I recently ran head-on into the following phrase: “LID is neutral on growth.” This occurred in the context of a series of presentations in which several colleagues and I presented a design for a small community utilizing a collection of low-impact development (LID) design elements that we have labeled simply Compact Urban Form.
The controversy arose because our design was mistakenly understood as a commentary on growth in general, while parts of the audience failed to realize that our compact neighborhood design actually offered a higher level of growth than does typical suburban sprawl.
Of course, growth is driven by a number of macro/global factors, and, were we to decide to limit growth, stormwater is not an effective tool. An explicit position on growth requires entry into a dialogue that ultimately must address population, religion, gender inequity, real versus artificial economies, and a host of other fundamental formal aspects of the differing cultures around the globe.
In fact, the use of environmental regulation to determine whether human settlements, human economies, and the overall footprint of humans across the globe should increase or decrease has been a problematic approach that has often polarized otherwise sympathetic concerns and has typically resulted in conflict and unintended consequences.
In the long run, growth will be most affected not by environmental regulation but by emerging realities of petroleum depletion, climate, resource scarcity, freshwater availability, disease resistance, and the eminent crumbling of the house of cards that represents global economic structures and their political and social disparities. Stormwater alone may not matter a hill of beans.
On the other hand, stormwater, and specifically LID, has no excuse to remain neutral on sprawl, because critiquing sprawl requires no position on growth, but simply a position on the easily catalogued environmental differences between various types of growth.
Over the next few months, several colleagues and I will offer a series of articles that seek to shed light on the project of building community and the relationship between that task and stormwater management. The present article offers a general framework for the issues we find relevant to that task.
Why Sprawl Exists: A Simplified History
In support of that effort, the following is a gross simplification. Please excuse the necessary omission of detail in favor of the often-obscure general pattern.
At the end of World War II, the US enjoyed two important truths: We were apparently quite wealthy, and we had mastered the art of mass production. This allowed us to make lots of great things with the confidence that we could sell them. The mass-production capabilities of the war were applied to TVs, TV dinners, TV trays, vacuums, frozen apple pies, spectacular automobiles, and, eventually, houses.
The pattern of growth for all American cities–growth that had been stagnant since 1929–suddenly exploded in a somewhat homogenized pattern of separated uses dominated by single-family homes, shopping malls, and business parks. Federal lending policy, private banking practices, federal transportation policy, and, eventually, environmental policy severely limited the form of the suburban landscape while the true urban landscape was left to decay. Our love affair with the automobile was also supported by these policies. This suburban pattern was favored by the industrial and economic discipline of mass production. During this time, we were so enamored with the new that we readily consumed billions of nearly identical products, including buildings, with limited critique of their long-term value and almost no recognition of the value of what they replaced. We were so fascinated with the new that we were blind to the long-term costs.Sixty years of ensuing geopolitical wrangling to ensure an ongoing supply of cheap oil coupled with extensive legal wrangling to ensure the proliferation of mass-produced, mass-marketed goods and ideas kept this pattern going, sometimes artificially, and led us to believe that the “choices” we saw were the only choices available.
What we know today as the typical American suburban landscape–what we have come to believe is the only landscape Americans want–has, in fact, been the only thing on the menu for the whole of our lives. We really had no other choices.
This pattern that we have allegedly chosen for so long is generally referred to as Conventional Suburban Development (CSD). There is no durable scientific evidence that CSD is what we really want.
Continued Sprawl: Enter the Environmentalists
About halfway through this extravaganza, we began to collectively realize that we were messing in the nest, and the conservation movement of the early 20th century experienced its own explosive post-war growth. Again with great simplification, the movement addressed key targets including the exploitation of natural resources that was fueling post-war growth and the direct impacts of suburban growth on the immediate environment.
One of the more obvious results of the movement has been the continued desire to “green” development as a way to reduce environmental impacts. This process started by demanding that development look more like nature, a simplistic trend with pre-war roots. It has evolved to the gizmo-green phenomena we see today and represents an equally simplistic technique: Do what you want, then “apply some green stuff.”
