LEEDS Neighborhood Development Rating Analysis SystemThis is a featured page


LEEDS Neighborhood Development Rating Analysis System
-- Planning for Failure
By Jim Miller

Source: http://www.usgbc.org/LEED/LEEDDrafts/RatingSystemVersions.aspx?CMSPageID=1458

SMART LOCATION vs. DUMB LOCATION

Nearly all cities have been planned with the automobile as the primary client with little regard for the people. Monbiot, George. Hard-Wired Traffic: http://masallp.wetpaint.com/page/HARD-WIRED+TRAFFIC

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. Miller, Jim. Dumbbell Planning versus Integrated Community Planning: http://masallp.wetpaint.com/page/DUMBBELL+PLANNING+VERSUS+INTEGRATED+COMMUNITY+PLANNING

The result is massive use of the auto, resulting in huge cost and damage to our environment. Special: Pat Murphy's Book, Plan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and Climate Change: http://www.communitysolution.org/plancbook.html

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? How to Get the Right Answers to the Right Questions: http://masallp.wetpaint.com/search/everything/HOW%2BTO%2BGET%2BTHE%2BRIGHT%2BANSWERS%2BTO%2BTHE%2BRIGHT%2BQUESTIONS.?contains=HOW%2BTO%2BGET%2BTHE%2BRIGHT%2BANSWERS%2BTO%2BTHE%2BRIGHT%2BQUESTIONS.

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 or spend billions more on a “locavore” mass transit system, neither of which can solve the basic problem of planning for excessive trip miles versus planning for minimal trip miles. The way cities are planned and work now, one cannot pry drivers out of their cars. When planning allows for “We work where we live, and we live where we work”, then and only then can we get ride of half our cars and minimize the “last mile” problem. Community Solutions to Peak Crises: http://masallp.wetpaint.com/page/COMMUNITY+SOLUTIONS+TO+PEAK+CRISES

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. We need to change our land use and zoning laws to encourage rather than prohibit clustered communities which are largely self-sufficient and sustainable. We need coherent communities. Coherent Community: http://masallp.wetpaint.com/page/A+COHERENT+COMMUNITY

These intentional communities will grow their own food, produce their own energy and become a eco-village practicing permaculture.

We need to build with eco-friendly building materials and recycle as much as we can. For instance we can use bamboo which grows to 120 feet tall in four years and can be made into a wide variety of building materials. Bamboo: http://strawbalebuilders.wetpaint.com/page/BAMBOO We can build affordable straw bale buildings with very high insulative values. http://strawbalebuilders.wetpaint.com/page/REFERENCES

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. Heartland Renaissance: http://masallp.wetpaint.com/page/HEARTLAND+RENAISSANCE

Another important barrier is the wholesale lack of interest on the part of urban planners to the Peak Oil Crises and the energy solutions. A recent conference of planners in Las Vegas had little focus on energy issues. 1


Over time, urbanites will flee the cities as they crumble and burn, to the intentional villages of their choice. Urban America will soon follow the road traveled by many rural towns and communities which became ghost towns. The Evisceration of Rural America: http://masallp.wetpaint.com/page/THE+EVISCERATION+OF+RURAL+AMERICA


Detroit, MI, has already “achieved” this distinction. Last Halloween, the Governor had to call out the National Guard to prevent the setting of massive fires in Detroit. "Devil's Night" Fires Doused In Detroit: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/30/national/main4558084.shtml


These IC's will be networked and form mutual assistance packs. Rebuilding the urban areas will be easier, once the fires go out. Megan Quinn, Outreach Director, The Community Solution: Our Journey Home: The Power of Community Solution: http://masallp.wetpaint.com/page/OUR+JOURNEY+HOME%3A+THE+POWER+OF+COMMUNITY


Transition needs to replace conflict.

Excessive land use barriers on use of farm land and forest land and which prevent clusters of eco-villages, work against “conservation” and proper uses of farm and forest lands. The Eco-village will use the farm land, sustainable tree harvest, straw bales, and bamboo to become self-sufficient in food, fuel and housing, so the objective of the preservationists is met. The Transition Initiative Primer: http://transitionnetwork.org/Primer/TransitionInitiativesPrimer.pdf

In order to accomplish the transition to eco-villages, we need to provide initial equity funding. Bridge Loans for Intentional Communities: http://masallp.wetpaint.com/page/BRIDGE+LOANS+FOR+INTENTIONAL+COMMUNITIES

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. Chrysler Electric Auto Company: http://chyslerelectricautocompany.wetpaint.com/

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”. http://afterarmageddon.blogspot.com/2008/10/city-planning-as-if-people-mattered.html

Clearly, people do not matter or else we would not find ourselves joined at hip with our vehicles.

Jim Miller
jimmiller5417@yahoo.com

November 23, 2008

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END NOTES
1City planners descend on Las Vegas... and largely ignore energy http://www.postcarbon.org/city_planners_descend_las_vegas_and_largely_ignore_energy Submitted by Daniel Lerch on May 9, 2008 - 4:04pm.
[Excerpt]
Disappointing, to be sure. Indeed, the whole conference was somewhat discouraging to me: a massive missed opportunity to address sustainable community planning in this most unsustainable of cities. Not only was there not a single session on what was wrong with Las Vegas (and there is plenty to be learned from, there), the closing speaker, New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger, largely focused on how Las Vegas was an extreme extension of American anti-urbanism (per Venturi et al's groundbreaking 1972 book Learning from Las Vegas) that nevertheless has become 'accidentally urban' thanks to the massive pedestrian traffic the Strip generates. Well, the urban designer in me finds that interesting. But we're in a sorry state when thousands of planners come to Las Vegas and the focus is on architectural philosophy -- and not on the fundamental incompatibility of that sprawling city's economic, land use and transportation patterns with the increasingly uncertain flows of natural and human capital it depends on for survival
After the session was over, I asked a fellow on his way out if the speakers had discussed energy. He said "No. Absolutely not."
Disappointing, but not surprising.


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