April 2010 - PlanGreen

Having known Doug Farr, author of Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design with Nature through participation in his LEED ND sessions at Congress for the New Urbanism congresses for 4-5 years, having followed him via the LEED ND Correspondence Committee, I thought I knew much of what Farr had to offer. Make no mistake, I considered him a thought leader. I helped to found a Sustainable Urbanism Ratings Group in Portland, Oregon to help Farr improve LEED ND. I have espoused the 2030 Communities Campaign he founded both within CNU and in the larger world for the last two years now.

But it took hearing that there was a Biophilia chapter for me to push my local library to buy this rather expensive book. After all, I have been prompting CNU designers to design utilizing ecosystem services for the 6-7 years that I have been active in CNU. I needed to see who my soul mates are and connect with them.

Sustainable Urbanism integrated many threads that were sometimes divergent or confusing for me. It gave me a better historical perspective and showed me where we are in a continuum. As an underemployed planner, it gave me the assurance I need to believe that my skills will be needed well into the future. It gave me a wealth of sound bites and quotes that I will use in my blog articles, public testimonies and other advocacy for progressive policy. It reinvigorated the boldness that comes with certainty and reinforced my commitment to sustainable urbanism.

To begin with the basics, there were four parts to the book:

The Case for Sustainable Urbanism
Implementing Sustainable Urbanism
Emerging Thresholds of Sustainable Urbanism
Case Studies in Sustainable Urbanism

It was Farr’s own writing in Part One—and in a smattering of the headings in Parts Two and Three—that I found most insightful, most pithy and perhaps most controversial within New Urbanism. For example, in Chapter 2 (p. 49) he states In order to strengthen human interdependence with natural systems, sustainable urbanism believes that human settlements need to be designed to make resource flows visible and experiential. . . Sustainable urbanism embraces the interweaving of riparian and wildlife corridors between and through neighborhoods. In Chapter 8 (p. 169) he states Filtering stormwater, even in high-density urban locations, is an important aim of sustainable urbanism.

I loved Farr’s moments of unexpected optimism about the immense task ahead of turning around America’s development pattern. For example, he writes regarding Gen X (p. 53)

As taxpaying voters presented with a bill for the full cost of the gloomy consequences of the prior generation’s wrong course on the built environment, they are also likely to embrace urbanism. . . .Given that this same pattern of land use that is cooking the planet is also contributing to the obesity epidemic, land-wasting low-density development, social isolation, heightened levels of pollution, higher taxes, and a shortened lifespan, it is hard to imagine that sustainable urbanism will not come to occupy the center of Gen X policy and governance.

After railing against land use laws that make LEED ND and sustainable urbanism illegal in many places, he offers this opinion (p. 59):

In light of the well-documented links between sprawl and the potential for shortened life spans, obesity, and accelerated threats to the Earth, a comprehensive plan that enables sprawl should, in the near future, run afoul of the law. With a growing awareness of how auto-dependent land use can be hostile to human well-being, in just a few years sustainable urbanist plans may be the law of the land.

For me there were a couple of irritating aspects to the book as well. While the lovely green color used throughout the book was aesthetically pleasing, when used in 6pt font, the light color made it difficult for me to read the timelines and sidebars interspersed through each chapter. I also felt that many of the subchapters were too short to be satisfying. Farr Associates own diagram on The Sustainable Corridor at the beginning of Chapter 6 Sustainable Corridors is crammed into a single page (p. 113) while the page next to it is mostly blank except for a chapter title–with adherence to style trumping readability. And in Chapter 9, The 2030 Community Challenge: Economic Growth with Sustainable Urbanism p. 204 Farr says nothing about the economic growth one might anticipate from the title!

I found the chapter on Biophilia to be missing something—though it was partially offset by the subchapter on Biodiversity Corridors in Chapter 6. But even that piece assumed that designers reading this book know the difference between using diverse native plant species and alien ornamentals to create a habitat patch. For the most part they don’t.

Despite my complaints, I would still give this book five stars and recommend it highly to others in professions involving the built environment as well as community activists seeking to adapt their communities for climate change and peak oil. After all, as Farr says in his Epilogue (p. 296) Sustainable urbanism, against enormous odds, requires the improbable: that the base of the pyramid—millions of us—“get it” and act in concert. . . What this book calls for is something that no one person can effect—a change in our political culture.

I am encouraged that the base of the pyramid may be waking up by reading that the citizens of Beaerton, OR are calling for a vibrant downtown to be created out of the sprawled array of car sales lots and disjointed strip commercial. “The City is looking for a consultant with international experience and acclaim in order to bring a cachet previously unseen in Beaverton that will excite the community to the possibilities of what the City may become in the future.”

This review was first posted as a review on Amazon.com.

This is a unique opportunity for exercising collaboration and creativity about creating sustainable communities… It’s also your one-stop shop to learn about the most cutting-edge topics… – including the unveiling of GreenTools’ “Toolkit2” – which will become every municipality’s favorite sustainability planning tool this year!

