A presentation given to the Escambia County Health Department as part of a statewide program that held meetings on climate change with health departments around the State of Florida. The presentation included local examples of both preventing climate change and adapting to climate change.

1. Climate Change in Northwest
Florida: Prevention and
Adaptation
Christian Wagley
www.sustainabletownconcepts.com

8. Land development is occurring at a far
higher rate than population growth,
resulting in sprawl. In the nation’s 34
metropolitan areas with populations greater
than one million people, between 1950 and
1990 the population increased 92.4%, while
the urbanized land area grew by 245%, or
2.65 times the population growth rate.
Source: Our Built and Natural Environments: A Technical Review of the
Interactions Between Land Use, Transportation, and Environmental Quality,
USEPA

16. “Annual price changes in most of the largest
metro areas, including New York, Los
Angeles, Chicago, Miami, San
Francisco, Seattle, Baltimore, Washington
D.C., and Philadelphia, followed a similar
pattern: Values were most stable within a 10-
mile radius of the center of the city, but
generally worsened with each successive
radius ring as far as 50 miles from the center
of the city.”
Business Week, July 12, 2008

33. Comparing Transportation and Operating Energy Use for an Office Building
Source: Environmental Building News, September 1, 2007

34. For an average new office
building built to code,
transportation accounts for
more than twice as much
energy use as building
operation.

37. Form-based codes support these
outcomes: walkable and mixed-use
neighborhoods, transportation options,
conservation of open lands, local character,
housing diversity, and vibrant downtowns.
Form-based codes discourage these
outcomes: sprawl development, automobile
dependency, loss of open lands, monotonous
subdivisions, deserted downtowns, and unsafe
streets and parks.

75. More compact, mixed-use
communities that follow traditional
urban development patterns are
best able to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions and help prevent climate
change

76. The patterns demonstrating how to do
it right are all around us

77. We cannot fully prevent and adapt to
climate change until we change the
rules of development to make it legal
to build compact, mixed-use, walkable
communities

78. A policy of strategic retreat advocated
by state and local governments would
reduce vulnerability of the built
environment to sea level rise

79. QUESTIONS?
Christian Wagley
christian@sustainabletownconcepts.com
www.sustainabletownconcepts.com
850-687-9968