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Whither intelligent vehicles and automated highways? (with Lee Epstein)

2013-06-17T13:00:21Z

Kaid Benfield, Director, Sustainable Communities, Washington, DC

(Today's article is co-authored with my friend and frequent collaborator, Lee Epstein. Lee is an attorney and land use planner working for sustainability in the mid-Atlantic region.)

The promise of a fully automated highway network has captivated the imaginations of futurists and aspirational engineers for several generations. In these visions there is a wide range of so-called “intelligent vehicle systems” or “automated vehicles” – from private vehicles that continuously “talk” to one another while keeping some level of human control, to fully automated networks that entirely take over one’s vehicle, using embedded GPS and other technologies to get one to a desired location without a human driver touching the wheel or the pedal. The optimistic goal seems to be to achieve just the right travel distance to maintain high speeds, more efficiently manage travel volumes, and avoid accidents.

Indeed, as far back as the 1939 New York World’s Fair, General Motors’ Futurama exhibit presented designer Norman Bel Geddes’s “magic motorways” – a network of modern expressways whizzing private automobiles on automated highways through urban areas and vast suburbs. What a wonder, observers thought.

We built part of it, the expressways at least, beginning in the 1950s. In some places, we’re still building them today. And, in part, it was a wonder, facilitating new commerce and faster connections between and sometimes within cities, and to and from the new suburbs that the modern highways enabled. It was a heady era for a while. But, over time, a more troubling set of consequences emerged.

The new roads surely brought commerce to urban regions, but they also allowed those regions to spread out thinly, displacing hundreds of thousands of square miles of working farms, ranches, woodlands, wetlands, natural stream valleys, open range, and unique desert environments. Meanwhile, inside cities, roads, expressways and entrance/exit ramps destroyed entire neighborhoods and split cities apart. Tailpipe pollution introduced the word “smog” to our vocabulary and insidious health risks to our children and elders. And eventually we learned that expressways don’t even facilitate travel that well within cities and suburbs (they do, for the most part, facilitate intercity travel), since they inevitably fill with cars and trucks to the point of paralyzing congestion.

Given this history, is there any reason to believe that automating the whole experience will make life (and our environment) better? We have our doubts.

In an article on The Atlantic Cities website this spring, urban observer Emily Badger reported on “driverless cars,” taking off from an earlier article by Tom Vanderbilt in Wired. Her story included an animation by University of Texas computer scientist Peter Stone, showing how an intersection might flow much more efficiently if fully automated and optimized for vehicle flow. In a way, the visualization is the natural successor to the gee-wizardry of Bel Geddes’s 1939 General Motors’ exhibit. Badger wrote and ended her piece with some healthy skepticism, however: “[W]hether we want to turn the personal car into a private train-like experience is a whole other question. But it’s probably not one for a computer scientist.”

Tim Maly, of the design/tech website Co.Design, recently had another take, in “Watch What Traffic Will Look Like When Cars Drive Themselves” (he also used Stone's animation in his piece). Noting that there was already unseen but substantial automation in our traffic systems, Maly quoted from an essay, “Blocking All Lanes,” by Sean Dockray, Fiona Whitton, and Steven Rowell in The Infrastructural City in which the authors traced the slow transformation from the standing policeman regulating traffic at a busy intersection to the modern sensor- or camera-activated signals employed today. He then used the same vision of change to trace a future transformation from a human vehicle driver with her hands on the wheel and foot on the gas or brake, to a high-tech system of mechanical precision steering and acceleration/braking networked with “GPS, proximity sensors, local mesh networks, or video cameras.” Maly made no value judgment, but did say that, in some places like China or Japan, such systems might make eminent sense.

In our view, these articles are provocative but don’t go far enough to ask and address important questions – in part for some of the reasons noted above. Fully automating highways may make traffic move more quickly and safely (if everything works as planned, right?) for a while, but what will they mean over time for the human and natural environment? Won’t the new types of roads eventually fill up just as the old ones have? Would such beautifully flowing, electronically choreographed, completely automated cars and intersections be compatible with fully and adequately accommodating pedestrians and bicyclists in a well designed, walkable urban environment? If so, how, exactly?

And would the development and use of such “intelligent” systems be any less, or indeed more, likely to lead to the unending extension of highways into exurban areas, or through rural areas – possibly promoting continuation of an unsustainable, sprawling growth spiral?

Our societal values around driving, walkability and the shape of cities are changing. Indeed, we have learned that in many instances, particularly for freeways within cities, building them has brought more negative consequences than positive ones. Enlightened cities are beginning to take old freeways down and replacing them with people-friendly boulevards. Could this be a step not forward but back, to an era when the emphasis was all about moving as many cars as possible as quickly as possible, rather than on creating better environments for humans that don’t rely so much on cars? What set of ethics should accompany this bold new technology?

These are not necessarily questions wholly without answers, but these very real concerns should be part of the study and analysis of self-driving vehicle technology. They should certainly be part of the discourse in the popular media. The last sixty years or so of freeway-building and its consequences don’t exactly inspire confidence that the right answer is to focus on freeways divorced from context.

It’s also hard to place much trust in regulatory and government agencies, which sometimes have too limited a mission or outlook to take this broader perspective into account. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), for example, recently set out 14 pages of guidance concerning automated highway/vehicle systems. NHTSA is focused on the safety potential of such technologies – for example, if they prevent crashes that occur from vehicles following too closely. Surely that is critically important, but it doesn’t begin to address the broader contextual issues.

While it may be conceivable for bright engineers, planners and designers to come up with ways to fit such systems carefully and properly into people-first, walkable urban environments, at a minimum that fitting needs to be done as the systems are conceived and tested rather than as an errant afterthought. Likewise for the possibility that these systems will exacerbate sprawl: there are policy approaches that can moderate the spread and extension of highways, and/or to keep sprawling growth to a minimum – but, again, the track record is not inspiring. These policies need to be considered, developed and adequately applied concurrently with the application of the new technologies, before the damage is inevitable.

Don’t get us wrong. We’re as enamored of new whiz-bang technology as the next guy or girl. But just because the word “intelligent” is used in a title doesn’t make it accurate – especially when it comes to sustainable urban regions in an era still suffering from past development and infrastructure mistakes.

In short, just because it’s high tech doesn’t make it better. Indeed, there are lots of “old fashioned” things we need to get right about our cities, urban regions, and transportation systems before we play with expensive new technology that still doesn’t solve those basic problems: we would place a higher priority on ensuring that cities are safe, hospitable to all, walkable, a pleasure to be in, and green (both naturally, and existentially); on urban/suburban regions that have defined limits, conserving important resource lands around them; and on transportation systems that help us get efficiently from point A to point B, but which take fully into account the first two problems as effectively as they solve the last.

Related posts:

Federal court says highway sponsors must first study transit, impacts on suburban sprawl (June 5, 2013)
Traffic explained, then fixed in 4 entertaining minutes (April 17, 2012)
Running freeways through cities has often been a costly mistake. So, what now? (March 5, 2012)
Freeways without futures (March 31, 2011)
Is there a downside to "intelligent cities" or "smart cities"? (March 3, 2011)

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Kaid Benfield writes about community, development, and the environment on Switchboard and in other national media. For more posts, see his blog's home page. Please also visit NRDC’s Sustainable Communities Video Channels.

How LEED-ND standards reduce driving and associated emissions: new research

2013-06-12T12:31:37Z

Kaid Benfield, Director, Sustainable Communities, Washington, DC

Confirming previous analysis, newly published research indicates that real estate development located, designed and built to the standards of LEED for Neighborhood Development will have dramatically lower rates of driving than average development in the same metropolitan region. In particular, estimated vehicle miles per person trip for twelve LEED-ND projects that were studied in depth ranged from 24 to 60 percent of their respective regional averages. The most urban and centrally located of the projects tended to achieve the highest shares of walking and transit use, and the lowest private vehicle trip lengths.

Put another way, even the “worst” performing of the LEED-ND projects is predicted to generate 40 percent less driving than an average development in its metropolitan region, according to the study’s sophisticated transportation models. This is largely because LEED-ND, a development rating system based on a set of voluntary standards, guides projects to locate within or adjacent and connected to already urbanized areas, and to be designed with walkable streets and densities. LEED-ND also rewards transit access, with increasing credit given to projects served by more frequent and plentiful transit options.

The study, led by well-known transportation expert Reid Ewing from the University of Utah, with four research colleagues, was published in April in the Journal of Planning Education and Research. The authors correctly summarize the essence and innovation of LEED-ND:

“Elements of smart growth, New Urbanism, and green building form the foundation of LEED-ND, producing a rating system that values compact, connected neighborhoods located near existing developed areas, and containing green buildings and infrastructure. For the first time under a LEED program, the location, context, and pattern of land development matters as much as the design of individual buildings.”

The authors discuss a number of criticisms of LEED-ND, including some made by me when the system was being considered for approval by the governing bodies of its founding organizations (NRDC, the Congress for the New Urbanism, and the US Green Building Council). Certainly, the system is not perfect and neither NRDC nor the industry groups got everything they wanted in the exhaustive (and exhausting) multi-year deliberations that produced the system. My ultimate concluson at the time, however, was that the system was nonetheless very good and deserved our enthusiastic support. It still does. LEED-ND is designed to be updated and improved periodically.

In the newly published research, the Ewing-led team first examined 239 “diverse mixed-use developments in six diverse regions” (Atlanta, Boston, Houston, Portland, Sacramento, and Seattle) in order to refine predictive models for estimating transportation behavior. "Multilevel modeling" was used to estimate internal capture of trips within the developments, walking and transit use for external trips, and trip length for external automobile trips. The team also generated separate formulas for different trip characteristics, depending on whether or not a trip was home-based, and whether or not it was work-related.

For the purposes of this article, suffice it to say that the development of the researchers’ transportation model was complex, sophisticated, and not for the technically timid to understand fully. But, utilizing a validation exercise comparing actual vehicle counts against those predicted by the refined model, the researchers concluded that “the new methodology far outperforms the conventional trip generation methodology of the Institute of Transportation Engineers.”

The team then predicted walking and transit mode shares and private vehicle trip lengths for the twelve selected projects and, from these, approximate vehicle miles of travel (VMT) per trip for each. In the final step, the team “analyzed the potential VMT reduction associated with those projects relative to a regional average baseline.”

