If you've read my posts on New Urbanism, you know that I'm a believer. You also know that my advocacy for New Urbanism as a model for community planning and neighborhood design has been qualified due to the fact that the model has failed more often that not to integrate transit. While New Urbanism puts the auto in its proper place (narrow residential streets, garages on alleys, and so on), without transit, the impact on auto reliance, vehicle miles traveled and pollution is more qualitative than quantitative.
Recently, I attended a presentation in Madison, Wisconsin by Doug Farr. Farr is an architect whose practice is in Chicago. He is the author of Sustainable Urbanism - Urban Design With Nature. The book is both a primer on the subject and a call to action. Farr is also chair of the US Green Building Council's committee that is developing the LEED for Neighborhood Design standards. LEED-ND is in test now; I'll explore this set of standards in subsequent posts.
Sustainable Urbanism has three critical components:
1. The use of SMART criteria to govern the location of new development.
2. Transit-oriented new urbanism community and neighborhood design.
3. High performance individual buildings.
This approach brings together the critical components that are needed to create new habitat that is truly sustainable, and to rebuild existing habitat. I will explore these components in subsequent posts. In addition, the Sustainable Urbanism framework will serve as a lens through which developments large and small will be critically reviewed.
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