wall more difficult. As the wall is closely related to the interior thermal environment, the solar panels should exist as independent structures to form a type of double facade. This is also good for structural maintenance of the historic building. In the hot season, air heat dissipation generated by the thermal pressure difference in the ventilation shaft could be used to avoid the envelope from directly absorbing radiation and heating too quickly.

Columbia GSAPP Recommendations In summary, we wholeheartedly support the plans by Talia Quesada Campaña to add a photovoltaic system to 204 Obispo Street. Factors including Havana’s climate, the efficiency of modern solar panels, and the Cuban government’s initiatives in support of renewable energy ensure that this use of solar panels is not only good for the environment -- it is economical. Our only suggestions are ways in which this system could be expanded, either by connecting the system to the power grid or increasing the surface area covered by photovoltaic cells.

Sources of Renewable Energy

III. Rainwater Capture 26

Climate Analysis Cuba is known for having defined dry and wet periods during the year, which makes it an ideal climate for rainwater harvesting. Since rainfall is very seasonal, implementing this strategy will result in significant amounts of water can be collected and stored to be used in drier seasons. There are a number of ways in which the water can be stored, depending on the amount of water that would be useful to store on site. Given that this is an existing building, collecting the water on the roof would be the simplest

approach. However, in the case that the building is not able to sustain that type of load on the roof, we believe having a localized rain barrel on each floor would be an energy effective alternative. Since this is a sustainable water management practice, this feature should be celebrated and revealed to act as an educational tool that would make people more aware about water usage and potentially inspire people to implement this strategy at a smaller scale in their own homes.

Average Monthly Temperature and Rainfall in Cuba from 1901-2016

Rainwater Capture

Financial Savings, Environmental Benefits Havana’s aqueduct and water distribution system is antiquated, mostly dating from the first years of the 20th century. It is estimated that 50% of the city’s drinking water is lost due to leakage.This is a concern for the city and one that could be ameliorated by the implementation of sustainable rainwater capture strategies. Urban rainwater harvesting positively benefits the community by reducing reliance on treated ground-water, minimizing runoff pollution, and housing reserves onsite which can be used for indoor toilets or for outdoor irrigation and landscape maintenance. The proposed design for this project

includes energy-efficient and costeffective measures including a rainwater harvesting system to irrigate the green roof and recirculate rainwater for use in toilets and urinals. Urbanization and population growth have made water scarcity a global concern but this conscious design decision to incorporate rainwater harvesting is a responsible and effective response to reducing dependence on freshwater sources for non-potable uses. Further, when adapting heritage structures or older buildings, this low-impact technology can reduce the need for large-scale, potentially invasive and damaging new infrastructure.

The chart above indicates benefits from natural systems v. highly managed. The short-term cost for adding the rainwater harvesting system will be offset by the long-term savings to the building and the city’s water system. Additionally, reducing reliance on ground-water mitigates some of the negative environmental impacts such as over-extracting fresh-water sources and lowering the CO2 emitted from energy used to treat and draw the water through urban areas 28

Countries around the world have undergone rapid urbanization throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. In 2018, the United Nations world water development report emphasized the need for global adoption of nature-based solutions for combating impending water scarcity issues. Locations like Singapore, Hawaii, Bermuda, and Berlin have all adopted rainwater harvesting systems to conserve urban water sources, support soil stabilization, reduce water-related illnesses, and bypass poor water quality or mineral contamination often found in groundwater. At Changi Airport in Singapore for example, the rainwater harvesting system supplies 28-33% of the total water needed to supply the airport. By using this free and available natural resource, the airport saves an estimated S$ 390,000 (approx $286k USD) per year.

Obispo 204, How much water can be collected? Precipitation Data 1909-2016

January February March April May June July August September October November December

Rainfall (mm) 39.55 34.31 49.88 76.43 175.27 186.69 142.42 157.81 200.899 163.56 76.79 38.51

Collection Area of Obispo 204 = 31142 sqm

Liters Collected 1231.67 1068.48 1553.36 2380.18 5458.25 5813.90 4435.24 4914.52 6256.12 5093.58 2391.39 1199.28

Above are calculations for 204 Obispo’s lot size and water amounts collected. These numbers indicate the amount of water collected throughout the year can supply an average of 508 toilet flushes per month.

