Kaid Benfield's Blog: Health and the Environment

Utah study links walkable neighborhoods and fitness

2008-08-01T13:26:02Z

More and more, this blog seems to be about walkable communities. I didn’t plan it that way, exactly, but from complete streets to obesity to Google’s walking directions to America’s most walkable cities, I seem to have this recurring theme. And now there’s another study on the issue to validate my premise that smart growth neighborhoods are good for us.

In particular, a new study from the University of Utah, to be published in the September issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, linked the body mass index (BMI) of nearly a half million Salt Lake County residents to 2000 Census data. The researchers found that “residents were at less risk of being obese or overweight if they lived in walkable neighborhoods-those that are more densely populated, designed to be more friendly to pedestrians and have a range of destinations for pedestrians.”

According to the University’s press release, the study found that a man of average height and weight weighed 10 pounds less if he lived in a walkable neighborhood versus a less walkable neighborhood. A woman of average size weighed six pounds less. This is, of course, fully consistent with the findings of previous research that analyzed different data sets, including the comprehensive SMARTRAQ study.

The implications were succinctly summarized by Ken Smith, one of the study’s authors: "It is difficult for individuals to change their behavior," he says, "but we can build environments that promote healthy behavior."

To an extent, this means building like we used to. The study also found that the most walkable neighborhoods – those with the best fitness results – tended to be built before 1950. The report on the study in the Salt Lake Tribune notes that the researchers found that adding 10 years to the age of a neighborhood decreased obesity risk by 8 percent for women and 13 percent for men.

Study co-author Barbara Brown told the Health Behavior New Service that “older neighborhoods often have bundles of design features, such as tree-shaded sidewalks, convenient small shops, bus stops, places to work and attractive destinations that give residents a reason to walk.”

Most recent development, by contrast, has been designed to facilitate automobile travel for a population believed to be little interested in walking for anything other than recreation. That may have been true for a time, but the surging interest in urban living suggests that as a nation we are now looking for neighborhoods built around pedestrian amenities, transportation choices and convenience.

Salt Lake County mayor Peter Corroon gets it: "Starting in the 1950s, we went away from the concept of walkable communities . . . We have to go back to where we were and create a model to building where you can live, work and recreate all within the same community."

Biophilia: greening our cities (literally!)

2008-07-24T21:08:50Z

Today we have a guest blogger. I've invited my NRDC colleague Rachel Sohmer, who is a smart growth advocate and conservation biologist, to share some thoughts and images on the subject of biophilia. The rest of this post is Rachel's, and I think she really delivered.

It’s been a long day. You need a break. Don’t ask me how I know, I just do. Here, try focusing on this:

Nice, right? Feel better yet? How about this:

Aaaaaahhhh…greenness. By the way, your blood pressure just went down, your work productivity went up, and your hair is even starting to acquire a nice glossy sheen. Ok, I know it doesn’t quite work that way, but the basic premise here is that human beings seem to have an intrinsic emotional need to connect with nature. E. O. Wilson and his colleagues call it ‘biophilia,’ and I love anything Dr. Wilson loves, which I guess makes me a biophilia-philiac? Anyway, researchers have shown that even just a view of greenery from your window can give you a psychological and physical boost. And if you find yourself without a tree to look at or a park to stroll through, you can apparently buy some Vitamin G(reen) at your nearest Embassy Suites these days.

So what does this have to do with smart growth? Knowing that part of growing smarter means growing denser (ha, I’m punny), it will be increasingly important to protect and foster the link between people and other living things in urban areas. Whether it’s in the form of parks, community gardens, green roofs, street plantings, or greenways (or ideally all of the above and then some), the success of smart growth rests as least in part on competing with large-lot suburbs on the foliage front.

I mean, seriously. Where would you rather live, even if you’re not a density-phobic sprawlian?:

Of course, besides making us happier and healthier people, greener urban environments also deliver those ‘triple bottom line’ environmental, economic and social benefits we all know and love.

Fortunately for all of us, developers like Jonathan Rose (NRDC friend and trustee, and tireless champion of sustainable development) are making it all happen with mixed-used, affordable, ‘biophilic’ projects like Via Verde in the south Bronx (depicted alongside the E.O. Wilson reference above). Check out this PBS clip of Mr. Rose explaining it all better than I ever could…then go outside and get some fresh air!

More city green:

Google Maps can now give walking directions!

2008-07-23T20:02:33Z

These guys are amazing. Google Maps has refined their mapping and travel-directions tool so that a user can now seek not only driving directions but also walking directions.

