As cities grow and the struggle to address climate change and its effects continues to mount, the importance of the urban tree has also grown. Efforts to cultivate urban tree canopies abound and are popular with policymakers and the public alike. Trees provide much-needed shade, remove air pollution, absorb carbon, and even increase property values. But boosting the urban treescape has one element that often gets overlooked: It’s one thing to plant a lot of trees—but it’s something else to maintain them.

Technology has long played a role in efforts to track, map, and quantify the big-picture impacts of urban treescapes, from the environmental to the economic, a topic covered in this column in 2018. But new technologies have emerged and evolved since then, and some of the most intriguing are focused not just on high-level policy impacts but on the crucial issue of long-term maintenance. One specific example: adequate and timely watering, especially for younger trees, must be part of planning if the urban tree population is to endure.

Increasingly, cities are leveraging sophisticated tree-data tools to encourage and enable citizen engagement with urban tree maintenance, and in some cases even directly involve citizens in caring for the canopy.  

Consider a set of ongoing projects originating with CityLAB Berlin, a tech innovation nonprofit that applies data to urban problems. In recent years, Berlin, one of the more tree-rich cities in Europe, lost 20 percent of its trees thanks to high temperatures and a dearth of rain. That’s partly because monitoring and maintaining individual trees can be a complicated and heavy burden for municipal governments. So in 2020, CityLAB launched Gieß den Kiez (Water the Neighborhood), a digital platform that made government tree data available and accessible to the public. This made it possible for citizens to learn about local tree-watering needs—and to commit to helping out. “The application was developed based on the needs of our community,” said Yannick Müller, the organization’s head of strategic partnerships, via email.

The amount of data already available was a revelation: government projects had previously detailed and mapped hundreds of thousands of trees. CityLab combined this with other data, such as rainfall figures. The result is a new digital map with data on more than half a million trees, indicating watering levels and dates, cross-matched with watering needs based on age and species. Feedback and insights from a highly tree-engaged chunk of the citizenry helped shape the platform’s subsequent development. Some individuals had already essentially adopted, and independently started maintaining, particular urban trees. “They feel like it’s their own tree,” CityLab Berlin manager Julia Zimmermann told an interviewer. Citizens also had specific ideas about utilizing the city’s existing water pump system and making it more accessible. 

“A chat tool enables interaction between users, groups, and initiatives and allowed us to communicate and collect feedback,” Müller explained. Aside from resolving smaller bugs, this inspired new features, like one that displays the location and status of water pumps. It also helped support the designation of “caretakers” for specific trees, who commit to monitoring and watering on a regular basis. “This small added feature allows citizens to make use of their resources in a more targeted manner,” he said.

In 2021, the city of Leipzig adopted the tool, and a few more German municipalities have followed, according to Müller. User numbers are increasing continually, with more than 3,500 registered citizen-caretakers now watching over 7,500 adopted trees.

That said, the efforts of Gieß den Kiez remain an adjunct to public policy, not formally absorbed into official government urban tree maintenance plans. “However, the platform succeeds in raising awareness for climate adaptations in the light of future heat waves,” Müller maintains. In Berlin, for example, “it ignited a debate between different local district authorities as to what extent citizens should be involved in taking care of city trees and if that’s a good use for water.” (It is, Müller argues, considering the costs of planting new trees and the many proven environmental and health benefits of a robust urban treescape.)

One of the inspirations CityLAB Berlin has cited is the NYC Tree Map, a digital tool with roots reaching to 2016 that now maps nearly 1 million trees. “The NYC Tree Map is the most comprehensive and up-to-date living tree map in the world,” the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation declares. “Integrated directly with Parks’ forestry database, the map gives citizens the same real-time access to the urban forest that Parks foresters have on the ground.” This enables New Yorkers to “digitally interact” with the city’s tree population across the five boroughs—for instance, they can monitor a tree’s most recent inspection, with the date and inspection ID.

“Our NYC Tree Map allows casual tree lovers to easily identify trees, flag concerns, and report their care,” NYC Parks Director of Stewardship Nichole Henderson said via email. “Groups and individuals log their tree care activities into the map, like watering, litter removal, soil cultivation and mulching.” Moreover, several citizen groups monitor and use the map to coordinate more ambitious stewardship and maintenance efforts. As examples, Henderson mentions the Jackson Heights Beautification Group, an arts and environmental organization in Queens; Trees New York, a longstanding professional organization that trains “citizen pruners,” among other engagement activities; and the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, whose projects include “community science” efforts such as experiments in capturing and using rainwater. And the tree map is key to NYC Parks’ own broader Let’s Green NYC campaign, which posts “citywide street tree care activities with community partners and allows volunteers to see the visible impact, how they are directly contributing to caring for the urban forest,” Henderson said.