For this reader, the study confirmed once again that shortening driving trip distances through central locations (as in redevelopment sites) is the single most important thing we can do to reduce vehicle miles traveled and associated carbon and other emissions. Working for mode shifts (for example, from driving to transit or walking) alone is unlikely to produce robust changes in behavior. Only three of the twelve projects had predicted walk mode shares of more than 15 percent, and the highest predicted transit mode shares were around 10 percent (still more than twice the national average; the authors concede that their ability to estimate transit mode share was limited and actual performance might be substantially higher).

But the differences between predicted driving trip lengths and the regional averages were dramatic. Even the highest predicted average driving trip length for the LEED-ND projects (about 5 miles) “is low by the standards of conventional sprawl development. Taken together, these LEED-ND pilot projects appear to generate relatively little VMT.” In other words, LEED-ND can be a powerful planning tool for reducing carbon emissions from driving. (Most of the research was conducted in 2010 but the study is just now being published.)

The newly published study is highly consistent with preliminary analysis conducted by Eliot Allen of Criterion Planners in Portland. Allen was the lead technical consultant in the development and testing of LEED-ND; analyzing the locations of LEED-ND pilot projects, he found in 2007 that the locations of the participating LEED-ND projects were associated with approximately double the density, double the transit commute share, and double the walk/bike commute share than were urban areas as a whole.

In 2010 Allen published a hypothetical demonstration analysis showing how a project taking advantage of LEED-ND’s carbon-saving credits and achieving certification at the gold level might avoid the generation of some 12,000 pounds of carbon per capita per year, a 30 percent reduction overall (including a 25 percent reduction in carbon from transportation) from a baseline development.

The good news is that Allen’s preliminary analysis suggesting that LEED-ND projects likely will reduce carbon emissions compared to average developments has now been reinforced by newly published research. The even better news is that the new, more in-depth analysis by Ewing and his colleagues now predicts that following the guidance of LEED-ND will likely result in even lower driving rates, and thus greater avoidance of carbon emissions, than did Allen's analysis.

How to use LEED-ND to improve an older neighborhood (October 16, 2012)
Knowing when it's green: A Citizen's Guide to (LEED for) Neighborhood Development (May 25, 2011)
5 ways that local groups and citizens can use LEED-ND (January 24, 2011)
How LEED-ND identifies the best places for development and planning (September 13, 2010)
The definitive study of how land use affects travel behavior (June 4, 2010)
LEED for Neighborhood Development formally launches to promote smart, sustainable land use (April 29, 2010)

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Kaid Benfield writes about community, development, and the environment on Switchboard and in the national media. For more posts, see his blog's home page. Please also visit NRDC’s sustainable communities video channels.

As we remake suburbs, should we guard against "commercial gentrification"?

2013-06-11T12:26:34Z

Kaid Benfield, Director, Sustainable Communities, Washington, DC

There is little question that suburban strip malls represent an unsustainable architecture. Totally automobile-dependent, marked by large surface parking lots, and remarkably inefficient at using land, strip malls generate much more pollution and consume much more in the way of resources on a per capita basis than do more walkable, urban shopping districts. Such urbanist thinkers as Galina Tachieva (Sprawl Repair Manual), June Williamson and Ellen Dunham-Jones (Retrofitting Suburbia) are absolutely correct in urging that, as these malls age and decline, they should be replaced with better, greener forms.

Indeed, some of our best and most iconic smart growth developments – The Crossings in Mountain View, California, and Mizner Park in Boca Raton, Florida come immediately to mind – were built on what were once dead shopping malls. Late 20th-century commercial buildings typically have much shorter life spans than do homes, so remaking these old parking lots and typically single-level stores represents one of our best hopes for achieving a greener suburban future.

And yet: As these properties have declined, so have their rents, making them affordable to small, often entrepreneurial businesses. Particularly as immigrants have settled in inner suburbs (where many of these fading commercial strips are), businesses owned and patronized by the immigrant population have occupied many of these spaces, in some cases alongside small start-ups owned by longtime community residents as well.

The risk is that, as we reshape these old properties with new buildings and concepts, the replacement properties will be much more valuable than their predecessors; indeed, that’s why new development is appealing to investors and how it is made possible. Overall, that’s a good thing. But small businesses either go under, unable to afford new rents, or relocate as a result. The logical place to relocate in many cases will be vacant storefronts in other strip malls in locations less attractive to the businesses' clienteles. What to do?

When we redevelop areas with low-income housing, we know what to do (which is not to say that we always do it): minimize displacement of residents, find new homes for those who must be displaced, and set aside properties in new development with affordable pricing to help make sure that a revitalizing neighborhood can retain diversity. An ethic has developed, in many cases adopted into law with inclusionary zoning.

But, as far as I know, there is no comparable, widely understood ethic to protect small, often minority businesses that are harmed by otherwise beneficial neighborhood change, and I am wondering whether there should be.

I recently visited my home town of Asheville, North Carolina, where there was an article in a local “alternative” weekly newspaper about small businesses that have sprung up in local strip malls. Julia Ritchey writes:

“Beyond the typical tanning salons, pawnshops and big-box stores, you will find other complexes that, like [local Korean restaurant] Stone Bowl’s, feature small, independently owned businesses with a flair for the unique. Call it manifest destiny, suburban style. By being accessible, original and part of a diverse cluster of storefronts, these local establishments ensure that the American strip mall may continue to thrive in today's fickle economy . . .

“Strip malls offer business owners certain quality of life conditions not always available in thriving, popular downtown districts: affordable rents, ample parking and a relatively hassle-free start up. What a strip mall may lack in charm and architectural interest, it makes up for in value.”

According to Ritchey’s article, Asheville’s strip malls offer a setting for synergies to develop and help connect entreprenurial businesses to each other: for example, establishments offering diverse but complementary products and services can share a customer base, trade ideas, and cross-promote. This strikes me as analogous in some ways to synergies available to start-ups in more urban “business incubators.”

It makes a lot of sense to me and, in many parts of the country, it is newer Americans who are benefitting the most from these opportunities. For them, a successful business in a strip mall is the American Dream at work. Three years ago, Aaron Renn (The Urbanophile) and I wrote separate articles (mine; Aaron’s) about a sort of organic economic revitalization being initiated by immigrants within the existing fabric of our older suburbs.

There is no doubt that today’s suburbs are more diverse than they used to be. As of 2009, 44 percent of elementary school students in suburban Fairfax County, Virginia - outside of Washington, DC - spoke a language other than English at home. Although Spanish is the second most common language (after English) spoken at home by Fairfax students, fully half of the county’s immigrant population is from Asia.

Fairfax remains one of America’s wealthiest counties (its rank fluctuates year to year but is always in the top five nationally), and a drive down any of its main drags is a drive through seemingly endless strip malls, many of them with Asian, Spanish, and Indian language signs marking the businesses within. As these aging malls are gradually replaced – and many of them will be in the next decade – what will become of these small businesses?

By the way, I don’t mean to suggest that the problem of commercial gentrification is inherently suburban. It is plainly not. Nor is redevelopment entirely to blame for the loss of small businesses, either in inner cities or in strip malls. Larger economic forces have been driving mom-and-pops out of business for decades.

But I do think there has been a resurgence of entrepreneurship in recent years. It is taking place in older commercial buildings with lower rents and, increasingly, that means it is taking place in some locations we may be quick to dismiss as car-dependent and unsustainable. While surely the best way to preserve small business diversity and opportunity is not to preserve some of the most unsustainable architecture in America, my sense is that we – environmentalists and urbanists – have not put enough thought into how best to sustain what that architecture is now nurturing.

Related posts:

How retrofitting a California suburb for walkability is spurring economic development (January 4, 2013)
How to retrofit failing suburban big-box stores into a green showcase (March 12, 2012)
Can this dead suburban mall be transformed into something better? It's complicated. (June 13, 2011)
The country's best suburban retrofit: Bethesda Row reaches maturity (January 28, 2010)
The big-box ghosts of shopping past (December 18, 2009)
As we lose shopping malls, are we losing something sacred? (December 2, 2009)
Strip shopping center vacancies at 17-year high (October 12, 2009)

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Federal court says highway sponsors must first study transit, impacts on suburban sprawl

2013-06-05T12:25:39Z

Kaid Benfield, Director, Sustainable Communities, Washington, DC

It is just an interim ruling, but it is potentially an important one: In a suit brought by inner-city, minority plaintiffs, the US District Court in Milwaukee has indicated that the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) cannot enlarge a major urban freeway connection without further study of the project's impacts on transit-dependent populations and on regional suburban sprawl. For now, the case is headed to mediation; but the court's ruling on legal issues in the case, as articulated in an opinion signed by federal judge Lynn Adelman, is potentially significant to other highway-expansion controversies with similar circumstances.

First, the court found that, before going forward with plans for construction, the agencies must first study the impact of “continuing to expand highway capacity in the region while transit capacity declines.” Second, the agencies also must examine the potential regional effects of highway expansion on suburban sprawl. The court rejected the agencies’ argument that they need only study the impacts in the specific area where the highway expansion was taking place, finding that it would defeat the “action-forcing” intent of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) if a piecemeal approach to highway projects and analysis allowed cumulative regional impacts to escape scrutiny.

The project in question would rebuild highways leading to and from a major freeway interchange west of downtown Milwaukee (the intersection of Interstates 94 and 894 with US route 45, called “the Zoo Interchange” because of its proximity to Milwaukee’s public zoo), as well as the interchange itself. In particular, FHWA and WisDOT seek to expand road capacity from six to eight lanes in one direction and, in the other, to install extra-wide shoulders that could potentially be used for additional capacity in the future. Four interchange ramps would be doubled in size, and surface streets would also be modified to accommodate the new configuration. The $1.7 billion construction undertaking, stretching 5.5 miles north-south, and 3.5 miles east-west, is said to be the largest single transportation project in Wisconsin history.

The suit was brought by Milwaukee Inner-City Congregations Allied for Hope and the Black Health Coalition of Wisconsin. The two organizations argued that the highway expansion plan failed to include any public transportation, would impair air quality, and would contribute to suburban sprawl. NEPA requires that major federal projects await full study of their potential impacts and alternative courses of action before going forward. The court’s ruling, issued last month, came in response to the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction stopping work on the project until the required analysis is completed.

