Rooftop falcon-cams and electric-car chargers on streetlights may sound like things out of the future, but for the city of San Jose, California, the future is now.

Okay, I’ll admit it. Having grown up on the East Coast, for much of my life all I knew of San Jose was that Dionne Warwick apparently didn’t know how to get back there.

But take one look at the LEED Platinum-certified City Hall; the Falcom-Cam that keeps watch of once-endangered Peregrine Falcons that now nest annually on the building’s roof, and; the electric car charging station across the street, and you’ll get a peak into the future of urban sustainability.

The thing about San Jose, Mayor Chuck Reed said to me during a phone call we had last week, is that “innovation just happens” happens in the Silicon Valley. Obviously not every city has the advantage of such a robust technologically innovative base, but like any other city, the hard part, explained Reed, is implementing policies to facilitate the development of that innovation.

Electric car-charging networks and regional sustainability

For example, said Reed, the technology exists to put electric car charging stations on light posts all across town, but because street lights are metered differently than other loads, and the metering infrastructure is owned and operated by Pacific Gas & Electric, the current institutional infrastructure would not be able to account for the energy used, even though the technical component of converting those streetlights is not the sticking point.

But building an electric vehicle infrastructure is something that is creeping ahead despite the bureaucratic hurdles it faces. San Jose’s four vehicle charging stations are open to the public through Coulomb Technologies’ ChargePoint Network. Coupled with the new installations at San Francisco City Hall and similar efforts in Oakland, the region is forging ahead as an electric vehicle hub. Continued…