Similar initiatives are playing out in other major cities. The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) in Washington, DC, maintains a digital tree map that encourages citizen involvement (including reporting browning leaves or insect damage, as well as trees in need of watering). The tree map launched with a special focus on maintaining 8,200 trees planted in 2017. Elsewhere, the Adopt-A-Tree app in Athens, Greece, enables citizens to take responsibility for watering individual city trees during dry summer months. And entities like CityLAB Berlin continue to innovate: its new Quantified Trees (“QTrees”) project aims to develop a prediction system supported by artificial intelligence, drawing on databases and sensors to identify urban trees at risk from drought. A prototype is already in testing, and launch is planned for this year.

Zimmermann, of CityLab Berlin, concedes that it has been difficult to precisely demonstrate the impact of these efforts. “This is due to the nature of nature,” she said. Trees adapt slowly, so gauging the effects of watering programs could require years of monitoring growth, roots, leaves, and so on. But in the short term, the project’s data dashboard does illuminate watering patterns —and has shown that watering amounts have increased since the program started, almost certainly countering drought effects. “So the project leads at least to a better understanding and caretaking of urban green,” she continued. In some cases it has sparked local governments to support volunteers with material and guidelines for optimal watering practices.

“Trees are the new polar bears, the trending face of the environmental movement,” the historian and author Jill Lepore observed recently, in a survey of humans’ surprisingly long-lived appreciation for the arboreal. Now we have the science and technology to understand and quantify the value of trees beyond aesthetics. “If our ancestors found it wise and necessary to cut down fast forests, it is all the more needful that their descendants should plant trees,” Andrew Jackson Downing, a landscape architect, wrote in 1847. “Let every man, whose soul is not a desert, plant trees.” Fair enough. But we have the obligation—and the technology—to maintain them, too.

Rob Walker is a journalist covering design, technology, and other subjects. He is the author of The Art of Noticing. His newsletter is at robwalker.substack.com.

Lead image: Newly planted trees along a pop-up bike lane in Berlin, Germany. Credit: IGphotography via iStock/Getty Images Plus.

New England’s “Knowledge Corridor,” a ribbon of college towns and legacy cities running through the Connecticut River Valley of Connecticut and Massachusetts, is home to more than 200,000 students. As enrollments have risen at the region’s 42 colleges and universities—including Amherst College, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Smith College, University of Connecticut, and Yale University—housing development hasn’t kept pace, and has mostly been confined to single-family homes. That’s pushed rents and home prices past the bounds of affordability for many of the region’s residents, especially seniors and low-income families, and put students and residents in competition for available housing. 

In rural Hatfield, Massachusetts, for example, residents have opted to preserve the town’s pastoral landscape, but that means the community’s aging population has few affordable options for downsizing; the only age-restricted affordable housing complex in town has 44 one-bedroom units, and nearly 10 times that many seniors on its waiting list. And in nearby Amherst, where nearly 60 percent of the town’s 39,000 residents are students, and more than half the land is protected from development, young families have had a harder time finding an affordable place to live: despite a rising population, the number of adults aged 25–44 plunged by 45 percent between 1990 and 2010.

In what has become a familiar narrative, residents seem to acknowledge the need for more housing—and even embrace smart-growth concepts that would contain sprawl—but many still instinctively push back when their communities try to loosen zoning and encourage density. 

To help residents and planners learn from each other, share their visions for their communities, and identify some acceptable parameters of change, Camille Barchers, an assistant professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Janelle Franklin, assistant planner for the town of Hatfield, are designing a series of exploratory scenario planning workshops this fall. Members of each community will be invited to participate in a role-playing simulation, where they can change zoning rules or locate different housing types on a map and consider the varied impacts. 

“We want to provide an opportunity for folks to think creatively about what changes could be made to their local zoning that minimize tradeoffs between the conservation of land and rural character and providing affordable housing,” Barchers says. “We’re hoping that, after participating in the workshop, community members might see a variety of futures that align with their visions of the community.” 

The project is one of four selected for support by the Lincoln Institute’s Consortium for Scenario Planning (CSP) in response to an RFP issued in January. Each project will use exploratory scenario planning to address housing affordability challenges in communities from San Diego to Pittsburgh. The awardees will describe their work in February 2024 at the annual Consortium for Scenario Planning conference in Portland, Oregon.

“Housing availability and affordability are issues that unite communities large and small across the United States. Many of these communities have already begun the difficult work of resolving these problems, but we at the Lincoln Institute are interested in seeing how scenario planning, a type of community vision process, can offer unique solutions,” says Ryan Handy, policy analyst at the Lincoln Institute. “Exploratory scenario planning in particular can bring diverse voices, lived experiences, and community buy-in to planning processes that have often struggled to be inclusive and meet a variety of needs.” 