The less obvious result is that much of the brilliant environmental legislation conceived in the 1960s and enacted in the ’70s, some of the most progressive regulation in history, has had the unintended consequence of exacerbating sprawl by both directly and indirectly opposing growth. In the simplest model, localized growth opposition caused projects, development, and populations to simply expand elsewhere, usually in a sprawling fashion because planning regulations still required sprawl.
The result has been an emergent schizophrenia in which our communities are driven by wildly conflicting goals in which no healthy economy can emerge or survive.
The Other Side of the Menu
In the late ’60s and ’70s, triggered by the growing awareness of environmental decay coupled with an emerging realization that development and growth economies were flawed in their long-term potential for sustainability, a small group of architects and planners began exploring development patterns that were common before World War II and that had generated far more lovable communities than those being turned out in the latter half of the 20th century.
They discovered that there were a whole host of possibilities on the back side of the sprawl menu that had been assumed to be obsolete, but which, in fact, offered a tremendous variety of answers to the emerging suburban problem, including:
* Walkable neighborhoods where kids were close to their schools and mom and dad were close to work
* Localized, familiar, and trusted businesses that kept higher portions of profit and wages in the community to spur greater investment and greater pride of ownership
* Smaller-scale, more flexible development patterns that could suit a range of uses so that buildings did not become obsolete after 10 years
* Neighborhoods that require fewer cars and shorter trips and offer, in return, a greater sense of community coupled with environmental
positives
* The provision of housing and neighborhood types for the full range of actual lifestyles that exist today, from empty nesters to college grads to each flavor of nontraditional family (representing the majority of individuals in the US)
* Opportunities for genuine, resilient growth without the necessity for ongoing suburban expansion
The discovery of these abandoned choices have evolved into various expressions including smart growth, transit-oriented development, livable cities, and the broader considerations of New Urbanism. For our purposes these patterns are loosely gathered under the heading of Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND).
Why TND Is Better for Stormwater
TND offers a single compelling reason for stormwater professionals to take a position on sprawl: Compact Urban Form. In short, it uses dramatically less land and, therefore, generates less disruption to watersheds.
Coupled with the other benefits of TND–including lower energy use, lower resource use, greater levels of community, diversity, symbiosis, longevity, and memorability–the ability for people to live close to schools, shops, and workplaces is the fundamental environmental advantage of TND.
Traditional neighborhoods come in varying scales, from the Upper West Side in Manhattan to Main Street in Sharon Springs, KS (population 1,100). They include a rich blend of amenities, resources, and opportunities that far exceed the divided feature set of CSD. By taking advantage of neighborhood schools, parks, plazas, and human-scaled streets, they reduce the total amount of land per unit (or enterprise) required to deliver highly functional and highly desirable results. During our current economic transition, TND patterns, both old and new, have exhibited higher economic resilience than conventional sprawl. Public agencies are discovering that unit costs for infrastructure, when measured per capita rather than per acre, are far lower for TND than CSD.John Jacob, professor and director of the Texas Coastal Watershed Program, has developed metrics demonstrating the stormwater advantages for Compact Urban Form and will present them in a future article. Paul Crabtree, president of Crabtree Group Inc., has also done extensive work on the infrastructure advantages of TND.
In new development, TND results in more land retained as farmland, natural areas, habitat preserves, and a host of other elements that help mitigate environmental problems ranging from heat islands to disrupted migration routes–and it specifically retains more land for stormwater treatment. For infill development, it means reduced pressure for continued sprawl at the edges.
By utilizing even timid densities (such as 10 units per acre) TND can require as little as 25% of the land coverage of CSD while delivering the same number of residential units and a much greater assortment of workplace and commercial opportunities in balanced and desirable neighborhoods.
