CNU debates energy-efficient development, street design, and government regulation

Progress toward drawing up environmental standards for neighborhood design — and thus allying New Urbanism with the increasingly potent “green building” movement — was highlighted during the June annual conference of the Congress for the New Urbanism. The 13th yearly gathering brought 1,200 people to Pasadena, California, for four days of discussions about New Urbanism’s recent advances and the future of community design. Three issues that repeatedly arose were efforts to lay out streets and roads in a more humanistic fashion; relations with conservatives; and connections between New Urbanism and “sustainable” design. Here are summaries of key sessions: • CNU board member Susan Mudd reported that this July a committee expects to complete a first draft of standards for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND). The standards will grade neighborhood development on energy efficiency. Current LEED standards reward building owners for incorporating environmental sustainability into their construction decisions. But the program, operated by the US Green Building Council, has been criticized for not taking location and community design sufficiently into account. (For a view of how important urban context can be in energy use, see “Urbanism holds promise for reducing energy use” on page 3.) A 15-person committee of CNU, the Green Building Council, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is writing the standards. This project is the first instance in which the Green Building Council has collaborated with other groups on devising a LEED standard. Committee members, including Mudd, hope not only that LEED-ND will stand on its own as a means of judging communities but that its principles will be incorporated into other LEED standards over time. LEED-ND will be a voluntary program. Developers will pay a yet-to-be-determined amount to have their projects graded. Projects will have to meet a dozen prerequisites, or thresholds. Those meeting the prerequisites will be judged in four categories: 1) location efficiency; 2) environmental preservation; 3) compact, complete, and connected neighborhoods (new urban design); and 4) resource efficiency, which includes such factors as recycled materials and wastewater systems. Out of 100 possible points, a score of 80 would achieve a platinum rating, 60 a gold rating, and 50 a silver rating. Forty points would merit certification. The committee is still debating a number of issues, including a farmland preservation prerequisite that stipulates that if 25 percent of soils on a site are “prime or unique,” the developer would have to mitigate the loss by preserving an equal volume of farmland elsewhere. “This might eliminate certification of development in entire Illinois counties,” notes Doug Farr, another CNU representative on the panel. Another difficult issue is the “transportation efficiency” threshold, Mudd says. At issue is a method for determining whether certain projects generate fewer vehicle miles traveled. LEED-ND will be posted on the web at www.usgbc.org. Those who wish to comment on the standards can join the “corresponding committee,” which has 800 members. Send an email to nd@committees.usgbc.org, and state that you would like to be on the corresponding committee. • The biggest recent innovation in European street design — “shared space” — was outlined for CNU by Ben Hamilton-Baillie, an urban design consultant based in Bristol, England. Hamilton-Baillie reported that a number of communities in Britain, Holland, and Denmark are eliminating traffic signals, warning signs, road markings, bollards, barriers, and curbs. Motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians mix together — with few accidents — by paying attention to one another and to the surroundings rather than by relying on signs, signals, and other traffic engineering tools that tell them how to behave. The shared-space approach contradicts what has been a central tenet of traffic engineering for decades: the idea that vehicular traffic and pedestrian activity are fundamentally incompatible. The new way of handling traffic, pioneered by Dutch planner Hans Monderman in approximately 150 projects, is producing surprisingly safe settings in the relatively small communities where it has mainly been applied. In the absence of signs, signals, and other conventional devices, people intuitively recognize the potential for accidents, and they use eye contact and their intelligence to avoid collisions. Hamilton-Baillie explained that in at least one community, fountains have been installed close to vehicular traffic. The fountains attract children and cause motorists to slow down and drive carefully. The premise of shared space is something of a paradox, he said. “The only way you design a safe intersection is to make it dangerous.” Urban designer Bruce Liedstrand of Mountain View, California, said the underlying idea might also be summed up as: “Risk is a safety device, like pain is for a body.” Hamilton-Baillie emphasized that this approach cannot be applied everywhere. Some roadways must remain largely conduits for vehicles. Many communities erect entrance gateways, install coarser pavement, and make other changes in the environment so that motorists know precisely where the shared-space zone begins and ends. A crucial goal is to slow the traffic to 20 mph or less so that drivers and pedestrians can easily make eye contact and figure out how to behave. For reports in European design periodicals, see www.hamilton-baillie.co.uk. • An all-day session of transportation planners, engineers, and urban designers hashed out issues relating to the forthcoming manual on urban thoroughfares by the Institute for Transportation Engineers (ITE) and CNU. The much-anticipated publication, begun in 2003 and funded by EPA and the Federal Highway Administration, will provide alternative street standards enabling boulevards and avenues to be built in place of high-capacity arterials, according to Heather Smith, a planner with CNU. The publication is expected to be mostly complete in time for a transportation summit November 18-19 in Kansas City, Missouri. ITE plans to release the manual in the spring of 2006, Smith said. Issues still unresolved at CNU included lane widths, target speeds, the appropriate number of lanes, and how to balance transportation modes. “It’s about shifting the paradigm from how to maximize the movement of motor vehicles to how to design for all modes of transportation and create good streets,” Smith said. • Conservatives received a lot of room to express their views. One panel discussion, called “Conservatives and Urbanism” (there has never been a session called “Liberals and Urbanism,” though it’s always possible there will be one in the future), featured four self-described conservatives. “One reason why new urbanists should listen to conservatives is that conservatives take ideas seriously,” said Ken Masugi of the conservative Claremont Institute, who criticized new urban codes meant to counter conventional zoning. “Conservatives aren’t interested in replacing one part of the regulatory regime with another,” he said. allegedly coercive Steven Greenhut, opinion writer for the Orange County Register, criticized New Urbanism for being coercive. “I do recognize that suburban zoning can be coercive, too,” he acknowledged. Despite that, he contended that new urbanists should do their jobs without government intervention. “Avoid coercion — let the market decide,” he said. “If New Urbanism is better, which many times it is, it will win people over.” His strongest criticisms regarded the use of eminent domain in projects like Downtown Brea, California, which incorporates new urban design. Mike Krusee, a Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives who was recently selected to serve on the CNU board, said he is a strong supporter of New Urbanism. He was won over two years ago after touring Kentlands and listening to Andres Duany. He advised new urbanists, however, to avoid embracing agendas like opposition to big-box stores and motor vehicles and advocacy of affordable housing, government regulation, and urban growth boundaries. “None of these things is your mission — your mission is design,” he said. In response, CNU chief executive John Norquist noted that “The roots of the regulations that govern sprawl came out of the left-wing movements that emerged at the end of World War I.” Those roots ought to make conservatives wary of defending conventional suburbs, he implied. Norquist portrayed CNU as an independent-minded group that benefits from diverse viewpoints. “What can new urbanists learn from conservatives and libertarians?” he asked. “That’s a question we ought to ask ourselves — as well as ‘What can be learned from leftists and moderates?’” Panelist Philip Bess, director of graduate architectural studies at the University of Notre Dame, outlined a philosophically conservative argument for New Urbanism. “Conservatism as a morally and intellectually serious idea refers to a temperament or disposition to value, preserve, and transmit what is good. ... The best life for human beings is the life of moral and intellectual excellence lived in community with others.” Architect Andres Duany argued that new urbanists are profoundly pragmatic. “Any tool that works best in the long run, new urbanists will use,” he said. Duany defended new urban codes as a reasonable response to the regulatory bureaucracy that promotes sprawl. u