Dockside Green.Photo: jayscratch

I recently took a vacation to Victoria, B.C., a wonderful city that — among other good things — is home to Dockside Green, which some people are calling the greenest development in the world.

At least with respect to new, highly urban developments-in-progress, they may have a case to make: For starters, when NRDC, the U.S. Green Building Council, and the Congress for the New Urbanism first announced the LEED for Neighborhood Development pilot program to honor smart growth, the developers of Dockside Green made a point of the neighborhood being the program’s very first applicant. It has since earned a platinum rating under LEED-ND.

Moreover, its two completed residential phases have also earned platinum ratings under the LEED green building programs, in one case setting a new world record for the highest LEED building score ever achieved, and in the second case tying their own record. Its completed commercial phase has also earned — you guessed it — a platinum rating.

For the most part, I am going to let the photos and videos tell this rich story, but allow me to set the table with some basics. Dockside Green is on its way to becoming a 26-building redevelopment of a 15-acre, former brownfield industrial site (cleanup alone reportedly cost $20 million), being built in phases as an eventual mixed-use community of 1.3 million square feet and some 2,500 residents.

Note the context in the heart of the region, not far from the central business district; it is served by multiple transit lines.

Dockside Green is being built by the financial institution Vancity, which launched the project with its partner, Windmill Developments, a firm committed to sustainability that persuaded the city of Victoria to approve a bold green concept for the site. (All of Windmill’s projects have achieved LEED platinum certification.) Master planning was by the architecture firm of Perkins & Will (formerly Busby, Will & Perkins). Mechanical and electrical engineering, as well as LEED consulting, was provided by Stantec.

Image: Small and Rossell landscape architects

Shoreline restoration design (not yet undertaken) and other landscape design was provided by the landscape architecture firm Small and Rossell. (I’m sure I’m leaving many important contributors out. Feel free to supplement these credits in the comments.) The project is being developed in 12 phases, comprising three neighborhoods, over seven years.

Dockside Green is host to a biomass gasification plant that, along with additional renewable energy technology (including on-building windmills and solar panels), enables the development to be carbon-neutral. Each residential unit has a real-time meter showing energy and hot water usage along with associated carbon emissions, which can be easily compared with the development as a whole or the unit’s history.

An educational wall explains Dockside Green’s water management system.Photo: Dockside Green Facebook page

The project also has significantly advanced water and waste handling systems, including its own sewage treatment and graywater recycling facilities, along with sophisticated green infrastructure and landscaping for handling stormwater, all of which is captured on site. One of the most prominent and attractive parts of the water management design — and of the project as a whole — is a constructed stream running through the development.

The stream.Photo: Maria Cook

Vancity worked with the city of Victoria to create and incorporate an affordable housing strategy to assist the project’s goal of mixed-income living. By all accounts, the developers have worked from the beginning to create not just a great development with a sustainability strategy, but a development of great ambition that has been all about sustainability from the beginning. From the project’s website:

A model for holistic, closed-loop design, Dockside Green functions as a total environmental system in which form, structure, materials, and mechanical and electrical systems interrelate and are interdependent — a largely self-sufficient, sustainable community where waste from one area will provide food for another. This is a dynamic environment where residents, employees, neighbouring businesses, and the broader community interact in a healthy and safe environment, reclaimed from disuse and contamination.

As a LEED® Platinum-targeted project, Dockside Green’s principles of New Urbanism, smart growth, green building, and sustainable community design are all essential elements of the development plan …

An integrated approach to design has been adopted, tailoring it specifically to the Dockside lands and the Victoria West community, recognizing the need to apply integrated design principles to the whole site — not just individual components and characteristics. A holistic, closed-loop design approach is the only way to enhance synergies and achieve our sustainability goals.

We strive to move the concept of whole-system costing beyond building design to include site and community infrastructure costs. For example, a sound green building strategy like ecological stormwater management will reduce infrastructure costs, while reducing the emission of greenhouse gases and heat-island effects, creating natural habitat and improving human health. Our ability to exploit whole-system thinking will be critical to our success: ecologically, socially, and financially …

For an excellent in-depth history and analysis of Dockside Green, see this highly informative article in Terrain by Portland-based architect Ken Pirie. Some readers may also
be interested in the development’s design guidelines, sustainability report, and green initiatives [PDFs].

So, how does this intensely green development work as a neighborhood? This may be where the “in progress” qualification comes into play. I think we are far from seeing it at its best.

Photo: InhabitatFor now, there is a fair amount of shopping right across the street, including a supermarket, so necessities are at hand. But my wife found the highly contemporary architecture a bit “austere,” and I think she has a point, especially with only a minority of the contemplated development constructed at this point; I found myself wishing for more warmth, which might come with more critical mass. In any event, whether one goes for the architecture or not is a matter of taste. We certainly didn’t dislike it. I also wished for at least a small park, which may eventually come if the waterfront is improved as contemplated in Small and Rossell’s site plan.