The plaintiffs did not challenge the reconstruction and safety redesign of the Zoo Interchange, but only its capacity-expanding elements. They argued that NEPA’s mandate that the agencies prepare a thorough Environmental Impact Statement on the project required FHWA and WisDOT to do more to discuss the potential cumulative impacts of highway expansion when viewed together with other highway projects in the vicinity and with a decline in transit service. (Contrary to recent experience, the EIS assumed that transit would expand, not decline, because expansion had been recommended in a nonbinding recommendation of the region’s metropolitan planning organization.)

The court agreed with the plaintiffs. The entire opinion is worth reading, but here are some excerpts, starting with the agencies’ assumptions regarding transit:

“[The agencies] have an obligation to acknowledge that the transit components of the Year 2035 plan are not being implemented and to identify the environmental harms that might materialize if transit continues to languish but the agencies continue to expand highway capacity in the region. Of course, even after the agencies identify those harms, the responsible decisionmakers will remain free to prioritize highway expansion over transit expansion, but at least the decision to do so will have been based on a full consideration of the environmental costs.” [Citations omitted.]

The court elaborated that the agencies have a duty to examine the effects of this pattern on the transit-dependent population:

“They must examine the potential social and economic impact on the transit-dependent of continuing to expand highway capacity in the region while transit capacity declines. If after conducting this examination the agencies determine that their continuing to expand highway capacity while transit capacity declines will have negative effects, the agencies must consider identifying and assessing an alternative to the project that might avoid, minimize, or mitigate those negative effects.

Such an alternative might include incorporating some form of transit into the project, such as rapid bus service between the City of Milwaukee and Waukesha County. Such bus service might offset the social and economic harm to inner city communities that might result if the continued expansion of highway capacity facilitates the movement of jobs and other services away from those in the inner city who do not have access to automobiles.” [Citations omitted.]

Later in the opinion, the court was emphatic that the agencies must look at the effects of the highway-first transportation practices on the metropolitan region, and specifically at the possibility that highway expansion enables suburban sprawl. It is not sufficient to examine only the part of the city where the Zoo Interchange is located:

“[T]he EIS contains no discussion of the potential sprawl-inducing effect of highway construction on the region as a whole. Indeed, it appears that no one has studied the overall environmental effect on the region of implementing all of the highway-expansion projects in SEWRPC’s 2035 plan. Rather, it seems that the agencies which implement specific projects study only the effects that could be expected to occur in the immediate vicinity of the project under consideration.

“By proceeding in this fashion, the agencies run the risk of overlooking an environmental effect that emerges on the regional level. For example, in the present case, by focusing solely on natural resources in the immediate vicinity of the Zoo Interchange, the agencies may overlook the fact that by facilitating automobile travel to suburban areas (i.e., by facilitating suburban sprawl), the Zoo Interchange project and other highway projects may be contributing to the destruction of natural resources in various other parts of the region.”

“Again, the Zoo Interchange project by itself might not have an appreciable effect on the region as a whole, but when that project is combined with SEWRPC’s other recommended highway projects, a regional environmental impact may emerge.”

The court is essentially admonishing the agencies for their failure to examine fully the impacts of the road-building contemplated in the regional plan back when the plan was written. Since the issue was not sufficiently addressed then, it must be addressed now.

While I agree with the court’s reasoning, the facts of this case illustrate just what a mess our multi-jurisdiction, multi-agency metropolitan regions are when it comes to issues of governance that affect a region as a whole. FHWA and WisDOT are not themselves responsible for the provision of transit service, so they made assumptions (self-serving and contrary to experience) about what transit service would be provided. The metropolitan planning organization makes general long-range planning recommendations, but it does not implement them; accordingly, some portions get implemented and others are ignored. No agency seems to believe it is responsible for studying the regional impacts of cumulative transportation actions.

These problems are ubiquitous across the country, though planning law in California is at least moving in the right direction when it comes to making transportation and land use planning both coordinated and meaningful. Portland has an elected regional government responsible for land use and transportation. But Milwaukee’s situation is far more common: one agency does this, another does that, and they all plead helplessness when it comes to the big picture.

Kudos to the court for stepping in and ensuring that someone follow the law and common-sense practice in cases like this. If not settled in mediation, the case is far from over, since there remains an evidentiary hearing on the motion for preliminary injunction and then at least two more rulings by the district court, after which there is always the possibility of appeal. Meanwhile, court-supervised mediation is scheduled to begin on June 13. Read the opinion here.

Related posts:

Impressive Denver study on equity & transit should become national model (May 4, 2012)
Can collaboration substitute for authority in solving regional problems? (May 1, 2012)
Running freeways through cities has often been a costly mistake. So, what now? (March 5, 2012)
New data show how transit corridors reduce traffic, increase walking (August 17, 2011)
The importance of regional planning that matters (August 12, 2011)
Freeways without futures (March 31, 2011)
Bringing regions together for cooperation and planning would promote sustainability (March 6, 2009)

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A sense of place, finally on the way

2013-06-04T12:30:17Z

Kaid Benfield, Director, Sustainable Communities, Washington, DC

After more than a dozen years of contentious delay, an exemplar of neighborhood-appropriate smart growth - exactly the kind of development we need - is finally, finally under construction about a half mile's walk from my house. Cathedral Commons will replace an obsolete and, for far too long, embarrassing eyesore of dated low-rise buildings and surface parking along the neighborhood's main drag. Ground was broken late last year on two adjacent parcels comprising a total of about 4 acres.

The development will modesly increase density in the district, but with sensitivity and without overwhelming the existing feeling of the neighborhood. Architecturally varied with design chosen to blend with nearby buildings, Cathedral Commons will fit right in, bringing enough new residents to help support walkable retail while delivering a badly needed sense of place to our part of the city.

We're going from this:

To this:

And from this:

To this:

Cathedral Commons (named for Washington National Cathedral a couple of blocks to the south) will comprise 146 new homes (including 8 townhouses along a stretch that borders a residential area), together with space for neighborhood shopping, restaurants, and a state-of-the-art supermarket. Ten percent of the multifamily homes will be set aside for affordable housing. The new complex replaces a 1950s-era supermarket and low-slung strip mall that included a long-out-of-business general merchandise store, along with a nondescript pharmacy. Both parcels have long been owned by Giant Food, which managed the supermarket and pharmacy.

The new Cathedral Commons "is a joint venture of Giant Food, the Greenbelt (MD)-based Bozzuto Development Company and Southside Investment Partners of Baltimore," wrote Stephen Harras in The Washington Post late last year.

More "before" photos:

When proposed, the project caused bitter divisions in the neighborhood. That wasn't the only reason for so much delay (Giant Food's corporation went through a change of ownership and reorganization; the recession hit; financial partners came and went), but it was probably the biggest. At least as many neighbors strongly supported the project as strongly opposed it (see, for example, the comments to this blog post), but the opponents tried all sorts of tactics, the low point being a petition to have the aging, faceless supermarket placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The argument was that the building "typified the urban architectural style of the postwar era." The petition was eventually withdrawn. (I've written before, citing this same example, that environmentalists and preservationists risk losing our credibility when we allow our safeguards to be abused.)

Amazingly, opponents thought the project too dense and out of character with the existing neighborhood when no part of it will be more than five stories high, and right across the street are residential buildings eight and nine stories tall:

Sigh. Cathedral Commons will be so much better architecturally for the neighborhood than these buildings (not to mention the ones it is replacing) that one hardly knows where to start. David Alpert, of the popular metro DC affairs blog Greater Greater Washington, eloquently made the case in a 2008 article:

"This project will replace bland, single-story buildings and large surface parking lots . . . with an appropriately scaled mixed-use project that will engage the street with many individual stores and residences.

"The north parcel, in the triangle made by Wisconsin, Idaho, and Newark Street, has small stores all around on the ground floor and residences above. There is also an opportunity for businesses on the second story (of the types that prefer the lower rent and lower visibility of an upstairs location, like yoga studios).

"South of Newark Street, the Giant will occupy most of the site. However, the project places several smaller stores in front of the store on both the Wisconsin Ave and Newark Street sides. On the Idaho Ave side, which is more residential, there will be townhouses fronting on the street.

"This is a great solution to the problem of blank walls around big supermarkets. A supermarket usually wants to put full-height shelves around all its walls, blocking any windows. Therefore, when we build a supermarket right on the street, we end up with long blank walls. Here, the Giant gets to have a nice entrance on the street, but the rest of the store is inside the block, allowing it to have no windows without hurting the streetscape."

I especially agree with David that the new development is appropriately scaled. This is not downtown-style density, and it doesn't come close to approaching the controversial building-height limit imposed by law in DC. That wouldn't be appropriate for this neighborhood. Instead, it is in between what is there now and the citywide maximum; it is just about perfect in size for its setting, in my opinion.

There are also no in-your-face uses that depart substantially from what has already been nthere: indeed, look closely at the site plan and you can see that the parcels either abut or sit across the street from commerical, multifamily, or civic buildings. The area long has had restaurants and other commercial uses at street level. Even the townhouses, which I think are a great way to transition to the nearby single-family neighborhood, sit across the street from a police station. (Look closely also at the western edge of the site plan, to the left of the police station's parking lot, and you can see existing victory gardens leased by people in the area for growing vegetables.) I believe that, within five years at the most, Cathedral Commons will feel much like it has always been there, because it fits into its neighborhood so well.

It took a definitive ruling by the DC Court of Appeals to resolve litigation brought by project opponents, who had already lost their case before the city's Zoning Commission. The court, in part citing the developers' argument that the project complies with LEED for Neighborhood Development standards, agreed with the Zoning Commission that its many benefits justified the necessary zoning approvals for it to go forward. It cited a ton of legal precedent in finding the opponents' arguments without merit.

While I am still annoyed at the delay, I could not be more pleased that the project is finally getting built. We deserve this.