To see how it works, I asked Google for driving directions from my office at NRDC to EPA’s Smart Growth Office. Here are the verbal directions and the route, which is 1.3 miles in length:

From: 1200 New York Ave NW, Washington, DC 20005
Drive: 1.3 mi – about 5 mins.
1. Head northeast on New York Ave NW toward 11th St NW 0.2 mi
2. Turn right at 9th St NW 0.7 mi
3. Turn right at Constitution Ave NW/US-1 0.4 mi
To: 1301 Constitution Ave NW, Washington, DC 20004

I then asked it for walking directions which, because I no longer needed to avoid one-way streets going the wrong way, produced a more direct route of only 0.8 mile, saving me half a mile:

From: 1200 New York Ave NW, Washington, DC 20005
Walk: 0.8 mi – about 17 mins.
1. Head southwest on New York Ave NW toward 13th St NW 0.2 mi
2. Turn left at 14th St NW 0.5 mi
3. Make a U-turn 144 ft [note: this is odd; see below re beta]
4. Turn right at Constitution Ave NW/US-1 249 ft
To: 1301 Constitution Ave NW, Washington, DC 20004

The tool will even pick routes through pedestrian-only passages and take terrain into account:

“Starting today, you can tell Google Maps that you want walking directions, and we'll try to find you a route that's direct, flat, and uses pedestrian pathways when we know about them. Just get directions as you normally would. If you're going 10 km or less (some call this 6.2 miles), we'll show you a link that you can click to get ‘Walking’ directions.”

In some locations, though Washington doesn’t appear to be one of them, Google Maps will even give you transit directions and, now, combined walking-and-transit directions. I love it.

Andy Schwerin, software engineer at Google, stresses that the new feature is in beta (someone please tell me why it’s called “beta”; thanks) and that there are some relevant features (sidewalks, pedestrian pathways, etc.) that are not complete in GM’s database. For example, I wonder what prompted the totally unecessary direction to make a U-turn in instruction #3 above.

But, quirks notwithstanding, it’s a great start. Google welcomes your feedback as they work to improve the tool.

I bet MapQuest and other mapping services won’t be far behind on this one.

The nation’s number one health problem deserves an environmental response

2008-07-22T16:59:12Z

The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) has released its latest numbers on obesity and the prevalence of overweight people in the US. Once again, they aren’t pretty.

Publishing its findings for 2007 state-by-state, the CDC found that not a single state in the US met the national health goal of limiting obesity to 15 percent or less of the population. Instead, obesity prevalence ranged from 18.7% to 32.0%, with 30 states coming in at 25 percent or more. No state failed to register a majority of its population overweight or obese.

Here’s the map:

You can compare the new map to those from earlier years that I featured in my previous post on this subject, back in May. What I find astounding is that, as recently as 1990, not a single state registered an obesity rate greater than 14 percent. Wow.

The press played this as a rankings story (Mississippi fat, Colorado lean!), but for me the real story is that, as a nation, a shocking 63 percent of our population is either overweight or obese. This makes us the fattest country in the world.

Look at the graph compiled from 2004 OECD health statistics by Choices magazine. It shows the portion of the population considered overweight (including those considered obese) in each country:

I’ve already been through the serious health and economic problems this poses. What nags at me is that there is almost no response by the mainstream environmental community. We don’t hesitate to go after nutritional issues when our food supply is affected by pollutants or unsustainable harvesting practices. We don’t hesitate to attack the environmental factors that increase the risk of cancer or lung disease.

But we’ve been mostly silent on looking into the environmental factors that contribute to overweight and obesity, and thus to heart attacks and stroke. My own theory is that the public health wing of the mainstream environmental community is led mostly by extremely talented toxicity scientists, who do outstanding work but simply possess a different kind of expertise and professional interest from that needed to address environmental contributors to human behavior.

With regard to these issues, sprawl and a lack of exercise in our automobile-oriented culture have proven associations with obesity and overweight sectors of the population. Our built environment needs to be reformed to promote healthier lifestyles.

NRDC and a few other environmental groups certainly do look for solutions to sprawl and automobile dependence. But we seldom do it through public health analysis or alongside our public health wing. Our programs would be strengthened and our arguments would carry more weight (heh) if we did.

That sound you just heard was environmental interests bumping heads, or the tale of the Waynesville Best Buy parking lot

2008-06-02T12:54:10Z

Waynesville, North Carolina is a sleepy southern town about 30 miles or so from where I grew up. It's where I got my first traffic ticket, among other things.

You know smart growth is catching on when a place like Waynesville (population 10,000) is trying to do the right thing. They have a zoning ordinance requiring that commercial enterprises place their parking lots behind rather than in front of their buildings, to create a more walkable streetscape. This not only creates a more cohesive, traditional community character; it also makes it easier for a retail customer of one store to walk to a second store on the same trip, or to walk from the doctor's office to the church, or whatever. Each walking trip saves a driving trip and, over time, they add up.

