Gridlock drives developers to design wiser cities

There's something wrong with this picture, environmentalists say

February 25, 1999
Web posted at: 6:12 p.m. EST (2312 GMT)

By CNN Interactive Editor Stephanie Siegel

ATLANTA (CNN) -- For years, environmentalists have preached to the saved. They met to share findings from their trials and errors with new technologies, cheered and consoled one another when no one else was listening.

So why are the Home Builders Association, the Chamber of Commerce, and city, state and federal governments listening now? Not only attending, but sponsoring and speaking at Georgia's Greenprints '99: Sustainable Communities by Design conference this week.

"All kinds of factors have been stacking up over the years," said Alycen Whiddon, City of Atlanta assistant planning director. Neighborhoods have been eaten away by highways and strip malls.

Atlanta ranks as the Sierra Club's No. 1 sprawl-threatened large city.

Village Homes residents in Davis, California, traded individual lawn space for a communal vineyard

"We've got a real challenge now to reverse that trend," she said.

A total of 400,000 acres a year of American forest, wetlands, prairie and farm are chewed up to build residential and commercial centers, according to the Sierra Club.

The Georgia Conservancy, Natural Lands Trust and innovative developers are teaching zoning boards that the typical suburban development takes too heavy a toll on wildlife and human health -- polluting water with pesticide runoff from lawns and golf courses, and choking the air with exhaust because every store, church and school is beyond walking distance.

Some fear these efforts may be too little, too late.

CH2M HILL's plan to develop Arrowhead Springs, California, drew scorn from those who would like the natural hot spring to stay natural -- even though the company's plans stress integration with and public education about the native environment.

The Pennsylvania subdivision called Farmview owns the farm, so they could preserve this backyard view

The project's architect, Paul Bierman-Lytle, who does a lot of work in developing countries like Costa Rica, himself questioned whether even the most advanced U.S. initiatives are enough to save the planet from running out of resources.

Sustainable development by definition "meets our needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs," he said.

"Are our needs golf courses? Bubble gum? Tablecloths? I'm afraid future generations will look back and say, 'You guys missed the boat. You were doing sustainable development for your niche, but you weren't doing it for planet Earth.'"

An Englishman blasted conference presenters for ignoring European sustainability models, such as planting a tree for each one cut down. The United States is 30 years behind Europe, he said.

But American developers face obstacles to innovation.

"If you start talking sustainability to a banker, you may scare him off," said real estate consultant Greg Logan. "If it's like the last five deals he did, the banker understands that. To the degree something looked different, it would be hard to get the banker to lend."

And neighbors fight a planned development when they hear it includes small lots or attached or stacked housing -- a higher density than their houses were zoned for. They think it means their property values will go down, said Hugh Saxon, the City of Decatur's public works director.

Most high-density developers have put housing on every possible bit of land, cutting down all the shade trees and greenery, crowding traffic and parking, paving all the land so that stormwater backs up.

But the suburban subdivisions advocated by "Rural by Design" author Randall Arendt put houses on smaller lots to leave wide-open spaces within the neighborhood for orchards or cornfields, preserving the rural look people moved there for in the first place.

Village Homes residents in Davis, California, traded individual lawn space for a village green

Studies show people choose an average house in a good neighborhood over a good house in an average neighboorhood, he said.

And mixed-use developments, with apartments over corner shops, mean people don't have to get in the car for every errand. Old intown neighborhoods, which were built in that "European" or "village" style, attract suburbanites weary of long commutes.

Maybe only 25 percent of homebuyers prefer these environment-friendly communities to the average suburban home, Logan said, but the supply is more like 1 percent -- leaving a big, profitable niche. "All of a sudden ... it's begun to make sense to corporate America."

"Eventually sustainability will be bankable," said Jim Durrett of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. Atlanta's business leaders have recognized that improving the quality of life, whether by reducing drive time, planting trees or cleaning up the polluted Chattahoochee River, is in their self-interest, he said.

"If we could only get the price of the traditional (environmentally damaging) things that have been out there to reflect the true cost, these things would be no-brainers."

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