Related posts:

New DC data confirm real estate recovery strongest in central & transit-served locations (March 26, 2013)
DC issues ambitious plan to become "the healthiest, greenest, and most livable city in the United States" (February 20, 2013
New online guide highlights the (sometimes hidden) beauty of Washington, DC (September 24, 2012)
Managing the increasing urbanization of Washington: sensitivity required (May 29, 2012)
'Baseball-oriented development' hits a home run in DC (May 14, 2012)
DC zoning update seeks to legalize, encourage better neighborhoods (February 23, 2012)
A spiffy green waterfront begins to take shape in DC (January 19, 2012)
The greening of DC's LeDroit Park neighborhood (featuring a Baptist church, a farm, & HRH The Prince of Wales) (May 5, 2011)

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How Baltimore helps convert vacant properties into rehabbed homes

2013-05-31T12:45:52Z

Kaid Benfield, Director, Sustainable Communities, Washington, DC

This will eventually be an article about Baltimore’s terrific Vacants to Values program, which is targeting abandoned housing for reinvestment and succeeding. But, first, some background:

One of the nation’s great tragedies of the latter half of the 20th century was the severe disinvestment of our inner cities as (mostly white, middle class) people fled to the suburbs. With no controls whatever on suburban sprawl, our metro regions hollowed out their cores, leaving behind blight, a severely diminished tax base, and a host of social problems. While I have problems with the phrase “shrinking cities” applied to areas where the suburbs have flourished, there’s no question that the hardships faced by core cities that lost population – even now-booming Washington, DC lost 30 percent of its population between 1953 and 1998 – were, and still are, very, very real.

This was just as devastating for the economy and the environment as it was for our social fabric. One could write a book about that (and, in fact, at NRDC we did). Some of my favorite recovering city districts such as Old North in St. Louis, Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati, and the South Bronx in New York, lost overwhelming portions of their populations. The good news is that each of those three are now coming back in great form (Old North; Over-the-Rhine; South Bronx).

Baltimore’s significantly abandoned districts have been slow to rebound, however. The city estimates that it has about 16,000 vacant buildings, 75 percent of them privately owned. About 10,000 of them are in areas where there still is no development demand.

More encouraging, perhaps, are the 6,000 in neighborhoods where there is some development interest, such as in the area near Johns Hopkins hospital, but not quite enough for the private market to respond without a boost. This is where the city comes in.

In late 2010, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake initiated the Vacants to Value program. In particular, the city undertakes careful market analysis of Baltimore neighborhoods to determine their potential for development. It then compares the geography of the market findings with the geography of vacant properties to identify areas for different types of stabilization, rehabilitation, and development incentives and support. It’s a six-part program intended to strengthen the market in areas of potential:

Streamline the disposition process for city-owned properties. This allowed the city to sell five times as many vacants in 2012 as in 2010.
Intensify and streamline code enforcement. In 85 designated neighborhoods with market potential, the city has issued 700 citations for building code violations (each carrying a $900 penalty) and filed 300 receivership cases to force abandoned properties to auction. Before the program began, these cases had to be litigated one at a time.
Designate and facilitate investment in “community development clusters” in “emerging markets” near areas of strength. The city has sold 90 percent of its own properties to private developers in these areas and catalyzed $21.4 million of private investment. Residential building permits rose 13 percent in these clusters, compared to 4 percent for the city as a whole, since the program has been in effect.
Provide homebuyer incentives. In one program, for example, the city has provided $10,000 “booster” payments to 117 households.
Support large-scale redevelopment (including multifamily housing) in distressed areas by clearing areas to become development-ready.
Where necessary, undertake demolition of blighted properties in areas of no market interest to “maintain, clear, hold and identify non-housing uses” such as green lots and community gardens. This last element is essentially a land-banking program.

As noted by my friend (and GWU faculty colleague) Joe Schilling in an interview with NPR, the program is innovative in at least two ways. From the interview summary:

“There are two pieces of Baltimore’s Vacants to Value program that stand out, first its targeted and strategic approach, and second its on-going public information workshops. On the front-end, the City analyzes the market demand for housing block by block and overlays this information with their vacant property inventory. From this analysis, the City is able to identify emerging markets and better target their resources.

“In addition to this strategic focus, the City also hosts bi-weekly workshops to teach the public how to buy vacants. The focus of the workshops rotates, instructing the public on: how to buy city-owned properties, how to rehab properties, how to market rehabbed properties, as well as how to take advantage of home-buyer incentives.”

A market-based approach is key to the city’s efforts. An excellent analysis of the program by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond explains:

“[Vacants to Value] presents a blueprint for redeveloping the many thousands of vacant properties located in areas the city has determined have viable real estate markets that, with limited public activity, can attract private investment, be rehabbed, and re-occupied. In these areas, the city expects a private property owner to be able either to sell his property unimproved or, after investing to make it habitable, be able to rent or sell it.

“V2V also emphasizes using private market forces, rather than public capital, to target approximately 700 vacant properties located in weak market areas. Investments in these areas will be on a large enough scale--encompassing at least a city block--to catalyze additional private investment. These projects will incorporate mixed-income housing development. V2V acknowledges that it cannot rid Baltimore of all its vacant houses. Instead, it targets investment to clusters of vacant property near functioning markets or seeks to leverage substantial resources that will lead to sustainable improvements.

“The idea is that by targeting a reasonable amount of investment to real estate markets that have some existing strengths, the city might be more likely to restore healthy market conditions than by following a ‘worst-first’ approach that simply allocates resources to the areas with the highest vacant property rates.”

I was given a tour of some of the community development clusters by Baltimore housing officials, and took the photographs accompanying this article. In some cases one could see side-by-side the benefits of the program in recently rehabbed properties compared to ones not yet addressed. Inside, I was impressed by the rehab standards of the properties now being put on the for-sale market by their (usually small) developers. (For a good description of one, see this article from last month in The Baltimore Sun.) I was also impressed that each of the several developers I spoke to during the tour was making use of the state’s historic property tax credit, demonstrating the value of that program as well.

Vacants to Value does have its critics. The Baltimore franchise of the ever-snarky City Paper ran a headline called “Still Pretty Vacant” over a story by Edward Ericson, Jr., claiming that the housing office was less than forthcoming in supplying data about the program and asserting that it was falling short of what Ericson said were Mayor Rawlings-Blake’s goals for it. (Ericson says the mayor promised 1500 renovated houses in the program’s first year. The existence of that “goal” is disputed by city officials.) A story from WBAL-TV reports that 450 properties had been rehabbed in the first two years of the program, and that the mayor hopes for 3000 more over the next three years.

At best, though, the program is a little over two years old, having started from scratch. Some of the data show marked improvement on important steps on the road to recovery (for example, the disposition of city-owned properties; the citations for code violations). The renovated properties I saw looked fantastic, especially in comparison to their not-yet-rehabbed neighbors, and even the critical stories contain positive anecdotes. There is progress afoot: let’s applaud the program so far and give it more time to accumulate more success.

(I do find the existence of 10,000 remaining properties that the program can only demolish a bit depressing. That part is not the program’s fault, though; the problem is that the Baltimore economy is not strong enough to support more inner-city growth.)

Meanwhile, Vacants to Value is a clear step in the right direction. What I would like to see next is interest in the city’s part in making these development clusters greener. There were blocks in my tour with few street trees, broken sidewalks, and too-wide roadways, all of which could be fixed. Bringing in some strategic vegetation would not just beautify the neighborhoods but also begin to address what I suspect are some significant stormwater runoff problems caused by all that impervious surface. In addition, I didn't see much if any transit in the clusters during the 3-4 hours I spent there.

While the city may not be able to afford a total greening of the program with appropriate infrastructure upgrades, how about a green pilot program in one of the key development areas? The work of the Talbot-Norfolk Triangle area in Boston is instructive as to the possibilities, and preference in the bidding process for purchase of properties could be given to developers who are willing to cost-share some of the implementation. I guarantee it would raise property values and tax revenues in locations where the city is willing to invest. Just an idea.

Visit the city’s Vacants to Values portal for more information about the program.

Related posts:

The case for building on a city's historic assets (April 29, 2013)
The essential elements of green cities (by Lee Epstein) (April 3, 2013)
How a tough neighborhood is building a stronger future with vivid public art (November 16, 2012)
A low-income community taps homegrown leadership for a brighter future (October 17, 2012)
Retrofitting inner-city neighborhoods for energy efficiency (October 1, 2012)
The right approach to green, inclusive revitalization (May 10, 2012)
A remarkable grassroots revitalization matures and thrives in Boston (March 26, 2012)
Is 'gentrification' always bad for revitalizing neighborhoods? (October 19, 2011)

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Shelley Poticha to lead NRDC's new urban solutions program

2013-05-24T12:43:34Z

Kaid Benfield, Director, Sustainable Communities, Washington, DC

I could not be more honored and excited to announce that Shelley Poticha is coming to NRDC to direct and build our new urban solutions program. Shelley has spent the last four years at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where she has been a senior advisor and director of the agency's Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities.

As I wrote last year, the OSHC under Shelley's leadership became the government's leading supporter of local initiatives for sustainability, assisting cities and towns all over the country on improving their plans and investment for a more resilient, greener future. In 2010 and 2011, for example, OSHC awarded 152 grants in 48 states, totaling $240 million. This in turn generated almost $253 million in private investments and commitments from local partners building a brighter future for their communities.

In a 2009 blog post praising Shelley's appointment at HUD, I described NRDC's longtime friend as an "awesome choice" who is "wise, pragmatic, insightful, committed and articulate." Shelley has been NRDC's partner in multiple initiatives including transportation reform, the co-founding of LEED for Neighborhood Development, and the creation of Smart Growth America, and has been a personal friend to many of us for years. Prior to her work at HUD, she served as President and CEO of Reconnecting America, where she became a national leader for the reform of land use and transportation planning and policy, with the goal of creating more sustainable and equitable development, particularly around transit stations.

Prior to joining Reconnecting America, Shelley was the Executive Director of the Congress for the New Urbanism.

I am also tremendously excited that NRDC will be launching our new urban solutions program, which will provide us with a formal operating structure for coordinating and building our work for better cities, including promotion of transportation choices through better regional planning; a scaled up energy efficiency effort in ten major US cities; model green, equitable neighborhoods; sustainable food in urban environments; green infrastructure for stormwater management and multiple community benefits; and resilient communities.