This is not, of course, how big-box stores usually do things, which is why a place like Waynesville needs an ordinance to require them to. To his credit, Waynesville mayor Gavin Brown insisted on compliance when the big retailer Best Buy came to town. As long as he could.

The problem, it turns out, was that the part of the lot close to the street was a contaminated brownfield. Best Buy's developer could afford the level of remediation required to put a parking lot on that part of the site, but it couldn't afford the higher level required if the site was going to be occupied by a structure with people working in it all day. So the city eventually granted a waiver.

Here's part of what the story in the local paper, the Smoky Mountain News, said about the issue:

"What Brown didn’t know then, though, was that Cedarwood had identified a hotspot of tolulene deposits on the Best Buy parcel, left over from the days when the site was the Dayco rubber parts factory. Conforming to the land-use standards would mean the main structure — rather than the parking lot — would sit on top of the tolulene. In that case, major environmental mitigation efforts would have to be taken, doubling the cost of construction and making it too prohibitive for Best Buy to come to Waynesville . . .
"A letter from Best Buy to the town board stated that the project would be in 'serious jeopardy' if the development was made to comply with the town’s land-use plan. Losing it wouldn’t be worth it, Brown says. The company will employ about 65 people with mid-level jobs and rake in up to $25 million in sales."

You can read the whole story here.

I don't really blame the town for caving in. For a place the size of Waynesville, attracting a business to the central shopping area is still a good thing, even if the design leaves something to be desired. It's better for the environment to have the store located on a redevelopment site within the town's jurisdictional limits - a lot better - than plopped down on prime farmland outside of town. But it's a shame they couldn't do it right.

Enviros, what about obesity?

2008-05-20T13:35:32Z

We Americans have gotten fat. And we’ve done so to an alarming degree. Sunday’s Washington Post began a five-part series on obesity in children, a particularly serious part of the problem:

“In ways only beginning to be understood, being overweight at a young age appears to be far more destructive to well-being than adding excess pounds later in life. Virtually every major organ is at risk. The greater damage is probably irreversible . . .

“With one in three children in this country overweight or worse, the . . . cumulative effect could be the country's first generation destined to have a shorter life span than its predecessor. A 2005 analysis by a team of scientists forecast a two- to five-year drop in life expectancy unless aggressive action manages to reverse obesity rates. Since then, children have only gotten fatter.

"’Five years might be an underestimate,’ lead author S. Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois at Chicago acknowledged recently . . .”

Let's move to adult obesity. Continuing my fascination with maps, I offer two compelling ones below. The maps come from the federal Centers for Disease Control, though I found them first on the website of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which has done outstanding work in sponsoring research in the field.

The first map represents the extent of obesity in the United States in 1990. States in medium blue had 10-14 percent of their population considered obese, defined as a Body Mass Index of 30 or above, or more than 30 pounds overweight for a person standing 5’4”. States in light blue ("Carolina blue" to Tar Heel fans) had less than 10 percent of their population defined as obese. No state topped the 14 percent mark:

The second map shows the rate of obesity in states in 2006. Everything has changed. Now, no state remains in light or medium blue. Only a tiny fraction of the country is even in dark blue, representing an obesity rate of 15-19 percent. Practically the entire country shows obesity rates greater than 20 percent (amber), with much of it greater than 25 percent (red), and two states alarmingly over 30 percent (dark rust).

As the CDC puts it, “These increasing rates raise concern because of their implications for Americans’ health. Being overweight or obese increases the risk of many diseases and health conditions, including the following:

Hypertension (high blood pressure)
Osteoarthritis (a degeneration of cartilage and its underlying bone within a joint)
Dyslipidemia (for example, high total cholesterol or high levels of triglycerides)
Type 2 diabetes
Coronary heart disease
Stroke
Gallbladder disease
Sleep apnea and respiratory problems
Some cancers (endometrial, breast, and colon).”

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US, with stroke third. Diabetes is sixth.

It has been estimated that the annual cost of overweight and obesity in the U.S. is a staggering 122.9 billion dollars. This represents some $64 billion in direct costs and $58.8 billion in indirect costs, a sum that is comparable to the economic costs of cigarette smoking. Direct costs include preventive, diagnostic, and treatment services, while indirect costs include the value of wages lost by people unable to work because of illness or disability, as well as the value of future earnings lost by premature death. Obesity and obesity-related conditions or ailments result in at least $62.7 million in doctors’ visits and $39.3 million in lost workdays each year.

Nonetheless, the mainstream environmental community has remained almost totally inactive on the issue. This needs to change.

Yes, the issues are complex and the causes not all and probably not mostly environmental, but that is equally true of cancer and asthma, two public health problems that have commanded a lot of attention from the environmental community for decades.