Dockside Green certainly isn’t yet the kind of complete, mature, multi-generational neighborhood highlighted by Scott Doyon’s “popsicle test” (can an 8-year-old go get a popsicle on her own and return home safely before it melts?) and featured in my last post. Now, there is a sense of isolation, in that it feels much more walkable internally than externally. There is still a large industrial tract between the development’s buildings and the waterfront to the east, along with a wide arterial road between the project and the commercial and residential properties on the hillside to the west. The remaining Dockside Green tracts to the south are still undeveloped, the parcels currently unkempt and fenced off. The whole surrounding area is clearly under redevelopment, though, so perhaps the critical mass that comes with neighborhood build-out will make the project feel more connected. It will be interesting to check back in a decade or so.

In the meantime, the water features are spectacular, lending quite a bit of nature to the development. We enjoyed the bakery and coffee bar, and so did quite a few others on a Tuesday morning. There were pets and a few small children around. The Galloping Goose bike trail, which runs alongside Dockside Green, was definitely being enjoyed. I came away hopeful for the neighborhood’s evolution, as well as majorly impressed by its green technology.

For additional perspective, watch these two videos. The first is a developer-sponsored, but informative, account of the neighborhood from the point of view of residents. The second presents the commentary of city officials and a founder of the environmental organization Smart Growth BC (now merged with the Canada Green Building Council):

Green, affordable homes in Savannah, Ga.Photo: Seven Waves Marketing

When revitalization of our distressed neighborhoods is done well, it is almost unrivaled in its ability to advance simultaneously each aspect of the “triple bottom line” of sustainability: improving the environment, the economy, and social equity. 

Revitalization is good for the environment for the reasons I discussed in a recent post; it strengthens cities and allows them to absorb population and economic growth in a nonsprawling fashion that is inherently more efficient, less consumptive, and less polluting than when development spreads out. It is good economically because it requires the building and maintenance of far less new infrastructure, and allows commerce to proceed with less travel time and distance to sap productivity; it also can increase tax revenues. 

Revitalization is not always good for social equity, unfortunately, since without proper attention to the issue, residents may not be able to afford to stay in a neighborhood that becomes more expensive. But when done thoughtfully, revitalization can be very beneficial to distressed populations, as the inspiring stories of Melrose Commons in the South Bronx, Dudley Street in Boston, and Old North in St. Louis amply demonstrate.   

The neighborhood scale and the usefulness of LEED-ND

Last fall I wrote that the two most important scales for thinking about a sustainable built environment are the metropolitan region and the neighborhood. Revitalization happens at the neighborhood scale, where increments of development take place, and where most people connect with their cities, their environments, and each other on an everyday basis. This is where change in our built environment occurs and is experienced most immediately. 

Over the last decade, NRDC made a major investment to help improve the shape and character of American development at the neighborhood scale. With two very able partners in the Congress for the New Urbanism and the U.S. Green Building Council, we conceived and developed LEED for Neighborhood Development, the first set of consensus-based national standards to guide new development to the right places with the right sustainable design. The goal of the program has been to define what is smart about smart growth and what is green about green neighborhoods, so that the private sector, reviewing public officials, and citizens alike will be able to evaluate and encourage the right kind of development. (The U.S. Green Building Council now manages the program.)

LEED-ND was designed from the very beginning to be especially supportive of revitalization and infill development in our inner cities and older communities. We hoped to provide a boost for good proposals while they were being considered, along with a set of model standards that could be adapted by governments and others who were also seeking to encourage sustainability.

CDC-led redevelopment project in St. Louis.Photo: ONSL Restoration GroupTo our immense satisfaction, that is exactly what has been happening, notwithstanding continuing turmoil in the real estate and development industry. Over 100 neighborhood-scale projects have now been certified under LEED-ND, from Vancouver’s urban Olympic Village (now a mixed-use community), to green affordable housing in Savannah, to a revitalizing arts district in Syracuse. In addition, while LEED-ND was intended primarily to influence the private sector, we are extraordinarily pleased that the program is earning increasing government recognition, from a state incentive program in Illinois, to new city plans in El Paso and Bellingham, Wash., to the discretionary grant programs of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is now using LEED-ND criteria in its evaluation process.

Green revitalization of distressed neighborhoods

LEED-ND can be very useful in helping inner-city developers — including nonprofit community development corporations (CDCs) — to guide smarter, greener, and more inclusive development in America’s distressed urban neighborhoods. At NRDC, we are particularly excited to be partnering in an effort to do just that with the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), one of the nation’s leading sponsors of urban community development, with offices in 30 regions across the country. In 2010, LISC invested over a billion dollars in community development, leveraging a total of $2.4 billion for over 10,000 affordable homes and nearly 3 billion square feet of retail and community space.

Together, and with local partners, including neighborhood residents, we hope to use LEED-ND to assist the development of demonstration projects and templates to help CDCs and municipal development authorities incorporate sustainable practices into their work. While we hope to make a difference, this will be far from a top-down effort. We want to help communities articulate and realize their own goals in a way that will bring them environmental benefits.

The collective influence of America’s 4,600 CDCs is substantial: In an average year, CDCs and related community-based nonprofit organizations are responsible for building some 86,000 homes and billions of square feet of commercial space in neighborhoods where private interests may be reluctant to accept risk. (For perspective, 86,000 homes represents as many as produced by the nation’s top five homebuilders combined, in a non-recession year.)  