Urban Solutions is the culmination of our thinking and work for sustainable communities since our organization adopted the topic as an institutional priority three years ago. I will become special counsel to the new program, and you may expect to hear much more about it here in the coming months.

Shelley holds a Master of City Planning from the University of California at Berkeley and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She will work in NRDC’s Washington office and expects to start in August.

Related posts:

HUD builds impressive record of support for smarter community planning (December 5, 2012)
HUD launches Sustainable Communities Resource Center (February 16, 2012)
New HUD grants will help communities pursue sustainability (November 22, 2011)
HUD to use LEED-ND criteria in judging federal grant competitions (May 21, 2010)
It's official: HUD's exciting new sustainability program (February 5, 2010)

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New round of arts grants help revitalize and animate city neighborhoods

2013-05-20T14:10:23Z

Kaid Benfield, Director, Sustainable Communities, Washington, DC

It’s no secret, unfortunately, that many American downtowns and neighborhoods were disinvested, some severely, over the past several decades. The consequences were devastating, as homes and storefronts were abandoned and once-thriving communities became devoid of opportunity and safety for those who remained.

While these issues remain real all across the country, the 21st century promises to be much kinder to cities and older neighborhoods than the second half of the 20th and, as neighborhoods recover, one of the more engaging trends is the role of community-based arts in revitalization. From the exhibitions of African-American art in Houston’s Project Row Houses to the amazing folk sculpture of the Heidelberg Project in Detroit to Candy Chang’s amazing Before I Die project that originated in New Orleans and has now spread elsewhere, artists are bringing life and purpose back to forgotten districts. While there may be some risk that “creative placemaking” could become a passing fad without a lasting legacy, I don’t think so: when it’s homegrown, it’s real.

I suspect Theaster Gates, the accomplished installation artist and social activist behind the Rebuild Foundation, based in several Midwestern cities, would agree. Rebuild enlists “teams of artists, architects, developers, educators, community activists, and residents who work together to integrate the arts, apprenticeship trade training, and creative entrepreneurship into a community-driven process of neighborhood transformation.” I learned of the Foundation’s work through the grant program of ArtPlace America, which is awarding Rebuild $250,000 to expand its revitalization work in the north St. Louis neighborhood of Hyde Park.

In particular, the organization is transforming a vacant building and adjacent lot into an arts and design-centric space that will host diverse cultural programming developed in partnership with the community. The site’s activities will include the Listening Room project to share archives of African-American music with the neighborhood; a cultural food program; an artist-led forum on neighborhood public space; and an incubator for local craftsmen and artistic entrepreneurs.

Rebuild is one of 54 organizations that today are receiving funding from ArtPlace America to support their work in creative placemaking in communities across the US. ArtPlace America is awarding a total of $15.2 million to 54 projects using the arts to transform 44 communities. It is also supporting a statewide project in Connecticut. (I last profiled ArtPlace America's work here.)

The Connecticut program, Create Here Now, looks fantastic. Administered by the state’s Department of Economic and Community Development, the program is helping 20 participating cities and towns repurpose storefronts and other vacant spaces for artists and provide marketing support for participating artists. The program fosters cooperative partnerships among municipalities, artists, entrepreneurs, and property owners.

Effective last July, Connecticut began incorporating a placemaking strategy into all of the state’s existing arts programs to focus outcomes on organizations and collaborations that create jobs and revitalize communities. Create Here Now has been piloted in Bridgeport, where the program has offered three-month leases to start-ups, rent free, in previously vacant spaces, enabling entrepreneurs to test products and potential neighborhoods in further developing their concepts. The overall goals are to increase visitors and shoppers to recovering neighborhoods, help change perceptions of neighborhood safety by activating vacant spaces and providing clean, well lit streets, and raise awareness of local talent, innovators and small businesspeople. ArtPlace America is helping with a $500,000 grant.

A much smaller but highly creative awardee that caught my eye was a project called “Silent Lights” in Brooklyn, intended to create a safer, more inviting pathway for pedestrian commuters traversing what has been a loud, poorly lit and busy underpass linking Red Hook in Brooklyn to its closest subway stop. Working in partnership with the New York City Department of Transportation, the Artist Build Collaborative will install a series of six colorful pedestrian “gates” that light up sequentially based on the intensity of sound and vibrations from oncoming traffic.

As anyone who has read me before knows, I strongly support anything that helps make urban neighborhoods more welcoming and thriving for current and future residents and visitors. It not only makes for better communities; it also makes for a healthier environment, because cities with their more centrally located and walkable neighborhoods are far less polluting and consumptive of resources on a per-person basis than the wasteful pattern of suburban sprawl that has for so long dominated our landscape. Bringing cities back is inherently green.

ArtPlace America is a collaboration of national and regional foundations, banks and federal agencies committed to accelerating creative placemaking – putting art at the heart of a portfolio of strategies designed to revitalize communities. This is the third cycle of grants awards by the collaboration. With this round, ArtPlace America has awarded a total of $42.1 million in 134 grants to 124 organizations in 79 communities across the country.

Foundations participating in ArtPlace America include Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Ford Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The William Penn Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Rasmuson Foundation, The Surdna Foundation, and two anonymous donors.

ArtPlace America also seeks advice and counsel from close working relationships with various federal agencies, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Education, and Transportation, along with leadership from the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Domestic Policy Council.

ArtPlace America is also supported by a $12 million loan fund capitalized by six major financial institutions and managed by the Nonprofit Finance Fund. Participating institutions are Bank of America, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Chase, MetLife, and Morgan Stanley.

Note to Readers: I will be publishing less frequently for the rest of this month as I finish the manuscript for People Habitat. No worries, I’m not going away.

Related posts:

The power of "creative placemaking" (January 7, 2013)
How creative entrepreneurs are enlivening Miami's Little Havana (September 14, 2012)
Terrific short video on arts-driven placemaking (June 15, 2012)
National arts partnership steps up big for community revitalization (June 12, 2012)
The role of the arts in thriving communities (July 28, 2011)
Recession spurs creative temporary uses of urban lots (September 21, 2009)

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Measuring life quality: the Boston Indicators Project

2013-05-13T12:23:27Z

Kaid Benfield, Director, Sustainable Communities, Washington, DC

For the past several years, the Boston Foundation has been collecting data on key indicators of the health of the city’s economic, social, and natural environment. The Boston Indicators Project surveys ten key categories relevant to quality of life:

Civic vitality
Cultural life and the arts
Economy
Education
Environment & energy
Health
Housing
Public safety
Technology
Transportation

The Project also examines six “crosscut topics,” including Boston neighborhoods, children and youth, “competitive edge,” fiscal health, race and ethnicity, and sustainable development.

Every two years, the Foundation issues a report of its findings, and it maintains an extensive website filled with information. In ambition, the measurements are similar to those of the Vital Signs initiative in Rockford, Illinois, and the “gross national happiness” index pursued by the Himalayan nation of Bhutan, as well as to some emerging indicators programs in Victoria, British Columbia, and Seattle. I’ll mention some of the differences but, first, let’s look at the Boston program.

The 2012 report emphasized economic vitality and inequality but, placing other issues within that frame, also delivered brief assessments of the condition of transit (with a shout to the Fairmount line and its new stations, one of which has been a focal point of a partnership involving NRDC) and the built environment (including a mention of new facilities in the Dudley neighborhood). While there are significant issues with respect to transit funding, ridership is booming and there have been some structural improvements in codes supporting smart growth:

“The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) faces a budget gap of about $1 billion annually over 20 years for maintenance and capital needs. In FY12, 45% of the operating budget of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) and MBTA was used to pay off debt, and the MBTA is considering fare hikes and service cuts. At the same time, “T” ridership hit a record high in October 2011, and 25 hybrid gas-electric buses came on line . . .

“In mid-2011, 31 cities and towns in Massachusetts had approved new Smart Growth zoning overlay districts under Massachusetts Chapter 40R/40S—with 20 in Greater Boston and total of 33—up from 26 in 2009. Approved districts allow for 12,000 potential units of housing. More than 1,400 units had been issued building permits.”

I was particularly interested in the indicators used to track the built environment and transportation. That level of detail was not in the report, so I dug inside the website a bit to see what I could find.

I learned a lot, some of it superficially contradictory: For example, the apparent good news is that a full third of land in Boston is devoted to multi-family and high-density housing, with only a miniscule portion devoted to low-density housing; but the bad news is that development consumes two acres per hour in Massachusetts, 65 percent for low-density development. Those two statistics don’t make sense together unless you realize that the former is looking only inside the formal jurisdictional boundary of the city of Boston and ignores the suburbs. (City boundaries, of course, are largely ignored by today’s economy and environment.)

More significant, perhaps, is that “there are more than 1 million people and 466,000 households located within 1/2 mile of an MBTA subway or Commuter Rail station and more than 886,000 people are employed at a location within 1/2 mile of a station.” That’s not bad, though at about one-fifth of the population, there’s room for improvement. In a different section, this topic is expanded:

“Greater Boston cities and towns with the lowest vehicle miles traveled rates, less than 4,000 per year, are also those with access to the commuter rail. Some of these cities and towns are in the inner core with multiple modes of travel available, but this also holds true for municipalities outside of the 495 belt.”

That’s good news. The transportation culture of Boston seems to be that, where transit is readily available, people will use it. One third of workers in Boston (presumably the city; the site doesn’t say) reportedly take transit to work.

The website also had sections on tree cover and plantings, community gardens, and green space distribution. There was a large section on neighborhoods. The statistics for all sections of the Boston Indicators Project do appear to be much more robust for the city than for the region, and perhaps that’s understandable. It also must be said that the Foundation is undertaking a mammoth task with what are undoubtedly limited resources to devote to it while maintaining their philanthropic mission to provide financial assistance to others. But I was impressed; I could have spent all day on the site.

One obvious difference between the Boston Indicators and Rockford’s Vital Signs initiative is that the latter is being undertaken by the area’s metropolitan planning organization, not a philanthropy. It also enjoyed the benefit of significant financial assistance from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, and has a much smaller region to track.

But I do like that Vital Signs devotes a specific category to “built environment” and I like the specificity of its indicators, covering such subjects as adaptive re-use of existing properties, districts with smart growth policies, vacant properties, districts that meet LEED-ND standards (!), brownfields, walkability, local food production, redevelopment, and displacement of low-income residents from revitalizing areas. The Vital Signs initiative is designed as a system in which measurements are taken at multiple times throughout the 20-year planning horizon, in order to indicate progress and determine whether adjustments in strategy are necessary.