We know that part of the problem with obesity is environmental. That is because we have created an environment that has become less conducive to physical activity. An exhaustive study conducted by Rutgers University, Smart Growth America and the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership, and published in the September 2003 issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion, found that people living in counties marked by sprawling land development are likely to walk less and weigh more than people who live in less sprawling counties. In addition, people in more sprawling counties are more likely to suffer from hypertension. These results hold true after controlling for factors such as age, education, gender, and race and ethnicity.

Similarly, another exhaustive, multi-year study of land use, travel behavior and health in metro Atlanta (the SMARTRAQ study, managed by Georgia Tech) found that people who live in neighborhoods with a mix of shops and businesses within easy walking distance are 7 percent less likely to be obese than those living in a mix level equal to the lower regional average. “Although this difference appears small,” says the report, “the relative decrease in the actual probability of obesity is much greater - approximately 35 percent. A typical white male living in a compact community with nearby shops and services is expected to weigh ten pounds less than a similar white male living in a low density, residential-only cul-de-sac subdivision.”

SMARTRAQ also found that every additional hour spent in a car each day translated into a 6 percent greater chance of being obese.

NRDC’s own research in Sacramento found that residents of a walkable smart growth neighborhood reported taking four times as many trips by foot as residents of a sprawling development on the edge of town.

There may be additional environmental factors that contribute to weight gain and obesity. We don’t know all the answers. We may not even know all the questions. But this is our nation's number one public health problem, and it deserves more attention from the environmental community.

Smart growth improves air quality, says new research

2008-05-07T18:41:13Z

The federal Environmental Protection Agency has released important new research detailing the benefits of smart growth on transportation emissions and air quality.

In particular, the report reviews the effects on traffic and pollution that would occur if new growth and land development were encouraged to take place on vacant parcels and redevelopment sites within established cities and suburbs, instead of sprawling out onto sites that are now farmland or forests. The report also examines the potential benefits of developing near public transportation and on obsolete industrial "brownfield" sites.

Written by EPA’s Smart Growth Program, Measuring the Air Quality and Transportation Impacts of Infill Development concludes:

“Fundamentally, well designed neighborhoods in more accessible places make walking, biking and transit more convenient options. Therefore, policies that increase the amount of urban and suburban infill development can help more people meet their everyday needs with less driving. In turn, this can reduce traffic and contribute to better regional air quality . . .

“This study illustrates how regions can calculate these benefits. The basic approach relies upon standard transportation forecasting models currently used by Metropolitan Planning Organizations across the country. The results suggest that strong support for infill development can be one of the most effective transportation and emission reduction investments regions can pursue . . .

“Across the three case studies, redirecting jobs and households to brownfield and other infill sites reduces overall travel, congestion and emissions from cars. For example, if just 8 percent of Denver’s jobs and households were shifted over time toward 10 regional centers, congestion would be reduced by over 6 percent and emissions would be reduced by about 4 percent. This would be equivalent to removing nearly half a million trips per day from the region’s roads, a significant share of the daily average (12.7 million miles). If the same amount of development was concentrated in 31 locations, the reduction in emissions would be somewhat smaller (3 percent).

“The Charlotte case study evaluated the impact of increased infill development in a single corridor. Although a much smaller number of jobs and homes were relocated to infill sites, the analysis demonstrates the benefits of focused development around transit. While the new rail service alone did reduce congestion in the corridor, it had a minimal impact on the region’s emissions. However, when 16,000 households and 10,000 jobs are relocated near the South Corridor stations, the reduction in emissions was 10 times greater and transit ridership increased by more than 6,000 trips each day.

“In Boston, the analysis considered redevelopment in just 13 suburban towns along the I-495 Corridor. Redirecting new development to brownfield sites in these towns reduced vehicle travel by 154,000 miles during the evening rush hour. Given the corridor’s average car trip of 15 miles, this reduction is equivalent to eliminating more than 10,000 trips.”

The full, 77-page report may be found here. It confirms and expands a growing body of research on land use and transportation, including last month's release of a major study documenting how smart growth reduces global warming emissions.

Neighborhood food choices may affect your health

2008-05-06T17:30:28Z

The balance of healthy-vs.-unhealthy food options near your home has a major impact on your health risk, according to a new report released this week by PolicyLink, UCLA's Center for Health Policy Research, and the California Center for Public Health Advocacy.

The report, Designed for Disease: The Link Between Local Food Environments and Obesity and Diabetes, shows that you are at a higher risk for obesity and diabetes if fast food and convenience stores dramatically outnumber grocery stores and produce markets in your neighborhood.

The study examined the correlation between the health of nearly 40,000 Californians and the mix of retail food outlets near their homes. The conclusion: Your "food landscape" has a significant impact on your health.