Rainwater Capture

Possible Rainwater Storage Solutions Illustrated below are options available towards rainwater collection tanks for the FANJ. Each of the three options is viable for the storage of rainwater, however, depending on the use to which the collected water is put, some tanks may be more applicable than others.

Floor Mounted Options: Incorporated per floor A. Horizontal Leg Tanks

Capacity Range: 115 to 22,800L Required capacity: 1068 to 6256L Preferred Capacity: 6256L Approximate cost: $1,800

These make great trailer mounted water tanks & also work well for stationary applications. Complete horizontal and elliptical shaped leg tanks are equipped with molded-in legs to support the tank and steel hoops for tie down. Tanks are manufactured from food grade polyethylene plastic resins with U.V. inhibitors. Option A contains U.V. inhibitors, hence if the water is later purified and used for drinking, this would be a good option. This option may be used either at the ground floor level or in the interior of upper floors.

B Vertical Plastic Tanks

Capacity Range: 38 to 75,708 L Required capacity: 1068 to 6256 L Preferred Capacity: 6256L Approximate cost: $3,658

Plastic Water Tanks featured below are ideal for multi-purpose use including: storing safe potable drinking water, rainwater harvesting & collection, long term storage of water, emergency backup in home water storage tanks, fire suppression & protection and farm irrigation. Option B is often put to use for the purpose of Rainwater storage. May be used at the ground floor level as well as the interior of upper floors.

C. Low Profile Hauling Tanks

Capacity Range: 1892 to 9,084L Required capacity: 1068 to 6256L Preferred Capacity: 6256L Approximate cost: $1,800

Low profile hauling tanks have caught the eye of both professional and novice haulers as their slosh reduction ribs provide excellent structural support. With a specific gravity rating of 1.5 (12.5 lbs. per gallon) these tanks are ready to roll. Option C is an innovative option that may be used underneath the building, hence this option would save space and provide an invisible solution.

Rainwater Capture

Harvesting Techniques 1. Rain Chains

Left: Designed by Lake | Flato Architects. Middle: Designed by Kason Group Right: Office Building Vegetal Rain Chain Facade Seo inc. and jun hashimoto

Rainwater Capture

Harvesting Techniques 2. Rain Gutters

Left: The Key SathornRatchapreuk Bangkok, by XSiTE Design, in Bangkok, Thailand. Right: by FLOAT Architectural Research and Design, LLC

Columbia GSAPP Recommendations The proposal by the Office of the Historian is an exemplary use of this sustainable building technique which, if similarly adopted by structures in the neighborhood, has the capacity to reduce pollution, save energy, and reduce building expenses. This building can serve as an example for sustainable adaptive reuse and help to spread awareness of the cost-effectiveness of rainwater harvesting systems and the ease of adding the necessary equipment into existing structures. By educating the public through interaction with the site, the popularity of these systems can proliferate and create a more sustainable and resilient urban water system. If the current design were to expand the rainwater harvesting system to also serve the adjacent wing, it would allow more flexibility regarding where to distribute equipment.

Rainwater Capture

IV. Reducing Ecological Footprint 36

Interior Material Conservation The project for a new Environmental Studies Center for the Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez de la Naturaleza y el Hombre, located at 204 Obispo Street, consists of the sustainable restoration of an eighteenth-century building in Old Havana with major additions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In keeping with the guiding principle of reducing the ecological footprint, the current proposal for the interior applies green building design principles and sustainable practices by incorporating what is already there, repurposing what is considered ‘waste’, and implementing a system that allows for direct, onsite sourcing of local material when needed. In doing so, the design for the interior of the building at 204 Obispo Street embraces a unique opportunity to become a high-quality example of how reusing existing material can reduce cost, overall carbon footprint, and bring added sustainable and historical value to a project. Recycling or reusing material is one of the oldest sustainable building techniques. It is also one of the most cost-effective sustainability measures. The present design

involves preserving existing materials, repurposing elements like terra-cotta blocks found on site, and incorporating recycled materials like recycled glass window panes that will be used as screens in the atriums. The most extensive strategy for reducing the carbon footprint, is maintaining the existing patchwork of floors, dating from different periods in the building’s history, rather than replacing all of the floors to create a unified appearance. Much of the original floor tiles on the upper floors are in good condition and can be reused. The glazed tiles provide natural resistance to moisture and maintain a slightly cooler temperature, which is ideally suited for warmer climates. Apart from reusing existing materials, new materials will be added that also fulfill the goal of reducing the building’s carbon footprint as much as possible. Among these is Cuban bamboo, a local and natural material, that will be used widely in the project. Bamboo can be grown on the green roof, thus eliminating any future transportation or purchase costs and allowing for quick repairs or replacements when needed.

