In my post of May 6th, “Traditional Neighborhood Development and LEED Go Hand in Hand,” I made the point that smart growth and new urbanism are helping give a ‘boost’ to green building practices. While conducting research for that article, however, I did find several assertions to the contrary. So, for the sake of playing devil’s advocate, I will here take a look at some of those assertions. Read the rest of this entry »
[There are a number of different approaches to communities and building that serve to support sustainability (and often other aims at the same time; sustainable strategies are almost invariably diverse and multi-faceted in the benefits they offer). Over the next few weeks, I intend to take a look at a number of these types of communities and the ways each of them contribute to improving overall sustainability.]
New Urbanism (sometimes referred to as Traditional Neighborhood Design) is a movement spearheaded by the The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). Its goals are “promoting walkable, neighborhood-based development as an alternative to sprawl. CNU takes a proactive, multi-disciplinary approach to restoring our communities.” Improving sustainability is one of the Principles of New Urbanism (see below),additionally, New Urbanism advocates a number of benefits. Although there are broad overlaps between using historical, traditional housing forms (or, unfortunately more often, faux-historical looking buildings) and New Urbanist principles, there is nothing magical about gabled roofs and wood siding, and New Urbanism does not require retro-styled throwbacks (although many examples of it do combine visual historical revivalism with the good community principles it supports).
Much of the attention we pay to green building deals with the parts and pieces and how our buildings work. Greener buildings use less energy for thermal comfort (heating and cooling) and less energy for lighting and draw on fewer resources (and less impact from the materials that are used) in their construction. All of these are good and useful steps to take. However, all of this just takes into account the building itself, and perhaps the site it rests upon. With this kind of focus (or lack thereof) one could envision a community of dispersed “green” buildings all individually well designed and well made, but, in the aggregate, contributing hugely to the destruction of habitat, the depletion of resources, and the net degradation of the environment.
The High Point neighborhood in Seattle, Washington — a mixed-use, mixed-income community that is seven miles from the space needle — has been winning national awards since its redevelopment began in 2003. At the end of 2007, it achieved worldwide recognition, receiving the Urban Land Institute’s 2007 Global Award for Excellence.
Before its redevelopment, the 120-acre site was occupied by barracks-style housing that had been built to accommodate wartime workers at Boeing. Then the Seattle Housing Authority, a public corporation that provides affordable housing to over 25,500 people, initiated a renewal effort that resulted in the largest sustainable mixed-use urban neighborhood in the U.S. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m celebrating Boxing Day in a new way this year - I’m putting all the cardboard boxes saved up from Shipping Month, aka December, to use in my Permaculture garden, by making sheet mulch.
Google sheet mulch and Permaculture. (For those not in the know, Permaculture is a fairly recent term for cultivating an edible landscape that establishes positively reinforcing relationships between water, soil, insects, microbes, sun, etc…for the purpose of sustainably and organically feeding its designing human.)
Sheet mulches are an easy way to ‘compost in place’, delivering all the water-borne yummies to the plants instead of under the compost pile. Design-wise, sheet mulching also avoids the not-so-Neighborhood-Association-Friendly look of compost piles, so it’s a tricky way to subvert the negative effects of suburban sprawl - grow a food landscape!
Portland has been recognized for decades as a leader in urban planning. Today its progressive philosophies are being applied to environmental policy-making. Tackling sustainability on an urban scale, the Portland Development Commission has conceived a model neighborhood known as the Lloyd Crossing Sustainable Urban Design Plan. A massive undertaking, the Plan sets goals and objectives that are intended to guide development over the next 45 years.
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