Five more green apples for NYC

2008-05-01T17:00:12Z

Last week my longtime NRDC colleague Eric Goldstein posted a blog entry highlighting five laudable environmental sites (green apples) and five awful ones (bad apples). Eric got it right as usual. I am particularly a fan of his because, like me, he loves cities and, besides, he is one of a very small handful of people who were already on the NRDC staff when I first joined 27 (!) years ago.

One of Eric’s green apples is the Queens Botanical Garden Visitor Center, which I mentioned here in my last post as one of the AIA’s “ten greenest” award winners for 2008. It’s one of the good ones, by the way.

But in this post I’d like to offer a slightly (though not entirely) different perspective and cite some additional examples that I think New Yorkers may too easily take for granted as part of their environmental bounty:

Walkable neighborhoods

A lot of places don’t have them at all. New York has them in abundance, from Brooklyn Heights to the Upper West Side to Rockefeller Center to the most celebrated of them all, Greenwich Village, not counting the hundreds I either don't know or don't have space to mention. Living in a “24-hour” environment where jobs, homes, shops, schools, and other everyday conveniences are so close at hand saves time, promotes public health by encouraging walking, reduces carbon and other emissions that would otherwise come from driving, and fosters a sense of community. New York is one of the most walkable cities in the world. Take note of the fact that most Americans have to drive 20+ miles per day just to accomplish the tasks of normal living, and celebrate the difference in New York.

Awesome affordable green development

Two such walkable neighborhoods being constructed near each other in the South Bronx deserve special mention. (Others, too, I’m sure, but these are the two I’m most familiar with.) First, pictured on the left, is Melrose Commons. The pictured bit of green housing is part of a redevelopment plan constructed by the community residents themselves -- approximately 6,000 people, primarily of African American and Latino descent, with a median family income of less than $12,000 a year. Troubled by an initial proposal that would have squeezed many of them out, they organized and took control of the situation, working to promote development that “would be sustainable, would complement the existing infrastructure and the regional location, and would provide for future growth and evolution.”

Today, the plan includes: 2000 diverse housing units that are using green technology, preserving the historical richness of the community, and providing affordable options for residents of different ages and incomes; community open space that is visible from the sidewalk and linked to schools and community gardens; "greening" of industrial areas with recreational space development; business development that will employ community members in such enterprises as an after school center, health care services and recycling projects. They are also developing a town center for education and cultural uses, including the return to community use of a former YWCA building. Melrose Commons is participating in the LEED for Neighborhood Development pilot project, and they sure look deserving to me.

Second, in the same area of the Bronx, is Via Verde, an award-winning project designed to serve a mix of incomes through a variety of unit types, including rental, co-op, and live/work town homes. Via Verde’s form is inspired by the integration of garden and city: the connected rooftops of low-rise town homes, a mid-rise duplex building, and an 18-story tower will be used to harvest rainwater, grow fruits and vegetables, to exercise, and to relax. Additional biophilic elements connecting people to nature will include private backyard gardens, semi-private courtyards, and public learning and gardening space to provide a range of outdoor experiences.

The project, being developed by a partnership that includes my sustainability brother-in-arms, Jonathan Rose, is being designed to exceed LEED Gold standards for environmentally responsible and energy efficient design. Passive, low-tech strategies include cross ventilation in all apartments, solar shading, and aforementioned green roofs to provide insulation and control storm water. The project also incorporates high-efficiency mechanical systems, energy-conserving appliances, and renewable energy strategies, including solar voltaic canopies. In addition, smart material choices, including non-toxic paints and rapidly renewable wood products, will improve the air quality for residents and conserve natural resources. Where were these projects on the AIA’s “ten greenest” list?

Bryant Park

I really hope New Yorkers don’t take this one for granted. A shameful embarrassment in the heart of Midtown for much of the last century, this is now a treasure. To say it had fallen into hard times is an understatement. As one observer put it, “the grim joke among New Yorkers was that the police only went into the park after someone was murdered to identify the victim.” In the late 1980s, though, the welfare of the park was handed to a private entity, the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation. After a massive effort, today the eight-acre urban oasis hosts a football-field-sized lawn, twin promenades featuring the same species of trees as the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris, six flower beds planted seasonally with 100 species of woody shrubs and herbaceous perennials and 20,000 bulbs, a carousel, a boule board, chess tables, the Bryant Park Grill, free wireless access, and 2,000 moveable chairs for pausing to take in the sights. It is an astounding success and is enjoyed by thousands of visitors every day.

