Policy
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The United States is expected to grow by 90 to 100
million people over the next 40 years. Our nation
faces a critical choice: do we grow by sprawl and
continue the destruction of biodiversity, increase traffic, social degradation and climate impacts or do we develop compactly, building diverse, healthy communities?

Development is supported and shaped by networks of hard and soft infrastructure systems. Hard systems such as water, data / telecom and transportation systems provide connectivity to essential energy, data and material resources as well as remove wastes. Soft systems include economic, educational, social, cultural and systems.

The resilience of a community arises from the richness and robustness of these interconnected systems.

Jonathan Rose Companies creates policy recommendations at the local, state and federal levels to facilitate the development of quality mixed-income, mixed-use projects in smart growth locations served by transit. We believe that our communities and regions can only thrive through sound policies that support planning, development and infrastructure investments that are environmentally, socially and economically responsible.


TESTIMONY BY JONATHAN F.P. ROSE
Senate Budget Commitee, March 26, 2009

 A STRATEGIC AND GREEN STIMULUS
By Jonathan F.P. Rose
The Huffington Post, January 27, 2009
The population of the United States is expected to grow by 90 to100 million people over the next 40 years. If we continue to grow as we have, by sprawling away from our urban centers, we will destroy our environment, fail to achieve critical climate change goals, and burden the poor and middle class with extraordinary transportation and energy expenses.

Working-class Americans now often spend more on transportation costs then they do on housing.When one combines the energy used to heat, cool and power a home with the energy used to get to and from it, a suburban single family home consumes four times as much energy as a green transit accessible multifamily home. Studies show that transit oriented development (TOD) and development oriented transit (DOT) would significantly reduce climate impacts. Both strategies should be employed in a systematic way across the United States, in both market-rate and subsidized housing and commercial developments.

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REBUILD AMERICA FOR CLIMATE PROSPERITY
By Jonathan F.P. Rose
The Huffington Post, December 8, 2008
At the core of the current fiscal crisis is a flawed economic worldview. While American investors were trading short term credit-default swaps, much of the rest of the world was investing in long-term infrastructure to compete with us. We celebrated financial engineering and ignored civil engineering.

China is now spending 9% of its GDP on infrastructure. Russia and India 5%. America, woefully, spends less than 1%.

America now faces a huge infrastructure gap -- estimates are we need $170 billion a year just to keep current water, waste water and transportation systems in good repair. Another $150 billion at least will be needed each year to bring these systems to globally competitive levels.

In recessionary times, repairing and renewing our infrastructure and greening existing buildings are amongst the best investments our nation can make. These projects stimulate the economy while providing jobs that can't be outsourced. But we can get an even greater return on our investments by focusing on the transformational benefits of investing in clean, smart energy systems, light rail systems, wind, solar, and energy efficiency. These increase our energy security, and lay the seeds for a new climate-based prosperity.

Where will the money come from?

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President Barak Obama has proposed an economic recovery bill of tremendous proportions. Unfortunately, with our rush to get cash flowing into the economy, the infrastructure portions of the current proposal, will fund - in many cases - the last brown projects of the 20th Century rather than the first green projects of the 21st Century.

The bill's goal short term goal is to get people working. But it would be much stronger if this work was organized by a long-term strategic vision. It is missing an extraordinary opportunity to not only stimulate the economy, but also invest in solutions that will improve our economic future, increase our energy security and reduce climate change.

There is no doubt the economy is in trouble and swift and decisive action is a must. The dramatic drop in employment and lack of liquidity has created a call to fund "shovel ready" projects. Unfortunately, most ready to go projects were designed in an era of "earmarks". So being "ready to go" is not sufficient criteria for smart investment policy.

President Barak Obama has spoken eloquently about the need to build a new green economy, but those words are not sufficiently reflected in this bill. The bill also seems to have been organized around a flawed premise that we need to deal with the economy first, and then the environment. In fact, the best investments can lead to a healthier economy and a healthier environment. It would be a terrible waste to spend billions of dollars in ways that harm the environment and then have to spend more to remediate the damage that we have done.

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