In addition to the exploratory scenario planning workshops that Barchers and Franklin will design and conduct in the towns of Amherst and Hatfield, Massachusetts—two in each community—CSP selected three other proposals:

• Cascadia Partners, a Portland, Oregon–based consulting firm, will design a housing choices game that uses exploratory scenario planning to guide planning practitioners, elected officials, municipal staff, and residents through discussions about housing solutions and tools. 
• Evolve Environment and Architecture, a Pittsburgh-based consulting firm, will conduct two exploratory scenario planning workshops in Pittsburgh’s Triboro Ecodistrict—home to the cities of Millvale, Sharpsburg, and Etna—and develop a scenario planning toolkit based on the workshops. 
• Marcel Sanchez Prieto and Adriana Cuellar, associate professors at the University of San Diego, along with Tyler Hanson, adjunct faculty member at Woodbury University, and Kalin Cannady, principal of architecture practice KCA&D, will use a series of exploratory scenario planning workshops in San Diego to explore housing solutions, such as community-based developers, tax incentives, loan strategies, affordable housing mandates, and zoning changes.  

All of the projects, which will be completed by May 2024, were selected through an RFP issued annually by the Consortium for Scenario Planning. Past projects have focused on changing food systems (2022), climate strategies (2021), and equity and low-growth scenarios (2020).    

To learn more about all Lincoln Institute RFPs, fellowships, and research opportunities, visit the research and data section of our website.  

Jon Gorey is a staff writer at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image: Amherst, Massachusetts. Credit: Denis Tangney Jr. via iStock/Getty Images Plus.

With sophisticated market research powered by prodigious profits, corporate real estate investors have long had the upper hand over vulnerable homeowners and the groups trying to protect them.

Investors can identify distressed homes in otherwise gentrifying neighborhoods, snap them up at a discount, and leave them empty for years waiting for nearby home values to rise. They can target longtime, elderly homeowners who may need to sell at a discount. And with plenty of cash on hand—and a new playbook that includes renting out houses rather than just flipping them—they can outbid individual homebuyers as they turn bedrooms into balance sheet items.

Now, a new data mapping tool from the Lincoln Institute’s Center for Geospatial Solutions (CGS) can help equip nonprofits, advocates, and local governments with similarly powerful technology to help identify and defend affordable housing stock threatened by real estate speculators and absentee landlords.

“It’s a very uneven playing field between private investors, who have the capital and are willing to invest the capital to get this market intelligence, and nonprofits that are struggling to keep the doors open, let alone invest in platforms like this,” says Jeff Allenby, CGS director of Geospatial Technology. “What you see is governments and nonprofits continuously trying to play catch up.”

Down-to-the-Parcel Data

In the wake of the Great Recession, corporations increasingly started purchasing and then renting out not just apartment buildings, but also single-family homes—especially in Sun Belt metro areas and postindustrial legacy cities, where rents remained stable despite lower property prices. Often, that’s had a cascade of negative impacts on low-income communities.

For one thing, it leaves more renters dealing with absentee corporate landlords, who can be quick to force an eviction and raise rents, but slow to fix a leaky roof or resolve code violations. It also reduces the supply of affordable housing stock available to would-be homebuyers, robbing local renters of opportunity.

In Baltimore’s Harlem Park neighborhood, for example, just 53 of the 464 homes sold since 2017—12 percent—were purchased by owner occupants. In 2022, one of every five homes sold in the neighborhood (19.2 percent) was purchased by an out-of-state business, and nearly half were bought by in-state corporations with multiple-property portfolios.

“You just saw this backfill of corporate ownership come into this neighborhood, and it’s going to take years to come back from that,” Allenby says. Where real estate investors once focused on flipping houses for a quick buck, they now see rental properties as a long-term moneymaker. “These houses are just gone, likely in perpetuity, from a homeownership perspective.”

This grim, granular data is courtesy of a CGS initiative called “Who Owns America?” Starting with Baltimore, CGS used a variety of public data sources to map every parcel in the city by its ownership characteristics, cross-checking postal information with deeds and other records to distinguish owner-occupied properties from those owned by private landlords and large or out-of-state businesses.

After coding city-owned residential parcels, Allenby explains, CGS filters for all properties where the owner’s mailing address doesn’t match the physical address—meaning it isn’t owner-occupied. After that, CGS can differentiate between private, off-site owners—local “mom-and-pop” landlords who may own one or two properties, for example—and more formal corporations, checking the names against a series of business-related keywords and acronyms, such as LLC, LLP, incorporated, and so on. Further filtering reveals whether a business is based in or out of state, and whether it owns multiple properties in the city.