World-class public transportation

This one is a no-brainer. New Yorkers can not only walk, they can ride. New York’s subway system is used by over 600,000 riders per day. It is one of the most extensive public transportation systems in the world, with 468 passenger stations, 656 miles of “revenue track,” and a total of 842 miles, including non-revenue track, according to Wikipedia. The subway is also notable for being among the few rapid transit systems in the world to run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This, of course, is in addition to the extensive regional rail service, and more buses and bus lines than one can count. In most US communities, the share of trips taken by public transportation is under three percent. Think about it.

Really small environmental footprint

Yes, you read that heading correctly. All this adds up to what is unquestionably the most resource-efficient and low-polluting city in the country, when those measures are considered on a per capita basis. As David Owen wrote in his thoughtful article “Green Manhattan,” originally published in the New Yorker, “if you made all eight million New Yorkers live at the density of my town, they would require a space equivalent to the land area of the six New England states plus Delaware and New Jersey.” (No word on where the current residents of New England, Delaware, and New Jersey might go.) Metropolitan Phoenix, which has a population roughly twice that of Manhattan, occupies more than 200 times as much land.

Owens continues, “eighty-two per cent of Manhattan residents travel to work by public transit, by bicycle, or on foot. That’s ten times the rate for Americans in general, and eight times the rate for residents of Los Angeles County. New York City is more populous than all but eleven states; if it were granted statehood, it would rank fifty-first in per-capita energy use.”

So what’s my point, anyway?

New York certainly has its share of problems, environmental and otherwise. I am extremely glad that some of my colleagues, including Eric, are working on them and solving them. But it also has some amazing environmental qualities, particularly for the US, that are not just particular spots like Queens Botanical Garden or Bryant Park, but systems producing environmental benefits. We don’t think to single them out because they are such an inherent part of the city’s fabric. But they deserve some apples, too. Don’t take them for granted, New Yorkers.

How to go green, according to architects

2008-04-30T13:10:30Z

The American Institute of Architects has announced their annual “Top Ten Green Projects,” as chosen by the Institute’s Committee on the Environment (affectionately known as “COTE”).

Now I have to say that I personally like and am impressed by just about everyone I’ve met from AIA’s environmental circles. I was flattered that they asked me, even as a non-architect, to serve on one of COTE’s sister committees, the committee on Communities by Design. (We supply the “community” side, get it?) We’re meeting later this week in Los Angeles, and I pretty much love the group of people. I think one or two of them are delegates from COTE, which is where it may get interesting, considering the rest of my post . . .

If I were to give advice to a designer about how to win this award next year, I would say the following: Stick very carefully to modernist design, preferably with long horizontal lines and sharp angles; surround your building with lots of grass and landscaping; have razzle and dazzle; don’t worry at all about the pesky fact that buildings in remote or sprawl locations waste more energy for transportation than they save in building efficiency; locate on a campus if possible; don’t bother with re-using historic properties, notwithstanding all that already-imbedded resource efficiency; total automobile dependence is just fine; neighborhood-y stuff is for sissies, don't worry about it; and for heaven’s sake don’t even think about affordable housing, or really about housing at all, OK?

I guess COTE didn’t get the memo about how much transportation efficiency matters to the climate or the environment, or how much being in a diverse neighborhood with amenities, shops and services promotes public health by encouraging walking.

As I posted some time back, there is a crude but very useful tool on the web called Walk Score. It measures the proximity of a given address to various categories of diverse uses, such as grocery stores, restaurants, schools, parks, drug stores, and other retail. It paints with a broad brush, so I wouldn't rely on it for anything terribly precise or consequential. But it’s a pretty good indicator of whether a location is in a real neighborhood or not, as well as how automobile-dependent it is. If the base location is residential, a high score means a resident can likely reach a lot of common destinations on foot, or at least with short driving trips. If the base location is commercial or institutional, a high score means a worker or visitor can conveniently run errands and combine trips to the base facility with visits to other common destinations. Both suggest a location that has good regional accessibility, and both mean less driving and less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If the score is low, anyone who lives or visits is basically driving some distance to get there.

You may recall that I entered the addresses of NRDC’s four large offices in New York, Washington, San Francisco and Santa Monica in Walk Score’s calculator. It turns out that we’re awesomely located, with walk scores of 100, 98, 98, and 97, respectively. My home, in a more residential area of Washington, still does pretty darn well with a 72 (“very walkable” under the system’s scale), but my in-laws in an outer suburb don’t fare so well with a 43 (“not walkable”). Below are the walk scores for the AIA’s “Ten Greenest” projects of 2008. Remember, scores above 70 are considered “very walkable,” while scores below 50 are considered “not walkable” and are likely to generate very high rates of driving as well. Scores from 50-70 are in between, with “some walkable locations”:

Aldo Leopold Legacy Center, Baraboo, WI: ZERO
Cesar Chavez Library, Phoenix, AZ: 15
Discovery Center at South Lake Union, Seattle, WA: 100!
Garthwaite Center for Science and Arts, Cambridge School of Weston, Weston, MA: 43
Lavin-Bernick Center, New Orleans, LA: 71
Macallen Building Condominiums, Boston, MA: 86
Nueva School Hillside Learning Complex, Hillsborough, CA: 14
Pocono Environmental Education Center, Dingman’s Ferry, PA: ZERO
Queens Botanical Garden Visitor & Administration Center, New York, NY: 82
Yale University Sculpture Building and Gallery, New Haven, CT: 91

I count one residential building and nine educational or institutional facilities. You certainly can’t fault the jury for seeking diversity in a way that compromised their design standards.

