In regional land use planning
"We need to forget about traffic congestion. In the short term, infill is going to increase it a lot in some places ... that is all there is to it. Once communities get dense enough then transit can work, although I believe that only expensive gasoline will actually relieve congestion … good environmentalists think seven generations."
DAVID MOGAVERO
Mogavero Notestine Associates
Population growth and economic expansion have led to widening areas of settlement, with increased energy consumption, traffic and building, and ever-increasing carbon emissions. Accelerated climate change, a growing dependence on imported fossil fuel and the rising cost of energy have made the energy dependent growth patterns of the past unsustainable. To assure communities will grow sustainably while taking action to shrink their regional carbon footprints, redevelopment agencies have the opportunity to become more involved in resource reclamation, alternative-energy technology and land-use planning that focuses on expanding multi-modal rapid transit and goods movement around compact, energy-efficient, environmentally sensitive development, and supports a mix of uses and a range of housing options.
Reclaim
Resources
- develop around natural features, integrating them into site development
- develop infill sites
- reclaim brownfield sites
- salvage and recycle deconstruction materials on other sites
- restore pervious surfaces and vegetation to reduce urban heat islands, retain groundwater, and recharge the aquifer
- protect or engineer wetlands for their cleansing properties
- treat contaminated soils and wastewater for reuse with bioremediation
- capture free energy in sun and wind
- recycle existing buildings through historic preservation or adaptive reuse
Important Resources
Sustainable Design, Ecology, Architecture, and Planning, Daniel E. Williams, FAIA, John Wiley & Sons, 2007.
Regenerative Design for Sustainable Development, John Tillman Lyle, John Wiley and Sons, 1996
Develop the
Transit Hub
The Technical Advisory Committee to the Statewide Transit-Oriented Development Study defined Transit Oriented Development (TOD) as: "moderate to higher density development, located within an easy walk of a major transit stop, generally with a mix of residential, employment and shopping opportunities designed for pedestrians without excluding the auto. TOD can be new construction or redevelopment of one or more buildings whose design and orientation facilitate transit use.”
Components of transit-oriented development
- primary emphasis on pedestrian-friendly, walkable design
- a town center oriented toward the train station
- a mix of commercial, residential, retail and civic uses that represents a regional node
- high-density, high-quality development within .25 miles of a train station
- a multi-modal transit system that includes bikeways, light rail, and buses, streetcars and trolleys
- reduced parking ratios
Benefits of Transit-oriented Development
- provides for greater independent mobility
- encourages a healthier lifestyle
- maintains existing infrastructure
- increases transit ridership
- reduces traffic congestion and driving
- increases residential and commercial densities, features mixed use and affordable development near public transit
- attracts amenities: hospitals and educational institutions
- stabilizes property values
- increases foot traffic and customers for area businesses
- greatly reduces dependence on fossil fuel
- greatly reduces pollution and environmental destruction
- reduces incentive to sprawl, increases incentive for compact development
- less expensive than new road construction and sprawl development
- enhances ability to maintain economic competitiveness
Important Resources
Department of Housing and Community Development Transit Oriented Development (TOD) Resources http://www.hcd.ca.gov/hpd/tod.pdf
Reconnecting America transit oriented development http://www.reconnectingamerica.org/
Green
Infill
Traditional development hardscapes land by building structures to slough off water and funnels it through a guttering and drainage system that overloads stormwater systems, washes pollutants into those systems and carries precious amounts of water, along with pollutants, to the sea. Aquifers are denied their natural source of water – normally percolated and filtered through soils after storms – and as a result cities need to use too much water to replace what they have funneled away. Cities risk water rationing and flooding because water is not stored but is wasted. Where infill opportunities arise, there is an opportunity to redress the balance.
Infill is the best value, in terms of greening development.
- infrastructure is in place
- there is no line loss in distributing energy from the grid; rather there is, perhaps, the chance to augment it
- density allows for the clustering of energy generators on urban rooftops
- services and transportation are nearby
Repurposing an estimated 4.5 million older buildings through restoration or adaptive reuse is the greenest form of green, as disturbance of the energy embodied in the materials and the construction of the structure is minimal, compared to new building, and fewer new resources are required to bring the site back into operation.
- structures built prior to the invention of central heat and air were designed to take advantage of passive solar and thermal mass
- daylighting from large windows, wide landings and balconies reduce electricity needs, and plaster-on-brick walls or heartwood provide considerable insulation.
- Demolition wastes fuel, adds to the landfill and releases toxins that could more effectively be sealed from exposure
- The embodied energy – accounting for the fuel, materials manufacturing, transport and resources in the existing structure – is doubled when one building comes down to put another in its place
Cleaning up a brownfield or a grayfield and siting a new structure on an empty lot benefits the ecology of the site by also addressing water, wastewater and other pollution issues.
