Kaid Benfield's Blog: Environmental Justice

Baltimore’s Virtual Supermarket fills the gap in food-deprived neighborhoods

2010-05-14T13:34:54Z

Thanks to Daniel and his thoughtful blog Discovering Urbanism for highlighting an innovative program designed to help residents of urban “food deserts” - neighborhoods without nearby access to supermarkets - obtain fresh, healthy food more conveniently. The program also helps draw patrons to two branch libraries by facilitating online food shopping from the libraries’ computers, with next-day deliveries to the same branches. This allows the sellers to keep costs and prices reasonable by consolidating delivery times and locations.

In particular, in March of this year the Baltimore City Health Department launched its Virtual Supermarket Project, operating at the Washington Village and Orleans Street (East Baltimore) library branches. Both sites are located in areas identified as having a need for healthy food options. Washington Village has the 6th highest mortality burden out of 55 city community areas for causes of death related to diet, including heart disease, stroke and diabetes. The neighborhood where the Orleans Street library is located ranked 19th in this category.

In the photo above, for example, Douglas Homes (red brick building), near the Orleans Street branch library, has a nearby Popeye's but no nearby supermarket.

The Virtual Supermarket Project was piloted last year as an innovative way to address food access problems in Baltimore City. The Health Department partnered with the Enoch Pratt Free Library (the city’s public library), which offered to house the program. Santoni’s Supermarket, a long-time Baltimore grocer, is currently the primary provider of supermarket items for the program. The Center for Design Practice at the Maryland Institute College of Art provided ideas on marketing and branding the project.

Urban “food deserts” are neighborhoods with no supermarkets or other resources that would provide healthy, inexpensive food within walking distance. Convenience stores and fast food or take-out restaurants may be common in these areas, but they generally do not offer fresh produce or much in the way of healthy menu options. In addition, few residents of the neighborhoods targeted by the program own their own vehicles (66% of the households in the Perkins/Middle East area do not have vehicles; 48% in Washington Village do not have vehicles), making travel to a distant supermarket an obstacle.

The program’s website explains its benefits:

“Consumers will receive a printout of their order and pay at the time of ordering with [cash, checks, credit cards or food stamps]. The Virtual Supermarket submits one aggregate Internet order per session, and the Baltimore City Health Department subsidizes this delivery charge. Groceries will be delivered to the ordering site the same or next business day, where consumers will return to pick-up their orders. They will be provided with a list at the delivery time to confirm that all ordered items are included in their package.

“This system benefits the consumer because a wider selection of high quality fruits, vegetables, grains, and dairy is made available in the neighborhood than is offered by local corner stores. Pooling purchases for delivery at one convenient site allows consumers to circumvent the delivery fee and the requirement that a certain amount of money be spent for the order to be delivered. Consumers do not have to navigate public transportation to get to the grocery store, nor will they have to manage hectic schedules and childcare to dedicate time to grocery shopping . . .

“Development of this model in Baltimore can result in the Virtual Supermarket's adoption in other US cities that struggle with food deserts. The overall implication, of course, is for health. Risks for obesity, CVD, and diabetes are strongly tied to diet, and research has found consistent evidence that diet is greatly affected by one's food environment and built/social environment. That is, people's eating behaviors are largely influenced by their community context, which acts to promote or restrict healthy eating. Removal of an access barrier to healthier foods via the power of the marketplace will be an important step towards ensuring that all consumers in this country, regardless of location, race, or income levels, can enjoy a range of healthy foods at fair prices. In an era where over half of disease is caused by unhealthy lifestyles and the obesity epidemic is cutting lives short, public health agencies and grocery stores can partner in a win-win scenario to expand choice and, by proxy, improve the range of foods that enable urban consumers to eat healthy and live healthier lives.”

The Health Department is also looking into the possibility of an additional site within the city’s recreation and parks system. The project is currently funded with a $60,000 grant from the 2009 federal stimulus package.

Daniel’s post contains some additional links and a food-desert map; it can be accessed here.

Move your cursor over the images for credit information.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Will these talented partners make the definitive revitalization movie?

2010-05-13T13:30:25Z

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a Washington, DC benefit party for the documentary-in-progress, The Rebirth of Over-the-Rhine. The film is about the restoration of the historic Cincinnati neighborhood of the same name, and the event was hosted by the film’s co-producer Joe Brinker, whom I’ve gotten to know a bit over the last year. Joe asked me to say a few words about the neighborhood’s potential, which is immense, and I was honored to be able to do so.

Over-the-Rhine was named by the German immigrants who settled it a century and a half ago. Like other inner-city neighborhoods, it suffered serious disinvestment and decline over the past several decades, and acquired a terrible reputation for drugs and crime as a result. But, as I wrote here last year, the neighborhood is replete with assets to build upon. Its walkability, historic character (the largest collection of 19th-century Italianate architecture in America), near-perfect location next to Cincinnati’s downtown, and opportunity to apply green technology combine to give it the potential to become one of the best-performing neighborhoods in the country from an environmental standpoint. In addition, while the community's abundance of vacant properties is hardly an asset, it should mean that the restoration can occur without displacing current residents.

It was fun to meet Joe’s very talented partners in the effort, co-producer Steve Dorst and director Melissa Godoy. I also got to hear a pretty good DC band, Suspicious Package, drink some wine, and eat a couple of Cincinnati hot dogs. But the best part of the evening was listening to Joe, Melissa and Steve talk about the film, and seeing a 14-minute clip of their work. This movie has a chance to be very good, and to tell a story that, although unique to Cincinnati’s character and history, is also representative of the comebacks of similarly situated districts in cities across the country (Saint Louis, Indianapolis, Atlanta, Denver and Boston, for example).

I won’t repeat all the things I wrote about the neighborhood last year, but I will quote a passage from the movie's website, written by Joe and quite clearly speaking from the heart:

“In Over-the-Rhine, my roots go back a century. Henry Schmidt, my great-great uncle, like so many other German immigrants, started my family’s Cincinnati story there in the late 1800s (and was soon joined by my grandfather and great uncle). He became a successful masonry contractor, with enough money to build his own house in what is now Norwood. He and his wife were childless, so they sent word back to the village of Klosterholte, Germany for their niece—my grandmother, Elizabeth Schmidt—to come care for them in their old age. Elizabeth married and had three children—one of whom is my father.

“As I grew up in Cincinnati, my first memories of Over-the-Rhine were in the 1970s. I remember the beauty and the decay, the boarded-up facades and the rich smells of Findlay Market. For me, the neighborhood embodied the most authentic strains of Cincinnati culture, from old-world traditions and architecture to African-American sounds and tastes. As I grew older, walking through Over-the-Rhine increasingly left me with feelings of melancholy and loss. It was a bittersweet feeling – one of the most remarkable and unique places in my city, a neighborhood that truly makes Cincinnati both historic and contemporary, was avoided by most and forgotten by many . . .

“But have you walked Over-the-Rhine’s streets lately? There’s a buzz, an energy: improved safety and security, renovated Italianate facades, new construction, new people, and new businesses. There is a widespread optimism and intent that I have never sensed before.

“Yet change often brings challenges and fear. Long-time residents of the neighborhood worry that they do not fit into plans for a new Over-the-Rhine. And the efforts of others who have committed decades to helping the neighborhood wonder if their contributions and experiences will be taken into account . . . Each of these groups has its own distinct vision of the future, yet all want to see a better Over-the-Rhine. Can they work together to achieve a common success?”

The clip that we saw focused on only a small part of this very rich story, but the three partners have over 200 hours of material awaiting editing, and they are still shooting. This is a big undertaking and, while perhaps a labor of love in many respects, a labor nonetheless. Joe and Steve have demanding and impressive day jobs and Melissa, whose portfolo is also impressive, doesn’t have unlimited time or resources to donate to the project, either. There is no big studio backing them. Thus the fundraiser last week, and more to come, I’m sure (one can also donate through the film's web site).