Reducing Ecological Footprint

Through the visible reuse of materials and sustainable material sourced onsite, the building serve as an important educational tool used to showcase these techniques to the greater public. As outlined in the report prepared by the project architect, Talia Quesada Campaña, the design, particularly the spaces exposed to the public, can inspire a similar reuse of materials in homes or other structures. The more exposure to these kinds of practices, the greater the possibility of the smart strategies developed in the project to be replicated and of the city to efficiently reduce its ecological footprint. The reuse of existing materials, many of which were sourced on site, not only fulfills an important ecological and educational purpose, it also gives witness to the various layers of alterations the building had undergone through the centuries. The guiding principle of reducing the building’s ecological footprint results in the reuse of materials from different periods in the building’s history, without one layer of accretions taking precedence over another. Sustainability converges with historic preservation so that the historicity of the building on Obispo Street would be revealed through the deployment of myriad coexisting accretions. Taken together they could form a palimpsest of unfinished and ever-widening contexts of interpretation, both ecological and historical--acting as a microcosm of the ongoing development of the city into the future. 38

Given the multiplicity of alterations-past and present--that characterize the spaces on Obispo Street, Jean Nouvel’s Rhinoceros/Fondazione Alda Fendi– Esperimenti can serve as a useful precedent for potential design choices in the interior of the building. The Fondazione Alda Fendi– Esperimenti is located in close proximity to the Roman Forum and, since its opening in 2018, provides exhibition spaces and culture oriented boutiques that open onto the street, as well as small residences available to visiting artists. If programmatically different from the Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez’s new facility, both reveal the passage of time as an aesthetic gesture. Like the building on Obispo Street, the buildings that comprise the Fondazione Alda Fendi– Esperimenti have sustained countless alterations over time. During the restoration process, Nouvel chose to refinish only parts of the rooms’ walls and floors, leaving parts of the original untouched. Thus, sections of original floor-tiles have been left untouched but surrounded by new materials. Modern additions, like the state-ofthe-art bathrooms and kitchens were designed as pared-down stainlesssteel blocks that provide a striking point of comparison to the building’s historic fabric, emphasizing the latter’s historic character and ongoing processes of alteration. Indeed, Nouvel conceived of the project as “a sculptural interpretation of the passage of time and the process of sedimentation

Rhinoceros / Fondazione Alda Fendi – Esperimenti.” Ateliers Jean Nouvel. Reducing Ecological Footprint

Rhinoceros / Fondazione Alda Fendi – Esperimenti.” Ateliers Jean Nouvel. 40

Unlike the Fondazione Alda Fendi– Esperimenti however, the building on Obispo Street not only enriches the possibilities of interpretation from the point of view of historic preservation, it does so while simultaneously offering opportunities for showcasing novel sustainability practices demanded by current exigencies. The interiors could form a record of the passage of time, but they also point to the urgency of finding greener ways to build. If, as studies have shown, recycling buildings is more sustainable than building new, albeit energy-efficient, buildings, then sustainability and historic preservation can, in theory, be closely aligned. Insofar as the interiors are both a product of preservation sensibilities and of engagement with sustainability practices, they point both to the past and to the future--to the possibility of deploying the material remnants of the past in service of a more sustainable future. This project is exciting precisely because a particular brand of preservation aesthetics and a novel aesthetics of sustainability can converge, becoming essentially coextensive with each other. The project clearly demonstrates the potential role historic preservation can play in making construction more sustainable.

Columbia GSAPP Recommendations We believe the convergence in the aesthetics of historic preservation and sustainable building to be the strongest aspect of the design of the interiors and one of the most interesting aspects of the project as a whole. We hope that the interiors of the building on Obispo Street be carried out in keeping with the plans submitted by Talia Quesada Campaña.