The resulting color-coded maps make it clear where owner occupancy is more prevalent and where corporate landlords are most active. Empowered with this intuitive, down-to-the-parcel data, communities can identify housing stock likely to be targeted by speculators. Then they can take steps to defend (or even reclaim) affordable housing before it’s lost to corporate ownership.

The Right to Fight Back 

One policy cities can employ to thwart predatory investors is a right of first refusal rule, which gives tenants the option to purchase their home before it’s sold to a corporation. Knowing where such investors are active can help community leaders support the rollout of such a program with more targeted public outreach, says Senior Research Fellow Robert “R.J.” McGrail, director of the Lincoln Institute’s Accelerating Community Investment initiative.

“That’s the neighborhood you do flyers in, where you have some community organization go knock on doors to tell people, ‘Just so you know, if the out-of-state company that you write your rent check to ever sells your house, you have the first chance to buy it,’” McGrail says. “The ‘just-so-you-know’ conversation can be incredibly agency building and empowering for an individual, in a way that I think is another downstream potential benefit from this tool.”

Allenby is quick to point out that the formalization of property ownership isn’t in itself a bad thing. For example, if a local landlord dies and his children inherit his three rental properties and put them all into an LLC, that doesn’t fundamentally alter the local real estate landscape. And true investment—companies that buy vacant, dilapidated buildings, restore them to good condition, and get them back into the housing market—is almost always welcome.

“Investor owner doesn’t necessarily mean bad owner,” McGrail agrees. But by overlapping additional layers of parcel-level datasets, CGS can provide more context and reveal bad actors. For example, mapping where corporate ownership coincides with code violations—reports of broken deck railings, lack of heat, leaky toilets, and so on—“tells a dramatically more nuanced, useful story around what is happening and what to do about it,” he says.

In that case, McGrail notes, mapping might offer chronically understaffed inspectional departments a better way to prioritize their code enforcement. Similarly, layering vacancy data over out-of-state ownership maps can inform discussions around land use policies such as a split-rate tax.

“So many times, policy discussions happen in a vacuum of data,” Allenby says. “You’re talking about theoreticals, abstract numbers, abstract concepts, and you don’t really have a good handle on the scale of the issue that you’re talking about. And these tools allow you to frame that conversation very specifically.”

Beyond Baltimore 

CGS can provide a granular data map customized to an organization’s or community’s needs in just a couple of weeks, Allenby says. And it’s not just a tool for cities. CGS has also mapped the entire state of Massachusetts for a housing nonprofit, and is currently documenting timberland ownership across Alabama.

CGS also partnered with the International Land Conservation Network to combine the research of multiple conservation organizations in search of “Consensus Landscapes”—areas that meet not just one conservation priority, such as biodiversity, habitat connectivity, or carbon storage potential, but many such goals, all at once. The goal of this collaborative mapping framework, according to CGS, is to identify “places that everyone can agree are important, and should be the immediate focus of collective conservation efforts” as the United States works to protect 30 percent of its land by 2030.

The Center for Geospatial Solutions created a framework for mapping “consensus landscapes” by assessing and integrating the research of several conservation organizations. Credit: Center for Geospatial Solutions.

Jim Gray, senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute, is now working with CGS to study ownership trends among manufactured housing communities, which have also garnered the attention of real estate investors in recent years for their relatively low costs and reliable rents. Gray calls CGS’s work “invaluable” for its ability to transform a largely anecdotal challenge into real data.

“Knowing the extent of the problem, who is responsible, and where the problem is most acute will help inform and target which communities need to prioritize preserving this affordable housing stock, and how to go about that,” he says.

To learn more or to work with the Center for Geospatial Solutions, visit the CGS website or contact cgs@lincolninst.edu.

Jon Gorey is a staff writer at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image: This Center for Geospatial Solutions image combines spatial analysis with land parcel data to illustrate different types of property ownership, part of a project intended to help communities better understand how institutional investors are affecting local land markets. Credit: Center for Geospatial Solutions.

Cuando se lanzó el primer programa comercial de bicicletas compartidas en 2008, la propuesta de valor era clara. La mayor circulación de bicicletas en las calles reduciría el uso de automóviles y las emisiones de carbono, proporcionaría a los residentes y turistas una forma de transporte flexible, y ofrecería un beneficio de salud pública como puntapié inicial.

