New Geography

Author: Rick Harrison

  • People, Planet, Prefurbia

    The term “sustainable” relates to a concept called the “Triple Bottom Line” (TBL): People, Planet, and Profit (the three P’s), endorsed by the United Nations in 2007 for urban and community accounting.

    American suburban land planning is about the SBL (Single Bottom Line): Profit. In city after city, mindless cookie cutter subdivisions, with characterless architecture, serve cars more than people. This dysfunction is caused by the boiler-plate regulations; engineers adhere to the minimum dimensions mandated by city ordinances to gain density, which maximizes developer’s profits. City council and planning commission members are appalled by the monotonous plans developers submit. Subdivisions that meet the minimums must be eventually approved. Developers are judged as evil, but they rely on the engineer who simply follows the city rules. Everyone mistakenly trusts that the consultant whose business card says “Land Planner” is the expert who will lay out the best development. However, “Land Planning” is not a regulated profession.

    What? Astonishingly there are no regulatory requirements to prevent anyone from representing him or herself as a land planner… you too can become one by simply printing the title on your business card, and everyone will assume that you, too are an expert. The suburbs have been ripe for a preferable system, one that we call ‘Prefurbia’. The concept was recently featured in Environmental Protection because of its potential for urban renewal. In terms of what it can do for suburbs, compare Conventional development to Prefurbia in terms of the three P’s of sustainability:

    People: Conventional Subdivision

    The land planner subdivides lots into ordinance minimums. If the city requires that a percentage of the site be set aside for open space, the area likely to be chosen is one that would not be fit for construction, rather than the best open space location for residents. Streets are designed first, then lots. No attention is given to the home or townhome unit other than a “pad” size to fit the structure. The main design focus is always the street layout (also true in Smart Growth plans). If there are any walkways, they parallel the street edge. The typical suburban maze-like street pattern is often difficult to drive through, and even more difficult for pedestrians, which further encourages a drive over a stroll. Suburban Land Use Transitions (zoning) place the lowest income (highest densities) in the most undesirable places. Positioning a high concentration of families overlooking loading docks along the rear of strip retail centers is not just acceptable, it’s encouraged.

    People: Prefurbia

    In Prefurbia, the Neighborhood Planner designs the pedestrian system first. Destinations for the walks are targeted as a basis for the open space “system,” assuring convenient pedestrian connectivity through the developers land. This is called a Pedestrian Oriented Design (POD). In Prefurbia, the suburban desire for space reigns supreme. Each home, attached or detached, is designed to assure that living areas are placed along the best views, giving the illusion of low density. The consultants who design the Prefurbia neighborhood (architects, planners and engineers) must do something that is foreign to them: they need to actually talk to each other! The architectural floor layouts, interior walls and window locations are an integrated component of the overall neighborhood, a first for land planning. Housing is situated so that each home sculpts a unique streetscape, eliminating monotony while embracing individualism (even if the architecture is somewhat repetitive).

    Prefurbia land use places higher density along the most desired site amenities without regard to residents income. In the design process, all income levels are treated as upper class. This new land use theory is called Connective Neighborhood Design (CND).

    Retail in Prefurbia is called the Neighborhood Marketplace. Neighborhood congregation areas such as patios, boardwalks, decks, ponds, etc., are placed along the rear of retail centers, which are also main pedestrian destinations. Since the Prefurbia pedestrian systems are separate from streets, there are few conflict points with vehicles. When walks are situated along streets they meander gracefully as far from the street edge as possible.

    Planet: Conventional

    Subdivision planning sets homes parallel to the edge of the street at the exact minimum distance allowed by regulations. The land planner must stretch the street as much as possible through the site to gain density (also true with Smart Growth design). The developer is burdened with constructing enormous street and utility main lengths to achieve the greatest density. Traffic flow is an afterthought.

    Planet: Prefurbia

    The Prefurbia Neighborhood Planner designs something very unnatural… a plan with dimensions greater than the minimums. Using entirely new geometric theory made practical by new technologies, the Neighborhood Planner separates the street pattern from the positioning of the homes, which results in lesser street length, but maintains density. This creates more organic (non-paved) space – lots of it! It’s more art than science to create independent, meandering shapes that open up the streetscape. In this scenario, it’s possible to maintain density by reducing the length of street by (typically) 25% compared to conventional planning and up to 50% compared to Smart Growth principals.