But what a worthy cause. I’m pulling for them, and I’m pulling for the neighborhood, too.

Move your cursor over the images for credit information.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

What will become of Pass Christian? The impact of the oil spill on community

2010-05-03T13:30:53Z

“You’ve probably had your last really good Pass Christian oyster for a while,” Captain Louis Skrmetta of Ship Island Excursions told the (South Mississippi) SunHerald. “We’re looking at financial ruin from this. We’ve pretty much realized that it is over for us for this summer, maybe even next year; who knows.”

Pass Christian, a town of a few thousand on Mississippi’s Gulf coast, east of New Orleans and west of Biloxi, is struggling for survival again. Home to the South’s first yacht club and one of the Gulf Coast’s best historic districts, as well as the hometown of ABC News anchor Robin Roberts, the Pass has seen hard times before, and all too recently. But the waters of the Gulf are its lifeblood, the basis of its seafood industry and its tourism, and all that is now very much in jeopardy because of the giant puddle of sticky ooze that is making its way to the shore, wiping out whatever life is in its path. The town’s official web site describes the community's past challenges in an optimistic light:

“Pass Christian, the birthplace of yachting in the south, has long been known as a resort style village where cool sea breezes mingle with the fragrant scents of Magnolias and Pine trees. Ancient moss-draped Live Oaks cast their shadows along scenic drive and afford rest and relaxation to the passing traveler. Pass Christian was struck by two of the strongest Hurricanes to ever hit the United States, Hurricane Camille in 1969 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. We are much like the Ancient Oaks that have witnessed the history of this wonderful sea side village. We are still here, enjoying the view of the Mississippi Sound, the gentle breezes, enjoying a bowl of gumbo with friends, and sharing our history.

“Come visit our village, taste some of the best oysters ever pulled from the sea or buy shrimp fresh from one of the shrimp boats docked in the harbor, see historic homes that rival Charleston and learn of two ladies, Camille and Katrina who blew through leaving high water marks and memories.”

Pass Christian’s Wikipedia entry reports that, of its approximately 8000 homes at the time, “all but 500 were damaged or destroyed” by Katrina in 2005. The hurricane totally destroyed the public library and the nearby city hall. “In early 2007, although rebuilding was underway in much of the city, a large portion of empty, deserted homes and other structures remain.” You know how, when we discuss the impacts of Katrina on New Orleans, we stress that it was not the direct effect of the hurricane that devastated the city but the failure of the levees and subsequent flooding? That’s because the Mississippi coast took the direct hit.

Perhaps it is telling that the web site of the Pass Christian Historical Society has not been updated since 2005. The images accompanying this post speak more eloquently than words can. But the Pass has been on the rebound, however slowly.

This is in part because Pass Christian was a focus of the post-Katrina Mississippi Renewal Forum to which so many new urbanist architects and planners donated their time and expertise. Working around the clock with local officials and other volunteers, the teams crafted foundations for first-class recovery plans for the built environment, stressing traditional forms that respected and built upon the community’s historic character. There is a terrific and highly recommended 42-page summary of recommendations comprising concepts for a new city hall, walkable streets, a pattern of green spaces, respect for nature, transit routes and more. The Renewal Forum’s plans for Pass Christian could, if implemented, do for that community what the justly lauded Sustainable Comprehensive Plan is doing for post-tornado Greensburg, Kansas.

The plans were embraced by the locals, culminating most notably in the adoption of a new, form-based zoning code in 2008 that would enable exactly the kind of rebuilding that the town needed and still needs.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the plans for Pass Christian was a concept for the rebuilding of the town’s severely damaged Walmart with an innovative, pedestrian-friendly design that maintained all of the store’s square footage, needed parking and functionality while allowing it to serve as an anchor of a mixed-use development. These drawings show the damaged store redesigned as a mixed-use walkable block, wrapped with a combination of smaller boutique stores. Note how the presence of trees changes the parking lot, which would be moved to the rear:

There was considerable optimism around this concept, coming precisely at a time when the retailing giant was stressing sustainability and community in its image advertising and big-picture thinking. The prospect of an urbanist Walmart in Pass Christian was hailed in USA Today, and the company agreed to participate in a local planning charrette, touting examples of other locations where it was building more urban facilities.

Talk about wishful thinking. In the end, the company built its usual sprawling SuperCenter, a one-story "landscraper" with a giant parking lot, as unwelcoming to pedestrians and as alien to local character as ever.

The collapse of the talks with Walmart illustrates how fragile even the best concepts for sustainable planning and rebuilding can be, especially in the face of desperation (the city authorities quickly gave an exemption from its new zoning code to accommodate the retailer). Now, as the massive oil spill approaches the coast, all the hard work of thoughtful restoration planning is in peril. How can businesses find money for sustainability when they can’t find customers? How can the town address gaps in its street grid or construct new green squares when the community’s very reasons for existence are in jeopardy? Right now survival comes first, and who can blame them? One can recover from a 1969 hurricane over time, if the next disaster doesn't occur until Katrina 36 years later. But a major economic disaster on top of a recession just five years after a major natural disaster? That's different.

“I’m not so much worried about when [the spill] will get here but instead more about how long it will be here,” commercial fisherman Captain Tom Becker told Bobby Cleveland of the (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger. “I’ve pretty much blown off this season, and now I’m worried about future seasons. There’s a lot of us in the same boat — charter fishermen, commercial fishermen and essentially everybody on the Gulf Coast since the water is so much a part of our economy.”

Writing in the SunHerald, Robin Fitzgerald reports that attorneys representing the owner of a Pass Christian seafood company have filed a class-action lawsuit naming Cameron International Corporation, BP, Transocean, Halliburton Energy Services Inc. and Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. as defendants. The suit represents all Mississippians who live, work in or derive an income from the coastal zone who may sustain loss or damage that would not have occurred "had the defendants exercised the high degree of care imposed on them.”

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Best practices for smart, sustainable community development: presentation

2010-03-22T13:33:28Z

Earlier this month I had the honor of participating in a webcast on the subject of sustainable community development, hosted by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation.

One of the nation’s premier organizations in its field, LISC “mobilizes corporate, government and philanthropic support to provide local community development organizations (CDCs) with: loans, grants and equity investments; local, statewide and national policy support; and technical and management assistance.” CDCs are nonprofit organizations that provide programs and services to neighborhoods or towns, typically focusing on lower-income residents or struggling communities. They can be involved in a variety of activities but many are engaged in real estate development and the provision of affordable housing.

Our full webcast is available online. The purpose of the session, which was superbly organized and moderated by LISC’s Julia Seward, was to explore the relationship between smart growth and the work of CDCs, and to discuss best practices. I was joined in the forum by Don Chen of the Ford Foundation and Teresa Brice, who directs on-the-ground operations in LISC’s Phoenix regional office. There was good audience participation and quite a bit of back-and-forth discussion after the initial presentations.

I led off the program, touching briefly on the environmental rationale for sustainable revitalization; presenting photos and a bit of supporting detail on some of my favorite examples in Atlanta, Saint Louis, New York, Seattle, Houston, and Los Angeles; and concluding with a few of the trends that I think are likely to influence the field in the next several years.

With impressive technology, the whole thing was recorded so that you can see and hear our presentations as if you were a participant; you can even see my pointer moving around my slide images as I talk. You’ll have to provide a name and email address to access the session, but it is free and access is immediate. My opening presentation was about 12 minutes or so, but you can fast-forward to any portion of the 89-minute program. I was followed by Don, then Lisa, and then discussion with the participants.