Reducing Ecological Footprint

V. Greenery for Insulation and Air Quality 42

Green Walls In keeping with the sustainability goals for this project, the use of vertical gardens in this project offers a promising avenue for reducing the urban heat island and energy consumption of the building on Obispo Street. Moreover, vertical gardens have the added benefit of improving air quality and providing vegetation in urban areas that often lack access to green space, facilitating a healthy, enjoyable environment. The visibility of the green wall also means that they could express the ecological Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez’s ecological mission. Studies have shown that vertical gardens provide great potential in reducing energy consumption in buildings. These results have consistently demonstrated that vertical gardens are cooler than the lightcolored walls and the black surfaces that are typically found in cities. Given the ubiquity of vertical wall space in urban areas and their potential for reducing energy consumption, vertical vgardens appear to be a sensible strategy for greening cities such as Havana. Together with rooftop garden technologies, they have the potential to reduce surface temperatures enough to suggest that significant reductions of the urban heat island would be possible if the implementation of these technologies were scaled-up from the individual building to encompass wider

Greenery

urban areas. The project on Obispo Street could thus function as a highly visible prototype, introducing a new technology with definite benefits that could later be replicated elsewhere. However, there are significant challenges to meet in order to successfully implement vertical gardens in the context of Old Havana. These include drawbacks such as higher initial investment, maintenance costs, and possible damage to the building if the wrong system or plant species is chosen. Another challenge inherent to using vegetation as a green technology is the difficulty in quantifying or projecting the benefits accrued from implementing green facades, since vegetation is highly variable and dependent on weather conditions. As of 2017, vertical gardens were also scarce on the island, with only one company that specializes in their installation. The experimental nature of the project may thus come with challenges and costs resulting from the relative novelty of the green technology in Cuba. But we believe the potential gains in sustainability and the potential for the exercise to be replicated elsewhere far outweigh the conceivable challenges in implementation.

In order for the project to be successful as a sustainable adaptive-reuse project, however, its sustainability goals must also align with those of historic preservation. Because of the historic and architectural significance of the building on Obispo Street, finding a vertical wall system that does not damage the building is clearly a matter of concern. Beyond concerns over the building’s fabric, its location within a broader urban context imposes further considerations relating to the maintenance of Old Havana’s historic character. This is all the more the case given that the building is located on a corner lot along Obispo Street, one of Old Havana’s principal thoroughfares. In our evaluation of the present proposal, potential energy-saving and environmental benefits are weighed against concerns over the building’s historic fabric and the urban character of the street on which it is located.

Western Wall Of the proposed uses of vertical walls in the project proposal, we believe the most cogent is the vertical garden on the western facade, which we fully endorse, provided a vertical garden system is found that does no damage to the building. Studies show that vertical gardens oriented east or west demonstrate the highest reductions in temperatures. Thermal studies of the building on Obispo Street reveal that the Southwestern facade receives considerable thermal loads as a result of high sun exposure during the day. Given existing conditions on the southwestern facade, the implementation of a vertical garden is a smart strategy to mitigate the effects of sun exposure, reduce temperature and decrease energy consumption. Provided the vertical garden does no harm to the building, the potential benefits related to sustainability align with historic preservation goals. The southwestern facade is a secondary facade that does not line the street, and is adjacent to an empty lot, which in coming years will be built-up as a parking garage. The installation of a vertical garden will improve the appearance of the empty lot adjoining the property, adding greenery to its urban environment. We expect this aesthetic value to carry through with the construction of the new parking garage, which will be shorter than the building on Obispo Street, allowing the vertical garden to be viewed from the street.

Columbia GSAPP Recommendations We support the vertical garden on the Southwestern facade. Studies show that west and east orientations have a big influence on the reductions during the cooling period. • • •

Having trellis on the southwestern wall with the awning that is also green. Significant reductions in air conditioning are possible with vertical gardens, solely due to shading the windows. Will improve the appearance of the empty lot adjoining the property.

The future construction of a parking garage on that property makes alterations to the southwestern wall a matter of lesser concern from the point of view of maintaining urban continuity.