    The extra landscaped area allows the Prefurbia Neighborhood Engineer to design with much lower environmental impact, and to reduce development costs. The flowing vehicular pattern reduces both time and energy when driving through the neighborhood. All of this together means that in Prefurbia, Green is affordable. Imagine the implications worldwide.

    Profit: Conventional

    A cookie-cutter subdivision developer relies on a price point to generate a profit. The local Land Planner is likely to design the same style for all clients with the thought that the minimum dimensions allowed by ordinance are in fact the absolute dimensions. Because of this, most, if not all, of the developments within the town will look and feel alike. Because competing developments look the same they must compete mainly on price. Selling cheaper to make a profit makes little sense. This is made worse when the Conventional (and Smart Growth) design requires the longest possible street lengths (and, therefore, costs) to achieve density. With the reduced lot values today, building excessive infrastructure from Conventional and Smart growth design can make many developments unprofitable.

    Financial Sustainability: Prefurbia

    Profit is not the correct word to describe the financial advantages of Prefurbia. A home is not something that is disposable after the initial sale. Subdividing land sets a pattern that continues to exist for many centuries. An average home sells once every six years. If the number of residents for each home represents just three people, a 100 unit layout will affect the lives and finances of 10,000 people over two centuries. The financial advantage of Prefurbia is based on a significant reduction of infrastructure that’s needed for development, which allows more funds to be spent on curb appeal. The ability to pay more attention to character building (architectural and landscaping elements) without increasing the initial home price provides a tremendous market advantage.

    Will the home buyer or renter prefer the claustrophobic garage grove subdivision over the beautiful, functional, open Prefurbia neighborhood? The advantages will continue to provide financial sustainability every time a resident resells the property.

    And with a significant reduction of public infrastructure, the municipality is the big winner. A 25% reduction in streets translates into 25% less cost to maintain, yet the tax base stays the same. With the increase in open space, Prefurbia neighborhoods can justify an increase in density that reduces the effects of sprawl.

    Perhaps the best news is that Prefurbia can be ideal not just to develop new suburbs and exurbs, but to redevelop urban areas… and maybe to rewrite the triple bottom line to People, Planet, Prefurbia.

    Rick Harrison is President of Rick Harrison Site Design Studio and author of Prefurbia: Reinventing The Suburbs From Disdainable To Sustainable. You can view a portfolio of pictures and videos of prefurbia at his website, rhsdplanning and at prefurbia.

  • Solar Gains On The Green Competition

    The living room of my electrician friend Harry Gres was filled with solar panels which were destined for his roof to demonstrate the advantages of his new eco-business venture. In the spirit of Herbert Hoover’s campaign pledge of a car in every garage, Harry envisions solar panels on every roof (including garages).

    I know very little about solar electric generation, but I was once a very satisfied owner of a 10kW wind energy system back in the (failed) green era in the early 1980s. Wind generation is very visible. When the blades spin on a wind system one can imagine a generator producing power. The whop-whop noise means the electric meter is turning backwards, a beautiful noise indeed. Harry Gres will have a silent 5kW system on top of his roof; the only visual excitement will be to see the electric meter spinning backwards during sunlit hours. Fortunately, here in Minnesota we have an abundance of both wind and sun.

    Harry’s excitement about a self-sufficient future was apparent. He explained how in his latest- generation solar system, each panel powers its own inverter, so shade in one area does not shut down production. I did not know that in earlier, typical solar systems the entire grid shut down if one panel was in the shade.

    I asked the million dollar question: What’s the cost? Harry explained that you could buy a $50,000 SUV that in 5 years would have little value, or purchase a solar array that would produce electricity for 25 years. I was able to figure out that the system cost 50 big ones. He then went on about how it was not the price, but rather the stewardship of the earth that was important. He also went on about the 30% tax credits which I’m not a fan of for a variety of reasons that are too lengthy to get into here.

    I was skeptical about a 5kW, $50,000 solar system, even though I’ve been deeply rooted in the green industry for 25 years. As a customer, I recently built my own green certified home, and back in 1983 I built a net-zero home (it produced more energy than it used) that used wind generation.

    As a professional, my business is designing sustainable neighborhoods for my developer customers. When I built my green home there were about a dozen other “green” homes that had recently been built and were on tours or home parades. All of them had elaborate — and expensive — geothermal heating/ventilating/air conditioning systems as part of their green packaging. I decided that spending a few thousand dollars on a highly efficient conventional HVAC system was a better investment than spending upwards of $50,000 on a geothermal design. My $200 natural gas bill for my 3,600 sq. ft. house during one of the coldest Januarys on record proved that I had made the right choice.