Go here to see the webcast. You can also separately download the visual part of the session from the same page, but the presentations are out of sequence in the download. LISC also has an archive of previous webcasts (lots of great subjects and good presenters), including another one with yours truly from back in October 2008.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Distressed city neighborhoods need green investment for community, environment

2010-03-19T13:36:48Z

Distressed city neighborhoods, more than others, are deficient in environmental amenities, particularly those that are typically provided by nature. That is almost a tautology, but they especially need trees, pocket parks, rain gardens, vegetated swales, permeable pavements, roof gardens and other urban green infrastructure to provide multiple environmental and quality-of-life benefits. So says Pace University law professor Alexandra Dapolito Dunn in a terrific new article published in the Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review.

(Today’s post is co-authored with my NRDC colleague Rachel Sohmer, who has written here before on the benefits of urban nature and more.)

Among environmental professionals, city green infrastructure is usually discussed as a matter of stormwater management, and Dunn has written a particularly helpful introduction to the subject from that perspective. We wish she had also included an explanation of why low-density development isn't the answer, but the point here was to focus our attention on the other end of the development spectrum. Dunn believes that green infrastructure investments directed to the urban core would not just be good for the environment; they would help alleviate urban poverty.

As Dunn explains, many cities have already successfully implemented strategies to protect water resources, but “green infrastructure has additional and exceptional benefits which are not frequently highlighted or discussed. Not only can it achieve water quality goals, protect sewer systems, and recharge groundwater supplies, but it also can improve air quality, provide green collar jobs, become a source for affordable produce, reduce crime, promote community interconnectedness and reduce energy costs for the urban poor.” But, for the most part, where green infrastructure could do the most good, you are least likely to find it.

Of course, none of the quality-of-life benefits linked with green infrastructure are specific to disadvantaged neighborhoods. They benefit neighborhoods of all sorts. But Dunn’s implied point is that the absence of green infrastructure in pockets of poverty puts these already stressed communities at even greater risk. Take, for example, the higher cost of food. Low-income city dwellers must pay up to thirty percent more for food compared with low-income rural and suburban residents, primarily due to food transport costs and postharvest losses. And healthy foods, particularly produce, might not be available at all. Likewise, heavy air pollution loads contribute to high rates of asthma in poor urban communities, several times the national average.

Unfortunately, even though targeting green infrastructure programs in distressed urban areas could provide much benefit to communities in need, there are considerable legal and policy barriers in the way. As Dunn explains, retrofitting existing neighborhoods for green infrastructure isn’t cheap, and cities and community development entities are often severely budget-constrained. Even when adequate funding exists, there may be a lack of political will to direct green infrastructure investments to areas where the resulting benefits, like neighborhood beautification, might be considered less visible.

So what can we do? Dunn reviews several big-picture, long-term strategies for getting more green infrastructure on the ground, from creating more public funding opportunities to refining cost/benefit models to battling political inertia with public awareness campaigns. That’s not an exhaustive list – we highly recommend downloading the article for a closer look.

The good news is that several cities are leading the way in green infrastructure initiatives that benefit lower-income communities. The article mentions Seattle and Philadelphia, among others. Even at the federal level there is a growing recognition that green infrastructure is an effective and economical way to reach sustainable development goals. Dunn cites the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the “stimulus”) of 2009, for example, which provides significant green infrastructure funding to states for water quality compliance purposes. To that we can add the recently introduced and NRDC-supported Green Infrastructure for Clean Water Act of 2009, which would establish several research centers, a dedicated green infrastructure program at the U.S. EPA, and grants to help communities – especially lower-income communities – implement their own green infrastructure projects.

No doubt we’ve got a long way to go, especially when it comes to meeting the complex challenges of distressed urban areas. But considering all that green infrastructure delivers, we remain optimistic that green infrastructure initiatives will only gain momentum and support going forward. As Dunn puts it, “given the growing stresses on urban centers and the urban poor, taking [steps] to make city life healthier and more sustainable can only yield further benefits in the future.”

Thank you to our colleague Madeline Fraser Cook, director of the Green Development Center at the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, for flagging this article for us.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Haiti update: Mourning, builder, architects donate emergency homes, work for more

2010-03-02T13:27:46Z

Former Georgetown University and Miami Heat basketball star Alonzo Mourning has always acted with intensity and purpose, as anyone on the receiving end of one of the nearly 3000 shots he blocked during his playing career can attest. Now those attributes are being channeled into helping others, especially the people of Haiti, where over 200,000 people lost their lives and at least twice that number lost their homes in the January earthquake.

In the face of such an enormous scale of tragedy, any one person’s – or one group’s – contribution seems miniscule. But it is nonetheless significant when someone of stature steps up. In ‘Zo’s case, that meant more or less immediate fundraising through his foundation and its progeny, the Athletes Relief Fund for Haiti, co-founded with former teammate and current Heat star Dwayne Wade. Their effort has already raised some $800,000 from NBA and NFL players and alums.

Some of those funds are being applied to an effort with Miami-based prefab construction builder InnoVida and architect Andres Duany to get emergency homes on the ground, quickly. As I wrote two weeks ago, Duany has designed homes that can be manufactured offsite, easily shipped in flat-pack form, and then assembled locally in a day or less. They are made of durable materials that can withstand severe weather events and may be configured in a variety of ways to suit families’ and communities’ needs (see illustrations). The group is donating 1000 of the homes immediately, and InnoVida is also moving to establish a manufacturing facility in Haiti that can build 10,000 more while providing job opportunity and training to Haitians.

The video I embedded in my previous post – made only two weeks into their work -- reveals the thoughtful approach that the Duany and InnoVida have taken, and all of us must wish them every possible success. You can learn all about the Haitian cabins, their technology, types, assembly and application in this well-illustrated publication. Sample from the opening pages, delineating some of their key characteristics:

Are built fast. Structures that are 160 sq ft (like the Starter Cabin) can be built in 12 hours. This is nearly 70% faster than traditional construction.
Are high-quality, durable, non-flammable, waterproof and do not provide a food source for algae or mold growth.
Are strong enough to withstand earthquakes, floods, tornados, hurricanes, fires and other natural disasters.
Promote a healthier global environment by producing very little construction-site waste, air pollution and natural-resource consumption.
Can be built with no heavy equipment and unskilled labor.
Significantly reduces the amount of energy needed to heat and/or cool the structure and provides excellent noise reduction.
Can furnish built-in platform beds, table, desk, closets, cabinets, and water and septic tanks.
Can be covered with any desired finish (paint, stone, stucco, wallpaper, etc.), but it is not required to do so.

The basic cabin (there is a range of types) can sleep up to eight people.

As promising as this effort is, no one person or company has “the” idea that can put Haiti back on some kind of path towards humanity, to say nothing of sustainability. We will also need many other efforts to succeed. The “Haiti House” built by Harbor Homes, for example, uses a similar flat-pack, prefab and assembly concept, but with aluminum and steel rather than composite fiber:

Cameron Sinclair of Architecture for Humanity emphasizes on The Huffington Post that no one should be naïve about the amount of time rebuilding will take:

“When we are rebuilding, do not let the media set the time line and expectations for reconstruction. I remember vividly well known news personalities standing on the rubble of homes in the lower ninth proclaiming that 'this time next year we will see families back home.' Some well meaning NGOs, who usually have little building experience, are even worse -- 'we'll have 25,000 Haitians back home if you donate today.' In reality, here is what it really looks like;

Pre-Planning Assessments and Damage Analysis (underway, will run for a year)

Establish Community Resource Center and Reconstruction Studio (Week 6 to Month 3)

Sorting Out Land Tenure and Building Ownership (Month 6 to Year 5)

Transitional Shelters, Health Clinics and Community Structures (Month 6 to Year 2)

Schools, Hospitals and Civic Structures (Month 9 to Year 3)

Permanent Housing (Year 1 to Year 5)”

Stefanos Polyzoides, like Duany a co-founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism, also has some thoughtful suggestions that stress the importance of using local labor.