I hope the two projects in Boston and Rockford are talking to each other. They are both doing challenging but potentially very useful work. My guess is that each could learn a lot from the other’s challenges, opportunities, and experience.

Kaid Benfield will be speaking at the Boston Society or Architects on May 15, on a program co-hosted by WalkBoston.

Related posts:

World's second-largest rooftop farm takes root in Boston (March 7, 2013)
Boston’s Asian CDC builds community from the ground up (September 1, 2009)
A remarkable grassroots revitalization matures and thrives in Boston (March 26, 2012)
The environmental building blocks of urban happiness (February 2, 2012)
Boston’s Asian CDC builds community from the ground up (September 1, 2009)

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Transit stars in 3 kinetic time-lapse minutes from Zurich

2013-05-10T13:14:54Z

Kaid Benfield, Director, Sustainable Communities, Washington, DC

I don’t think filmmaker Alessandro Della Bella intended to make a video about transit in Zurich, but trains, trams, streetcars and the people who ride them are the clear stars in this hyper-fun time-lapse video.

Frenetic Zurich is one of three videos so far in a larger work. Says Della Bella about the project as a whole:

“‘Helvetia by Night’ is a time-lapse project about Switzerland by night. Short videos of long nights present you the stunning beauty of the Swiss Alps and show you the magic of a spectacular nighttime sky. Imagine watching a slide-show at fast speed or looking at a flip book. It is photography turning into a movie. Everything in the videos is real and happening out there while most of us are sleeping.”

You won’t see the Alps in this one, but you will definitely see urbanism in action. Enjoy:

Frenetic Zurich from Alessandro Della Bella on Vimeo.

Related posts:

This transit system is also the world's longest art exhibit (April 22, 2013)
New DC data confirm real estate recovery strongest in central & transit-served locations (March 26, 2013)
This is transit-oriented development? (March 8, 2013)
And, on the eighth day, God created transit (February 7, 2013)
The fascinating visual rhythms of regional transit (December 6, 2012)

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There must be a there (excerpted from People Habitat)

2013-05-08T12:26:47Z

Kaid Benfield, Director, Sustainable Communities, Washington, DC

Today’s article is another excerpt from my forthcoming book, People Habitat: 25 Ways to Think about Greener, Healthier Cities, which will be coming out later this year. I shared an excerpt from the introduction on March 27.

In the 1930s, Gertrude Stein famously said of Oakland, California, “there is no ‘there’ there.” Was she saying that Oakland had no anchor, no soul, no raison d’etre, no identity? Stein, who was around 60 when she wrote the well-known sentence, had grown up in Oakland, when the city was much smaller. Scholars today insist that she was referring to the loss of places she had known as a child, as in not having a “there” to return to, rather than rendering a general dismissal of the city.

Nonetheless, the phrase has stuck to refer to places that lack character and distinctiveness. (For the record, I do not find the Oakland of today to be one of them.)

We all know such places, unfortunately. In the new suburbs of America, in particular, every place looks like every other place, or so it seems: wide arterial roads, chain retail and scattered office buildings, subdivisions with near-identical houses, a regional shopping mall here and there that looks more or less like all the others, inside and out. If I drive out of Washington on Virginia Route 123, I quite literally do not know where I am for about ten miles. Am I still leaving McLean? Am I in Vienna? Oakton? I forget, which one comes first? Am I approaching Fairfax? The locations may have different names, but not different identities (until you get to the historic core of Fairfax). The truth is that, because of their equivalence, it doesn’t really matter where I am, except as a reference point for how close I am getting to my destination.

In a particularly egregious example cited in his classic 1992 book Edge City, Joel Garreau described a sizable place in New Jersey everyone simply called “287 and 78” (for the intersection of two Interstate highways). It was a community in the geographic sense, but not in character or its political administration. According to Garreau, 287 and 78 had no formal boundaries, no elected ruling structure, and no overall leader. Rather, the place was “governed” by a patchwork of generally uncoordinated and conflicting zoning, planning, and county boards. Unfortunately, many places in America can be described much as Garreau described 287 and 78.

We all also know places that most certainly do have a “there”: when we’re in Paris or New York, for example, there’s little doubt that we are in Paris or New York, because the architecture, landmarks and rhythms of the two great cities tell us so. We also know when we are in downtown Missoula or Asheville; when we’re in Santa Fe, it looks and feels like Santa Fe.

We know neighborhoods with a "there," too: I believe having a clear identity and distinctive character can be just as beneficial to neighborhoods as to the larger cities that surround them. Often this identity is signaled and enhanced by memorable public spaces.

In Washington, for example, a well-known urban neighborhood is called Dupont Circle, because there is an actual place (and wonderful small urban park) called Dupont Circle that anchors the neighborhood. In Southern California, we know we’re in Santa Monica (a city within a city that, to me, feels like a large urban neighborhood) because the Palisades overlooking the Pacific Ocean and beach below remind us, as do the famous pier and pedestrian mall. In London’s Bloomsbury or Barcelona’s Gracia district, the neighborhoods are dotted with public squares that lend them character.

I find that I am almost always thinking about the quality of places. I’ve had the good fortune to work closely with some amazing architects who have taught me by example how to do just that, and who have given me a vocabulary to go with my long-held intuitive sense that places feel better when there is, in fact, a “there.” The built environment alone cannot give a place character, but it can either help or hurt, depending on whether it supports or diminishes what filmmaker Sarah Marder calls “the genius of a place.”

Why does this matter to greener and healthier cities? Because places of appealing character and distinctiveness draw us to them and away from sprawl; as they do, they become more sustainable, in a quite literal sense. Their signature public spaces, such as Washington's Dupont Circle, Boston's Quincy Market or Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza, represent not just great venues for hanging out but also continuity of time, place and identity.

Even in neighborhoods that have been severely disinvested, great or potentially great public spaces represent hope for renewal. In Cincinnati’s wonderfully named Over-the-Rhine (that story will be in my next book), for example, revitalization is made more feasible today because of certain stellar neighborhood anchors that have lasted, such as Washington Park, the Findlay Market, and the Cincinnati Music Hall. When great public spaces strengthen the prospects for walkable, compact settlement, we can reduce the spread of environmental harm.

When you come down to it, there is no broad sustainability without individual places that help limit environmental impacts while also nourishing the human spirit. People habitat – comprising neighborhoods, small towns, cities, metropolitan regions – is every bit as important to the environment as natural habitat and wilderness.

Indeed, making human places great should be seen as a key strategy for protecting wilderness. Think about the etymology of the word “attractive”: if we attract people to people places, we can better preserve those wild places where we are “visitors but do not remain,” to paraphrase the 1964 federal Wilderness Act. But key to the attraction is having a “there” to be attracted to.

Related posts:

The power of "creative placemaking" (January 7, 2013)
Shaping shared places to improve cities (November 13, 2012)
Is placemaking a "new environmentalism"? (April 23, 2012)
Preserving a sense of place in LA's Little Tokyo (April 9, 2012)
Why I support the DC building height restrictions (November 19, 2012)

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Is there a way to (downtown) San Jose? (by Lee Epstein)

2013-05-06T12:32:11Z

Kaid Benfield, Director, Sustainable Communities, Washington, DC

Today’s post is written by my frequent collaborator and contributor to this site, Lee Epstein Lee is an attorney and land use planner working for sustainability in the mid-Atlantic region. His last appearance here was on April 3 (“The essential elements of green cities”).

I recently read Richard Florida’s account of San Jose, California on The Atlantic Cities (“Lessons from Silicon Valley’s ‘Downtown,’” April 5, 2013), and was prompted into some reflections of my own about the state of urban affairs, if they can be called that, around the city and its surroundings. I believe that, if the region is to fulfill its potential, some improvements are in order, and sooner rather than later.

But first, a caveat: I hesitate to jump into a geographic region that I only know as a tourist, and I wouldn’t presume to deeply analyze its problems or its promise. When I travel, I can – from a safe remove – describe what seems to be working or not working; but one can’t do too substantial an analysis without committing significant resources of time and effort, and spending real time on the ground.

That said, as a long-time urban planner, I’m reasonably familiar with the history of development across the Golden State. Indeed, some of the history of suburbanization there is the history of suburbanization everywhere in the US:

The post-war growth of cities and towns generally;
A wholesale emigration in the US from north to south and east to west, and residential and commercial movements out of established cities to the wide, open spaces outside them -- followed by civic buildings and major local institutions;
Aging industrial facilities that attracted workers at one point, but then shed them too quickly at another;
The development of the Interstate Highway System that allowed urban migrations and transformations at an immense speed and scale, literally plowing through, over and under whole urban neighborhoods, on the one hand, and helping to create the impetus for sprawl and sprawl-malls in the hinterlands, on the other; and,
Most recently, the rise of the Cyber-Age, with its uncertain implications for the future of cities and brick-and-mortar retail.

Like many of its cousins elsewhere across North America, the urban region around San Jose is polycentric. In this instance, much major economic development and investment has occurred to the northwest, scattered in a chain of dozens of cities from Palo Alto up through San Francisco and Oakland, and around San Francisco Bay. But there is no doubt that “Silicon Valley” in highly urbanized Santa Clara County, is real – just ask one of its workers, looking for 1,500 square feet of living space in and around San Jose that doesn’t cost a mint’s worth of gold bars.

The big question, recently addressed in summary by Florida and in detail by SPUR, the Bay-area urban planning organization (“Shaping Downtown San Jose,” by Egon Terplan and Jason Su, in The Urbanist, April, 2013) is whether or how the City of San Jose can once again become the center of life and commerce it once was, many decades ago, when the County (now almost two million in population) was rather sleepy and agricultural.

Can the housing needed by those thousands of knowledge workers, noted above, be created downtown? Can some of the internet and tech companies that built their beloved, isolated corporate campuses northwest of San Jose – not unlike the land-wasting corporate “office parks” of the 1970’s and ‘80’s – be brought back into town?

For example, take a look at the Facebook “campus” in Menlo Park, above.

