Suburban Centers
from Center-ing Our Suburbs, by Richard Untermann (Planning Commissioners Journal #22, Spring 1996)

"Centers" are mixed-use areas of retail, commercial, and housing located at the intersections of selected major cross streets. They provide a variety of compatible shopping opportunities akin to the old-fashioned small town: grocery, drug, hardware, bank, doctor, dentist, laundry, shoe repair, and other local services-- all in close proximity. The changing demographics of our population also means that more people are likely to find Centers desirable places to live.

Would People Live There? The largest growth in the housing market is for smaller, non-traditional families -- people living alone, living together as unrelated individuals or as separate families. This market will exceed the need for traditional family dwellings in the near future, and non-traditional households have been better served in smaller units with access to good public services, shopping, and transit. Centers would also benefit the young, elderly, unemployed, and handicapped who often lack automobile mobility.

Centers would generally have higher densities than currently exist, as would neighborhoods close to a Center. Whenever possible, Centers would be connected by sidewalks to nearby residential communities, enabling residents to walk to shopping, recreation, transportation, and, for some, work.

Centers are premised on the belief that closer coordination between land use and transportation can reduce the use of automobiles, while leading to greater convenience in people's day-to-day lives. They represent one step in changing the fuel and land consumptive pattern that has dominated so much of suburban development since World War II. Centers take time, creativity, and sound planning to develop -- but will provide multiple benefits to those communities that take the step.

Richard Untermann is Professor Emeretus of Urban Planning at the University of Washington. He is the author of "Accommodating the Pedestrian: Adapting Towns and Neighborhoods for Walking and Bicycling," and has written several articles for the Planning Commissioners Journal, most recently Sidewalk Essentials (PCJ #27, Summer 1997). Untermann now resides in Santa Barbara, California, where he works as a consultant on planning and design issues.

Low Density Contributes to Sprawl
from Sprawl Is Like the Weather, by Brent Thompson (Planning Commissioners Journal #11, Summer 1993)

"Why do officials continue to contribute to land wasting development practices even when they would often profess to being against sprawl as well as being advocates of people being able to exercise their property rights to the fullest?

One reason is the widely held belief in the virtues of low density development. In the approval process for almost any development, there is a call for lowering the development's density. But those who testify against higher density don't seem to realize that the cumulative result of lower density development is sprawl.

Decision-makers listen to arguments for lower densities and believe they are contributing to livability if they reduce density on any given project. However, the result of lowering densities is that it takes more space to house people and to provide services for them. Distances between everything increase. As distances increase, the need for parking lots increases, because with greater distances, walking and bicycling are not convenient. Public transportation is not viable because bus lines cannot economically cover the huge spaces the cities consume for development.

The end result of this development pattern is the waste of land, the increased use of automobiles, the need for more parking lots, and greater air pollution. All this, of course, detracts from the very livability that was so eagerly sought with the plea for lower densities."

Brent Thompson, an Ashland, Oregon building renovator and property manager, was a member of the Ashland Planning Commission for eight years. He now serves on the City Council.

Compact Development Preserves Desirable Open Space
from Growing Greener: Conservation Subdivision Design, by Randall G. Arendt (Planning Commissioners Journal #33, Winter 1999)

"The first advantage of conservation subdivision design is the opportunity it offers to reduce infrastructure engineering and construction costs. Because of the development pattern is more compact, street and utility costs are reduced. In addition, conservation design can reduce the number of costly wetland crossings needed, since those parts of the site are within the open space conservation area.

The second advantage occurs during marketing and sales, when developers and realtors can capitalize on the amenities that have been preserved or provided within the development. These positive features can form the basis for an environmentally-oriented marketing strategy highlighting the benefits of living in a community where forest habitat, meadows, wetland buffers, and/or productive farmland has been preserved.

The "art" of marketing conservation subdivisions emphasizes that buyers of smaller lots are actually purchasing much more than their individual lots. With open space ranging from 50 to 65 percent, sales strategies focusing on this kind of amenity strike a responsive chord among many homebuyers, particularly when lots are laid out to maximize views of the conservation land."

Randall G. Arendt is a land use planner, site designer, author, lecturer, and advocate of conservation planning. He is vice president of conservation at the Natural Lands Trust in Media, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Conservation Design for Subdivisions and is principal author of Rural by Design: Maintaining Small Town Character.

Arendt is also author of, Open Space Zoning: What It Is & Why It Works, which appeared in Issue 5 of the Planning Commissioners Journal (July/August 1992).

Designing for Higher Densities
from Considering Residents' Needs in Planning for Higher Density Housing, by Clare Cooper Marcus (Planning Commissioners Journal #8, Jan/Feb 1993)

"Concerns about building over agricultural land around our towns and cities, and about long commutes and polluted air, are prompting increased discussion of how and where to build at higher densities. ... One of the key issues in doing this successfully is the site-planning of such housing. ...

In the 1960s I started questioning and interviewing residents of medium-density housing (row houses, town houses, walk-up apartments) as to what they liked and disliked about the places where they lived. ...

What do people want? They want a home with visual and aural privacy. They like views onto trees or distant city-scapes rather than onto rows of dwellings just like their own. They want a place where they can plant a garden and be private when they sit outdoors with a cup of coffee. They enjoy having access to some outdoor landscaped space shared with their neighbors as long as it is secure, well-maintained and suitable for their children to play in. They want to be able to park their car within sight of their home, and to have a front door which visitors can easily find."

Clare Cooper Marcus is a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches courses on social and psychological factors in the design of housing and public open space. She is co-author of "Housing As If People Mattered: Site Design Guidelines for Medium-Density Family Housing."

Small-Scale Multi-Family Housing
from Designing Multi-Family Housing for Residential Neighborhoods, by Rene Davids and Christine Killory (Planning Commissioners Journal #23, Summer 1996)

"Despite the challenges to the housing market presented by profound social and economic change, there are surprisingly few alternatives to the single family house, especially in single-family residential neighborhoods. Most so-called "multi-family housing" responds to purely quantitative criteria, packing the largest possible number of units on a given piece of land. When children are forced to play on walkways, in stairwells, in parking lots, or on leftover spaces scattered randomly about the site, the result is a living environment that doesn't work well for anyone.

Multi-family housing can create successful small neighborhoods within the community, if carefully designed. As architects, we've tried to employ built forms that foster residential privacy, as well as a strong sense of personal and family identity, while fitting in with the surrounding neighborhood.

Neighborhood opposition to multi-family projects tends to increase as projects grow larger in size. Developments of fifteen units or less usually don't evoke strong NIMBY-like responses, as they don't overwhelm their surroundings. Courtyard housing is a particularly suitable type for a variety of urban and suburban situations. As a compact building type, housing courts fit easily onto small infill lots unsuitable for other uses, allowing urban and suburban residential areas to be "densified" without altering the essential fabric."

René Davids and Christine Killory are partners in the architectural firm of Davids Killory. Details about the design of their courtyard housing projects can be found in their Planning Commissioners Journal article.