What has been sad to read, unfortunately, has been a surprising amount of sniping in the comments sections of web postings (for example, here and here), with various proponents of particular approaches stressing why one or the other of these efforts is misplaced. In my humble opinion Haiti needs all ideas and as much effort from talented people as possible. Sinclair said it best:

“There is no 'ownership' in rebuilding lives. It sickens me when I hear agencies say their processes are proprietary. If you like what we are doing either support us or steal this plan. We need dozens of tug boat NGOs working together to build back Haiti better. Let's not waste donor dollars on working in silos. Haiti has suffered enough.”

This 97-second news clip from a Miami TV station (that has not enabled embedding, unfortunately, so the link takes you offsite) gives a great mini-tour of the Mourning/InnoVida/Duany effort. Check it out. 'Zo looks like he could still play, and heaven knows my Georgetown Hoyas could use him right now if that were possible.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Rebuilding Haiti, quickly and thoughtfully

2010-02-16T13:37:05Z

The massive earthquake in Haiti has caused a major crisis of homelessness. Addressing it poses almost inconceivable challenges.

People need shelter that can be built very quickly and cheaply, that can be replicated thousands of times. It needs to be secure from the elements, and it needs to respect the culture of the Haitian people.

One of the most promising approaches that I have seen has been devised by Andres Duany, who with colleagues created the “Katrina Cottages” that provided relief (and an alternative to FEMA trailers) to the people of Louisiana and Mississippi following the 2005 hurricane and flooding. The solution for Haiti involves prefabricated shelters that can be manufactured offsite, easily shipped in flat-pack form, and then assembled locally in a day or less.

According to a story in the Miami Herald written by Andres Viglucci, the genesis came from another project in the Duany Plater-Zyberk portfolio:

“The material is a composite that Duany calls ‘totally miraculous’ -- thin but strong, durable, fireproof, waterproof and mold-proof. The idea grew out of a project Duany was already working on in Miami's Little Haiti, to erect eight larger prefab houses using the same technique and material.”

The structure is only part of it, of course. In Viglucci’s story and in the fascinating video below, Andres describes challenges relating to sanitation, sewage, local customs regarding cooking, eating, and windows, and more, all in the context of extreme poverty. There is clearly a learn-by-doing aspect to this as well. (As a personal aside, this passionate fan of Georgetown basketball was pleased to hear Andres refer in the video to the fundraising work for Haiti being done by former Hoya and Miami Heat star Alonzo Mourning.)

Glancing at the design initially, I was tempted to deem it too cold and simplistic. I was wrong. Watch and learn:

Rebuilding Haiti from Marvin Joseph on Vimeo.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Urbanism in Baghdad: rebuilding Sadr City

2010-02-11T13:39:21Z

I honestly don’t know what to think of this, so for now I’ll just report it: Aseel Kami writes on Reuters that “the city of Baghdad asked foreign companies [last month] to sign up for a project to design and build 75,000 apartments, the first phase of a $10 billion plan to rebuild the Iraqi capital's sprawling Sadr City slum.”

If all phases are built as contemplated, the project will cover 22 square miles (14,000 acres) and take over 10 years to implement. When completed, it will comprise 150,000 apartments as well as a university, a medical center, shops, parks and theaters.

The challenge is formidable. As Kami’s article puts it, “Many buildings in Sadr City, a crowded Shi'ite area of up to 3 million people adjacent to an oilfield, have been reduced to rubble by U.S. air strikes. Electric power is sporadic, water is brought in by truck and the poorest residents live in shelters improvised from scavenged materials.” That’s rough.

The government invited participation from foreign companies, and has awarded a design contract for the first phase to British architects Broadway Malyan. No designs or details have been posted online. In a comment posted on the website of The Architects’ Journal, Daniel Hewitt suggests that the use of western firms for the work is something to be considered with sensitivity for the plight of the Iraqi people, and that point would seem to be well taken.

I did some research on Sadr City for this post. Even before the US invasion, the area (then called Saddam City) housed many more people than its infrastructure could support, and there are many press reports of breakdowns in sewers and other systems. Now there is much more destruction, of course. There has been a serious shortage of potable water, which one hopes will be alleviated somewhat by a new water treatment plant built by the US Army. I found two very good in-depth articles, one by Michael Totten for his own site, and one by David Enders for the Virginia Quarterly Review; both are filled with insight.

It’s a complicated place, and one can only imagine the environmental issues. There is obviously much work to be done there. Will this massive project turn out to be the right approach? We’ll see.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Indianapolis can still be a winner in smart growth (part 3 of the Indy revitalization series)

2010-02-08T13:37:42Z

Football digression to, um, kick off today's post: Congratulations to the very impressive New Orleans Saints for a big win over the Colts in last night's Super Bowl. I was rooting for Indy, but it's hard not to feel good for the Saints' fans, especially the residents of the Crescent City, who have long deserved something new to celebrate. As for the Colts, at least we can make a connection to urbanism: I love the stadium on the edge of downtown Indianapolis where the team plays home games, in part because it looks like an actual, if enormous, building (the Saints, who have to play in this monstrosity, may be winners on the field but are not so fortunate in architecture). Now to your regularly scheduled blog post.

About three miles or so from the Colts’ stadium is Indy’s designated smart growth revitalization district, a distressed area with many vacant properties, including a largely abandoned industrial corridor along a rail line, but also good bones for renewal including a resilient population, a good street grid, some stable residential blocks, and prospects for a new, state-of-the-art transit line in the old rail corridor. After a bit of a break from two earlier posts in which I gave an overview (part 1) and discussed what an advisory team including yours truly saw and heard while there last fall (part 2), this installment concludes the series with some thoughts on what strategies might give redevelopment there the best chance of success as a smart, green model project.

Achieving a path of sustainability in the district will be a challenge, and not just because of issues within the neighborhood. For example, Indianapolis as a whole is extraordinarily automobile-dependent: of the nation’s 60 largest cities, it ranks 6th in the portion of its commuters who drive alone to work. In addition, disinvestment is a well-established pattern in Indiana: the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy found that an astonishing 94 percent of development in the state has been taking place on greenfields, outside of existing areas. (By comparison, in Oregon the portion is 52 percent; in Colorado, 62 percent.)

The larger context aside, the smart growth district’s potential for sustainable restoration is great. An interesting frame for discussing its potential is LEED for Neighborhood Development, with its consensus-based criteria for sustainable neighborhoods. Let’s look at each of the system’s three major categories:

Location and linkage

In the first, LEED-ND looks generally to where a neighborhood is located within its metropolitan region. This is because a good central or close-in location tends to re-use infrastructure and be more convenient to other neighborhoods, jobs, and assets within the region; research shows that people in such well-placed locations spend far less time in their cars than do those who live on the fringe, substantially reducing emissions of greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants as a result.

In this case, the district’s location may be its greatest community and environmental asset. It is well within the city’s and the region’s central area, only two miles from downtown. Not only does this add convenience; it also allows the municipality and new development to save money on infrastructure, which already exists (even though it may require upgrading). The abundance of previously developed building sites also provides the opportunity to improve environmental conditions on what are now brownfields, as well as for the region to accommodate residents and economic growth without further suburban sprawl, with all its attendant problems. (Prior to the current recession, Indiana was losing an average of nearly 40,000 acres of rural land each year to sprawl.)

The district is also served by a number of bus lines, but while there we heard complaints that service was not sufficiently frequent. Restoring the community’s former density should help tremendously in making transit more viable. Of course, a particularly helpful boost to the district’s linkage with downtown and other neighborhoods will come if the proposed light rail line through the community is built, as it should be. I believe the line will be essential to the district’s realizing its full potential for recovery.

Neighborhood pattern and design

The second of LEED-ND’s categories is another in which the district has a very good foundation to build upon, but it is also where it needs the most improvement. To begin, a major asset to the community is its traditional street grid: the district is very well connected, supplying a multiplicity of walking, bicycling and driving routes. This will not only greatly enhance walkability, but also shorten emergency response times for neighborhood residents.