The heart of our approach will feature model revitalization projects that achieve local goals while demonstrating a new commitment to sustainable revitalization and advanced practices. More specifically, we hope to help our partners achieve the following:

• Locate, design, and build to a sustainability standard sufficient to achieve LEED-ND certification at a high level (including walkable, mixed-use features; transportation choices; access to parks, healthy food, jobs, and schools; and advanced techniques for energy and water management);
• Involve local residents to the greatest extent possible in planning and design, and ensure that there is no net loss in affordable housing;
• Apply sophisticated environmental analysis to quantify the benefits we hope to achieve;
• Develop replicable approaches that can be transferred to CDCs and municipalities aro
  und the country, and guidebooks to assist their implementation; and
• Learn lessons along the way that can allow for continual assessment and improvement.

We know this is an ambitious agenda, and we will need the support of additional partners, including financial supporters, to make it happen. The number of projects that LISC and NRDC can undertake directly will certainly be limited by the availability of funding. But we have already begun providing assistance to some really exciting projects in Philadelphia and Indianapolis — more about those in a future post. 

This is our contribution, but the challenge and opportunity to help communities improve their urban neighborhoods requires and deserves the involvement of many more parties. While I am immensely pleased that this agenda is now embraced by NRDC, we are only one organization; ultimately, we can provide some dedication and perhaps some environmental leadership, but the revitalization of America’s long-neglected neighborhoods is not about us, but about local initiatives across the country. 

Fortunately, I am inspired every day by the efforts and ingenuity of neighbors and fellow travelers who share our commitment, whether it be on one city block or on a larger, programmatic scale. One of the goals of this blog is to share their stories, both to bestow a bit of well-deserved recognition on the principals, and to help others learn and become as inspired as I am.

New York City.Photo: Werner Kunz

For a long time, America’s environmental community celebrated wilderness and the rural landscape while disdaining cities and towns. Thoreau’s Walden Pond and John Muir’s Yosemite Valley were seen as the ideal, while cities were seen as sources of dirt and pollution, something to get away from. If environmentalists were involved with cities at all, it was likely to be in efforts to oppose development, with the effect of making our built environment more spread out, and less urban.

We’ve come a long way since then, if still not far enough. We were and remain right to uphold nature, wildlife, and the rural landscape as places critical to celebrate and preserve. But what we realize now, many of us anyway, is that cities and towns — the communities where for millennia people have aggregated in search of more efficient commerce and sharing of resources and social networks — are really the environmental solution, not the problem: The best way to save wilderness is through strong, compact, beautiful communities that are more, not less, urban and do not encroach on places of significant natural value. As my friend who works long and hard for a wildlife advocacy organization puts it, to save wildlife habitat we need people to stay in “people habitat.”

For our cities and towns to function as successful people habitat, they must be communities where people want to live, work, and play. We must make them great, but always within a decidedly urban, non-sprawling form. As it turns out, compact living — in communities of streets, homes, shops, workplaces, schools, and the like assembled at a walkable scale — not only helps to save the landscape; it also reduces pollution and consumption of resources. We don’t drive as far or as often; we share infrastructure. While recent authors such as Edward Glaeser and David Owen are sometimes excessive in extolling the virtues of urban density without giving attention to the other things that make cities attractive and successful, they are absolutely right that city living reduces energy consumption, carbon emissions, and other environmental impacts.  

A lot of my professional friends are committed urbanists as well as committed environmentalists. We understand the environmental advantages of urban living so thoroughly that we take it for granted that other people do, too. But we make that mistake at our — and the planet’s — peril. The increased development and maintenance of strong, sustainable cities and towns will not happen without a concerted effort. 

A lot is riding on the outcome: 83 percent of America’s population — some 259 million people — live in cities and their surrounding metropolitan areas. Somewhat astoundingly (and as I have written previously), 37 of the world’s 100 largest economies are U.S. metros. New York, for example, ranks 13th, with a $1.8 trillion economy equivalent to that of Switzerland and the Netherlands combined; Los Angeles (18th) has an economy that is bigger than Turkey’s; Chicago’s (21st) is larger than Switzerland’s, Poland’s, or Belgium’s.

With so much population and economic activity, it can be no wonder that our working and living patterns in cities and suburbs have enormous environmental consequences, both for community residents and for the planet. And the implications are going to intensify: Over the next 25 years, America’s population will increase by 70 million people and 50 million households, the equivalent of adding France or Germany to the U.S. With a combination of building new homes, workplaces, shops, and schools and replacing those that will reach the end of their functional lives, fully half the built environment that we will have on the ground in 25 years does not now exist.

These circumstances provide not just a formidable challenge but also a tremendous opportunity to get things right. Unfortunately, past practices have done a lot of damage, particularly in the latter half of the 20th century, when America severely disinvested our inner cities and traditional towns while population, investment, and tax base fled for (quite literally) greener pastures. The result, as we now know all too well, has been desecration of the natural and rural landscape while leaving behind decaying infrastructure, polluted air and waterways, and distressed populations. 

Older cities and towns with shrinking revenues did what they could, but critical issues such as waste, public transportation, street and sidewalk maintenance, parks, libraries, and neighborhood schools — issues where attention and investment could have made a difference — were back-burnered or neglected altogether. Meanwhile, sprawl caused driving rates to grow three times faster than population, sending carbon and other emissions through the roof while requiring still more costly new infrastructure that was built while we neglected the old.