    Geothermal systems get a lot of buzz. The green certified homes I visited sold quickly at the asking price in a terrible housing market. Most sold for over a million dollars. But a new green home has a low energy bill not because of its geothermal design, but because its emulation of “thermos bottle” construction means that it requires little heating or cooling.

    While Harry was giving me the sales pitch on the $50,000 panels I began to ponder: What if those green homes on parade had been designed with solar arrays instead of geothermal systems? Had they used highly efficient HVAC systems instead of geothermal ones, the homes could have come to the market at the same selling price, and then had free electricity.

    Wind generation may be cheaper to install, but the chances that you’ll get a wind system approved in your dense neighborhood is pretty much a fantasy, whereas the solar array is likely acceptable anywhere. A wind generator is really cool: Directions are not necessary and guests always have something to converse about. The owner of a wind generator does not have to worry about shadows or cloudy days, only about those times when the wind is calm. Wind can happen 24 hours a day. On the other hand, the solar array does not produce the loud whop-whop-whop sound similar to a helicopter hovering a few feet over your and your neighbor’s homes.

    The $26,000 I spent in 1983 for the wind generator would be equivalent, after inflation, to spending $54,000 today. So— those who purchase solar systems like Harry’s today will spend about the same post-inflation dollars that I spent in 1983, and they will have the prospect of free electricity.

    Given the mindset of the new green home buyer, and the apparent success of those who sell homes with geothermal systems, maybe $50,000 for the prospect of solar electricity is not so farfetched. The more I began thinking about this the more excited I became for my friend’s new venture.

    Unlike wind power, which can never hope to achieve high volume distribution, solar panels have the potential for high production numbers. Relatively high sales numbers foster competition, which drives research and development for product evolution.

    As an example, back in the 1980s I sold $10,000 desktop Hewlett Packard Workstations along with a $5,000 Civil Engineering Software package we developed. For today’s market, we developed a $995.00 sustainable neighborhood design software package that works great on a $300 notebook. Comparing the systems we sold in the 1980s to those we sell today at 1/10 the cost is like comparing the Model T Ford to a ZR1 Corvette. Profits from the early adopters of those expensive computer systems financed the research and development that eventually led to the price/performance ratio we take for granted today.

    So is Harry onto something?

    I hope Harry, his family, and all those who jump in during a deep recession profit greatly from this risk he’s taken on. I hope the day comes when we look up at the low cost energy producing tiles on our roofs and think back to the entrepreneurs like Harry Gres that risked all on a venture to make it possible. That’s the American spirit that we need to get back to.

    Rick Harrison is President of Rick Harrison Site Design Studio and author of Prefurbia: Reinventing The Suburbs From Disdainable To Sustainable. His websites are rhsdplanning and prefurbia.

  • Farmland Prices: The Cost of Growing A Suburb

    Summer in Minnesota – land of 10,000 lakes — is, for many families, about boating, with the Harley the preferred mode of ground transportation. In winter, snow mobiles are popular. Hunting and fishing replace the corner coffee shops as hangouts. Three car garages are considered a minimum – four even better!

    So how did it come to pass that out-of-control land prices would destroy the economics of housing in this small-town region? And why was the pattern repeated in markets like Las Vegas and Phoenix?

    In the 1980’s the Metropolitan Council in Minneapolis became concerned with sprawl. The MET Council thought Portland, Oregon’s policies to control sprawl by creating an Urban Boundary would be beneficial to the Twin City area, a seven county region. This area is topographically simple: no ocean boundary, and, unlike Portland’s region, no mountain ranges. The MET Council did not anticipate that their attempt to control growth would end up contributing to it.

    Farmers who owned land with sewer capacity outside the boundary knew that its value had just skyrocketed. When a supply — land — is limited, those that control it can name their own price. Within the boundary land was too expensive to develop affordable housing. So cities outside the MET Council’s control began to attract developers. Places that nobody had heard of much: Otsego, Albertville, Elk River, and Hugo are all a very long drive from the Twin City core. These towns had two important components for builders: city sewer and cheap land.

