urban | design.banter:: All I Want for Christmas is to Replace Sprawl with Infill

urban | design.banter 
:: infill | re-knitting our urban fabric | cohousing | keeping small towns from becoming suburbs ::  

why shouldn't where you live be somewhere you would want to visit?

Not a very simple request, is it? But it seems that every time I go home for the holidays, the new "it" retail center is located farther away, as the newest neighborhoods are built farther and and farther out. I am well aware of the hypocrisy of lamenting lost nature adjacent to the suburb where I grew up. My parent's house, built in the early 80's, was once in someone's prairie. There are still plenty of acreage around us, with cows, horses, and even some emu happily roaming. What upsets me is the skipping over of large plots of land not being used by happy animals (and not designated parks and greenbelts, which are essential with increased density), abandoned strip malls, and underused parking lots in lieu of greenfield development many miles from nowhere.

I know that I risk sounding like a "no-growth-er." I'm not a no-growth-er, just a smart growth-er. The term smart growth is used a lot, but here I'll look at implementing a few smart growth principals in my beloved hometown, or should I say, home Metroplex of Dallas/Fort Worth, and similar cities with many miles of suburbs.  I believe we can maintain the positive quality of life aspects of suburbs that people love while reducing the aspects they don't love (namely traffic, long commutes and total dependence on a car).

Why not infill instead of sprawl?

"But, there will be so much more traffic." Yes, with any development comes more traffic. But building farther out decreases the density of an area, making everyone dependent on a car (or a ride from mom). In an already populated area, it may seem like the existing roads could not bear the traffic added by an infill development. But that is the point: transit, walking and biking are only more viable options when they are the easiest and most desirable. When you are stuck in traffic on the highway and watch six trains go by while you sit in the same place, that's when you will think about using transit. The more density in an area, the more efficient transit can become. More density can support more businesses per square mile, bringing things closer to you and therefore more walkable and bikeable. 

"But, the city says we need all that parking." Maybe on the three nights before Christmas Eve. But most of the vast seas of parking lots are rarely full, and as density with transit, walking and biking become more viable options, less parking will be needed. Northgate Mall, a somewhat sad, smaller, older city mall in north Seattle, was given new life with a suburban style lifestyle center face lift. Now, the parking that is remaining is always full due to the popularity of the new stores and restaurants, but a revival of the whole area has occurred, with an improved transit center and new multifamily development. If the mall was not located along a freeway (as most malls are), providing parking in the middle and the new shops along the exterior (with zero lot lines along sidewalks) would have been a even better "smart growth" design. I am encouraged by cities realizing how detrimental so much surface parking is to the urban landscape, and making exceptions to require less parking.

 The new lifestyle center exterior of Northgate Mall in Seattle. Photo Credit.

"But, we don't have the space we need for a proper development." Yes, master planned developments depend on economies of scale, and buyers have come to expect certain amenities. However, I believe that if subdivisions were not totally isolated, autonomous developments, residents wouldn't need these extra amenities. If new developments were built as infill, residents would already be close to schools, city parks with pools and sport fields, greenbelts, and places to walk and bike. Existing and new residents would not have to pay for the roads and infrastructure expansion (including new schools, as city schools are being closed due to under enrollment). Following smart growth principals, streets inside the developments can be thinner and more appropriate for low speeds (versus the freeway width curving streets found in new suburbs). 

As we begin to pull out of the current state of the economy, I hope that the decreased value of homes in places of unchecked sprawl and the hours spent in traffic commuting farther away will serve as reminders that we cannot afford to keep up the current pace of suburban green field development. I believe that smart growth will bring suburban commuters a higher quality of life, and the happy horses and cows will thank us.

 

urban | design.banter:: Book Review - Sprawl Repair Manual

Each Friday we bring you  urban | design.banter 
:: infill | re-knitting our urban fabric | cohousing | keeping small towns from becoming suburbs :: why shouldn't where you live be somewhere you would want to visit?
 
"The promise of suburbia has been eroding for decades, but reached a critical point with the mortgage meltdown of 2008." 

This Promise of Suburbia is given new hope in "Sprawl Repair Manual," by Galina Tachieva, a partner at Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, an architecture and planning firm in the enviable position on the front lines of New Urbanism and suburban redevelopment. 

Sprawl can be repaired by "building communities based on the neighborhood unit." Instead of building new developments in green fields (land that has never been built on), why not densify existing areas? Not only will this bring life and density to existing suburbs and create what the author refers to as "complete communities," new developments will be closer to existing infrastructure and transportation. Children can attend existing schools (which, if they are in the city, may be underutilized) and existing fire and police can be used and will benefit from the new influx of taxes. However, according to Tachieva, "Sprawl remains cheaper to plan, easier to finance, faster to permit, and less complicated to build."

The main problem with sprawl, in terms of cost to the government and citizens, health, community connectivity, and access is dependence on the car. Part of this is the use of outdated single use zone, which makes it illegal for dwelling units to be near everyday needs. Repairing sprawl and densifying existing neighborhoods would mean integrating commercial and civic buildings into residential areas, and adding dwelling units to commercial areas. 

