Randall Arendt video on conservation design and traditional neighborhoods

Planning consultant Randall Arendt has produced a 60-minute video, “Creating Traditional Neighborhoods with Conservation Design Principles: The Greener Aspects of New Urbanism,” which aims at bridging the gaps separating land-use planners, conservationists, new urbanists, and landscape architects. In it Arendt uses photos and plans of many small communities, both recent and old, in the US and Great Britain to show how natural landscapes can be preserved and pleasing streets, parks, and open spaces can be created in new developments. He discusses ways of weaving existing hedgerows, orchards, hillsides, vernal pools, New England stone walls, and other features into communities with densities ranging from one dwelling per three acres to three to four dwellings an acre. The material is drawn from Arendt’s 1999 Planning Advisory Service book, Crossroads, Hamlet, Village, Town: Design Characteristics of Traditional Neighborhoods, Old and New. The video is available for $95 plus $5 shipping from Arendt’s office in Narragansett, Rhode Island (phone 401-792-8200 or go to www.greenerprospects.com).