We cannot allow the future to mimic the recent past. We need our inner cities and traditional communities to absorb as much of our anticipated growth as possible, to keep the impacts per increment of growth as low as possible. And, to do that, we need cities to be brought back to life, with great neighborhoods and complete streets, with walkability and well-functioning public transit, with clean parks and rivers, with air that is safe to breathe and water that is safe to drink.

This, I believe, leads to some imperatives: where cities have been disinvested, we must rebuild them; where populations have been neglected, we must provide them with opportunity; where suburbs have been allowed to sprawl nonsensically, we must retrofit them and make them better. These are not just economic and social matters: these are environmental issues, every bit as deserving of the environmental community’s attention as the preservation of nature.

Photo: woodleywonderworks

The majority of Americans consider themselves to be good drivers, according to a new survey from Allstate. But the rest of the survey reveals a different story.

American drivers believe their own driving knowledge, ability, and safe driving habits are substantially superior to those of, well, just about all other American drivers. Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of American drivers rate themselves as “excellent” or “very good” drivers. American drivers’ positive self-rating is more than twice as high as the rating they give to their own close friends (29 percent “excellent” or “very good”) and also other people their age (22 percent). Drivers also don’t think much of the driving ability of people from surrounding states, senior citizens, parents with young children, and especially teenagers, according to the survey.  

Despite American drivers’ confidence in their abilities, many admit to practicing dangerous behaviors on the road:

• Eighty-nine percent say they’ve driven faster than the posted speed limit, and 40 percent say they’ve driven more than 20 miles per hour over the limit.
• Almost half (45 percent) say they have driven while excessively tired — to the point of almost falling asleep.
• Fifteen percent say they have driven while intoxicated, with men almost four times more likely than women to have done so (23 percent of men versus six percent of women).
• More than one-third (34 percent) have sent a text message or email while driving, but the prevalence of the practice changes by age group. Those 18-29 years of age are the most likely to text while driving (63 percent) with drivers ages 30-44 not far behind (58 percent). Texting while driving decreases with older age groups; only 25 percent of those 45-54, 6 percent of those 55-64, and 2 percent of those over 65 admit to the practice.
• Fifty-three percent report having received a speeding ticket or other moving violation. Among these drivers, 44 percent say they have received three or more.
• Fifty-six percent of American drivers say they have been involved in an accident, but only 28 percent of them say the accident was their own fault.

Historic photo of Matt and Kelly Grocoff’s house.Photo: Kelly & Matt’s Net Zero House

Cross-posted from Natural Resources Defense Council.

Matt and Kelly Grocoff have renovated their 110-year-old home in Ann Arbor, Mich. to state-of-the-art energy standards. Their energy bills demonstrate the results: They actually generate more energy from on-site renewable sources than they consume. The Grocoffs believe they now have the oldest “net zero” home in America.

There’s a lot to like about this, but what I like best is that the home is green not only with respect to building energy but also with respect to transportation energy, because it is in a walkable city neighborhood of older homes on compact lots on gridded streets, with services and amenities close by. They sit within a block’s walk of three schools, by my count, and there is a transit line also a block away. There’s a neighborhood pocket park just down their own block. The house today, in all its net zero glory.Photo: Kelly & Matt’s Net Zero HouseThere’s a market, a bank branch, and several restaurants within a 10- to 12-minute walk. Yet theirs is a leafy neighborhood of mostly single-family homes.

I ran the address through the Center for Neighborhood Technology’s Abogo calculator for transportation costs and emissions: An average household in the Grocoffs’ neighborhood emits only half as much carbon from transportation as does an average household for the metropolitan region as a whole. This is because the Grocoffs’ more central, more walkable location shortens driving distances and tends to reduce automobile trips, compared to more outlying subdivisions.

Image: Abogo

So finally we have a well-publicized green home that is also in a green location. I hope the Grocoffs begin to stress that in their materials as they move forward. And so much the better that the home fully retains its historic character. Here’s the neighborhood (the large building complex in the lower left corner is two schools):

Regular readers know that few things bug me more than boasts about “green” homes and other buildings placed in locations with high driving rates that wipe out whatever energy savings they achieve from superior building technology. (See my posts about a bogus “net zero” claim, and green awards for sprawl from the American Institute of Architects and even the U.S. Green Building Council.)

You can read about the Grocoffs’ energy-efficient home on their own site, on Treehugger, on annarbor.com, or on GreenovationTV, which Matt Grocoff founded. Or you can just take the three-minute video tour, courtesy of a local TV station. The home looks not just green, but also like a very nice place to live:

Beginning trail construction on the BeltLine.Photo: Angel Luis Poventud

I once called the Atlanta BeltLine “the country’s best smart growth project.” I still haven’t seen one that is better in concept. But now, with a few years of history, how is the implementation coming along? Is the reality matching the vision?