Announcement for the GreenTools Government Confluence, May 5, 2010 co-sponsored by King County GreenTools and Cascadia Green Building Council.

It is encouraging that Cascadia Green Building Council focuses on communities and not solely on buildings. The topics in its GreenTools Government Confluence (co-sponsored with Washington’s King County)–Living Buildings, Affordable Housing, Existing Building Stock, Low Impact Development, Eco-Districts and District Energy, Green Building Financials, Urban Food Production, Social Equity—are important parts of sustainable urbanism.

But I am not sure that the Confluence covers all the bases or is, as advertised, a “one-stop shop.” Let’s take a look at how one community that has worked hard to reach the front of the pack in sustainability ratings got there.

What if…

What if a community could point to these accomplishments in comparing itself with its own 1990 levels?

• Transit Ridership: Up 85 percent

• Bike Commutes: Quadrupled

• Vehicle Miles Traveled: Down 7 percent per capita

• Untreated stormwater entering streams and rivers: Down by 64 percent

• Dollars staying in the local economy: Up by $800 million calculated on car travel savings alone. [i]

Would that community be moving in the right direction to address both structural change in the economy and climate change? Would it be moving toward a more sustainable, perhaps more prosperous future? The above is actual data for Portland from 2005 compared with 1990.

Nationally renowned economist Joe Cortright believes that because Portland has planned for density, arranged land uses more compactly and provided transit alternatives to a wide range of neighborhoods, Portlanders,

… compared to other urban Americans, drive less, take shorter trips, use transit more often, and purchase more green vehicles. And far from individual or social self-denial, these choices have produced a tangible green dividend for the region – more than a billion dollars in savings on out-of-pocket spending for transportation, as well as another $1.5 billion savings in time.

Cortright points out that this reduction in vehicle miles traveled stimulates the local economy because the time and money saved by less driving produces more demand for other local goods and services.

Doug Farr, Architect and Author, Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design with Nature echoes Cortright in his keynote address for the National League of Cities last year in Portland:

Portland’s unique status is the result of a range of investments in and policies promoting a sustainable yet distinctively urban way of life. These elements – which include transit, land use, bicycling use, high density development, green building and recycling – combine to form a culture and knowledge base that perpetuates Portland’s sustainable lifestyle.

My point here is that we cannot address community sustainability without addressing both the land use-transportation connection and some of the finer issues of urban design that allow people to get out of their automobiles.

What’s Missing. . .

Based on the opinion of the nationally respected commentators above that much of Portland’s sustainability reputation is based upon its transportation and land use connection, let’s ask whether the Confluence is missing any important points for making a community sustainable. Might it be missing a Sprawl Repair Kit or a Complete Streets or a Transit-Oriented Communities session? Might it be missing any focus on urban design that makes communities walkable. Might it be missing any session on LEED for Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND)?

I will be the first to admit that Portland has a long way to go in the urban design realm and that it must be vigilant in maintaining its political will. Its business community is calling for increased parking allowances in downtown buildings, maintaining that more onsite parking is necessary for downtown to become more competitive with the suburbs. Portland also has its share of policies that lead to poor streetscapes. It even has design firms that are willing to sacrifice on-street parking for a series of stormwater infiltration bump-outs.

Additionally, Portland’s Economic Development Strategy outlines Clean Tech as one of its four top traded sectors without giving a nod to urban designers–showing that the city is not immune to the focus on “technology will save us” mentality that has swept the nation. But the city’s leaders obviously get it that smart community design is a major component of building a sustainable city.

Going Forward

Green Tools for communities should also give communities the kind of urban design tools to make them places where people want to walk and have destinations that allow them to meet their daily needs while doing so. While important, the GreenTools Government Confluence can not be a community’s “one-stop shop” to sustainability if it doesn’t adequately address issues of urban design. To reduce carbon footprint more quickly, improve community health and well-being, save more money and create more local jobs, Washington communities would do well to take part in the Futurewise Series on Creating Transit-Oriented Communities as well. All communities pursuing sustainability would do well to join the Congress for the New Urbanism 2030 Communities Campaign—a campaign to reverse the U.S. per capita increase in vehicle miles traveled and adopt LEED-ND as a municipal standard by 2030. Finally, communities would do well to consider Sustainable Urbanism’s chapter RFQ for Sustainable Urbanist Professionals .

This post first appeared on Sustainable Industries blog on 4-24-10.

Mary Vogel is a Portland-based Congress for the New Urbanism-Accredited planning and urban design consultant offering sustainability services to local governments and private organizations. She is a problem-solver who helping communities become more efficient and resilient, more compact and walkable, more connected to nature’s services and more prosperous and self-reliant—better prepared for the challenges of the 21^st Century.

[i] Portland’s Green Dividend: A White Paper from CEOs for Cities by Joe Cortright, July 2007, p.2.