    As the tiny towns outside the Urban Boundary attracted more development, they also attracted the national developers. All of the nation’s Top Ten Home Builders discovered this region. Each year 25,000 or so new homes were built and quickly sold to suburbanites who preferred a 30 to 40 mile commute over living near the city core. (Keep in mind that Minneapolis / St Paul has one of the nicest core areas of a major US city. Even downtrodden sections look pretty nice. And Minneapolis stays alive in the evenings and becomes a social Mecca that is also relatively safe.)

    Much of the escalation in home pricing was due to a bidding war over developable farmland. National builders, using their Wall Street dollars, competed for desirable acreage. If Farmer Fred was able to sell his property for $50,000 an acre, when Roy next door put his farm up, the starting price was $50,000 and the final fee was likely to be $60,000, the starting point of the next site for sale. By 2005 the outer small town land that could have been bought for $12,000 an acre a decade earlier was worth more than 10 times that amount.

    In the past, builders would look at the price of a finished lot, and assume that the house they built on it would cost a maximum of four times the finished lot price; a sort of “one-quarter” rule for land costs. If the lot cost $30,000, they would not build a home that ultimately cost more than $120,000.

    By 2005, if outer suburban land sold for $150,000 an acre and the density (after required park areas, wetlands, buffers, and shoreline zones) was two homes per acre, that meant that $75,000 of a new suburban home was in raw land costs. Add to that $25,000 in construction of roads, utilities, fees, etc, and the lot price skyrocketed to $100,000. Using the one-quarter rule, this meant the builder would need to get $400,000 for the finished home.

    At the 2006 Land Development Today Breakthroughs conference I spoke about our research into the impending market crash and its basis. The market had just begun to show signs of slowdown, and nobody was predicting a big fall.

    Our “study” was based on a comparison of our local housing market in the Minneapolis region with markets where we were working in about 40 States. It involved a simple search of major builders in the top markets. We looked at areas where land prices were escalating much faster than inflation in order to see the common elements. The National Association of Home Builders average national price for a 2,400 square foot average home was $264,000. It should be no surprise that impromptu results indicated the average price of a 2,400 square foot home in Phoenix was $331,000 (20% above average), in Las Vegas $442,000 (40% high), and in the Minneapolis suburbs $349,000 (25% high).

    Weather was not one of the common elements. But all three areas — Las Vegas, Phoenix, and the Twin Cities — had explosive growth for two decades until 2007 (2006 for the Twin Cities), and all three had most, if not all, of the nation’s Top Ten Home Builders selling and building.

    In March of 2005 one of my clients made me an offer. If I convinced a certain farmer to sell, I would receive not just the planning fees, but also 5% of the profits. The land in question was about an hour’s drive from the urban core during rush hour traffic. I looked at the site and took out the slope restriction, the Department of Natural Resources tiers, the wetlands, the buffers, and the land that was otherwise not buildable, including the rolling surface areas that resembled more Moto-Cross course than residential developable land.

    The cost for the remaining buildable area would have been about $300,000 an acre. The numbers simply did not work out. Land prices had reached the breaking point. Since there was no possible way to profit, my 5% of zero would still be zero. I suggested that my client not do the deal, and saved him from financial ruin.

    It’s easy to make Government the scapegoat. Even though the MET Council set in motion policies that likely caused sprawl by trying to curb it, it was not the cause of land prices going out of control. All the major developers with their deep pockets outbidding each other for over a decade was what did the economics in. Today, housing prices in the Twin City market have plummeted to a more realistic point that is about what the national average was in 2005.

    Five years before the crash many actually believed that high land prices were a sign of a great economy. Well guess what? They were wrong.

    Rick Harrison is President of Rick Harrison Site Design Studio and author of Prefurbia: Reinventing The Suburbs From Disdainable To Sustainable. His websites are rhsdplanning and prefurbia.com.

  • Project Development: Regulation and Roulette

    The site plan logically should be the key to approval of a development project. Yet in reality, the plan is secondary to the presentation. My conclusions are based upon experience with well over a thousand developments over four decades, most in the mainland USA. And what I’ve observed is that the best site plan is only as good as the presentation that will convince the council or planning commission to vote “Yes” on it. No “yes” vote, no deal, no development.

    Each presenter deals with the dog-and-pony show in his own way. There’s an endless variety of styles (or lack of styles). All of these public meetings have one thing in common: The neighbors (if there are any) will be there to oppose the new development.

    Not Too Long Ago…
    In the old days there were three factions: The developer presenting the plan, the neighbors opposing the plan, and the council listening to both sides. If the development was high profile, someone from the local press might also show up. The planning commission and council are fully aware that all plans will be met with neighborhood opposition, and they will have to listen to lengthy complaints along the route to approving (possibly) the plan.