Durante la década siguiente, las bicicletas compartidas se expandieron a lo largo de todo el país. No obstante, debido a que los programas de bicicletas compartidas suelen depender de fondos corporativos o están a cargo de empresas de micromovilidad con fines de lucro, rara vez se implementó el servicio en ciudades y barrios de bajos ingresos en los que el acceso a más opciones de transporte sería beneficioso. Hace poco, este conocido patrón se vio sacudido por la popularidad creciente de las bicicletas eléctricas (es decir, bicicletas equipadas con tecnología de baterías eléctricas que complementan o, en ocasiones, reemplazan a las bicicletas tradicionales a pedal), y por parte de las ciudades y los defensores del ciclismo que tergiversan el esquema habitual de bicicletas compartidas.

Durante los últimos años, se han lanzado o anunciado proyectos experimentales de uso compartido de bicicletas dirigidos a comunidades y residentes de bajos ingresos en ciudades como Denver, Oakland, Búfalo, Nueva York; Youngstown, Ohio; y Worcester, Massachusetts.

Las ventas de bicicletas eléctricas están en auge a nivel mundial, y la tecnología está demostrando que puede cambiar las reglas de juego. “Todas las bicicletas compartidas deberían ser eléctricas”, expresó John MacArthur, gerente del programa de transporte sostenible del Centro de Educación e Investigación para el Transporte (TREC, por su sigla en inglés) de la Universidad Estatal de Portland, que publicó un informe sobre la equidad de las bicicletas compartidas en el año 2020. “No tengo ninguna duda sobre esto”.

La razón clave, añadió MacArthur, es que está demostrado que las bicicletas eléctricas derriban antiguas barreras en relación con quiénes andan en bicicleta. Atraen a adultos mayores, personas con limitaciones físicas, personas que no andan en bicicleta desde su infancia y personas que jamás se identificaron con el deporte ni con la cultura del ciclismo. Con las bicicletas tradicionales, explica, “solo se llega a una cierta cantidad de personas”.

En ciudades como Portland y Nueva York, que construyeron flotas completamente eléctricas (o en su mayoría), los usuarios “andan más en bicicleta y con mayor frecuencia”, afirma MacArthur. TREC descubrió que mientras un viaje típico en bicicleta compartida tiene unos cinco kilómetros y medio, los viajes en bicicleta eléctrica suelen extenderse más de ocho kilómetros, y, a veces, casi el doble.

Esto puede tener un impacto espacial y económico, ya que tendría el potencial de expandir el acceso a barrios, empleos y servicios. “La equidad en el servicio de bicicletas compartidas” ya es un problema reconocido, y las organizaciones sin fines de lucro, así como los emprendedores locales, están involucrándose para satisfacer las necesidades de comunidades y áreas geográficas que, históricamente, han quedado desatendidas. Todas las iniciativas recientes tienen, al menos, el objetivo parcial de no solo expandir las opciones de transporte, sino también estimular la vitalidad de los barrios y la independencia que esta conlleva.

“El uso histórico del suelo, las bancas de crédito hipotecario y otras políticas conformaron un país con una geografía de oportunidades muy irregular”, afirma Jessie Grogan, directora adjunta de Menos pobreza y desigualdad espacial del Instituto Lincoln. “La correlación entre los activos del barrio y la segregación racial y étnica no fue casual, por lo que el proceso inverso tampoco lo será. Si bien debemos trabajar para que todos los barrios ofrezcan oportunidades, mientras tanto, las bicicletas eléctricas pueden ser un puente esencial entre los lugares con abundancia y escasez de oportunidades. Un viaje cómodo y barato o gratuito a otra comunidad para acceder a un buen trabajo o una buena escuela o una oportunidad recreativa podría ser un salvavidas para las personas de barrios desatendidos”.

Shared Mobility, una organización sin fines de lucro para el transporte equitativo con sede en Búfalo, Nueva York, es una de las entidades que intenta ayudar a los socios locales a subsanar las deficiencias. En 2020, la organización adquirió alrededor de 3.000 bicicletas eléctricas que Uber pensaba desechar tras la venta de su negocio de bicicletas compartidas de marca Jump. El grupo se asoció con el East Side Bike Club (ESBC) de la ciudad para usar algunas de las bicicletas e iniciar una biblioteca de bicicletas eléctricas en Búfalo. De esta forma, atendieron las necesidades de un área de bajos ingresos con población predominantemente negra. Las bibliotecas de bicicletas eléctricas ofrecen a los miembros de la comunidad alquileres de bicicletas sin costo y capacitaciones relacionadas con las bicicletas. Entre otros servicios de reparación de bicicletas y programas educativos, ESBC ahora permite el uso de las bicicletas eléctricas durante una semana sin costo alguno. Shared Mobility trabajó con socios de otras comunidades en Nueva York, California y Carolina del Norte para sembrar bibliotecas de bicicletas eléctricas en esos lugares.