Reduction of dependence on a car is then created two ways: things are closer together, allowing for walking, and people live closer together, allowing for effective mass transit.  It's a snowball effect from there: people can walk, bike or take transit to more places, cities can require less parking, with less parking lot area more density can happen, and so on. With less area to cover and more efficient delivery, infrastructure costs can be reduced. Tachieva hopes by repairing sprawl that a more connected, cohesive transportation network can be formed, and the open space provided in suburbs will be accessible.

The author presents specific methods of repair at different scales: regional, community, parking and roads, blocks, and individual buildings.The book contains a great mix of text, diagrams, drawings and before and after photos. This is a must read for anyone interested in sustainable communities.

More information: www.sprawlrepair.com

Book Review: Green Metropolis by David Owen

Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability, by David Owen. 

Based on the subject matter and publicity this book has received, it was practically mandatory that I read it, but I was not expecting much. I was very pleasantly surprised. Owen takes on pop conventional wisdom at every turn and takes the wind out of many environmental sails. The main argument of the book is that many of our attempts at being green (i.e. reducing our carbon emissions) are futile without striving for density, with Manhattan as the best American example. Slapping solar panels on a McMansion in a new greenfield development does not make a green building, says Owen, because the real environmental damage is the infrastructure that supports the sprawl, and the amount of driving it takes to live in a typical suburban town. The most important number in your car isn't the gas mileage, he says, it's the odometer. 

"Oil is liquid civilization: we  are what we burn."


Owen has some harsh words for the LEED system, mostly for contributing to what he calls "LEED brain," which I summarize as forsaking common sense for racking up points for green building projects in order to gain recognition. He offers common sense tips for making a new home green, including build a small home on a small infill lot, thoroughly caulk and insulate it, and use efficient appliances. He says that many of these points, especially the importance of caulking and insulating, aren't particularly glamorous or  photogenic like small residential wind turbines, which he thinks are "wasteful investments in inappropriate technology." He quotes Thomas L Friedman's latest book, "Hot, Flat and Crowded," his chapter title "If it isn't Boring, it isn't Green" which Owen says is a reminder of the "dangers and temptations of LEED brain." I can't totally agree with this, as I believe there are exciting technologies that can reduce carbon emissions and great recycled products, but I have been accused of being a regressionist, and tend to think that green building is mostly common sense, and has been for all of human history until the industrial revolution, when we started to use brute force against nature instead of working with it.

Owen discusses the new Sprint Headquarters in Overland Park, Kansas, which has been recognized as a "green" building and has the typical green building rap sheet. Owen says:


"There is nothing truly ecologically enlightened about Sprint's Overland Park campus, no matter how many so-called green features the individual buildings include, or how much recaptured runoff water the ground staff uses when irrigating the complex's dozens of acres of lawn,  or many bicycles are (theoretically) made available  for trips between buildings, or how many trees the company has planted, or how many PETA-certified border collies are used to keep migratory birds from defecating around the edges of the man-made "wetland area"...The campus is a sprawl bomb, and the "open space" preserved on the property merely makes the impact worse."


An office like this would be much more environmentally friendly if it were placed all in one office town in downtown Kansas City (where there is surely high vacancy), creating more critical mass in downtown which would allow for more efficient transit from the suburbs. He also has harsh words for the Rocky Mountain Institute's headquarters in Snowmass, Colorado, which is also packed with sustainable features, but in a "thinly populated area," meaning that employees have no other choice but to drive to work.

Oh, and I love the term "sprawl bomb." I'm going to see if I can use it in a sentence soon.



The most interesting point that Owen makes is that the most critical environmental issues facing a city are not planting green roofs and trees, or allowing rain barrels and solar panels. He argued that the most critical environmental issues facing a city are law enforcement,street noise, resources for the elderly, crime, parks, and schools-the quality (or lack thereof) these things are what causes people to abandon the city for the suburbs, especially when they have kids. The more people stay in the city (and in turn the more children raised in the city) the higher the density and the tax base, and therefore the quality of life. Owen mentions cities such as Minneapolis where schools are being closed in the cities while taxes are being levied to build more schools in the sprawling suburbs. If services were better in the city, more families could stay and their kids could attend established schools--which not only saves money because the schools are already built, but these schools are more likely to be serviced by roads with sidewalks and public transit, obviously rare in the suburbs. 

The question that lingered in my mind for most of the book, as I'm sure it does for most readers since Owen answered it at the end, is if he thinks Manhattan is so great, why doesn't he live there anymore? He and his wife lived there for seven years before relocating to rural Connecticut.  

The answer is, of course, not everyone can live in Manhattan. From my previous blog post, "Green Building Myths": Per ca pita, rural areas have higher carbon footprints than dense cities like NYC, which is arguably the most important metric when considering what's "green". But a rural area may seem "cleaner" because of the lack of air pollution (which can be concentrated in cities), green spaces, clean water, and the general aesthetic and aromatic pleasantness that comes with a lower population density, like lawns, gardens, and contained trash. We need to understand these differences and strive to improve the undesirable aspects of city living while building on its virtues. 

References: Sierra Club Challenge to Sprawl
Urban Land Institute Booklet (PDF): Higher Density Development: Myth & Fact

Related books I recommend: 

Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream, by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jeff Speck

Asphalt Nation by Jane Holtz Kay 

The Geography of Nowhere: the Rise and Decline of America's Man-made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler.