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LEED Neighborhood Development Rating Analysis System
COMMENTS BY JAMES E. MILLER on
LEED for Neighborhood Development Rating System: http://www.usgbc.org/LEED/LEEDDrafts/RatingSystemVersions.aspx?CMSPageID=1458
SMART LOCATION
Nearly all cities have been planned with the automobile as the primary client with little regard for the people. By cutting up the urban areas in defined areas for land use, it forces the people to use cars and other transportation to accomplish their daily tasks.
The ornithological view is that cities have pockets of uses at some distance from each other with a thin ribbon of road between them – representing a dumbbell. The result is massive use of the auto, resulting in huge cost and damage to our environment. If you don't ask the right questions, you will not get the right answers. The main question is: How can be cut the number and extent of trips in half?
What the Smart Location appears to ask: How can a community provide connection to mass transit or centers of interest over the “last mile” (or quarter-mile) from homes and other centers? The answer is: it cannot unless it is willing to engage in massive urban renewal. The way cities work, one cannot pry drivers out of their cars.
The only real hope is to shift population from the cities to the rural areas of the county, but not to just any rural area and not to just any plot of land. What is needed is for intentional communities for form in the areas outside of cities which is still mostly rural and where land prices permit farming. These intentional communities will grow their own food, produce their own energy and become a eco-village practicing permaculture.
There are currently substantial legal barriers to creating cluster communities which are self-sufficient and sustainable. To be sustainable, the IC's must engage in crop production and turn algae into biodiesel and giant grasses into syngas and biochar. They need to engage in light industry in hopes of generating net profits from the “outside” to off-set the leaky barrel syndrome.
Over time, urbanites will flee the cities as they crumble, to the intentional villages of their choice. These IC's will be networked and form mutual assistance packs. Rebuilding the urban areas will be easier, once the fires go out.
References:
Mutual Aid Society of America: http://masallp.wetpaint.com
Algal Oil Diesel: http:algaloildiesel.wetpaint.com
Straw Bale Builders: http://strawbalebuilders.wetpaint.com
DEPENDENCE ON THE AUTOMOBILE
We can greatly reduce the impact which the internal combustion engine has on our pocketbooks and on the environment by going to all electric, plug-in vehicles for short trips and plug-in hybrids for longer trips using the sliding piston genset and biodiesel or compressed syngas. The main goal is to reduce the trip miles by half during the next four years. To do this, it will take a massive shift in mindset of our planners and government officials. We will also have to contend with the NIMBY's. By establishing new eco-villages in rural area, at least we will have fewer NIMBY's with whom to contend.
Unless the changes mentioned above are made, the efforts of the LEED neighborhood analysis is just so much churning of the status quo. No substantial gains in environmental or economic justice can be expected, given the stats quo. We need planners to “plan as if people mattered”. Clearly, people do not matter or else we would not find ourselves joined at hip with our vehicles.
Jim Miller
jimmiller5417@yahoo.com
LEED for Neighborhood Development Rating System: http://www.usgbc.org/LEED/LEEDDrafts/RatingSystemVersions.aspx?CMSPageID=1458
SMART LOCATION
Nearly all cities have been planned with the automobile as the primary client with little regard for the people. By cutting up the urban areas in defined areas for land use, it forces the people to use cars and other transportation to accomplish their daily tasks.
The ornithological view is that cities have pockets of uses at some distance from each other with a thin ribbon of road between them – representing a dumbbell. The result is massive use of the auto, resulting in huge cost and damage to our environment. If you don't ask the right questions, you will not get the right answers. The main question is: How can be cut the number and extent of trips in half?
What the Smart Location appears to ask: How can a community provide connection to mass transit or centers of interest over the “last mile” (or quarter-mile) from homes and other centers? The answer is: it cannot unless it is willing to engage in massive urban renewal. The way cities work, one cannot pry drivers out of their cars.
The only real hope is to shift population from the cities to the rural areas of the county, but not to just any rural area and not to just any plot of land. What is needed is for intentional communities for form in the areas outside of cities which is still mostly rural and where land prices permit farming. These intentional communities will grow their own food, produce their own energy and become a eco-village practicing permaculture.
There are currently substantial legal barriers to creating cluster communities which are self-sufficient and sustainable. To be sustainable, the IC's must engage in crop production and turn algae into biodiesel and giant grasses into syngas and biochar. They need to engage in light industry in hopes of generating net profits from the “outside” to off-set the leaky barrel syndrome.
Over time, urbanites will flee the cities as they crumble, to the intentional villages of their choice. These IC's will be networked and form mutual assistance packs. Rebuilding the urban areas will be easier, once the fires go out.
References:
Mutual Aid Society of America: http://masallp.wetpaint.com
Algal Oil Diesel: http:algaloildiesel.wetpaint.com
Straw Bale Builders: http://strawbalebuilders.wetpaint.com
DEPENDENCE ON THE AUTOMOBILE
We can greatly reduce the impact which the internal combustion engine has on our pocketbooks and on the environment by going to all electric, plug-in vehicles for short trips and plug-in hybrids for longer trips using the sliding piston genset and biodiesel or compressed syngas. The main goal is to reduce the trip miles by half during the next four years. To do this, it will take a massive shift in mindset of our planners and government officials. We will also have to contend with the NIMBY's. By establishing new eco-villages in rural area, at least we will have fewer NIMBY's with whom to contend.
Unless the changes mentioned above are made, the efforts of the LEED neighborhood analysis is just so much churning of the status quo. No substantial gains in environmental or economic justice can be expected, given the stats quo. We need planners to “plan as if people mattered”. Clearly, people do not matter or else we would not find ourselves joined at hip with our vehicles.
Jim Miller
jimmiller5417@yahoo.com
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