Michael Galligano, director ejecutivo de Shared Mobility, comenta que el tipo de compromiso comunitario que ESBC y otros grupos tienen puede ayudarlos a conseguir subsidios y fondos para financiar estos programas. Pero, además, argumenta que las municipalidades deberían implementar programas de bicicletas y bicicletas eléctricas como una forma de transporte público, con la planificación y el financiamiento correspondientes. “¿Dónde termina el transporte público?”, pregunta. “Creemos que no se trata solo de autobuses y trenes. También se trata de andar en bicicleta, caminar, compartir autos y alquilar vehículos con conductor”.

Galligano menciona a la Autoridad de Transporte del Distrito Capital, que brinda servicios a Albany, Nueva York, y a los municipios aledaños, como un ejemplo de un colaborador de larga trayectoria de Shared Mobility que piensa de esta forma, y que, próximamente, financiará de forma parcial su propio programa de bicicletas eléctricas con presupuesto destinado al transporte público. Mientras tanto, en Massachusetts, el gobierno nacional prometió US$ 5 millones para financiar iniciativas que faciliten el acceso a opciones de transporte que utilizan energía limpia, como las bicicletas eléctricas, a poblaciones de bajos ingresos. Dicha propuesta permitirá que la ciudad de Worcester proporcione bicicletas eléctricas a 100 residentes como parte de un estudio de dos años destinado a obtener más información sobre el uso y los efectos de la tecnología.

Otra iniciativa de bicicletas eléctricas en una ciudad posindustrial se basa en un abordaje de financiamiento híbrido. Esta primavera, YoGoBikeshare hace su lanzamiento en Youngstown, Ohio, con cerca de 30 bicicletas distribuidas en cuatro estaciones base. Este negocio de propietarios negros, que se financió con una inversión de estos mismos y con un préstamo de la incubadora de empresas Youngstown Business Incubator, satisface una necesidad en una ciudad que otras empresas de micromovilidad han pasado por alto.

“El transporte en comunidades como Youngstown es un desafío particular, ya que décadas de deterioro económico y demográfico generaron ciudades muy grandes y extendidas en relación con el tamaño de la población”, destaca Grogan. “Además, las ciudades más pobres no suelen tener un buen servicio de transporte público, por lo que es particularmente importante invertir en opciones de movilidad en lugares como Youngstown”.

La comunidad filantrópica también se está involucrando con la expansión del acceso a las bicicletas eléctricas. MacArthur destaca el trabajo de Better Bike Share, fundada por la JPB Foundation, que tiene el objetivo explícito de aumentar el “acceso a sistemas de micromovilidad compartida y su uso en las comunidades de bajos ingresos y de personas negras, indígenas y de color (BIPOC, por su sigla en inglés)”. Su ciudad aliada de mayor reputación es Filadelfia: los esfuerzos realizados durante la última década para construir un sistema de bicicletas compartidas más inclusivo han sentado un precedente, comenta MacArthur, y las becas de Better Bike Share ya financiaron múltiples proyectos en todo el país.

No cabe duda de que todos estos experimentos son pequeños pasos progresivos, y no proyectos de transporte masivos para toda la ciudad ni reformas de infraestructura integrales. Pero el cambio gradual puede aportar su grano de arena. Al menos, el advenimiento de las bicicletas eléctricas como una herramienta para expandir el acceso a oportunidades económicas representa una posibilidad de atraer un mayor apoyo generalizado de la gente para las alternativas de transporte. Y combinar la tecnología con programas barriales que se multiplican como centros comunitarios, por ejemplo, el ESBC en Búfalo, podría ser una forma útil de reforzar dicho objetivo. Incluso si las personas llegan con fines recreativos o por mera curiosidad, dice MacArthur, dicha motivación puede ser la puerta de entrada para que consideren las bicicletas eléctricas como un medio de transporte útil, y puede ayudar a inspirar a los embajadores a expandir ese mensaje.

Por más de una década, la mayor parte de la atención que recibieron los programas de bicicletas compartidas se centró en reducir los kilómetros realizados por los vehículos y las emisiones de carbono, y en aumentar las ganancias. Sin embargo, una evolución parece estar en camino, ya que el acceso a las bicicletas se expande, las percepciones empiezan a cambiar, y los beneficios económicos, así como aquellos relacionados con la equidad de las bicicletas eléctricas, son cada vez más evidentes. El objetivo final del uso compartido de bicicletas, explica Galligano, es expandir el “repertorio de opciones de transporte”, y si esta tecnología innovadora está inspirando experimentos originales y llegando a públicos nuevos, mucho mejor: “No se trata de una solución universal”.