The challenge with writing about the BeltLine is that the massive public/private undertaking is so enormous, so multifaceted, so ambitious and potentially transformative, and so complicated that it is difficult to know where to start, how much to say, and what comments are fair. I’ll try to boil it down to a few impressions that I have formed as a highly interested observer from afar:

1. The concept remains extraordinarily impressive.

Route of the BeltLine.Image: ABITo briefly review the basics, the city is seeking to invest some $2.8 billion in a new, 22-mile public transit, trails, and parks loop around the heart of the city of Atlanta on the site of an abandoned rail and industrial corridor. Because the BeltLine passes through some of the inner city’s most distressed neighborhoods, the intent is for this major public investment to leverage substantial private investment in revitalization, particularly workforce housing. The transit is to be either light rail or streetcars, connecting in several places along the loop to the MARTA regional rail transit system.

Around 2,000 acres of new, expanded, and improved parks are involved, all of which will be linked by a multi-use trail, itself a linear park, along the BeltLine as well as by the transit loop. Many of the parks are being designed to include significant green management features. The project will also involve the remediation of over a thousand acres of brownfields.

The hoped-for economic impacts include 5,600 units of workforce housing, 30,000 permanent jobs, and 48,000 person-years of construction jobs, and a $20 billion increase in the city’s tax base over 25 years. It’s an incredible bundle of related public benefits if the city and its partners can pull this off.

2. Visible benefits so far include but are largely limited to parks and trails.

Last week, a representative of the Atlanta Beltline Partnership, a fundraising and outreach affiliate of the initiative, helpfully sent me her organization’s new annual report, along with the latest report from Atlanta BeltLine, Inc. (ABI), the entity created by the city to oversee the project’s implementation. (The Partnership and ABI jointly sponsor the BeltLine’s web site.) Both point to some significant achievement in the development and improvement of parks as a result of the initiative.

From the Partnership’s report:

All over the city, the Atlanta BeltLine is beginning to take shape. In the West End, a multiuse trail is complete. Work is underway on a walking and biking path on Atlanta’s east side. And in the Old Fourth Ward, in the heart of the city, a signature park is emerging.

Historic Fourth Ward Park.Photo: HDR, Inc.Of the 20 pages of ABI’s report allocated to substantive accomplishment, 14 are devoted to parks and green space. Perhaps the most impressive of the parks work to date is the new (if awkwardly named) Historic Fourth Ward Park on the east side of the Beltline. Critic Jonathan Lerner writes of the park:

But I can say — from the times I have slipped through an opening in the fence to explore during the construction — that this is a transformative space. Its centerpiece is a sinuously shaped “lake” sunk deep into the topography that does double duty. It provides a focal point and — edged by boardwalks, bridges and piers, terraces and fountains, and a gracious amphitheater — will be an inviting activity center.

More mundanely, it functions as a stormwater detention device for this historically flood-prone location. The artificial declivity dug for the lake — emphasized by soaring granite retaining walls — along with the natural, gentler rise of the park’s topography beyond it toward the east, south, and west, creates long views up and down and lots of visual drama. The descent into it and the soft, curvaceous shapes of its hardscape and waterscape are a respite from the Historic Fourth Ward’s sharp-edged buildings and rectilinear street grid.

Site plan for the Historic Fourth Ward Park.Image: lorigamiThe park’s 17 acres include some significant green technology, according to ABI’s report:

• The purpose of the lake is to provide capacity relief to the combined sewer system and is designed to integrate aesthetically with the surrounding Historic Fourth Ward Park while meeting federal consent decree requirements.

 

• Converts five acres of former contaminated industrial land into a clean, green public space.

 

 

• City of Atlanta’s first water-neutral park: All irrigation needs will be met by the storm water basin and no water will be drawn from the City’s water supply.

 

 

• Utilizes energy-efficient LED lighting to minimize energy costs and provide a secure environment.

 

The park also includes a nifty and quite sophisticated skate park.

Among additional green features in new BeltLine parks, the new eight-acre D.H. Stanton Park on the Beltline’s south side is equipped with solar panels that, ABI says, will generate enough electricity to completely offset the park’s energy costs. And the report drily notes that the BeltLine’s new five-acre Boulevard Crossing Park (really, improve these names) was facilitated by an “innovative partnership with Trees Atlanta [that] used 24 goats to clear 1.5 acres of invasive kudzu over a three-week period in Fall 2010.”

Work has also begun on several miles of trails in at least three segments of the BeltLine. Some portions are finished and open to the public, while other portions are sufficiently cleared for “interim hiking.”

3. The transit isn’t coming for a while.

These accomplishments notwithstanding, for an urbanist like myself, the transit loop is the most important public-funded element of the BeltLine by far. Experience in other cities demonstrates that, in addition to improving transportation efficiency, fixed-route transit can be a powerful catalyst for development and private investment. But, without it, the BeltLine’s benefits will be limited at best.

Here’s some of what the ABI report says about transit:

ABI and M
ARTA are partnering to finalize the Atlanta BeltLine’s Tier I Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on behalf of the Federal Transit Administration, a major milestone in the federal funding process for transit. As part of the Atlanta BeltLine Corridor Design project, transit is being conceptually designed and integrated with the proposed trail and greenspace elements of the Atlanta BeltLine; station locations and alignment are being refined; and cost estimates are being updated.