Greenery

Principle Facade We do not think that the principal facade should a green wall. The reductions in thermal energy are more modest because the narrow street already mitigates sun exposure. This experimental intervention gives us pause. Our primary concern is maintaining the historic character of the building’s primary facade. •

First, the green wall would signify a disruption in the historic streetwall on one of Old Havana’s principal streets. We believe this may not be justified if the gains in energy efficiency are modest.

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The experimental nature of the intervention means that it potentially puts the building’s historic fabric in unnecessary risk, should the vertical garden fail to thrive. Vertical gardens, according to https://www. ipscuba.net/medio-ambiente/emprendimiento-ecologico-promueve-lajardineria-vertical-en-cuba/, were scarce on the island as of 2017. The potential lack of expertise in installing and maintaining vertical gardens on the island may thus imply a real risk on the construction of a vertical garden, a risk that may not be justified on this facade as previously stated.

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Adding an additional vertical garden would signify an additional cost with potentially only modest gains. Especially in the case of the fancy European kind

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Additionally, the design already incorporates a green wall in the building’s vestibule. Because the green wall is on the interior, its purpose is primarily decorative.

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But it could, however, give visibility to the work done by the foundation and symbolize the building’s status as a prototype of sustainable restoration work.

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The interior vertical wall’s small scale potentially offers the opportunity to experiment with different techniques at a lower cost and with less risk to the building’s fabric and the historic character of its environs. The experiments on the could then be scaled-up to the level of the building.

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Seeing as this interior green wall would be visible on the street front, but would not compromise the historic character of the building

The difference in conditions between the two facades, not least of which is levels of sun exposure, means that finding plants that work in both the southwest and Obispo facades is an additional challenge that would have to be overcome. 46

The green wall makes full use of the exterior wall of the building, which plays an essential role in improving the contact chance between residents and green plants, and also improving the green vision rate. At the same time, energy conservation and environmental protection, which makes the building interior warm in winter and cool in summer. It is also conducive to creating a healthy, natural living environment. The green wall needs specific auxiliary technical means. • •

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Adding planting groove; Using materials such as bamboo, wood, steel, to making plant climbing frame, liana such as honeysuckle, grape, gourd could grow along with the skeleton; Planting basin which hangs on the skeleton formed green walls;

Those edible and climbing plants which grow fast, such as grapes, peas, soybeans, pumpkins, squash, luffa, bitter gourd, calabash, etc., always have peculiar shapes, fewer diseases and pests, and may be used in the corridor, porch or exterior walls. Lush green leaves, vines climbing the entire frame, colorful ripe fruit hanging in the air with the wind shaking, people could enjoy shadow under the green wall and harvest joy scene. Besides, the interior green wall could also consider the gabion structure as a load-bearing structure. The gabion structure is to fill the flexible-structure metal cage with the stone material in line with the particle size requirements to form a flexible structure with a certain void ratio (see below image. gabion structure diagram).

Greenery

The structure was initially used for mountain reinforcement and river embankment construction, but architects concerned it because it could only and economically use all kinds of crushed stone materials based on guaranteeing the structural stability of the structure. Various filling materials will give the gabion structure with different functions. If part of the filling materials in the gabion structure are replaced with humus soil, the gabion structure could be used as the container to plant herbaceous plants. The gabion structure could contain the soil matrix in it without loss, and the gap between the filling fragments could also create a safe 48

growth micro-environment for the herb, which ensures that it is free from the adverse impact of extrusion, wind erosion, and water seepage. Because of the existence of metal cage frame of gabion structure, the growth of plant root system will not adversely affect the flexibility and integrity of gabion structure. As long as the problem of water retention is solved, the gabion structure planted by greening could be used as an overall flexible protective surface for the beautification of building appearance and the improvement of the ecological environment. Barcelona, Spain, for example, Laguardia graveyard, on the outskirts of the city. For processing for seismic damage scattered

upon the mountains of rubble, the architects use gabion structure for building exterior wall construction of the tomb, the gap between gravel as plant growth provides good conditions. Local species around the graveyard in under the action of an external force such as anemophilous natural diffusion, could continue to provide the graveyard is suitable for growth of the provenance in rubble, sowing in of pioneer plant root system developed, also can have the effect of fixed gravel (see below image. Figure 3: Lagualada cemetery) .