Rob Walker es periodista; escribe sobre diseño, tecnología y otros temas. Es el autor de The Art of Noticing. Publica un boletín en robwalker.substack.com.

Imagen: Shared Mobility, una organización sin fines de lucro para el transporte equitativo con sede en Búfalo, Nueva York, ayudó a varias comunidades a iniciar bibliotecas de bicicletas eléctricas, que brindan servicios gratuitos de alquiler y reparación, entre otros. Shane Paul y Tyler Madell, integrantes del equipo de Shared Mobility, a la derecha, se reúnen con integrantes de la organización sin fines de lucro Pacoima Beautiful, para ayudar a construir una biblioteca de bicicletas eléctricas en Pacoima, California. Crédito: Patrick Cray.

This article is part of a larger feature on how land use battles are hindering the clean energy transition.

A critical land use dimension of the clean energy transition is the mining of metals used for batteries for electric vehicles and general power storage, including lithium, cobalt, copper, nickel, niobium, and graphite. The World Bank estimates that over 3 billion tons of minerals and metals will be needed by 2050 to meet the clean energy storage and deployment goals in the 2015 Paris Agreement—a production increase of 500 percent.

With these minerals in such high demand, regions like Latin America, which controls two-thirds of the global supply of lithium, are under tremendous pressure to allow mining as a new source of economic development. But the mining process is dangerous, hugely disruptive to the environment, and often occurs within Indigenous territories.

The resource-rich countries where the minerals are, primarily in the Global South, are home to extensive biodiversity and uniquely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, said Claudia Dobles Camargo, former First Lady of Costa Rica, where open-air mining is banned. “We cannot just transition from one type of energy to clean energy without taking into consideration that this could become a new extractivism,” she said. Honduras and El Salvador have also banned the practice.

Beyond the developing world, any move to extract these clean-power minerals seems to become instantaneously contentious. When a Maine couple discovered large lithium deposits on their property, they were surprised that neighbors didn’t celebrate the potential contribution to the clean energy transition—but rather demanded state regulators prevent any kind of mining operation at all.

Technology may come to the rescue, in the form of more sustainable lithium mining techniques involving microbes, seawater, and brine. Lithium can also be recycled from old batteries, a process dubbed “urban mining.” And researchers at MIT and elsewhere are working on new kinds of batteries, such as metal-air devices using aluminum, zinc, or iron, all of which are abundantly available, that would obviate the need for lithium altogether.

Another approach to minimize damage and land use conflicts: reduce demand for batteries for electric vehicles by driving less—a higher bar, to be sure, for societies just getting used to the concept of alternatives to fossil fuel.

A report by a team led by Providence College Professor Thea Riofrancos found that the United States “can achieve zero emissions transportation while limiting the amount of lithium mining necessary by reducing the car dependence of the transportation system, decreasing the size of electric vehicle batteries, and maximizing lithium recycling.”

“Reordering the US transportation system through policy and spending shifts to prioritize public and active transit while reducing car dependency,” the report says, “can also ensure transit equity, protect ecosystems, respect Indigenous rights, and meet the demands of global justice.”

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, host of the Land Matters podcast, and a contributing editor of Land Lines.

Lead image: Silver Peak lithium mine, Nevada. Credit: simonkr via E+/Getty Images.

Over the past two years, the federal government has raced to turbocharge the transition from gas-powered vehicles to electric alternatives. The Biden administration wants EVs to make up half of new auto sales by 2030; last year’s Inflation Reduction Act juices that goal through a $7,500 individual tax credit for eligible EV buyers. But the electric vehicle transition isn’t just a consumer issue—it’s an infrastructure challenge.

After all, a nation of EV drivers will depend on lots of places to charge up—and that system simply doesn’t exist. While today’s EV owners do an estimated 70 to 80 percent of their vehicle charging at home, that won’t work for long-distance driving. So the Biden administration has declared a goal of 500,000 public EV chargers built out by 2030, along highways, around cities, and in rural areas, with the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law committing $5 billion to this nascent network.

But some experts say that if we come anywhere close to meeting the ambitious 2030 EV sales target, even that charging infrastructure won’t be enough: The number of chargers needed would be closer to 2 million. Moreover, long-haul freight trucking, a crucial transportation category, poses special challenges—with some fascinating potential solutions.

“Most people, when they think about vehicle electrification, think, how do we replace the gas stations with charging stations?,” says Tallis Blalack, managing director of the ASPIRE (Advancing Sustainability through Powered Infrastructure for Roadway Electrification) Engineering Research Center at Utah State University. But alternative, or supplementary, possibilities are emerging, including charging coils embedded into pavement at periodic intervals that recharge vehicles driving over them, in the manner of a phone sitting on a wireless charging pad—basically, electric roads.