    In the past, the citizens sitting on these boards would most likely dismiss Elwood and Betsy Smith’s complaint about how a development in their back yard would invade their privacy, and would vote in favor of the new master planned community instead.

    How It’s Different Today
    Today there is often an additional audience. Televised meetings provide an entire region of neighbors. The on-screen council listens to the neighbor’s objections, no matter how absurd they may be, then answers directly to the camera, showing the general community watching at home that they really care about every citizen’s opinion. The council member must never appear too much in favor of the developer, as that could be misconstrued as not caring about the citizens he or she represents. A televised Council member hears the Smith’s complaint with a very concerned on-camera look, explains how maybe we have too many new homes in this town, and proceeds to tell viewers that the developer might want to consider a buffer and a drop in density. Concerns have changed from developing economically sensible neighborhoods to “please elect me Mayor when I’m on the ballot”.

    Planning Outside The USA
    Our first large site plan done outside the States was in Freeport, Bahamas. In 2000, when we were first contacted to design Heritage Village, we asked about doing presentations to the city council and planning commission to help move the approval process along. We were told that the development company and the regulating entity were the same, and if they liked the plan it would be built! That is exactly what had happened.

    Our next attempt outside the USA was not so easy. In Mexico City when we asked to sit down with government officials to change policy to create better neighborhoods, the developer said… No. At the time, we did not understand why it was so critical that we were not to suggest changes.

    We Discover A Superior Foreign System
    We wrongly assumed that all planning outside the USA could have similar problems, with restrictions that were absurdly prohibitive for designing great neighborhoods. It was only when we worked in Bogota, Columbia last year that we had the opportunity to work within a system that may not be so backwards after all. Our request to meet with the authorities to show them new ways to design neighborhoods was met, as it had been in Mexico City, with an absolute… No.

    We then asked for an opportunity to present the plan, and were told that was not necessary. Being that it was Columbia you can imagine our first thoughts. Cartels? Maybe corruption? The reality was much simpler. Since our plans met the minimums (they actually exceeded them), they were automatically considered approved. Imagine that – no neighbors to complain! If everything conforms, it should be approved … right? Just plain common sense.

    Zoning-Compliant Projects Should Be Exempt From Public Meetings
    When you think about it, why wouldn’t this work in the USA? if the development plan being submitted meets or exceeds the zoning and the subdivision regulation minimums, why does it need to go through any public approvals at all? The American developer often faces months or years of delays, enormous interest payments, and tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on consultants and legal help to re-create plans that conform. Those massive sums could go towards making better neighborhoods, better architecture, better landscaping, less environmental impacts, and more affordable housing.

    We’d Still Need Public Meetings
    The public would still have plenty of input on regulation and zoning exemptions, where public citizen input is valuable. If a developer is proposing something that goes below minimums or does not conform to zoning regulations, then it is reasonable to go through the more time consuming process that we currently have. This brings up the question of how the developer would introduce something different to the written law. This could be a problem under typical PUD (Planned Unit Development) regulations, which typically allow blanket changes to the minimums when alternative designs are not covered by typical zoning.

    This PUD Pandora’s box, once opened, can have devastating results if the regulators and the neighbors both agree that the plan is simply not good enough. The developer thinks the plan is just dandy as is, but in reality most PUD proposals are simply too vague to be functional. A battle of wills that can last years often ensues.
    In the end , these expensive delays increase lot costs, and the home buyer ultimately pays. If a special ordinance such as PUD, Cluster Conservation, or Coving was specifically spelled out in a rewards-based — instead of a minimums-based — system, developers could get benefits for great plans complete with open space and connectivity, typically density and setback relaxations.

    While writing Prefurbia, we began to ask ourselves, how did we take something so simple and let it get so out of control? The third world countries are progressive enough to actually allow developers who comply with the rules to quickly build their neighborhood. Maybe they are not so far behind us after all.

    Perhaps our regulations and planning approach is intended to keep the system “busy” with billable hours. Imagine if we could get a conforming plan stamped, and the next day construction could begin. How many billable hours would be eliminated, how much construction cost and land holding interest saved? That would be very hard to calculate, but it’s likely significant.

    “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it…” Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth

    The inconvenient truth won’t win us many friends in the consulting industry whose incomes depend upon generating billing time in meetings. But can we afford to continue down the path we are presently on? We need to take a hard look at the regulations. Are they written solely to provide the highest living standards? Or do they generate the highest billable hours for the consultants who propose them?

