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I Think Our Environment is Crucial. Why

Should I Care About City Planning?
by Adam Shake · 8 comments

23 diggs 10 points 10 votes

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 Planning is an important element influencing sustainability of a town or city.

The design of an urban area has inherent in it a level of resource and energy use-the right
design can result in thrifty use of energy and resource savings, the wrong design can
create an energy hog for decades.

Twililight Earth is proud to present a Guest Article by George Osner

For instance, how much travel is required by the design and layout? Home to work, home to
shopping, home to school, trips for recreation and experience of nature and so forth. What is the
form of this travel? Some designs facilitate and raise the likelihood that many trips will be on foot or
by bicycle, others require that nearly every trip involves a car. Some designs work hand in hand with
transit, others virtually insure that transit cannot be an option.

In addition, different designs have substantially different amounts of resources used in their
development, and require differing amounts of energy and resources to operate. For instance,
low-density areas require, on average, more length of street per unit, and therefore more asphalt
and concrete to construct streets and sidewalks. The utilities beneath the streets-gas pipes and
electrical lines, water and sewer pipelines, storm drains, phone and cable TV lines, all must be longer
and therefore use more materials, and take more energy to install. Furthermore, they will require
more energy to operate as long and they are in use-water has to be pumped farther, electricity has
line losses, and so forth-and there are the added miles of lines requiring maintenance. Of course,
the more miles of streets, the more maintenance, the more potholes needing filling, the more
resources, energy (and cost!).

Individual separated units are less energy efficient than attached units. More materials are required
in their construction, and they require more heating and cooling energy for the same level of
insulation. Lower density, spread out units mean longer distances to everything, hence more trip
miles. In addition, they don’t create the “critical mass” for transit. Effective transit needs a large
number of people living within walking distance of transit stops. Savvy developers know that
property values increase dramatically around light rail and trolley lines, where people can walk to the
line, and will create “transit-oriented developments,” or TOD’s. Historically, rail and trolley lines were
used to create development opportunities, a kind of development-oriented transit, and smart cities
are again taking this approach.

Most cities have a form of zoning regulation that requires that different uses be separated-residential
with residential, commercial with commercial, offices, with offices, and industrial with industrial.
Often these categories are further separated into a dozen or more rigidly separated groups. In
practice, this means that the rules are set up to ensure that every trip to the store for a loaf of
bread or a gallon of milk requires that you get in your car, and that every trip to work also is a trip in
the car, usually of several miles (or many, many miles if you live in a “bedroom community”). This
type of regulation has been around less than 100 years. It was evolved in response to a need to
separate sensitive uses, such as housing, from noisy, polluting, hazardous industrial uses. But the
end result has been a rigid system that does not recognize the value of bringing daily commercial
activity together with the places people live. This type of zoning, together with public improvement
standards for factors such as streets, is the DNA that dictates our urban form today, and it is flawed.

What is needed to produce a walkable, sustainable, livable neighborhood for the 21st century in the
United States? We need to break down the separation of uses to get back to the basics of keeping
genuinely hazardous or obnoxious uses separate from living areas. We need to provide for more
attached housing and higher densities. We need to renew and revitalize our downtowns. We need

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 more grid street designs and less cul-de-sacs, breaking down the barriers to walking from place to
place. We need street and trail designs that make walking and cycling a pleasant and safe
experience, and that make it possible to go by foot or bicycle anywhere a car can go. We need to
design nodes of higher density to allow for viable transit lines, and commit to the installation and
operation of transit-and to making the transit trip a pleasant as well as useful and reliable one.

Most of all, we need committed and informed citizens who will participate in the civic processes that
generate our urban forms, that will hold government decision makers and staff accountable to
provide liveable, sustainable places.

I often hear that the typical suburb is simply giving the consumer what they want, that it is a pure
response to the market, that the suburban home is “the American Dream” desired by every citizen,
and that there is no role for those that would attempt to change this. The reality is that “what the
consumer wants” is heavily shaped by what the market has to offer and by advertising and media.
For many years the suburban home has indeed been presented as the ideal. We can no longer
afford to promote that outmoded model as a society. A good plan and good implementation can
influence urban form and enhance our cities, making them more liveable, more walkable, less
resource and energy-intensive. I hope you’ll get involved.

George Osner, AICP

George has been a planner for 33 years and his goal as a planner is and has always been to make
the future a better place for the coming generations. He believes that the urban form and the
relationship of the land uses within it and the transportation network are key to that brighter future.

George is also @gosner on Twitter and can be found there, vehemently defending the environment.
He recently wrote an article for the Grass Stain Guru and we are honored to feature him on Twilight
Earth.

photo credit: KimonBerlin

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 If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

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5. Beefs Effects on People, the Environment and Society

{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Pierrette Mimi Poinsett MD FAAP 04.30.09 at 8:52 am

Great article. However I think it is important to expand the paradigm to consider regions rather
than cities alone. How do we address city borders, urban-suburban-rural interfaces, people
living on the edges? There is a place for people to live in well planned dense communities.
However without our rural areas and the important agricultural products they produce, cities
cannot function well.

2 Bruce McClendon 04.30.09 at 9:14 am

Outstanding article, clearly stated and yet very comprehensive. I what to reinforce the
importance of public involvement and participation in all aspects of the development decision
making process. The real change that President Obama has been calling for, is all about public
empowerment. Planners should be at the front line and champions for citizen participation and
co-ownership of the consequences of development and redevelopment decisions.

