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- Info
Sustainable development: How to make it work
| Author: |
Barnett, Jonathan |
| Date: |
1993 |
| Periodical: |
Architectural Record |
| Abstract: |
Uncontrolled urban growth is probably the greatest obstacle to sustainable development in the United States. Cities are spreading over the natural landscape far faster than population increases or economic progress require, while older urban districts with their valuable infrastructures are underused or abandoned. The design of new buildings can enhance sustainability; but a new colony of earth-sheltered, solar houses out on the suburban fringe is far more harmful to the environment than the same number of new, conventional houses on an existing street within an established community. Building on untouched sites always destabilizes natural systems and can mean losing valuable agricultural or forestland. Access to the new development requires more roads, more trips, more extensions of the urban infrastructure; in other words, more natural resources used and more pollution created. Despite a generation's experience with increasingly detailed federal and state environmental legislation, most urban growth is still out of control. The environmental impact statement has undoubtedly made new projects more responsive to environmental concerns, but the review process is cumbersome and applies only to major developments. Coastal zone management and stricter air- and water-quality standards have helped save sensitive dunes and wetlands, brought rivers back to life, and reduced smog. But rapid growth continues to create new environmental problems. Most development is still the result of thousands of local decisions made by individual communities about separate projects. Development regulations in the U. S. have traditionally been delegated by the states to local government, and home rule on development issues is strongly established and unlikely to change. Private real-estate investments in separate, competing developments have been the prime mechanism for urban growth; that is not likely to change either. Sustainable development is nevertheless possible. It requires four policy innovations that are well within the existing powers of states and local government; and there are current prototypes for each course of action. Taken together and combined with existing environmental legislation, they would add up to successful regional growth management and local design. 1. Laws establishing growth limits around existing cities and relating new development to the availability of infrastructure and public facilities. 2. Local zoning that ties development directly to the carrying capacity of the natural landscape and environment. 3. Public policies that make the creation of communities the primary objective of development regulation. 4. Restoration of natural landscapes in by-passed and derelict urban areas, and other policies to restore vitality to older cities. |
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