Considering the other benefits that can be achieved by building (and rediscovering) wonderful neighborhoods, I will posit TND via Compact Urban Form as the universal best management practice and one that should be the starting point for any development consideration.Further Differentiating PlaceTND, of course, is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Within the full range of town making there are numerous settings within TND that are important in designing place and developing stormwater strategies. These may include rural edges, residential neighborhoods, downtowns, main streets, and regional corridors.
Each of these represents traditional menu items that require different approaches to both urban design and stormwater management. Stormwater (and other) responses will be different in each one, and professionals must understand the differing characteristics of each.
In fact, this has already been done in the form of the Rural to Urban Transect. This tool, simply referred to as “the Transect” and developed in part by Duany Plater-Zyberk, allows planners and designers to identify differing tools for land subdivision, development, architectural design, and infrastructure, and–very importantly–street and public space design.
The Transect creates the framework in which the appropriate collection of tools can be identified for different contexts. It helps us avoid using rural tools in downtown and also prevents us from using urban tools in rural settings. Differentiating between the six basic Transect settings allows us to assess larger-scale benefits of various configurations and artfully dial up or down the tools we use for various specialties.
In simplest terms for stormwater professionals, this means that we will do things differently in a residential neighborhood than we would in a business district. Where we might see rain gardens in planting strips in the former, we may utilize only permeable paving and limited piping on the latter. These differences have been demonstrated clearly in the Light Imprint Handbook (Low 2008).
Another key difference to consider is the repair of existing suburbs, known as Sprawl Repair. Many sprawling suburban locations have the bones of great towns in their centers but require substantial transformation. That transformation requires a vision toward a more compact future while an existing sprawling reality remains. Rather than treat such places as sprawl and apply sprawl-based LID, we need to utilize LID methods that do not prevent consideration of TND.
This means that simple approaches such as onsite treatment may be dialed down so that greater site coverage by useful urbanism can be achieved, with an understanding that the more compact urban form will allow for better overall performance of the watershed.
Beyond these examples, there is a whole world of road and infrastructure design that is closely associated with TND that also has implications for stormwater management and indicates counterintuitive best practices. Navigating this territory requires a general understanding of the full range of choices on the menu. The ones on the back side often taste better and are far more nourishing than plain old sprawl.
LID Neutral on Sprawl? An Example
As noted earlier, I believe it’s not necessary to take a position on growth when considering the full range of possibilities for urban form. There are plenty of options that allow for sensible growth without the negative environmental impacts and should make it easy for LID professionals to take a clear position on sprawl.
A neutral position assumes the professional need apply LID methods only to the extent that stormwater problems are mitigated, regardless of urban form. Yet applying LID to CSD still allows that development model to degrade the environment in many ways. If the LID professional has a position on the environment, it seems difficult that she could remain neutral on sprawl.
In our case study from Katy, TX (Dreiling, Crabtree, and Jacob 2010), standard LID methods were originally requested for a single-use, single-typology suburban development of cul-de-sacs and single-family houses (CSD). The resulting urban pattern could only work if residents commuted long distances and shopped outside of the neighborhood. Even the proposed schools were surrounded by seas of parking, prompting increased auto use. While the development might score points on stormwater, it would score poorly on vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas production, not to mention long-term social and economic durability.
Our counterproposal presented actual neighborhoods (TND) where needs could be largely met within the neighborhoods, where residents could operate businesses, where local farmers could sell products, and where many more people could walk in order to perform daily tasks. Additionally, it presented a much wider range of real estate products for sale, ensuring access to more customers than a typical CSD offering a single product.
The result was preservation of 75% of the subject site as functional agricultural lands or
naturalized stormwater treatment, coupled with an actual increase in the number of residential units and a dramatic increase in localized commercial, retail, and work space.
As LID professionals in the context of this case, we took a stance on sprawl and drove the overall neighborhood design to better achieve LID goals while also addressing a full collection of other environmental, economic, and social concerns.
