In the Navy Yard


A national competition with future glory at stake. A battle between Philadelphia and the Bay Area. A confident powerhouse and a plucky competitor. And the underdog pulls off the upset.

A rehash of the drama of Giants-Phillies? No, I am referring to the US Department of Energy’s recent $129 million grant to Penn State University to establish a center at the Navy Yard in Philadelphia that will look comprehensively – through engineering, public policy, and behavioral nudges - at how to make buildings more energy efficient. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the powerhouse in this arena, was the favored, shoo-in applicant, but was somehow not selected, much to their chagrin and surprise. (Now they know how the Phillies feel.) I’m sure that Secretary Chu, who has Berkeley ties, has gotten a lot of flak for this.

Back on the East Coast, this is a huge coup for the City of Brotherly Love. The addition to the Navy Yard should make for an even better synergy of cool activity down there: scientists and policy wonks will now be joining makers of ships (Aker), trendy clothes (Urban Outfitters), and butterscotch krimpets (Tasty Baking Company) as Philadelphia-based firms with Navy Yard addresses.

It should also make for a fascinating experiment. Buildings are a huge energy consumer, of course: some 40 percent in this country, by some accounts. And a major needle-mover in terms of energy consumption by buildings will take a massive collaborative effort, since the present fragmented nature of the building industry often offers insufficient incentive for any one actor – the developers, the architects, the materials suppliers, the contractors, the occupiers, or the governments in whose jurisdictions they are located – to invest in more energy efficient solutions.

In other words, many eyes will be on this effort. Yay for Philadelphia that it will be housed within our boundaries. Now if only a certain baseball team was hosting games up the street on South Broad . . .

Comments

Nicholas said…
Haha, will the Village People ever go away?

One of my favorite books of those I read in the last several years is Buzz Bissinger's "A Prayer for the City," about Ed Rendell's first term as mayor. Maybe the central drama of that book is the frantic attempts to save the Navy Yard from closure, which were ultimately unsuccessful despite many herculean efforts.

The book was suffused with a sense of dread of what would happen when it closed and ultimately desolation when it happened. It was unimaginable that the city could continue to survive without its old manufacturing base. It seemed best chance the city had of any economic vitality going forward was by being a really good tourist destination for suburban types.

So I'm heartened to see so much vitality coming into a place where so much despair rested less than twenty years ago. And I'm sure there are lessons to take away from that, along the lines of realizing our inability to foresee the future and thus finding hope even when we see no reason for it and taking caution even when success seems inevitable.
LH said…
Nicholas, thank you for making the connection to "Prayer for the City" and thank you for making the point about the future not proceeding the way we thought. I attended an event at the Navy Yard earlier this week and speaker after speaker who was involved in its development echoed that same sentiment: no one knew to go after Urban Outfitters, Tasty Baking, or the Greater Philadelphia Innovation Cluster, it just happened and look at all the good that has come of it. "Build it and they will come"? Perhaps; so long as you don't presume to know for sure who the "they" will be.

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