Our team did not have calibrated density data for the district, but it is apparent from the data we had that it is currently nowhere near even LEED-ND’s minimum (7 homes per residential acre, commercial floor area ratio at least 0.5), especially if abandoned buildings are discounted. The community probably was compliant with the minimum before its decline, and restoring and augmenting the district’s density will be essential to bringing a range of benefits, including more shopping and job alternatives, better transportation, greater walkability, and more “eyes on the street” to help reduce crime.

At the same time, it will be important to current residents that the things they like about their community not be lost. As a matter of architecture and design, this can be accomplished by preserving current blocks of single-family detached homes essentially as they are, but with restored completeness by rehabilitating abandoned houses and building appropriately sized new ones on vacant lots. Accessory units such as in-law suites should also be permitted. At the same time, the district can add needed density by building homes and commercial properties in the old rail corridor, where abandoned buildings now stand. Ideally, these would have a variety of scales, from single-family to duplexes and townhouses to multifamily apartments and condos, along with moderately scaled commercial and civic properties. In many cases existing historic buildings can be adapted for these new uses.

It will make the most planning sense to place multifamily buildings and commercial properties in clusters where the light rail stop(s) might be. Neighbors should be thoroughly involved in planning the best location for transit stops, where new development should be placed, and what form it should take. In our planning sessions, it was generally thought that even the largest new buildings would be unlikely to exceed five or six stories, and many could be smaller, retaining the historic scale and feel of the community while still bringing its density up to more viable levels. The idea is to complete the neighborhood, not change it to something unrecognizable.

LEED-ND also encourages mixed-income communities. This will mean adding units for marketing to somewhat more affluent residents, who may be drawn to amenities such as the light rail stop and the nascent design center recently built at one of the main intersections. But, at the same time, it must be stressed that no current residents need be displaced to accommodate the new, given the substantial availability of vacant and abandoned land for building.

If these things are accomplished, the community will attain the critical mass necessary to again support neighborhood-serving retail. Residents should not have to leave their own community to shop for food, health supplies or hardware, visit the bank, or grab a bite to eat. This is partly a matter of convenience, and partly a matter of giving a community a center, a stronger identity and sense of place.

A rough measure of the district’s current completeness, convenience and walkability can be provided by Walk Score, which most readers know measures a location’s walkability based on how many typical shops, services and amenities are found within walking distance. Normally, inner city neighborhoods score better on this scale than their suburban counterparts. But this is not the case with the redevelopment district, which has a Walk Score of only 38 out of 100 when measured from the relatively central intersection of 22nd Street and the Monon corridor. Despite the district’s central location and favorable street grid the score is lower than the Indianapolis metro average (46) and far lower than the city’s most amenity-rich neighborhoods (the top ten percent score 77 on average). Over two-thirds of the city’s residents have better access to neighborhood amenities than does the redevelopment district.

A reasonable goal might be to raise the community’s score to the city’s average or above within five years, and to the “very walkable” category (70+) within five years of a rail stop’s opening.

Green infrastructure and buildings

Beyond capitalizing on its location and improving the neighborhood’s components and texture, the city will need to do more to achieve its stated goal “of creating a green development demonstration area recognizable as such within 3 years.”

Perhaps the district’s greatest opportunity for additional sustainability achievement lies in the use of advanced techniques for managing stormwater runoff with green infrastructure. As most readers know, these include such measures as rain gardens, green roofs, vegetated swales, buffers and strips, tree planting and preservation, and use of permeable pavers for sidewalks, street and parking infrastructure. These allow stormwater to be absorbed rather than running off and picking up pollutants on its way to receiving waterways.

In the redevelopment district, the potential for these techniques is immense, because so many of the community’s roads and sidewalks need repair or replacement anyway, and there is likely to be so much new building on previously developed sites now covered with impervious surface. Sidewalks represent particularly good opportunities for incorporation of pavers and native vegetation at appropriate intervals, for example, and as streets are upgraded, they can be designed as green, “complete” streets with native landscaping to separate lanes and slow traffic to appropriate speeds.

In our workshops, we were impressed by the green infrastructure concepts proposed by the design teams from Ball State University (see students' conceptual drawings from the workshop), and we recommended that the area’s neighborhood associations and community development corporations, along with the city’s Office of Sustainability, take advantage of the university’s expertise in crafting a plan and implementation schedule to address these issues. Our meeting with Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard suggested that his office also would be fully supportive.

Beyond stormwater, the district should also take every opportunity to preserve and re-use existing structures, especially buildings of historic significance, to help preserve community character while conserving energy embedded in the buildings’ construction. Where new buildings are constructed in the district, they should conform to generally recognized green building standards such as those in LEED for new commercial and multifamily construction, LEED-Residential, or the Green Communities standards developed by Enterprise Community Partners. Basic green building techniques are now mainstream and add little if any additional cost.

How to begin

Our team had an extensive set of recommendations, but here are just a few that I think could help substantially. Some could be undertaken right away:

Undertake infrastructure repair now, especially of broken or deteriorated sidewalks, street pavement, lighting, and street trees. This will provide quick, visible evidence that the city is serious about neighborhood restoration, while also making the community more attractive to private investment.
Initiate a green infrastructure pilot project in a portion of the district, perhaps an area four to six blocks in size. This, too, would have the benefit of visibility, adding credibility to the city’s efforts without requiring major capital expenditure.
Institute a program of small grants to homeowners and residents to support property repair and improvement.
Select, plan and construct a model green, complete street that reduces water runoff, enhances neighborhood beauty, and accommodates all users – pedestrians, bicyclists, and drivers – equitably and safely along one of the district’s main corridors. The street can become a showcase leading to similar efforts throughout the neighborhood and in other parts of the city.
Work with community residents to designate an area of the neighborhood to serve as a walkable center, with moderate-density multifamily residences and an appropriate mix of neighborhood-serving shops and services. Ideally this would be located at a light rail stop. Design and construct the center to qualify for LEED-ND gold or above certification.
Initiate land banking to control, consolidate and hold vacant properties until they are ripe for redevelopment.
Build the light rail line, with one or more stops within the redevelopment district. This would be a major boost to the neighborhood’s prospects while helping reduce the city’s unusually high degree of automobile dependence.
Attain compliance with LEED-ND required minimums (the prerequisites for walkability, density, connectivity, energy and water efficiency, and construction activity pollution prevention) throughout the neighborhood.

Of course, for my architecture and planning teammates and me to make recommendations is pretty easy; for the city and neighborhood to implement them will be much more difficult, especially starting now with the recession. At best, it will take a long period of sustained investment. But I was impressed by the amount of energy and commitment we witnessed while there and, given the successes I have seen elsewhere in similar situations, I’m very hopeful. Indy, make it a winner.

Note: a version of this post also appears on Rooflines, the blog of the National Housing Institute.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

It's official: HUD's exciting new sustainability program

2010-02-05T19:22:28Z

This has been in the works for a long time, and the announcement finally came yesterday at the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference in Seattle. From the press release:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – During a sustainability forum at Portland State University and a speech to the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference in Seattle, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan today announced the launch of HUD’s new Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities (OSHC). The office will be overseen by HUD Deputy Secretary Ron Sims who won national recognition for turning King County, Washington into a model for sustainable communities. OSHC is designed to help build stronger, more sustainable communities by connecting housing to jobs, fostering local innovation and building a clean energy economy. Funded by Congress for the first time in HUD’s 2010 Budget, OSHC is a key component of the Obama Administration’s Partnership for Sustainable Communities.

"Through our new Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities, we will begin to tie the quality and location of housing to broader opportunities such as access to good jobs, quality schools, and safe streets," said Donovan. "By working with DOT, EPA and other federal agencies, and with Deputy Secretary Sims’ guidance, we will finally begin to meet the needs of today without compromising the futures of our children and grandchildren .”

Under the management of Director Shelley Poticha, OSHC will be the center-point for all of HUD’s sustainability efforts. The average household spends more than half of its budget on housing and transportation, which have become American families’ two single biggest expenses. With OSHC as lead, HUD will work to improve access to affordable housing and transportation options, saving money for American families while allowing them more time to spend at home and less time traveling.

The office will also invest in energy-efficient homes and buildings, in renewable energy, and in next-generation infrastructure to lay the foundation for the clean energy economy America needs to compete and create jobs in the 21st century. To meet that goal, OSHC will strengthen HUD’s Energy Efficient Mortgage product and other energy retrofit financing options—for both single family homes and multi-family rental housing--through a $50 million Energy Innovation Fund. HUD will also make available an Affordability Index that measures the costs of where a home is located in relation to jobs, schools and transportation.

Congress provided $150 million to HUD for a Sustainable Communities Initiative. Of that amount, $100 million is available for regional integrated planning initiatives through HUD’s Sustainable Communities Planning Grant Program . . .

Whatever other disappointments there are in the current trainwreck of a political climate, HUD's new focus and the leadership of Secretary Donovan are not among them. As I've reported here before, this is a major step (if a modest one as far as dedicated dollars go) and one very fitting for an agency with "urban development" in its name. Many of us in the field know either Ron, Shelley, or both well (Shelley was a co-founder of LEED for Neighborhood Development and a founding board member of Smart Growth America; we were also co-authors of this book), and our respect and support for them could not be greater.

The planning grants are especially welcome, given the immense importance of regional thinking to sustainability (see my comments on the subject in Monday's post). The agency also announced that it is accepting feedback on the shape of the program, and has even constructed a wiki to assist the process. Good for them and for us.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Inclusive revitalization at its best: Melrose Commons in the South Bronx

2010-01-18T13:41:12Z

Today, as we remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I like to think that the great civil and human rights leader would be pleased by the way the values he lived for are represented in the story of New York City’s Melrose Commons.

Melrose is a large-scale redevelopment project that, when completed, will comprise some 2,000 mixed-income homes along with shops and services in a part of the South Bronx that had deteriorated badly. The project is making great progress and enjoys very good sustainability characteristics, along with strong support and participation from neighborhood residents working to improve their community. But, as with many such stories, it did not begin that way.

It is hard to imagine now, but the South Bronx was once farmland. It was subsequently settled by immigrants in the mid-19th century and thrived as a collection of well-functioning city neighborhoods for many decades. But beginning in the 1950s it was badly hurt by the all-too-typical urban pattern of white flight to the suburbs, highway construction that created physical barriers between districts, disinvestment, building deterioration, and then “slum clearance.” By the 1980s the South Bronx had lost two-thirds of its population and had become world-famous for urban deterioration, crime and arson. By the early 1990s its population had declined to less than 6,000 of the nation’s poorest people.

The New York City government had begun planning redevelopment of the area in the 1980s. But, when a plan was finally announced in 1990 to replace a 30-block portion of the South Bronx with a massive new development, neighborhood residents were understandably upset, not least because they felt they had not been adequately consulted and many of them would be displaced. While the residents had known a planning process had been under way, they believed that they not had a fair opportunity to review and influence the plan - which called for 2,600 new units of housing, 250,000 square feet of new commercial space, and a realignment of the street system - as it was being constructed. Some critics believed the development also was largely suburban in character, out of place for its urban setting.

According to an excellent summary posted on the web site of the Sustainable Communities Network, people in the affected community gradually began to gather together to discuss pending developments in the neighborhood. The Bronx Center project, a local community group, hosted a public meeting on the issues in 1992. Among the residents’ concerns were displacement, the affordability of the proposed new housing, the welfare of existing neighborhood businesses, a failure to plan for services (health care, senior citizens, youth, libraries) needed in the community, the street realignment, and the overall quality of the project.

With the assistance of the Bronx Center project, the neighbors formed an organization called Nos Quedamos (“We Stay” in Spanish) that quickly brought together a diverse, inclusive group of community residents along with municipal representatives. At the request of the Bronx borough president, the community was allotted time to formulate an alternate development plan. And, to their credit, the city’s Departments of Planning and Housing and Urban Development agreed to meet with the group on a weekly basis to help formulate a new, more responsive vision. Staff members from the city’s Departments of Transportation and Environmental Protection, the Bronx borough president's office, and the mayor's office also agreed to participate.

With the help of Magnusson Architecture & Planning, Nos Quedamos began to construct an alternative development proposal that would allow the residents to stay and that would better protect their long-range interests. According to another excellent summary, prepared for the World Sustainable Building Conference in Melbourne in 2008, after only six months of meetings and charrettes the group had persuaded the city to adopt their alternative instead of the original plan.

The resulting Melrose Commons Urban Renewal Plan (bullet points here, detailed summary here) was built around an impressive set of forward-looking, inclusive sustainability features that embodied many principles of smart urbanism and green building before either became a common part of the planning vocabulary:

No involuntary displacement of existing residents and businesses
Varied, mixed-income ownership and rental housing
Housing densities appropriate to an urban community
Attractive architectural design to facilitate a welcoming neighborhood environment and attract development
Physical development that is both environmentally conscious and sustainable
Open space distributed in a way that responds to the community's concerns for security (the city's original plan had called for a single large, open field that neighbors felt would create security risks)
Respect for existing street and movement patterns
Appropriate distribution of commercial space and services that enable community residents and businesses to expand their economic opportunities
Development that complements existing infrastructure and the community's regional location, while providing for the neighborhood’s future growth and evolution

Today Nos Quedamos, now organized as a community development corporation, is the guiding force behind the plan’s implementation. From their website:

“It is our intention to guide the process of change, progress, and implementation of the housing and urban development goals we defined in the Melrose Commons Urban Renewal Plan. Nos Quedamos views the urban renewal process as not only encompassing physical regeneration, but also addressing socio-economic and environmental conditions in the area. Our goal is to develop an economically productive, sustainable, and healthy community. This vision is one that respects, supports and involves the existing community in the formulation of plans and policies that address the issues of housing, open space, community renewal and its sustainability.”

In other words, the community is in charge of its own regeneration and is an equal partner with the city in making it happen.

A range of private developers and architects are involved in building out the plan, and many are incorporating impressive green features. For example, the townhomes pictured in the photos just above, designed by David Danois Architects and environmental consultant Steven Winter Associates, received the top residential award from the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association in 2003. They include a variety of high-efficiency appliances as well as interior finishes that are low in evaporative pollution. New homeowners have been given manuals that explain green maintenance procedures and energy-saving features.

Writing last month in the Mott Haven Herald, Jeanmarie Evelly reports that the Eltona, a multifamily building that features rooftop windmills, pictured below, has recently received a LEED platinum rating for its environmental features. Moreover, its residents will be participating in a study by the Mount Sinai School of Medicine to assess the health effects of living in a green building. Researchers hope, among other things, that the building’s ban on smoking will reduce asthma symptoms in a neighborhood where asthma has been epidemic.

Eltona residents will also be eligible, Evelly writes, to receive on-site job training from Wildcat Service Corporation, a workforce development organization. The building houses 63 apartments subsidized to be affordable to families making 60 percent or less of the region’s mean income. In addition to the Eltona, Evelly’s article cites three other Melrose buildings that have received or are on track to receive green certification.

Nos Quedamos’s web site has an environmental section that reports on its advocacy for brownfield remediation and redevelopment, air quality improvement and, of course, green buildings:

“Nos Quedamos continues to push for green and LEED (The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System™) certified developments, encompassing materials, systems, and high efficiency Energy Star® appliances and fixtures which help reduce energy and water usage in our projects; urban agriculture, roof gardens, including green spaces with native plants as well as capturing and reusing rain and gray water. All these measures allow our buildings to create a positive impact both for the environment and the community.”