It was our opinion that LID should necessarily pursue an interest in lowering a host of development impacts beyond stormwater. Thus stormwater professionals, as well as architects, planners, civil engineers, and builders, should consider themselves stewards of their sites and should seek to maintain or improve the health of any landscape in which they work.
This requires, at the very least, a stance on sprawl.
Conclusion: Are Stormwater Professionals Expected to Be Town Planners?
In short: Yes. We are all responsible for making our communities. We all play a role.
The neutral on growth/neutral on sprawl position suggests that some stormwater professionals are simply doing their part to improve the decisions of others without commenting on those decisions. This has also been a position held by some civil and transportation engineers for a long time. I believe it’s fueled both by a professional desire to remain disinterested and by an economic desire to avoid the complexity of opinion. I see this pattern fully in my own profession.
A dirty little secret: Silos are a problem. Specialization without synthesis, harmony, and orchestration makes for lousy music, and many of our current environmental problems are exacerbated by specialists who remain neutral on larger issues.
A focus on stormwater only can have unintended consequences that lead to a host of other environmental (as well as economic) problems, including a general increase in the stormwater problem at the scale of the region (or watershed). A focus on stormwater at the scale of the site fails to recognize the advantages that TND can offer at the scale of the watershed.
At the very least, I want stormwater professionals to take a diversified approach to stormwater management in different types of communities and avoid the desire to apply universally a set of rules that work in the suburbs but not in the city.
At best, I seek a collaborative future where the full discipline of building and maintaining civilization is shared and understood by the host of professionals who will work on that project. This collaboration will not only dismantle silos, but will allow us to discover simpler solutions to environmental problems that also happen to solve a host of other problems in symbiotic and integrative ways.
My position is this:
We are now, more than ever, seeing evidence of the global and local interconnections between habitats, natural systems, economies, industrial practices, food safety, climate, global energy production, and a nearly unlimited host of other factors. We are also starting to see examples of dying human habitats popping up round the globe.
None of us has the luxury of blinders anymore. None of us can remain in a silo, and none of us can relinquish our responsibility to test the larger rightness or wrongness of our endeavors. Even domestic concerns about congestion, social stress, and personal productivity require a stance on sprawl.
I believe we have to take stands and adjust our individual practices to focus on environmental and social positives, regardless of the source of the paycheck. We are obligated to apply pressure toward the good and to stop assisting the bad.
As agents of conservation, we all have at the very least a responsibility to understand where the actions we take with regard to stormwater management harmonize with the other issues that affect the health of the natural environment. Couple that with a newly important need to understand the best ways to construct and manage the human habitat both for environmental health reasons and for the simple sustainability of the valuable aspects of our culture, and we should all feel a desire to become generalists who can address a number of problems with common solutions.
There is little innocence in this game because we all participate: we all consume, and we all make decisions that affect the whole of the human habitat and, increasingly, the whole of the natural habitat. It matters where we buy our clothes and our groceries. It matters where we work and go to school. The projects on which we work as consultants have implications for the future from which none of us is sheltered.
Simply, it matters.
Understanding the tremendous differences between CSD and TND, and understanding that TND is explicitly about accommodating more growth without using more land, allows professionals of all sorts to take a position on sprawl while remaining neutral on growth. It gets us out of the growth business and into the design business where we belong.
Stormwater professionals are, necessarily, stewards, and as stewards it is imperative that, regardless of our professional specialties, we see ourselves as collaborators on the whole of environmental health and related approaches to development. Without the need to be either a pro-growth zealot or a no-growth NIMBY, there are legitimate concerns about the health of a given landscape that are affected by all aspects of development.
Stormwater professionals should see themselves in alliance with other environmental and development interests who seek to expand the repertoire of development types so that comprehensive environmental actions can be undertaken not as the result of required regulation, but as a natural byproduct of quality planning of the human habitat.
Rather than simply applying LID to CSD, we need to recognize that TND is LID and that, as LID professionals, we should favor a design approach that does more than one thing.