- infill contributes to greenhouse gas-emissions reduction by contributing to the density that supports transit-oriented development
- infill stimulates the revision of outdated land-use zoning and building codes
- these provide incentives for:
- stormwater management and treatment systems
- wastewater management systems
- transit-capital projects
- green-street, parking-lot and green-roof demonstration projects that reduce runoff and recycling irrigation water
Infill development can be eligible for historic-preservation tax credits, brownfields, LEED points, tax-increment financing in RDAs, state infill grant funds and proposed incentives for green infill such as green-zoning overlays with tax incentives
The perception that increased housing density leads to local traffic and parking congestion is legitimate. While it is true that increased density tends to increase the number of cars on the road per square mile, and so tends to increase local traffic and emissions, sprawl actually increases total traffic congestion more. Smart growth strategies, including infill, can reduce per-capita vehicle ownership and use by 20-40%*, when paired with reductions in road and parking-facility costs, accidents, energy consumption and pollution emissions and increased options for walking, cycling and improved transit. Local governments have begun to adopt alternative traffic-mitigation fees that can finance improvements to multiple modes rather than just roadways.
Important Resources
"Understanding Smart Growth Savings," Todd Litman, http://www.vtpi.org/sg_save.pdf
Visualizing Density: A Catalog Illustrating the Density of Residential Neighborhoods, Julie Campoli and Alex MacLean (2002), Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, www.lincolninst.edu/subcenters/vd/
Creating Great Neighborhoods: Density in Your Community, Local Government Commission LGC (2004), (www.lgc.org), US Environmental Protection Agency and the National Association of Realtors, http://www.epa.gov/dced/pdf/density.pdf
Energy Benefits of
Urban Land Infill, Brownfields, and Sustainable Urban
Development: A Working Paper, Evans Paull Northeast-Midwest Institute, updated, April 2008, and other papers and presentations on climate change with information related to the energy benefits of brownfields and urban infillhttp://www.nemw.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=93&Itemid=73
"Sector
Integration"
S. L. Klein*, Senior Engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, is looking for a city council to sponsor an "Alternative Energy Zone," a city-wide energy micro-economy that would operate free of hydrocarbon sources, which will include "a recycling and biomass waste fuel recovery plant [see Department of Energy's mini-grid],home electrical generators, alternative-fuel cars, alternative-fuel service stations, and businesses, vendors and utilities to help maintain the alternative energy infrastructure" ... that also would draw on other available local energy sources: "wind, wave, geothermal along with solar energy." A similar commitment was made by Buffalo, New York, when George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla created the first AC power grid in 1900.
Important Resources
*Green Perspectives in Alternative Energy Zones
http://www.green-technology.org/green_technology_magazine/alternative_energy_zones.htm
Wastewater Bioremediation
Wetlands naturally break down and digest pollutants with the help of a diverse community of organisms, including bacteria, fungi, plants, snails, clams and fish, which clean and filter the wastewater by processing our waste as their food. "Wetlands are the most biologically productive ecosystems on earth. The many plants and animals that live there can use the nutrients that occur in wastewater and transform the waste into harmless byproducts. Engineered wetlands can process wastewater from cities and housing developments, preserving open space and natural wildlife habitats. Build vegetated swales for stormwater conveyance and design space for infiltration basins and trenches, detention and retention ponds and filtration systems"*
On a grander scale, Chicago, Illinois is launching a series of projects based upon the integrated street-design system Growing Water that won the History Channel's 2007 City of the Future competition – the insertion of "eco-boulevards" into the city's street systems that would filter and clean the city's wastewater and stormwater through bioremediation.
Important Resources
*Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design With Nature, Douglas Farr, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, November 2007
San Francisco Estuary Project Green Infill – Clean Stormwater, http://www.sfestuary.org/projects/detail.php?projectID=9 l
Growing Water: UrbanLab http://www.urbanlab.com/h2o/
Momentum Grows for Futuristic Scheme
http://archrecord.construction.com/news/daily/archives/080929future.asp
Develop
Agile Energy Systems
Clustering Green Buildings for On-site Energy Generation
Agile energy systems have been compared to the Internet or wireless infrastructure because the systems are models of flexibility in order to meet the diverse needs of differing markets and conditions. An agile system can be designed for malls, office complexes, hospitals, college campuses and residential developments. In an agile system, larger facilities or clusters of buildings generate their own power, using alternative-energy sources like wind and solar, storing the excess or selling it back to the grid. The small generating facilities' on-site generation, storage and distribution smoothes out fluctuations in supply from renewable resources and reduces transmission losses, cutting down on operating costs, and eliminating the need for overhead power lines. Agile systems also insulate communities from the debilitating energy crises of the past. Renewable energy generated by central plants can connect groups of buildings, and strategically spaced central plants can power a region. Financing is based on load demands for the building, the complex or the cluster.
The Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) is planning to install agile energy systems on each of its nine campuses. Each system will generate several megawatts of solar power – enough to power 1,000 homes, and more than enough to power each campus. In LACCD's case, tax dollars will partially fund the systems, but the city's residents will benefit from free energy supplied to the grid.
Important Resources
Distributed Energy Resources Animated Power System http://www.energy.ca.gov/distgen/background/background.html
Agile Energy Systems: Global Lessons from the California Energy Crisis, Woodrow Clark and Ted Bradshaw, Elsevier Science; 1 edition (Dec. 13, 2004)
online audio: http://www.milkeninstitute.org/events/events.taf?function=detail&ID=141&cat=Forums |