In the upcoming year, ABI will create a Transit Implementation Strategy, initiate a Tier 2 EIS for a portion of the corridor and continue transit design and engineering through the Corridor Design and other planned projects. This work will serve as the blueprint for transit implementation and progress segments of transit to the point that they may proceed to preliminary engineering activities. This will include identification and screening of alternatives, conceptual engineering, ridership modeling, cost estimating, financial planning, and operational and maintenance planning. The Transit Implementation Strategy is anticipated to identify at least two specific segments of transit to be moved into design and/or construction in the next five years. These segments may connect the redevelopment corridor along the Atlanta BeltLine to activity centers in the core of the city.

Hmmm, there’s a lot of deliberate uncertainty written into those paragraphs. Even the near-term projects are described as “moved into design” in the next five years … I suspect that, put another way, the city doesn’t believe it is in a position to make promises. But, meanwhile, there are apparently some things it can do — things that are going to have to be done anyway — while it continues to search for funding (and perhaps more political support?).

Conceptual rendering of transit in the BeltLine.Image: ABI via Creative Loafing.One can’t help but wonder why the “transit implementation strategy” was still in the future as of the end of 2010, when the report was prepared. I also wonder if there has been internal competition among worthy transit projects for funding: When the federal Department of Transportation’s TIGER grants were being handed out last year, the money for Atlanta went for the downtown streetcar, not the BeltLine.

I am certainly not going to argue which project was a better candidate; presumably the city made an informed decision about which was more likely to attract funds, and I have no reason to doubt their judgment. I don’t know how advanced the planning for the streetcar was at the time, for example, but surely it was more advanced than that for the BeltLine. That said, if a project of the BeltLine’s massive ambition is to succeed, sooner or later it is going to have to become the top transit priority for the city. It’s just too complicated to get done otherwise.

In the meantime, I suppose it made sense to lead with parks and green space rather than with transit. As challenging as the land acquisition, remediation, design, public engagement, and funding can be for parks, that bundle becomes far more formidable when it comes to a rail line. The public is at least getting to see some near-term accomplishment in the parks and trails.

But a case can also be made for going all-out at least for a segment, however short, of the transit line right from the start, even if they had to begin with a bus line. This would have sent an immediate signal to the public, as well as to private investors, that this project is fundamentally about transit. The unfortunate experience here in the D.C. area is that, once a community comes to love a parks-and-trail corridor, some of them will actually oppose the transit intended in the corridor (facts notwithstanding) because they want their park to remain as it is.

4. A decent start has been made on revitalization and workforce housing.

There is already some significant development along the BeltLine. As I have written before, I’m a big fan of the Glenwood Park project, although even that well-conceived and -designed project won’t realize its full potential until the transit is in place.

A rendering of the unified concept for development, trail, and transit.Image: Lord Aeck & Sargent ArchitectureIn addition, ABI reports that $8.8 million has been capitalized into the Atlanta BeltLine Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which is administered by The Atlanta Development Authority. These funds, according to the report, can be applied to incentives for new and rehabilitated housing, down payment assistance for homebuyers, and property acquisition for future affordable housing development. ABI has set up a website to help promote new affordable housing developments (two shown above) along the BeltLine and to facilitate the down payment assistance to qualifying prospects.

On the land use side, the city has divided the complicated planning process along the BeltLine into ten segments; master plans have already been completed and adopted for seven of those segments, and the process was advanced for the remaining three as of the time of the ABI report. I took a look at a presentation [PDF] on zoning changes needed for redevelopment along the BeltLine, and it is clear that planners are working with the right concepts, at least for streetscapes and parking.

ABI’s report also includes sections on community benefits (the city has identified a daunting 45 neighborhoods affected by the project), job training, and public art.

5.  Some intriguing proposals have been put forward to speed the BeltLine’s implementation.

Thomas Wheatley is an Atlanta journalist who covers transportation and land use for the publication Creative Loafing. Wheatley believes that the BeltLine’s prospects for success need to be boosted by “big, bold ideas” that will be highly visible and can restore public confidence in the project. He offers five, including one in each of the city’s four quadrants:

• The Full Loop: Introduce Atlanta to the Beltline by building a bike path along the entire BeltLine corridor. “It’s far less expensive than the project’s transit component and far more feasible in the short-term,” says Wheatley.

• Northwest: Turn a giant hole in the ground into Atlanta’s new waterfront. “The booming Westside would benefit with a 45-acre reservoir and green space that’s twice the size of Piedmont Park” on the site of the now-defunct Bellwood quarry.

• Southeast: Ready one of the Beltline’s coolest segments for rail — and art. “Secure the Beltline’s most prominent gap — a bucolic, gritty stretch of tracks [currently owned by CSX] between Glenwood Park and southwest Atlanta.” Wheatley believes this segment should be next in line for transit after the northeast segment.

• Southwest: Turn a 31-acre parking lot into a vibrant southside neighborhood. “With the right project, some of Atlanta’s most beleaguered communities — and the entire city — could benefit” from the transformation of this long-vacant parcel, owned by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Wheatley reports that the Foundation would like the parcel to create development that “changes the script” of gentrification, but there is some concern over whether the distressed surrounding neighborhoods are strong enough to support commercial components of mixed-use.