Not that the problem is unique to Facebook. This blog published several pieces (including this one) on Apple’s failure to think “community” when it designed and pushed its high-concept, “donut/spaceship” headquarters in Cupertino a couple years ago. (Fortunately, other high-tech companies are not as physically disconnected from their communities. For example, Amazon has opted for a creative, community-strengthening design for its headquarters in Seattle, and Zappo appears to be doing good work in Las Vegas.)

Is there a company that can make the kind of commitment to San Jose that Amazon has made to Seattle? While some firms such as Cisco and eBay reside in North San Jose, can some Silicon Valley firms be coaxed into downtown?

In addition to what the Silicon Valley companies may do as they consider the more urban future that their workers will seek, can San Jose at least moderately densify and, as SPUR’s recent report recommends, improve connectivity and urban continuity by filling in the gap-toothed interstices now represented by parking lots and one-story buildings? Importantly, can San Jose do this without losing the character and funky mix of ethnic eateries and small businesses which are there now, and keep or create a lively, active street-level scene? Can the city capitalize on and successfully brand some of the newer cultural and nightlife attractions it has managed to create? Can it work with its neighbors to limit further growth beyond the existing urban fringe?

These are all tough questions, but the answers generally need to be “yes” to most or all of them in order to succeed. Florida has some good suggestions for moving the ball along, including these: changing the mindset that made San Jose and many medium-sized cities a terrific habitat for fast-moving cars, but awful for pedestrians (starting by converting streets back to a two-way system with parallel, on-street parking, and maybe tearing up some of those disruptive expressways or expressway ramps that chop up and separate whole parts of their core); keeping or bringing back major government offices and functions downtown, and keeping them both physically and psychologically accessible; eschewing fringe shopping malls (if that horse hasn’t already left the barn); and embracing a wide variety of nightlife.

These would be a good start for any place trying to bulk up and come back, but I think San Jose needs additionally to keep some more sophisticated, 21st-century principles in mind if it is to maximize the benefits of its needed urbanization. Some of these themes have been previously visited and explored here, but bear repeating:

Added density is good, but adding a lot more isn’t always a lot better. There is, of course, a place for city districts of high rises and very high density, but cities of moderate residential densities (50-100 dwelling units/acre downtown, with 7-20 units/acre adjacent) and four-six-story commercial buildings, can be just as efficient, providing a good, human-scaled urban vibe.
Design is crucial. One can have mid- to high-rises galore, but if the streetscape -- the public realm -- is sterile and wind-swept, instead of attractive, interactive and interesting, no one wants to be there during the day or night, and no one will be.
Bring various forms of green infrastructure into the city. Bring nature into the city in its many forms, from street trees to green squares, pocket parks to rain-gardens that treat stormwater runoff, flowers and ornamental greenery to “daylighted” streams and improved river commons. These all gladden the heart, refresh the spirit, and provide respite from the summer heat.
Maintain and restore historic buildings. Historic buildings provide our collective memory of place. We managed to effectively wipe out enormous and valuable parts of our architectural and cultural heritage nationwide, from the 1950s through the 1990s. But there are still gems in San Jose that must be respected.
Capitalize on the city’s existing bones. Beneath what we’ve done to many of our cities lies the beating heart of a still-living community, and the infrastructure that, with a few tweaks, can handle growth. Modify it, perhaps, but use it.
Try to keep what’s working. If there is a distinct ethnic neighborhood, or groups of ethnic restaurants, or specialized businesses, celebrate them, market them, and try to keep them.

Finally, a note about the San Jose/Santa Clara metro area and a ranking of ‘Best Performing Cities” recently released by the Milliken Institute (reported by Richard Florida in Atlantic Cities on April 29). San Jose came out on top of this index in 2012 (though it curiously ranked 51 the previous year). Although San Jose has significant problems to solve, I think the current high ranking, at least, is explainable. First, Milliken conflates the term “cities” with what are really metropolitan regions – and we know that the metropolitan region around and including Silicon Valley is performing very well, indeed. Second, according to a good recent analysis by Florida and his colleagues, both education levels and the amount of scientific and technical employment are very important to the index – and of course there are both, at high levels, in and about Santa Clara County. In my view, the ranking shouldn’t obscure the fact that San Jose probably needs to confront its challenges sooner, rather than later.

Again, I don’t pretend to have studied San Jose in depth, so I cannot presume to offer detailed or carefully considered advice. But I believe these are important points for places like San Jose: changing communities with potential, where economic growth is still taking place, but whose identity and economy has been significantly diffused or diluted and for which a more focused and hopeful future is desired.

More articles by Lee Epstein:

The essential elements of green cities (April 3, 2013)
Meet the nation's biggest landlord (and developer) (February 6, 2013)
Could Buenos Aires be a model for thinking about US cities? (January 10, 2013)
Sandy as preview: making communities more resilient to severe climate events (November 5, 2012)
Getting to yes on the right kind of suburban change (October 9, 2012)
The fall - and rise - of small downtown America (September 7, 2012)

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Kaid Benfield explores community, development, and the environment on Switchboard and in other national media. For more posts, see his blog's home page. Please also visit NRDC’s Sustainable Communities Video Channels.

What good, grassroots advocacy for complete streets looks like

2013-05-03T12:28:27Z

Kaid Benfield, Director, Sustainable Communities, Washington, DC

I took a tour of Miami Beach this morning. No, not in person (though I wish), but via the wonders of Google Earth. And I didn’t see South Beach, the grand hotels, or the ocean, for that matter. So what was the point?

I wanted to see a stretch of road on the backside of the community – away from the Atlantic – that is being reconstructed by the Florida Department of Transportation. It’s a 1.3-mile stretch of Florida Route 907, known locally as Alton Road. My first set of impressions varied from it’s nondescript, to it’s chaotic, to it’s every road in America, to “are you kidding me, it’s sunshine and palm trees, where’s the beef?”

But, as I looked closer, I noticed the stranded pedestrians. They wouldn’t be in the middle of the roadway if they were better accommodated, and I even felt frightened for one or two of them. This is not an easy road to cross conveniently. And, to tell the truth, it doesn’t even look that pleasant to drive on. Isn’t the reconstruction – required mostly for flood control – an opportunity to make it work better for everyone with a “complete streets” approach?

That’s exactly what a grassroots group called the Alton Road Reconstruction Coalition thinks. I love the graphic below, which sets out the possibilities and the coalition’s position about as clearly and sensibly as I’ve seen. What they are proposing wouldn’t cost that much more, if anything, and it would make both the road safer and that part of the community more pleasant to be in. There are all sorts of wins here, and no real losses that I can see. It’s a terrific example of how to do local advocacy, in my opinion.

Take a look at the coalition’s website to learn more. There’s more detail, but the citizens’ proposal includes the following:

Wide sidewalks
Hike / Bike trail for runners and bikers on the west side of Alton
Narrow driving lanes to slow traffic and allow for more sidewalk space — 10 ‘ vs. 11′
More shade trees
Center island medians to allow a refuge for pedestrians and planting space for shade trees
30 MPH speed limit
More parking
Pedestrian crossing signals at all intersections

It’s a great concept as is, but I would urge that they consider a few improvements to the proposal. In particular:

This is at least partially about flood control. Why not add some green infrastructure in the form of pervious pavers in the sidewalks and crosswalks, and with sophisticated landscaping specifically designed to absorb rainwater? It makes sense to work on complete streets and green streets at the same time. By the way, some of this may be implicit in the proposal; if so, I would highlight it so the DOT has to respond.
The illustration does show pavers in the bike lanes. That’s the wrong place for them. Bumpy pavement is OK for pedestrians but horrible for cyclists, and wet pavers are especially slippery for bicycle tires. Keep the bike lanes smooth.
I also would not encourage runners and cyclists to use the same space, particularly a two-way space, as seems to be the proposal here. That diminishes the experience for both and is an accident waiting to happen, especially since so many runners wear headphones while they are out and can’t hear warnings.

Those are minor tweaks, though. On the whole, this is a great idea and very well presented. Let’s hope the coalition gets the results they and the community deserve.

Thanks to Wanda Mouzon for bringing this issue to her friends, including me.

Related posts:

Streamlining the process for people-oriented streets (June 26, 2012)
Fixing suburbs with green streets that accommodate everyone (December 20, 2011)
How green infrastructure is making cities more sustainable & hospitable (October 11, 2011)
Complete streets policies are gaining popularity across the country (April 27, 2011)
Accommodating the multiple purposes of streets (video) (January 28, 2011)
Hi, I’m Kaid, proud to be an 'avid cyclist' (March 26, 2010)
Streets for seniors: a video look at issues and remedies (July 1, 2009)

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Is it time for "smarter smart growth"?

2013-05-01T12:28:47Z

Kaid Benfield, Director, Sustainable Communities, Washington, DC

I hesitate to write yet another article about bringing “smart growth” – the combination of ideas born in the 1990s to counter suburban sprawl – into the 21st century. I’ve long argued that, at a minimum, it’s time to update the so-called “ten principles” adopted back then by the Smart Growth Network that emphasize compact development, transportation choices, and so on. We’ve learned so much since then, about green infrastructure, food, health, green buildings, the merits of moderate density, revitalization and gentrification, and more, that would allow us to make communities even smarter.

But most smart growth advocates remain concentrated on the infill+density+transit formula of the 1990s. The one major addition to the menu that I would recognize since the 1990s has been walkability (and perhaps its cousin, complete streets), and it’s an important one. But that’s about it, for what the major parts of the smart growth movement spend their time on.

So I was heartened to see a Twitter link earlier this week to an article in the awkwardly named UrbDeZine San Diego titled “10 Rules for Smarter Smart Growth.” I have company in this lonely quest!

Now, as it turns out, the author of the article, Bill Adams, and I differ in the specific “smarter” ideas that we champion. But what we both have in common is that it’s time to get past advocating for the fact of smart growth – it’s already mainstream in nearly every planning office in the country – and start working on its quality.

