CNU and environmentalists air goals and concerns

An Environmental Forum at the fall Board meeting of the Congress for the New Urbanism brought representatives of leading environmental groups together with CNU officials. The participants examined common interests and points of contention between CNU and environmentalists during the half-day meeting October 1 in Washington, D.C. “We have a lot of common ground, in my opinion,” says Kaid Benfield, senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “A lot of what we worry about as environmentalists relate to urban sprawl and bad growth patterns. Many environmental problems are solved or mitigated substantially by good (urban) design, much of which is coming from the people who constitute CNU.” Environmental groups represented include national, state, and regional organizations: NRDC, Environmental Defense Fund, Conservation Fund, Trust for Public Land, Citizens for a Better Environment, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Conservation Law Foundation, Georgia Conservancy, Michigan Land Use Institute, South Carolina Coastal Conservation League (SCCCL), Southern Environmental Law Center, Urban Ecology and 1,000 Friends of Oregon. CNU was represented by Board members Peter Calthorpe, Henry Richmond, Jean Driscoll, Judy Corbett, Jacquelyne Grimshaw, Executive Director Shelley Poticha, and Susan Mudd (who as CNU Environmental Task Force cochair and Wisconsin director of Citizens for a Better Environment, wore two hats). There is no disagreement among any of the meeting participants to the idea that the New Urbanism offers a better alternative to suburban sprawl, according to Mudd. The major perceived division between the two groups relates to where projects should be built and how much emphasis should be placed on infill versus greenfield development. “Although the Congress clearly has a mission to revitalize cities and urban life, many of the members’ signature projects are on greenfield sites — new towns beyond the urban fringe,” says Mudd, adding, “there is a feeling that there needs to be a consensus about where and when development should occur. It was recognized that this was a point with the potential to divide CNU and environmental groups.” defining infill The issue is not an easy one, and even the definition of what is “infill” was not resolved. While in large, old cities, infill might be considered brownfield and redevelopment sites in the inner city, in newer, fast-growing metropolitan areas infill could be defined as filling in gaps that suburbia has leapt over, according to Dana Beach of the SCCCL. Environmentalists also recognize that new development will occur on the edge of cities, and in such cases it should be contiguous to existing urban or suburbanized areas, Beach says. Additionally, he suggests that there might be some cases where environmentalists would support new, distinct places (like villages or towns), unconnected to existing development. Toward resolving the greenfield/infill issue, the environmentalists and CNU representatives agreed to collab-oratively define criteria for identifying the “green infrastructure” of regions — i.e. the framework of environmental and open space systems that help shape urban form and determine lands available to accept growth. It also was agreed that educational material needs to be created, including: 1) The documentation of environmental benefits of the New Urbanism; 2) A paper outlining facts and myths about the New Urbanism; and 3) identifying incentives and barriers to infill development. It further was suggested that efforts should be made to bring together new urbanists and practitioners of the “green building” movement (this is already occurring in a few new urbanist projects, notably Civano and Coffee Creek). Beyond those immediate goals, some environmentalists are interested in working on actual development projects with CNU practitioners. NRDC is researching and writing national reports on sprawl and “smart growth,” Benfield says. “We hope that NRDC can use what it has learned (in creating those reports), in local situations,” he explains, “and that CNU members can be involved in that work, applying new urbanist and smart growth solutions on the ground.”