Now, the five that score so poorly, including the two zeros (!), are not without merit as examples of good architecture and of good use of green technology. But to call them the greenest projects in the country is just plain ridiculous. That completely ignores the most important contributor of global warming emissions of all. (Transportation emits 31% of our greenhouse gas emissions; commercial buildings emit 16% and residential buildings emit 19%. The rest is industrial.)

I guess we should be glad that they at least got some of them right. I love the South Lake Union project, pictured above. As the description on the AIA site reads, the facility “is centrally located within an emerging neighborhood of residential communities, offices, and nearby private schools, and provides the only available green space suitable for field activities . . . The building is located at the intersection of two arterial streets and invites pedestrian interaction. In addition to hosting exhibit space showing the history of the neighborhood free of charge, the facility is available to residents of the community for private meetings and after-hours functions. The Discovery Center hosts summer block parties for the neighborhood and an outdoor film series during the summer months.

“The site is easily accessible via public transit with two bus stops at the corner serving numerous routes. The South Lake Union streetcar also runs along the Westlake Avenue corridor with a stop adjacent to the Discovery Center . . . The off-street parking area also includes a reserved space for a car belonging to a car-sharing program.”

Congratulations to the Miller|Hull Partnership in Seattle for the design, and to their client for selecting a site that delivers environmental benefits. And congratulations also to the designers and patrons of the Lavin-Bernick Center, the Macallen Building, the Queens Botanical Garden Visitor Center, and the Yale Sculpture Building, all of which are well sited as well as well designed.

You can read about all the winners and see plenty of pictures here.

Trouble the Water – a note from NOLA

2008-03-10T04:20:26Z

Trouble the Water is the name of a new documentary film about the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. At this point, I bet I’ve seen a half-dozen such films, but this one is the best.

What sets it apart is that it tells the story from the inside out, and from the point of view of a single remarkable couple, Kimberly Rivers Roberts and Scott Roberts, who were stuck in their home Ninth Ward during the storm, hanging on to rowboats and rooftops and trying to help their neighbors, while recording on a home camcorder that Kim had bought on the street for $20 just days before. Their video and as-it-happened narration was edited and supplemented by that of veteran documentary filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, whose own concept for a Katrina documentary had fallen through and who happened to meet the Robertses via a chance encounter at a shelter in middle Louisiana after the storm. Lessin and Deal were the right people at the right time, and filmed Kim and Scott’s return to their home.

I was lucky enough to see an extended clip of Trouble the Water last week while in New Orleans for Regional Equity ’08, a conference that tied together issues of social equity and land use (among others). One of the conference’s plenary sessions featured the film, with appearances by Kim and Scott, Tia and Carl, and noted actor/activist Danny Glover, who is producing the work. Do watch the short video that weaves some of the film’s scenes with perspective added by its principals, and you’ll see what I mean.

Adding an amazingly upbeat note to their story of survival, Kim actually gave birth to a daughter during the Sundance Film Festival, where Trouble the Water won the Grand Jury Prize as best documentary. Deal hurried her and Scott from the festival to a hospital in a snowstorm!

Kim Roberts is also a musician who performs under the name Black Kold Medina, and you can listen to clips of her work here. The lady’s got talent.

The recovery of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast still has a long way to go, with extraordinary challenges remaining, but I for one am encouraged by the fact that at least they have some of the best planning minds in the country on the job. Go here to read about some of the planning effort.

Coal miner’s granddaughter

2008-02-24T22:14:34Z

While perusing the latest issue of the excellent and soon-to-be-lamented music magazine No Depression, I came across an eloquent review of Kathy Mattea’s forthcoming album, Coal.

Mattea, of course, is the husky-voiced and melodic folk-country artist who has won numerous Grammys and whose wonderful 1986 album Walk the Way the Wind Blows has been played, oh, 40 times or so in my abode. Wonderful, wonderful collection of songs penned by the likes of Nanci Griffith and Rodney Crowell, and about as good as it gets for the genre.