Here are Adams’s 10 rules:

Purge the term NIMBY from your language and your thinking. “It stultifies any further understanding of community concerns, or how to reach a compromise.” The truth, in my opinion, is that NIMBYs sometimes have a point.
Respect community planning. It takes seemingly forever, Adams concedes, but it’s worth it: “Modern smart growth occurs best through this planning process, not through ad hoc project variances . . . Developments that require spot zoning under the smart growth or TOD banner are usually wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
Integrate with the surrounding community. “A successful smart growth project recognizes the existing desirable and undesirable neighborhood patterns, and works to fit in with the former and tweak the latter.”
In transit oriented developments (TODs), transit orientation should exceed auto orientation. Adams’s point on this one mainly seems to be an argument against parking requirements and provision. As a general rule, the proposition of transit-first, cars-second in TODs should be inarguable (see the egregious example of a 1970s-era, auto-oriented transit station, photo right). But I think there can be sensible provision for parking in TODs; it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Where Adams and I definitely agree is that it isn’t TOD unless the transit and development are oriented to one another; having development simply near the station is not enough.
Respect neighborhood character & identity. “Lack of identity or a negative identity makes increasing neighborhood density difficult. A development that challenges or changes a community’s identity architecturally or in terms of land use can undermine the very thing that attracts residents to the neighborhood. Diversity of land uses is good but incompatibility is not. Preserve historic resources and urban fabric.” Amen to that.
Increase density incrementally. “Don’t let maximizing density become the enemy of increasing density.” I SO agree with that, especially since many of the benefits of smart growth (such as reducing driving and related carbon emissions, and reducing stormwater runoff per capita) are achieved at densities well under 60 dwellings per acre. There are some terrific examples of suburban developments that add density while fitting right in to existing neighborhoods.
Conform to existing “smart” retail corridors and centers. “A successful smart growth project doesn’t add a large amount of retail space on the periphery of an existing successful or resurging commercial district.”
Look for opportunities to narrow (verb) streets and vanquish parking lots. “The antithesis of smart growth and the trademark of sprawl are wide streets, dispersed development, and parking lots.” I agree with most of this but think that the first and third of these "sprawl trademarks" are somewhat situational. There are places, for example, where wide, multi-modal boulevards add character and attractiveness to a neighborhood, even a highly urban one. In addition, I know at least one major and highly successful suburban retrofit into a walkable urban center that could not have happened without parking garages. Today it thrives as a true place of multimodal choice. So I would vanquish parking lots when opportunities arise, yes, but also incorporate structured and underground parking here and there. There are very few districts in the US that can thrive with no provision for parking at all.
Prioritize non-auto transportation by creating unique or exclusive pedestrian and bicycle amenities. Adams argues that walking and cycling routes don’t have to be adjacent to driving routes; there are lots of places where they can be tucked in, to great benefit. I agree.
Design for human nature, honed over millions of years, rather than efficiencies and logic, decided upon during the course of design. “Such design is often counter-intuitive. This concept is exemplified in the attraction of people to small spaces, crowded rooms, and long lines.” That’s an excellent point, and perhaps also a nod to “original green” thinking. It seldom makes sense to try to outsmart human nature. (I will differ on one point: most humans I know abhor long lines; if they are in one, it’s certainly not because of the line.)

I agree with the essence of just about all of these, especially numbers 1, 2, 5 and 6. Adams adds a number 11, as well, preserve and enhance existing density and urban fabric. Since that was pretty much my whole point two days ago, I’m certainly not going to disagree now.

Here are four that I would add to make it a round 15:

Integrate nature into the community, especially at the neighborhood scale, as with pocket parks, green infrastructure, street trees and the like. We humans need that sort of thing, and too many developers and municipalities today don’t bother.
Integrate green technology into buildings and infrastructure. In this day and age, smart growth just isn’t very smart unless it takes every opportunity to reduce emissions and resource consumption. And it’s the performance, not the technology, that matters.

Employ universal access and age-friendly design. By 2030, there will be over 40 seniors in the US for every 100 persons of working age. We baby boomers aren’t going away, so let’s get ready.
Make urbanism more family-friendly, too. We are building better cities with smart growth, but for whom? Do we really want to keep turning a blind eye to such a major segment of our population? In Washington, almost all of the city’s population increase over the past decade can be accounted for by an increase in residents between 20 and 35 years old. The number of children younger than 15 dropped by a fifth. I believe we need to change that and, for planners, that means better schools, better parks and playgrounds, and at least some moderate- (rather than high-) density housing with a little yard space.

Since Adams cheated by adding a “bonus” number 11, I’m adding a bonus number 16: Pursue communities suitable for a diversity of incomes, housing types, ethnicities, and old/new residents. That’s the future of America; surely it should also be the future of smart growth.

What do you think?

Related posts:

For walkable cities, it's not about the density - it's about finding the right kind of density (March 4, 2013
Mitigating the environmental paradox of smart growth: softening urban density (November 26, 2012)
Managing the increasing urbanization of Washington: sensitivity required (May 29, 2012)
Smart growth is a start. But it's not enough. (April 24, 2012)
Smart growth principles for the 21st century (December 13, 2010)
It's time to update the definition of "smart growth" (December 6, 2010)

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The case for building on a city's historic assets

2013-04-29T12:24:30Z

Kaid Benfield, Director, Sustainable Communities, Washington, DC

It’s ridiculously easy to think about the benefits of historic preservation in immensely walkable Providence, Rhode Island. I’m not sure I’ve seen a better collection of downtown historic architecture this side of New Orleans. Elsewhere there are fine smaller historic downtowns, of course, such as in Annapolis, and wonderful urban historic districts (frequently close to downtowns) such as Old Salem in North Carolina and Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati. But in Providence, it’s the downtown itself that practically oozes with dignified charm.

I have a feeling that, as was the case with many fine older buildings in my hometown, Providence’s splendid architectural legacy remains intact because, when people were tearing down historic properties a few decades ago and putting up newer but mediocre buildings in their places, Providence’s economy simply couldn’t support the new stuff. So the splendid older buildings remain today, available to be given new life by creative-class businesses.

Providence may be a particularly fine example, but it is hardly the only city with underutilized historic assets that could become a cornerstone of future economic development. Information has largely replaced manufacturing as America’s economic engine, and young, talented workers today are seeking walkable districts with character in which to work and live. (Just ask suburban Dublin, Ohio about that.) From Pasadena to Portland, from Paducah to Providence, saving and sprucing up these assets is the way to go.

Scott Wolf is the executive director of Grow Smart Rhode Island, an organization that advocates asset-based economic development and smart land use. Scott, who is my colleague on the board of Smart Growth America, argues persuasively that his state should capitalize on its historic architecture by encouraging older buildings’ rehabilitation and use:

“Let’s restore our state historic-property tax credit to once again take advantage of our vast collection of historic buildings and neighborhoods, which we know are settings with great appeal for knowledge-economy companies and workers. It’s far from a coincidence that United Natural Foods, the largest distributor of organic food in America, relocated several years ago from Connecticut to the rehabbed ALCO site, in Providence, that Atrion Networking expanded into Hope Artiste Village, in Pawtucket, after that historic-tax-credit project opened for business, or that Moran Shipping, a technologically sophisticated, homegrown corporation with international reach, decided to forgo a move to Houston and instead relocate to a rehabbed building across from the State House.”

The federal government has a limited tax credit program for investment in income-producing historic properties: in particular, owners of buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places may be eligible for a 20 percent federal income tax credit that can be applied against the cost of their rehabilitation for reuse; in effect, 20 percent of the rehab costs will be borne by the federal government for most taxpayers. This reflects the public benefits of saving infrastructure and property.

But the federal incentive can be either undermined or strengthened by state law, depending upon whether there is a corresponding benefit available against state income taxes and, if so, how it is structured.

In many states, tax credits are indeed available to reduce the real cost of rehabbing historic buildings. According to an analysis by Harry K. Schwartz for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, most programs include variations on the following:

Criteria establishing what buildings qualify for the credit;
Standards to ensure that the rehabilitation preserves the historic and architectural character of the building;
A method for calculating the value of the credit awarded, reflected as a percentage of the amount expended on that portion of the rehabilitation work that is approved as a certified rehabilitation;
A minimum amount, or threshold, required to be invested in the rehabilitation; and
A mechanism for administering the program, generally involving the state historic preservation office and, in some cases, the state department of revenue or the state department of economic development.

According to Grow Smart Rhode Island, that state's Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission has found that, since 2002, Rhode Island’s Historic Tax Credit Program stimulated $1.2 billion of private investment in the rehabilitation of 208 historic buildings (mainly in urban and town centers) in 15 different communities. The Commission estimates that these projects created 22,000 construction jobs and 6,000 permanent jobs, and paid $806 million in wages, during that period. But the law was allowed to sunset, with its resurrection scheduled for debate in this session of the legislature.

I was honored to participate last week in Providence in an Earth Day program on how cities can celebrate diversity and culture while weaving together the interrelated needs of art, education, health and housing. The session, sponsored by the University of Rhode Island, was ably moderated by Marc Levitt, host and co-executive producer of the WGBH radio program Action Speaks.

In my portion of the program, I presented Mark Holland’s “Eight Pillars of a Healing City,” one of which is green buildings. (In a restatement of the principles by the Healing Cities Institute, this one became “restorative architecture.”) I emphasized that green buildings didn’t have to be new and that, in fact, older properties may have intrinsic green properties such as embodied energy and resources (that do not have to be spent anew as with a new building) and “original green” characteristics such as climate-specific design built before what Steve Mouzon calls “The Thermostat Age.” Older buildings also serve a less measurable, but no less important, function in constituting a shared cultural legacy. Simply put, they remind us where we – and our places – came from.

Providence is sometimes thought of as a declining city, but to me it seemed more like a promising one – poised for rebirth, fueled by the country’s emerging economy and demographics. Its chances – like those of other, similarly situated communities – will be enhanced if it (1) recognizes the impressive assets that it has; (2) builds upon those assets by courting the right kinds of businesses and residents that appreciate character and walkability; and (3) preserves those assets for the future, starting with re-enacting the state’s historic property tax credit.

Related posts:

Cincinnati re-opens spectacular park in revitalizing historic district (July 12, 2012)
When values collide: balancing green technology and historic buildings (June 25, 2012)
The green dividend from reusing older buildings (January 24, 2012)
The greenest (historic) building is the one that's in the right context (June 16, 2011)
Will this historic downtown recover? (photoessay) (May 6, 2011)
Assembling the green facts to support preservation (March 7, 2011)

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