The greenest features of Melrose Commons, however, will be its location, transportation connections, walkability, and urban design. These will reduce the per capita environmental footprint of the project’s residents, businesses, and visitors immensely.

Nos Quedamos has entered Melrose into the LEED-ND pilot program, and I hope it scores well. For all sorts of reasons, it’s one of my favorites.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

The Atlanta Beltline remains the country's best smart growth story, and these short videos show why

2010-01-13T13:47:01Z

Two years ago I called the Atlanta Beltline "the country's best smart growth project." Although I have seen and learned about many more since then, I have not changed my mind.

The Beltline is an enormously ambitious, 15-year undertaking to use a long-abandoned rail corridor for transit, parks, trails, and revitalization in some of the city's most neglected neighborhoods. It's a 22-mile loop of an opportunity that just broke ground, and its potential is amazing.

Here are three short videos that tell the story much better than I can. If your time is limited, start with this one (only 3 minutes), just released last week:

The next one (just under 6 minutes), released last spring, tells the story in a bit more depth, featuring many of the principals and great visuals:

Finally, the most arty of the three (also 3 minutes), shows an exhibit of photos of the corridor in its pre-redevelopment condition, set to an awesome Norah Jones soundtrack:

If Transportation for America is looking for a poster child to sell its vision of a more sustainable country based on more sustainable transportation investments, it can do no better. If other cities are considering neighborhood-supportive transit investments (I'm looking at you, Cincinnati and Indianapolis), they should follow this model, in both substance and communications, as closely as they can. I love this project.

Go here for more information about the Atlanta Beltline.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Reflecting national central-city trends, DC population rises while crime plummets

2010-01-05T13:39:37Z

New end-of-year data confirm what some of us have been reporting for a long time: central cities in the US are no longer in decline. This is great news for the environment, since it is more evidence that sprawl is losing its hold on the American psyche.

In Washington, DC, where I live, a steady trend of population growth in the last decade has reversed years of population loss caused by middle-class flight to the suburbs. In 2009, that growth (a net gain of 9,583 residents) was larger than anything seen since the 1940s. A story in The Washington Post, written by Carol Morello and Tim Craig, further reports that last year’s gain was due in significant measure to residents moving into DC from other US municipalities, not just immigration from other countries as in previous years.

DC’s population may have already surpassed the 600,000 mark for the first time in two decades. The official Census estimate of city’s population as of July 1, 2009 was 599,657. In a news conference last week, DC mayor Adrian Fenty noted that the District’s rate of growth in 2009 was greater than that seen in all but four states (Wyoming, Utah, Texas and Colorado). Demographer William H. Frey of the Brookings Institution is quoted in Morello and Craig’s story as observing that "What we've seen is a frozen suburbanization nationwide, and the District has been part of it."

(DC's population stopped declining in the 2000s. Source: DC Govt)

DC city council member Jack Evans says that things started to improve in Washington during the mayoral administration of Anthony Williams, Fenty’s predecessor: "The whole image of the District of Columbia began to change from a dangerous, dirty, unsafe place to a very different city"

That change is also reflected in the latest crime statistics, which show a sharp continuing decline in violent crime in both the central city and its most diverse suburban municipality, Prince George’s County, Maryland. Another Post story, written by Allison Klein, reports that DC and Prince George’s, “long considered the region's most violent jurisdictions, logged their lowest homicide totals in years in 2009, with D.C. hitting a 45-year low.” Other suburban jurisdictions also reported a decline. The story notes that, although DC registered a particularly large decline (25 percent, compared to 2008), it is significant that crime is dropping across the entire region because “when violence is tamped down in one area, it often gets pushed to a neighboring jurisdiction.”

Crime in other US central cities (the article cites New York, Philadelphia and Chicago) declined around ten percent last year. While this does not mean that all is well, the trend does bode well for those of us who believe that urban revitalization is essential to sustainability.

So does the population trend, perhaps even more so since it indicates a return of confidence in DC and other cities. I have to note, though, that at least in the case of DC the population reversal means that the city is becoming more diverse and younger, something that is regarded with suspicion in some circles (see also this blog post). While there should be no turning back on these trends, city leaders and smart growth advocates must remain sensitive to the understandable fears of once-disenfranchised populations that do not want to lose their voices. We are a long, long way from that now, however, and in the meantime let’s celebrate how far we have come and encourage the urban revival.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

“If you don’t have safe streets, all the light rail lines in the world aren’t going to save your city”

2009-11-30T13:31:48Z

The environmental community needs to broaden our definition of what is "environmental." First, my friend and frequent collaborator Lee Epstein posted a thoughtful blog entry on urban education and its effect on middle class families' housing choices and, thus, on suburban sprawl. This week, I've had several occasions to think about that other elephant in the smart-growth room: personal safety.

To slow the spread of development willy-nilly across the landscape, we need to repopulate our central cities, many of which lost population in the latter half of the 20th century. We're starting to make some real progress on that but, to grow that progress and make it stick, we need to get serious about crime.

That was certainly one of the strongest messages to emerge from the residents of Indianapolis's Smart Growth Redevelopment District. They know better than anyone whether their community is safe enough to flourish. And then on Friday I ran across a thoughtful but troubling blog post from Indianapolis resident and Urbanophile Aaron Renn, about all sorts of things, but concluding with some notes about a shooting in a revitalized section of his city (not the redevelopment district I visited):

"This week in Indy a horrific shooting left Gabe Jordan, wine steward at upscale specialty grocery Goose the Market, in critical condition and likely paralyzed from the waist down. This was an apparently random act of violence. He was shot in the back during a robbery while he was out walking his dog late one evening near his home on the East Side . . .

"Urbanist blogs don't often talk a lot about crime or education or race. I have talked the race issue but am a rarity. Those conversations tend to happen in more specialty places. But things like this remind us that things like safety and education and social justice are the basics. If you don't have safe streets, all the light rail lines in the world aren't going to save your city . . .

"I've walked all over the East Side. I've walked around Fountain Square and other places at night by myself frequently and nothing has happened to me. The odds of anything like this happening to anyone are probably very low. But the plain fact is it would be nearly non-existent in a place like suburban Fishers."

Renn's commentary on the subject is more extended than I have quoted here, and I invite you to read and consider it.

Here in DC, there was a recent, tragic murder of a 9-year-old child in his own home, in our city's trendiest success story of revitalization, Columbia Heights. As Petula Dvorak wrote in Friday's Washington Post, "Oscar Fuentes was killed there by a gunshot through the front door of his apartment. He was looking through the peephole at the commotion outside. Someone had tried to rob his family members as they walked home along Columbia Road, and the women ducked inside to get away." This is almost unbelievably heartbreaking to read, yet Dvorak's main point is that the other kids in the neighborhood don't consider it all that unusual.

Dvorak continues:

"It went from a neighborhood that had small ethnic groceries, check cashing joints and little else to a teeming commercial district that looks straight out of an urban planner's handbook.

"There is public art, a pop-jet fountain, a restaurant that serves wasabi-crusted meatloaf. Some residents are taking an online poll to determine whether their new plaza should be adorned with a Christmas tree this year.

"And in that city block where the boy died are the District's most prominent Latino community organizations, a church, tenant-owned buildings, two well-regarded charter schools, a wonderful youth center, a health center, counselors, social workers, a mural with the planet Earth that reads 'He's got the whole world in his hands' and a display of Chinese brush paintings by kids."

These are our showcase neighborhoods. Yeah, I know and applaud the statistics showing that city crime has gone down a lot since the worst days of the 1970s and 1980s, while suburban crime has gone up. And I know the statistics about how personal risk from car accidents in the suburbs make them just as unsafe as the city, in their way. But I also know that most of the people who cite those stats are bold, creative-class types who love urban living anyway.

Renn is right when he says that this sort of random gunfire is much less common in newer suburbs (and he's a city-lover, too). This is a real problem, and we wish it away at our peril.