Coal, the new collection, is all about the culture of coal the mineral, and mining, in Mattea’s home state of West Virginia. My colleague Rob Perks was all over the environmental and social issues of mining country in his blog entry last week, so I won’t try to repeat any of that here. But, for a different sort of introduction to those issues, go to Mattea’s website, where you can listen to a thoughtful interview (with in-studio music! click on "Coal" at the top of the site) that was first aired on Public Radio International, and just listen. Mattea’s roots in that culture (two grandfathers who worked in the mines, a mom who worked for the union) are deep indeed.

As a onetime musician myself, I am tempted to go off on so many tangents here that we might never get back to the subject at hand. But I will say that the album – which apparently won’t be released until April – will contain some of the best songs of some terrific songwriters, including DC’s Hazel Dickens, whom I used to see all the time on the #36 bus to Georgetown when I lived on that route; Billy Edd Wheeler, whose songs were some of the first I ever taught myself as a teenager and who lives in my native Buncombe County, North Carolina; and the immortal Merle Travis. There are samples on Mattea’s website where, of course, you can pre-order the album.

I wish I could link Grant Alden's review of the collection in No Depression, but it isn’t online. It is almost poetic in places: If you live in or drive through the Appalachian coal country of West Virginia or Kentucky, a fine gray grit will cover your car. It will shade your house . . . [Mattea] is someone with whom you might have a long conversation, no matter who you are, and both of you would learn something.

I’m generally not a fan of political music, since it tends to be un-nuanced and not as good as I wish at being, well, either political or musical. But I have so many connections to this album that I can’t ignore it.

So check out the music online, and if you’re a music fan pick up a copy of No Depression on the news stand. (The March-April issue also contains features on two of Canada's finest, producer extraordinaire Daniel Lanois and singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards.) You won’t be able to buy the magazine much longer, unfortunately. The issue after this one will be the last in print, although they vow to keep the website going.

I know, this post didn't have much to do with smart growth, did it? What, you thought I was a single-issue kind of guy? And, anyway, figuring out ways to cultivate and maintain a healthy economy and community (and, by the way, generating electricity) while developing and conserving the landscape is a huge part of sustainability. Coal puts all of those in bold relief. Back on topic in a more mainstream way next time.

Discover your neighborhood’s walkability score!

2007-12-04T18:59:24Z

It couldn’t be easier: just enter the address, click the button, and up pops your score on a scale of 1-100. See if your score is better than that of your friends or competitors, and then brag about it – it’s the American way! And it’s fun, besides.

Using the growing body of geographic data imbedded in Google Maps, a new web site has emerged to help real estate agents and prospective property owners and tenants to determine how accessible any given location is. In particular, it internally calculates the distances to a range of important and useful services and amenities such as stores, schools, parks, and restaurants, and then combines the data into a single “walk score.”

Just for fun, I entered the addresses of NRDC’s four large offices in New York, Washington, San Francisco and Santa Monica. We’re awesomely located, with walk scores of 100, 98, 98, and 97, respectively. My home, in a more residential area, still does pretty darn well with a 72 (“very walkable” under the system’s scale), but my in-laws don’t fare so well with a 43 (“not walkable”).

Check it out for yourself.

Now I should note, as the site itself does, that the score has limitations. Proximity to services and amenities, while essential, is not the only important characteristic of a great walkable neighborhood. Other important ones that the walk score site doesn’t capture but the LEED for Neighborhood Development rating system does include sidewalks, safe driving speeds, pedestrian-friendly building entrances and windows, reasonable block lengths and, as I discussed in an earlier post, street trees. One that might not be intuitive to people (it wasn’t to me when I first began studying this field) is the presence of on-street parking; it creates a feeling of safety for walkers because it separates them from moving traffic. Here’s a dramatic contrast between a good and not-so-good walking environment:

LEED-ND values walkability very highly in its rating criteria, which combine locational, design, and green technology features in a comprehensive, technically precise system designed to identify and reward true smart growth. If you’re interested, visit the system’s technical criteria and look at “neighborhood pattern and design” credits 2 (p.54), 7 (p.65), and 8 (p.69).

Finally, one of the country’s top real estate analysts, Chris Leinberger at the Brookings Institution, has recently published a survey of good walkable environments in the top 30 US metropolitan areas, and ranked the metro areas according to the number of such places they provide per capita. Chris ranks Washington, DC at the top, on the strength of its downtown and 20 other highly walkable city and suburban neighborhoods, from DuPont Circle in town to Reston Town Center in suburban Virginia. Interestingly, Chris points out that, 20 years ago, only the Georgetown and Old Town Alexandria neighborhoods would have qualified in the DC metro area. We’re moving in the right direction.

Thanks to my NRDC colleague Rachel Sohmer for pointing me to Chris's report. Other metro areas in the top five include Boston, San Francisco, Denver (that one surprises me), and Portland. New York snobs take note: you’re only number ten. :)