the gabion structure. He creates gabion wallboard with the function of both sun protection and the plant’s growth. To retain moisture, the panels are made by covering the metal cage with two layers of gravel and a layer of lava, which is then coated with a certain thickness of soil and sand mixed with seeds. In order to prevent the damage of plant roots to the wall, a layer of concrete should be poured on the sand surface. When the concrete is solidified, the metal cage can be lifted and anchored on the main structure of the building.qv

In the construction of the Chateau le Lez apartment in Germany, the architects also used this feature of Greenery

Green Roof

While green roofs are not a common element in the traditional colonial architecture of Havana, Cuba, their benefits in terms of agriculture, climate control and city beautification are ample. In support of FANJ’s emphasis on greening its sustainable pilot project in El Centro the following pages clarify benefits, analyze thermal capacity in relation to Cuba, and introduce plant substrates for a subtropical climate. Due to Havana’s subtropical climate which witnesses frequent events of flash flooding and high temperatures, the intrinsic climatic benefits of green roofs are most valuable. In the following, the research is narrowed to extensive green roofs due to the advantage of convenience, easy operation, low maintenance and low upfront cost.

1) Ecological benefits Among the different ecological benefits, green roofs can help reduce the urban heat, helping with the absorption of CO2 and pollution reduction by vegetation. They also have a great capacity to retain part of the rain water, diminishing flooding risk. 2) Financial benefits Green roofs will reduce the general heat of the building, allowing shadows and better insulation. Indeed, it allows obvious financial benefits, helping cross ventilation to bring freshness across the building too 3) Social/ Community benefits The noise isolation can be considered as a social or community benefit reported by green roofs. The noise isolation depend on the substrate composition and the thickness, as well as the vegetation type and the density of plants on it. However, the need of permeable spaces for ventilation in Cuba make difficult to avoid noise penetration 4) Thermal benefits Green roofs can help to preserve impermeable layer systems from mechanical damage, or chemical decomposition or biological processes. They can help to improve their durability, avoiding their exposition to lag temperature. The research results show that it can reduce the increase of outdoor temperature by approximately 42% and the increase of the indoor temperature by 8% during the daytime. During the night, it can maintain 17% of the temperature in the outdoor environment, stabilizing the temperature change.

Greenery

Extensive Green Roofs for a Sub-Tropical Climate An extensive green roof for FANJ is the most apt option in terms of cost efficiency and benefits. The typical modular layering of an extensive green roof consists of a protective pads, a reservoir drainage board, a permeable pad, a substrate layer, and a planting layer (bottom-up) (below) . The team proposes a maximum of 15 mm growing medium that is sufficient for the production of sedum, herbs and perennials that can be used both for the café/restaurant and as a thermal/rainwater runoff layer. This layer will be discussed further later. `

Filter Layer: This layer protects the drainage layer below it from the growing medium above which can potentially negatively affect the retention of rainwater runoff. It is made from a mass produced cheap synthetic fabric called polypropylene. This lightweight fabric is mainly manufactured in Mexico and the US, thus the assumption is that obtaining it will be relatively cheap and easy for a Cuban contractor.

Drainage Layer: In a sub-tropical climate where flash floods is a commo n nuance, a reservoir drainage board is proposed with a standard thickness of 25 mm. With such a board, the geometry of the section reduces urban runoff by withholding the water until it gets saturated (below) . A great product example of this is SedumDrain® 25 which comes in sheets 1915 mm x 960 mm and 25 mm height.

Protection and Root Barrier Layer: This layer preforms as a protection layer between the building structural elements and any root invasions that may arise from the plants. It is made of corrosion-resistant metal, fiberglass or plastic that create an impenetrable wall that roots can not get through.

Roofing Membrane: This layer refers to the structural support that carries the roof and its live loads. The additional dead load due to the weight of an extensive green roof should thus be addressed. A rule of thumb for a 15 mm growing medium extensive green roof is a saturated load of 22lbs/ft2.