So, what to do? I don't pretend to know, really. But maybe we start by being honest about the problems that linger in our cities rather than sweeping them under the rug while we celebrate the virtues of urban bikesharing, streetcars, and green roofs.

Rummaging around on the topic, I was pleased to learn that the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), whose track record on inclusive, affordable urban smart growth is impressive (and with whom NRDC is beginning to partner on revitalization), has a Community Safety Initiative that "has helped establish police/community partnerships in over a dozen cities nationwide." Other LISC projects specifically target parcels where crime is taking place for renovation and adaptive reuse.

Working with the MetLife Corporation, LISC also administers an award program to communities that do especially outstanding work in addressing problems of crime and violence. One of this year's award recipients, announced earlier this month, is Brooklyn's Myrtle Avenue Revitalization Project:

"Once tagged "Murder Avenue" by the broader Brooklyn community, Myrtle Avenue struggled with a negative image stemming from high crime and perceptions that it was unsafe due to building vacancies and poorly maintained public space. Simple yet effective strategies were used by MARP and the NYPD to turn the tides.

"MARP began by facilitating communication between merchants and the 88th precinct and by removing all graffiti from the commercial corridor. From there, the partners worked to increase police visibility on Myrtle Avenue, helping to reduce crime and make the retail district a more welcoming place to visit. Other ongoing efforts include storefront and streetscape improvements, recruiting new entrepreneurs to fill retail vacancies and attract foot traffic, hosting special events, and coordinating a system for Myrtle Avenue merchants to communicate quickly and frequently to facilitate crime prevention. The commercial corridor now thrives as reductions in crime and vacancies continue to attract new businesses and private investment to the area."

The neighborhood's restoration appears to be progressing very nicely. You can read about it here.

Among other strategies, addressing vacant properties (not much of an issue in Columbia Heights or Fountain Square, perhaps, but a significant one in the Indianapolis Smart Growth Redevelopment District and elsewhere) may help. Writing last week on Smart Growth America's blog, Mara D'Angelou cites research finding an increase in total assaults in a given set of blocks by 18.5% for every additional vacancy. And the design of redevelopment can help, too: Seattle has a good summary of "crime prevention through environmental design" that explains how natural, passive surveillance of an area ("eyes on the street") can be enhanced with lighting (not glaring "crime lights"), window placement, porches and balconies, landscaping, and right-size fencing, among other things. (Wikipedia also has a good summary.)

It's a beginning.

Reposted from November 23. Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

A close-up look at a revitalization district (Indianapolis, part 2: the challenges)

2009-11-19T13:45:37Z

Earlier this month I began a series of posts about Indianapolis's Smart Growth Redevelopment District, which I have had the honor of advising. The area in question is a distressed part of the city, two miles northeast of downtown, divided by an abandoned railroad corridor and beset with brownfields and vacant properties. It has a resilient population, though, along with some nice streets, historic buildings and the potential for a new light rail line that would run through the old corridor. I was part of a team assembled by the American Institute of Architects to examine the district, meet with residents, and offer recommendations.

What we saw in our visit

Although the district has declined significantly, it retains good "bones" for restoration. These include a good urban street grid that can promote walkability, and some relatively stable residential areas (see photo above). It also has a terrific location close to the region's core. There is ample park space, although it is not particularly well-developed for the best use by the neighborhood. And our meetings there left no doubt that the level of community awareness and engagement in the neighborhood appears strong.

The old rail corridor - now known as the Monon Trail - is the district's most striking land use feature (it is the green line running north-south on the satellite photo, above), and it is both a problem and an opportunity. Historically, it has divided the neighborhood, with King Park and other areas to the west, Martindale-Brightwood to the east. Industrial sites lining the corridor from the days when it was a functioning railroad are now (mostly) very badly deteriorated, further isolating residential areas on either side, creating major eyesores, and presenting risks from toxic contamination.

For example, below is a map of brownfields and suspected brownfields in the neighborhood, depicted in yellow and amber; notice how they congregate along the Monon corridor:

The trail through the corridor, which runs for many miles through the metropolitan region, is now a popular recreational facility for bicyclists and strollers, but from my observation it appears to be used primarily by people passing through the district, not so much by local residents. If the portion of the corridor in the redevelopment district is cleaned up and its old industrial sites used for new moderate-density, mixed-use development, however, it could become a strong asset, especially if the light rail line is built alongside the trail.

But the dominant impression to an outside observer is that the neighborhood has far too many vacant and abandoned properties, both commercial and residential. In the map below, parcels shown in light green are vacant. Parcels marked with a dot have standing but abandoned houses:

The district was never high-density and shouldn't be considered a candidate for downtown-type development, but it once had a decent critical mass of people and functioning buildings sufficient to support good transit service, an array of places of worship, and neighborhood-serving retail. That is no longer the case; many sprawling suburban neighborhoods probably have higher population densities than does the redevelopment district, and its lack of density is hurting its chances for recovery. Currently the district has only one bank branch, and no adequate supermarket or pharmacy. It certainly lacks a walkable center.

The area also has deteriorating infrastructure, especially visible in broken and interrupted sidewalks. And there is visible evidence of sewer infrastructure that has been overloaded with runoff, leading to combined sewer overflows.

On the positive side, there is an emerging mixed-use redevelopment at 22nd Street and the Monon, featuring the Project School (see photo below) and a nascent arts/design center, both in an old automobile factory. Martindale on the Monon, a redevelopment project, has added new and rehabbed homes in a portion of the district. A number of local community development corporations are adding value with scattered building throughout the area. The district also has some brick streets, which could definitely add value to thoughtful redevelopment.

I'm not quite sure what to say about the Keystone Industrial Park, a mid-1990s effort to bring new jobs to the city that is still being filled out. It is an asset of sorts, potentially a major source of jobs for residents of the district. But it is a suburban-style property (satellite image below), oriented to automobiles and a freeway in a zone that is disconnected and completely isolated from the community. It is a part of the neighborhood in name only, really something that just happens to be there rather than part of or enhancing the district in any visible way.

What we heard

One of the great hopes for the district is that, as noted, its residents are aware and engaged. They care about their community and they are sophisticated about its history and potential; many are lifelong residents. They are also justifiably skeptical, given that the district has been the subject of previous planning efforts, none of which have lived up to their expectations. (One participant in the first community meeting during our visit put it eloquently: "Don't tell us [again] what we need to do: help us do it.") They have seen investment and attention drained from their community and reallocated to the suburbs.

The statement that resonated the strongest in the breakout section on land use and neighborhood design was "I want the neighborhood to be more like it was" before it was disinvested. I believe that new activity that focuses first on restoration (rather than "change") will be the most warmly received and have the greatest opportunity for rebuilding trust.

Another strong theme from the larger community meeting was that infrastructure spending and management in Indianapolis in recent years had primarily benefited suburban residents, facilitating the flow of commuters back and forth through the district rather than adding value to the district itself. One small but perhaps telling example was that the ability to make left turns from some streets was reportedly "taken away" in order to facilitate through traffic.

If Indianapolis is like many other cities, the concern that the district has been considered conduit as much as or rather than community may be well founded. Unfortunately, this does not help the community's perception of what a light rail line might bring to the district ("it will benefit 'them,' not 'us'"), but ultimately most residents do seem to understand that their potential for recovery will be enhanced considerably if the line is built, with one or more stops within the district.

The residents expressed very real concern about public safety, with "people from Gary and South Chicago selling drugs here." We "need to feel safe where we live." There is also concern that transit service is poor, and that the community is beset with public health hazards that may be contributing to disease such as asthma and breast cancer.

These are formidable inner-city challenges that will require investment, time and trust to overcome. But, by the time our team left (after three-plus very full and grueling days), the community was feeling encouraged and appreciative. In the next installment I will tell you why.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.