Sometimes referred to as “inductive charging,” this technology has received less attention than the more traditional charging stations. But it’s being actively piloted in multiple places across the United States, including Salt Lake City, Orlando, and Detroit, in various locations in Sweden, and elsewhere in Europe.

“We believe that passenger vehicles are well over the tipping point—those are being electrified, and despite the challenges, it’s going to happen,” Blalack says. But the story isn’t so clear-cut when it comes to the trucks and heavy-duty vehicles that long-haul shipping relies on, and that may require a different way of thinking about EV infrastructure.

As Blalack points out, nearly half of US freight travels over 250 miles, most of it via truck, and medium- and heavy-duty trucks account for nearly a quarter of US transportation greenhouse-gas emissions. ASPIRE estimates that the cost of operating a diesel truck could nearly double using long-range batteries and the fast-charging station options currently available. That’s because long-range batteries for heavy-duty trucks are big, expensive, and heavy (cutting into payload space), and even fast charging—assuming it’s available—can entail costly delays. With an electric road that provides charging on the go, trucks could use smaller batteries that don’t have to hold as much of a charge, and the cost would actually shrink, perhaps to as low as half the current cost, according to ASPIRE.

The technology could be built out gradually, but advocates ultimately envision it being available across long sections of US highways. And it could charge properly equipped lighter trucks and passenger vehicles as well; drivers would decide whether to charge while in motion, paying via in-vehicle software or an app. In at least some cases, the process of fitting highways with charging coils could be paired with other needed upgrades and maintenance. The coils would be placed every few miles, with specifics depending on traffic patterns. The coil technology—the development of which dates to the 1990s, including work on wireless energy transfer at the University of Auckland, an ASPIRE partner—can also be used in static form; drivers essentially just park over it, requiring no charging post.

Clearly, any widespread buildout of electric roads would take years. But existing and pending pilot programs suggest incremental benefits and possibilities across different scenarios. ASPIRE, through its own Salt Lake City facilities and partnerships, is testing both freight logistics and electric transit programs. It’s also directly involved in several other pilot projects, including one from the Indiana Department of Transportation and Purdue University to develop what they bill as among the first working examples of a “contactless wireless-charging concrete pavement highway segment.” A separate effort involves a new stretch of roadway west of Orlando that will include an electrified section to demonstrate how the technology can be part of new construction rather than a retrofit.

Another example that has captured attention—in part because of its location in the heart of the American auto industry—involves a pair of electric roads in Detroit. The first, scheduled for completion this year, will electrify a quarter-mile stretch near Michigan Central Station; the second, projected for next year, is a three-quarter-mile strip near downtown. Both will facilitate experiments with a variety of electric vehicles. “This pilot project will enable us to identify [potential] use cases,” noted a Michigan Department of Transportation (MDot) spokesperson. “Some examples of use cases for wireless charging technology could be integrated into taxi and ride-sharing services, enabling vehicles to be charged while waiting for passengers, commercial vehicle queues at border crossings, static pad charging for transit and last-mile delivery stops, and in-motion charging for shuttle and transit routes.”

So far, the technology has largely been left out of the big federal funding initiatives that have boosted EV infrastructure spending. ASPIRE works with state and local governments as well as private industry; the Detroit project is funded by MDot and Israeli tech company Electreon, which has been involved in a number of EV infrastructure projects in the United States and Europe. “Interest in wireless charging is greater now than at any point since Electreon was established in 2013,” says Dr. Stefan Tongur, a vice president for the company. “Several countries in Europe have targets to electrify thousands of kilometers. . . . We are seeing interest and plans in other parts of the world too.” Sweden, as an example, has conducted a variety of pilot programs, recently announced it would deploy the technology on a 21-kilometer highway linking Stockholm and Gothenburg over the next two to three years, and may commit to up to 3,000 kilometers of electric roads by 2035.

In the next five or so years, such pilots may be extended into more ambitious experiments, Blalack says, gradually adding roadway segments based on freight traffic patterns. By 2040, one ASPIRE roadmap suggests, that could include interstate highways.

ASPIRE has partnerships with multiple educational institutions, labs, government entities, and nonprofits that are engaged in a range of energy technology projects. The idea isn’t so much to replace the charging station strategy; we’ll definitely need to build that infrastructure, too. But other options can help meet the EV challenge. As Blalack says, “Our charging solution has to be: all of the above.”

Rob Walker is a journalist covering design, technology, and other subjects. He is the author of The Art of Noticing. His newsletter is at robwalker.substack.com.

Lead Image: Wireless electric charging is in place on roads in Tel Aviv. Credit: Courtesy of Electreon.