Finally, a collaborative project born of architects, a writer, and an artist have proposed what they call a “humanist model” that would plant places of inspiration along the BeltLine, including a “mind garden,” “sound field,” and “circus politicus,” among others:

A humanist model for the Atlanta Beltline envisions more than a belt that girdles the city. It must include supportive connections to neighborhoods along the way and a pathway filled with wonder. Institutions provide substantial support and inspiration to city inhabitants, in concert with dwelling and infrastructure. It is these Institutional Belt Loops that form the nexus of our reconstruction, encircling 10 stops on the Beltline to invigorate strategic communities.

As a visionary collaborative model, we have constructed an idealized world in the representational form of a comic book. We were motivated to select a form of communication that would provide a platform for a writer, two artists and a gaggle of architects. We were able to work together by carrying forward our individual strengths to form a new synthetic vision. Though we are also aware of the comic nature of all idealized vision, this did not prevent us from joyful and serious forward progress.

The lead character in our narrative is Willa, a precocious eleven-year old …

I am not a local and won’t judge the specifics of these concepts, but I like the idea of doing highly visible demonstrations that can show more of the BeltLine’s incredible potential than one senses Atlantans have been able to see so far.

Photo: BeltLine GroupI am rooting hard for this massive, incredibly complex project.  You should, too: If it succeeds, it will create an incredible model not just for Atlanta, but for cities around the world. But it has a long way to go. (The annual reports of the Atlanta BeltLine Partnership and ABI — cited extensively above — must be online, but I was unable to find either.  My sense is that the two entities would benefit greatly from some communications help.)

Photo: Kai Hagen

It’s certainly well-known among my colleagues that I am passionate about cities. I’m proud to think of myself as an urbanist who believes we can no longer accept sprawl as the dominant form of land use in America. Instead, we must direct growth and development in ways that strengthen our existing cities and communities.

There are many environmental, economic, and ethical reasons why this is so, but for me personally none is more compelling than the need to reduce development pressure on our remaining natural and rural landscapes. There is a bargain implied in smart growth: Every vacant or underutilized acre that we develop in our existing communities at a walkable density displaces what would otherwise be five to six acres of sprawl and lost landscape. 

It’s a bargain worth making. And it has two sides: Those who love natural areas must commit to accepting the right kind of growth in our existing communities, in order to save as much nature as we can in the countryside; and those who love cities must commit to conservation of natural landscapes and accepting limits on sprawl so that cities and towns can be reinvested and strengthened.

I’m passionate about cities, but I am also passionate about wilderness. I grew up in the mountains of North Carolina before I migrated to the big city. My friend Kai Hagen (a terrific photographer whose photo accompanies this post), on the other hand, grew up in Washington, D.C. — within walking distance of where I live now, by coincidence — and migrated to the mountains. In this short and very well-produced video by The Wilderness Society, Kai reminds us why the conservation side of smart growth matters every bit as much as the development side:

Jane Jacobs.Photo: Sam Beebe

Cross-posted from Natural Resources Defense Council.

Amazingly, the video below is the first time I have seen and heard the late Jane Jacobs speak. Everyone in my world knows her work and her wisdom, of course: She was voted No. 1 in Planetizen‘s 2009 poll of urban thinkers. Her 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities was immensely influential to the field of urban planning. From that book’s Wikipedia entry:

Jacobs argued that modernist urban planning rejects the city, because it rejects human beings living in a community characterized by layered complexity and seeming chaos. The modernist planners used deductive reasoning to find principles by which to plan cities. Among these policies the most violent was urban renewal; the most prevalent was and is the separation of uses (i.e. residential, industrial, commercial). These policies, she claimed, destroy communities and innovative economies by creating isolated, unnatural urban spaces.

In their place Jacobs advocated for “four generators of diversity,” writing on page 151, “The necessity for these four conditions is the most important point this book has to make. In combination, these conditions create effective economic pools of use.”

• Mixed uses.
• Short blocks.
• Buildings of various ages & states of repair.
• Density.

Agreed. The excellent video below, produced by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, starts with some odd, dated footage but quickly becomes highly relevant to today’s thinking about communities and sustainability — and very enjoyable, too. It also includes a surprising name-check to my hometown. Recommended:

Photo: Affordable Housing Institute

Cross-posted from Natural Resources Defense Council.

One of the more creative ideas to emerge in those hectic (and, for some, tragic) days following Hurricane Katrina was the invention of “Katrina Cottages,” sturdier and, to my eyes, much more attractive alternatives to the FEMA trailers typically used to house displaced residents. They are prefabricated and modular, and they can be constructed on site or placed on wheels and transported like conventional mobile homes. They are also designed so that they can be anchored in place to become fixed, permanent housing. There are now many variations, but these attributes are common to all.

I am proud to say that several of my friends were involved in the cottages’ design, under the auspices of a massive volunteer effort organized by the Congress for the New Urbanism called the Mississippi Renewal Forum. I was greatly impressed by the entire effort. I was also impressed by the cottages, in part because, where I come from, mobile homes are affordable housing for a lot of people. If thoughtful design can improve the genre, that is for the better, in my opinion. And, in fact, the concept is now being employed in an increasing number of applications beyond the original post-disaster concept. (You can read the history of the Katrina Cottages here.)