3 Robert Borchard, AICP 04.30.09 at 9:29 am

As you know, I consider myself a “city builder” but city planning and design does not operate in
a vacuum at the scale that it is necessary for us to make changes. We are at a point in our
(humanity’s) evolution where the changes need to occur at a societal level. Our culture of
consumption needs to change. The things we value, family, work, entertainment, our
environment, need to be re-evaluated. As planners (city builders) we must also become
educators; advocates for a new world that has arrived (like it or not GW and friends) and our
window of opportunity is small! Climate change is upon us and we can plan for a smaller carbon
footprint. There must be a willing consumer for our product though! More important, at least to
me, we need to prepare society for the foreseeable consequences of the damage that we have
already wrought on our planet. Rising sea levels, changing water/agricultural crop patterns; our
forests, plant and animal life, everything around us is in a “shift mode” and we must start to
make adjustments NOW. We need to begin the process of educating the public on what to
expect and preparing for the necessary changes in our infrastructure. In the real world we are

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 dealing with, the carbon footprint is the easy part of the challenge before us. Guess I’m on a
rant, huh. Good day ole buddy; good job!

4 Cindy van Empel 04.30.09 at 12:14 pm

It’s good to see a fellow New Urbanist (or two!) here.

As George does, I get a bit tired hearing the same old saw about developers building what the
market wants. I’m not as nice as George. I say “nonsense”!

When population characteristics of buyers are shifting toward “empty nesters,” childless
couples, and unmarried people, I simply do not buy the idea that what these people really want
is a 3,500-square-foot house miles from the nearest store and nightlife.

No, what developers too often build is whatever is easy and cheap. People buy houses they
don’t really want in order to gain a toehold in the housing market.

Furthermore, what the market “wants” is not the same as what it can afford or manage to
maintain. I might want to live in Trump Tower, but if I can’t make the payments, then I have to
live somewhere else. Witness the sickening rise in foreclosures, which are ruining the families
who unwisely entered contracts they could not afford and are destroying the housing market
for those who own houses, but who want to sell for some reason.

Almost everyone loses.

Better we should build a variety of housing types in transportation efficient locations, which will
reduce residents’ transportation costs and allow people to live how they choose. The happy
byproducts are improved living conditions for everyone, more stable finances for municipalities,
and a more stable housing market.

5 David 04.30.09 at 1:10 pm

Great post, thanks for sharing it. I see some of these communities springing up, like Stapleton
in Denver, which reuse “dead” land into great sustainable communities - and it gives me hope. I
live in the country now, but sometimes I do wish I lived in a place where I could walk or ride
my bike everywhere and that was designed to be self-sustaining. Maybe someday will leave the
country…

6 George Osner 04.30.09 at 9:45 pm

Thank you all for some excellent comments that really extend the conversation.

It is so true that planning needs to encompass the whole realm, city and county alike. This post
focuses on the city part of the equation. The countryside serves so many critical
functions–three obvious ones–1) is is the place where most of our food supply comes from.
Even with emerging urban agriculture and a return to food gardening, most food will continue
to come from farms. 2) the countryside is the great bio-renewal area, where growing things

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 take in CO2 and regenerate oxygen, and where our companion species on the planet can find a
place to thrive. 3) the countryside is a landscape necessary for the renewal and regeneration of
our spirits.

I live in a city surrounded by farmland, and with natural landscapes at a distance beyond the
farmland. Both are vital parts of human life and survival. In regard to the farmland, this is very
much a human shaped landscape, and planning is needed to maintain it as a productive
element. This could be another whole column, but for now let me just say that a focus on
population in the cities and densifying them, rather than sprawling around the edges and
transplanting whole populations into ranchettes, is necessary to maintain our food supply, let
alone the other vital purposes of the countryside.

Yes, good planning and good planners are all about adapting to change, and change is what we
will be experiencing–in spades–in the coming decades. Planning as a means to address the
coming changes–another great topic for a future post–thanks, Bob!

This is such a vital topic, hope you keep the conversation going, online and in your home
communities. I invite you to join the dialog on Twitter–I’m @gosner there.

7 Al 04.30.09 at 9:59 pm

Awesome…

Now how do we get the rest of the world to think like us?

8 Don Bradley, Ph.D., AICP 05.02.09 at 11:11 pm

Thank you George, Bruce, Robert, and Cindy, for all of your thoughtful contributions. I believe
what we all can agree on
is that good planning and smart growth is so much beneficial
to no planning or as we used to call it “disjointed incrementalism”.
I,ve told students for decades that I believe that rural sprawl is
worse for the environment, people, and society than urban sprawl.
First, most civilized humans like to live fairly close to their families,
work, and other citizens who all contribute to the total culture.
We are learning now that is seems to be a necessity to get densities
higher to reduce travel distances to all of our activities which has
the intended benefit of being more efficient, saving time and resources as well as helping
reduce global warming and resource
depletion. The unintended payoff is that we may just all become
more tolerant, diverse, and enjoy living together in a richer urban
atmosphere. If we and our allies can assist in making urban and
regional planning in this nation less political and economic and more social and physical we will
truly serve the long range future interest
and the public welfare. Keep up the good work and fight. Don

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