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Community Design
The ways our communities are designed and built have an enormous impact on how we live, work and play. In order to thrive, all residents – young and old, wealthy and poor, healthy and disabled – need easy access to employment, education, social outlets, health care, physical activity, clean air and water, and safe and affordable shelter. We are also learning that people need to have regular contact with nature.
Residents of the Upstate, along with most of the nation, have grudgingly become accustomed to development patterns that consume acres upon acres of open space, generate pollution, drive up infrastructure costs, and force us to spend too much of our time behind a steering wheel. What is the antidote? Policies that promote better community design.
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Conventional subdivision design
(illustration credit: Randall J. Arendt, Conservation Design for Subdivisions: A Practical Guide to Creating Open Space Networks, Island Press, 1996) |
Housing is a major part of our area’s increasing development footprint. We all have seen the numerous subdivisions popping up all around the Upstate. To ensure these developments are built to meet the needs of individual residents and the larger community, neighborhoods should be designed to promote active living, conserve natural resources, and enhance a community’s identity.
Cluster Subdivision Design, sometimes called conservation subdivision design, offers residents the best of both worlds – modern, single-family homes surrounded by woods, wetlands, streams, and other undisturbed green spaces. This design option is typically listed as an alternative to conventional subdivisions in local codes, but in fact all subdivisions should be required to conserve meaningful natural areas. Cluster subdivisions allow for the same overall number of units per acre to be developed that were already permitted, but the key difference is that new construction is designed to be located on only a portion (ideally, less than half) of a parcel of land. The remaining open space is permanently protected under a legal agreement.
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Cluster subdivision design: the same property designed as a cluster or conservation development yields the same number of lots but conserves more than half of the acreage as common green space and reduces infrastructure costs.
(illustration credit: Randall J. Arendt, Conservation Design for Subdivisions: A Practical Guide to Creating Open Space Networks, Island Press, 1996) |
Additional
resources & information:
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| Traditional neighborhood design is compact, walkable, and mixed-use. |
Traditional Neighborhood Design (TND) provides the opportunity to build a more socially cohesive and environmentally sensitive community by recapturing the qualities of the neighborhoods of old: houses located close to sidewalks, interconnected streets, and walkable distances to schools, parks, and grocery stores. Contemporary development has shifted away from the historic pattern of residential growth occurring around a core center of civic buildings, public squares, and houses of worship. Our communities are increasingly comprised of residential-only subdivisions isolated from civic and commercial activity. Although some homebuyers will continue to prefer separate, homogenous subdivisions, the market has not yet realized the potential of offering the alternative of TND.
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| Typical development patterns of the last 50 years involve separation of uses and auto-centric design. |
Popularized by architects Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, TNDs generally include the following:
- A discernable center: helps maintain a “sense of place” and serves as a potential transportation node for transit
- Most dwellings within a five-minute walk of the center: enables residents to use non-motorized transportation to access central amenities
- Variety of dwelling types, such as townhouses, single-family houses, and apartments: provides housing opportunities for people of all demographics (younger, older, kids, no kids)
- Shops and offices at the edge: provides easy access to work and other essential activities
- Small playgrounds close to dwellings: promotes recreational and community-building opportunities
- Small ancillary buildings permitted in back of houses: provides space for rental housing (e.g. for students or elderly) and small offices
- Schools within walking distance: promotes active living opportunities for children while reducing traffic and air congestion
- Streets connected by a network: decreases traffic congestion
- Street trees and narrower streets: slows traffic and creates a more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly scale
- Parking lots and garage doors are put at the rear of buildings, often on alleys: promotes a pedestrian scale and cohesive street aesthetic
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| Dilworth,
in Charlotte, NC, was built in 1891 and serves as a
model for… |
By incorporating these design elements, TNDs can create diverse and vibrant communities that facilitate human interaction, encourage physical activity, and enable people of different incomes and life stages to live in proximity.
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| …newly-developed TNDs like Vermillion, in Huntersville, NC. (Upstate Forever organized a field trip to these two communities in February, 2001.) |
Additional
resources & information:
- Congress for the New Urbanism
- NewUrbanism.org
- Local Government Commission
- The
New Old Neighborhood: New Urbanist Town Centers
Find Success in
2 Southern Cities
EnviroLink Handbook Southeast, 2005
- Carrington, Spartanburg, SC
- Griffin Park, Simpsonville, SC
- Verdae Development, Greenville, SC
- Acadia, Greenville, SC
- Kentlands, Gaithersburg, MD
- Vermillion, Huntersville, NC
- Habersham, Beaufort, SC
- I’on
Village, Mt. Pleasant, SC
Notes:
1. The Trust for Public Land, “The Land and People Relationship,”
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