Image: Cedar Street Cottages

As I result, I was intrigued and pleased to read recently that a developer is planning to recycle 12 of the cottages that are no longer needed as temporary housing, using them as permanent housing on an infill site in the town of Buena Vista, Colo. Dustin Urban writes on the developer’s blog:

This unique infill project will feature 12 beautifully designed and built one and two-bedroom “Katrina Cottages” originally used as emergency housing after hurricane Katrina. With the majority offered for long-term lease, the cottages will offer downtown living within walking distance of schools, restaurants and shops. Located a block from East Main Street, the cottages will support a more prosperous Main Street business environment and will create a beautiful streetscape complete with sidewalks and street trees.

This is terrific. The developer’s principal project in Buena Vista, South Main, is interesting in itself, with green and fitness-oriented features. One thing its housing does not appear to be, though — at least so far — is small. Another part of the developer’s website trumpets a large, custom-built Spanish Colonial house on “a large lot” with “South Main’s most sizeable private outdoor space to date,” apparently intended to be used as a part-time residence.

This Katrina cottage was the first installation of the Seaside Academic Village.Photo: Seaside InstituteMeanwhile, in the iconic new urbanist resort town of Seaside, Fla., Katrina Cottages are being employed for a small educational facility. (Check out a 20-second video of the first cottage being transported into town and a six-second video of it being wheeled into place.)

Finally, Ocean Springs, Miss. is home to a mature, mixed-use enclave of some 23 Katrina Cottages on a two-acre site called Cottage Square. The project was developed by architect Bruce Tolar and Enterprise Community Partners, the national affordable-housing organization. Enterprise, which NRDC helped to establish an award-winning green housing program a few years ago, owns the project. It was built as a demonstration of the potential of the cottages, especially when employed together as a neighborhood.

Tolar has an office in the project, which also hosts a hair salon and real estate office in addition to homes. Lynn Lofton wrote in The Mississippi Business Journal:

The group of cheerful-looking cottages with their white picket fences and welcoming front porches are making a statement about alternative living in Ocean Springs. Cottage Square is being developed on a two-acre plot on Government Street near downtown of this walkable town. Planners hope it will serve as a model for the concept of mixed-use zoning and affordable housing. The cottages, built in a coastal style and painted pastel colors, are built to hurricane codes …

“We work with local governments and developers to help provide housing,” said Michelle Whetten, Gulf Coast director for Enterprise. “We were invited to participate by the Katrina Cottage Group because we share a lot of the same goals, and we wanted to demonstrate how these cottages can be used. We also share their emphasis for green, energy-efficient housing” …

She and Tolar believe the cottages are best when they’re in a planned group such as this one. “They work best in a group with a mix of styles, uses and income levels,” she said.

I have written before about the potential for cottage-sized housing, and think the Katrina model has advanced the possibilities. I hope it continues to catch on.

Here’s a very informative video tour of Cottage Square, discussing the cottages’ history and showing how the neighborhood can support a sustainable lifestyle:

Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

I wrote in May about a report by Richard Florida that city crime had dropped to its lowest rate in 40 years. Now there’s more: Last week, Florida wrote another intriguing analysis of recent crime data for The Atlantic. Looking inside the numbers and at recent research, he shatters a number of popular myths: that crime is higher when economic times are hardest; that big cities and minority populations are incubators of crime; that immigration breeds crime.

None of these myths are supported by recent facts, according to Florida. Here’s some of his latest report:

Almost three years into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, with massive unemployment and pessimism rife, America’s crime rates are falling and no one — not our pundits, policemen, or politicians, our professors or city planners — can tell us why. As I wrote about here, there were 5.5 percent fewer murders, forcible rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults reported in 2010 than in 2009, according to the most recent edition of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report; property crimes fell by 2.8 percent over the same period and reported arsons dropped by 8.3 percent. 

And the drop was steepest in America’s biggest cities — which are still popularly believed to be cauldrons of criminality. “While cities and suburbs alike are much safer today than in 1990,” notes a recent report by the Brookings Institution, “central cities — the big cities that make up the hubs of the 100 largest metro areas — benefited the most from declining crime rates. Among suburban communities, older, higher-density suburbs saw crime drop at a faster pace than newer, lower-density, emerging, and exurban communities on the metropolitan fringe.”

New York City: safer than ever. Photo: Andrew MaceFlorida notes that the Brookings report also found that the association between crime and the proportion of the community population that is black, Hispanic, poor, or foreign-born has diminished considerably over time. “The strength of the relationship between the share of black residents and property crime decreased by half between 1990 and 2008,” says Brookings, “while the association between the share of Hispanic residents and violent crime all but disappeared.”

All very encouraging, especially for unabashed urbanists such as myself. But the most intriguing part of Florida’s article concerns diversity:

[T]he key factor [related to decreasing crime], as it turns out, lies in the growing racial, ethnic, and demographic diversity of our cities and metro areas. Our analysis found that the Hispanic share of the population is negatively associated with urban crime. Crime also fell as the percentage of the population that is non-white and the percentage that is gay increased. And of all the variables in our analysis, the one that is most consistently negatively associated with crime is a place’s percentage of foreign-born residents. Not only did we find a negative correlation (-0.36) between foreign-born share and crime in general, the pattern held across all of the many, various types of crime — from murder and arson to burglary and car theft.

Now that’s exciting.