Greenery

Plant Level and Growing Medium The plant selection is typically based on several criteria such as weight, plant coverage, level of maintenance and tolerance to the tough environmental conditions such as high sun exposure, shallow growing media, restricted water supply, increased wind speeds and prolonged dry periods. The most common plants to use on a green roof are a dominant of ruderal (herbaceous and sub-shrub). The most are surrogate of early-stage local grassland ecosystem succession, arboreal (trees and shrubs), and hygrophilous herb. Most specifically, a case study in Malaysia shows that in Tropical environment, the most suitable plant species are often the Portulacaceae, Neoregelia and Crassulaceae plants.

Portulacaceae • • • • •

Height x width: 6” x 6-12” Growth rate: moderate Soil: well-drained, tolerates dry Low water consumption Useful for the production of flowers (during the whole year) and can be eaten.

Neoregelia (ampullaceal) • • • • •

Height x width: 2 inches tall and 3/4 of an inch wide Growth rate: low Soil: well-drained, tolerates dry Low water consumption Flowers

Crassulaceae • • • •

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Height x width: 5-30” Growth rate: moderate Soil: light, well-drained water consumption 1 to 2 waterings a week, only when the soil has dried well. Useful for the production of flowers (during the whole year)

Sedum spp •

It is “a succulent ground cover, has become very famous to be used in green roofs as this plant can survive in these challenging environments.”

Ipomoea horsfalliae • • • • • • • • • • •

Height x width: Can be mainly of 3 diffrent size: 12-15 ft. (3.6-4.7 m) 15-20 ft. (4.7-6 m) 20-30 ft. (6-9 m) Growth rate: low Soil: well-drained, tolerates dry Full Sun Sun to Partial Shade Average Water Needs; Water regularly; do not overwater Flowers

Syngoniumpodophyllum • • •

should be watered 2-3 times a week in summer, but much less often in winter. Height or Length: 3-6 feet Water consumption: The soil should be kept lightly moist during spring and summer and slightly drier during the fall and winter months

Additionally, and based on the Malaysian case, some eaten vegetables can grow in an extensive roof system such as Cardinal Creeper (ipomoea horsfalliae /jasminumsambac), Sweet Potato (ipomoea batatas), arrowhead plants (syngoniumpodophyllum), and beach morning glory (ipomoea pes-caprae) can be used on the roof.Indeed, it seems that there is not a lot of green roof in Cuba, many systems with plants or trees are used to create shadows on the buildings. “However, it is referred to green directly related to roof, but Cuban repertory shows the existence of other modalities not considered by the international literature, where vegetation is not directly in contact to the roof, and then there is no thermal inertia but shading.”

Greenery

Thermal Comfort and Rainwater Runoff Analysis

A key feature of sub-tropical climates is its high, humid temperatures and frequent instances of flash flooding, thus green roofs present themselves as prime sustainable solutions to mitigate climatic conditions. Through a comparative analysis between green roofs, non-reflective roofs, and reflective roofs done by the University in Texas, Austin has found that universally, any green roof reduces the interior temperature of a building by 10 degrees. Yet, in terms of water retention, green roofs varied in their capacity to retain rainwater based on their composition, slope and thickness. Fortunately in the case of FANJ, there has been a documented case of using a green roof in Cuba that we are able to refer to. In their research Dania Gonzalez and Luis Guillermo tracked the temperature variation between 3 roofs. The first being a traditional exposed roof, the second a double green roof and the third an extensive green roof. Results show that while costs of an extensive green roof is double the standard roof upfront, it reduces temperatures and thus reducing electricity costs significantly (above)

Greenery

Conclusion The Preliminary Design Report for the renovation of the historic structure at calle Obispo No. 204 prepared by Arq.Talia Quesada Campaña on behalf of the Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez contains an intelligently conceived and schematically well articulated set of strategies for the incorporation of sustainable design principles in this important building project. The delegation from Columbia University’ Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation who participated in the highly productive taller at FANJ fully endorses these strategies, and is pleased to contribute the additional analyses and recommendations elaborated in this report. We are optimistic that by implementing these ideas, the Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez and the Office of the Historian of the City of Havana can realize their goal of making the renovation of Obispo 204 a showcase for the best practices of sustainability in historic preservation, which can set an example for future renovation projects not just in Havana but throughout the tropics. We are Columbia GSAPP look forward to seeing this important project come to fruition.