    Rick Harrison is President of Rick Harrison Site Design Studio and author of Prefurbia: Reinventing The Suburbs From Disdainable To Sustainable. His websites are rhsdplanning and prefurbia.com.

  • Smart Growth? Or Not So Bright Idea?

    Smart Growth and New Urbanism have increasingly merged into a loosely aligned set of ideas. The benefits of this high-density housing viewpoint are fast becoming a ‘given’ to planners and city governments, but studies that promote the advantages often omit the obvious disadvantages. Here are some downsides that show a much different story:

    Smart Growth or Dumb Idea?

    One goal of Smart Growth is to move our society away from dependence on cars, and many Smart Growth plans intentionally make it difficult to drive through the neighborhood, making walking more inviting. Smart Growth planners advocate short blocks in a grid pattern to distribute traffic (vehicular and pedestrian) evenly within a development. These short blocks produce a multitude of 4-way intersections, and add a multitude of those trendy “turnabouts,” to make a bland site plan look more interesting.

    But all of this together destroys “flow”. On the other hand, in a grid planned neighborhood you might drive a straight line with an occasional turn, giving the impression of a much shorter drive than a curved subdivision. But with short blocks, a driver must stop completely, pause, then when safe accelerate through the intersection onto the next intersection, then repeat… multiple times. This scenario uses a tremendous amount of energy; the car eats gas.

    To understand this point clearly, go out and try to push a modern car. All the safety and convenience features, even in the most basic car sold today, add weight. Even a Toyota Prius is just under 3,000 lbs. While a given model may get great mileage the bulk of energy consumed is in getting the thing moving from a full stop. Should a vehicle maintain a constant flow (at any speed), the energy usage plummets, compared to stop-and-go traffic patterns that intentionally force conflicts.

    To make matters worse, the majority of vehicular vs. pedestrian accidents occur at intersections. Smart Growth designs have many more intersections than conventional suburban plans . Even more dangerous, Smart Growth walkways are placed close to the where the cars turns. Check out Traffic by Vanderbilt for an understanding of the psychology of driving.

    One may argue that cars will become more efficient. So what? This stop and go scenario also consumes time.

    Rooting Out Tree Issues

    Nobody can argue against the character of a tree-lined street… no one, that is, except the city Public Works department that must maintain structures being destroyed by trees growing in close confines to concrete walks and curbs. Smart Growth/New Urbanist compact front yard spaces are typically 10 feet or less. This simply cannot provide for enough room for tree growth when there is a 4’ wide walk typically a few feet away from the curb, the area where street trees grow. Without trees to define the street, these solutions have very little organic life to offset the vast volume of paving in front of each porch.

    Now and in the near future there will be a new era of solar heat and power, most of which will be mounted on the roofs of homes. Guess what blocks the sun’s energy? Yep – street trees! High density means that the proximity of trees to roofs will deter the sun’s energy from reaching those solar panels.

    Get Real About Presentations, Porches and People

    Typically, when a high-density development is proposed, the renderings show large green common areas bounded by homes with grand porches. The presentations usually show only a few cars parked along the street, and plenty of residents enjoying the spaces lined by mature trees that have had about 20 years of growth. This misrepresentation helps to win over councils, planning commissions and concerned neighbors. What is not shown in the presentations for approvals are claustrophobic, intense areas, such as the typical street most residents will live on, or perhaps the views down the alleys.

    There may be some neighborhoods that are built as represented, but architectural and land planning consultants are likely to stretch the truth more than a wee bit to gain approvals. Where can we see the original presentation images compared to what actually gets built?

    Those inviting large porches where neighbors sit and gossip in the presentation: Do they ultimately end up as stoops hardly large enough to fit a standing person? Those large mature trees: Are they actually just seedlings? Does the real streetscape have people walking on the typically narrow 4 foot wide walkways? How many people are walking along the roadway instead? Are the streets lined with just a few cars, as the renderings show, or are they packed with unsightly vehicles, while the nice cars are likely stored in the rear garage?

    The Evolution of Pavement

    Suburbs have changed during the last few decades. For example, in Minnesota thirty years ago an average suburban lot would have been 15,000 square feet and 90 to 100 feet wide. Today, 8,000 square feet and 70 feet wide would be more typical. In a conventional suburban plan, there weren’t any alleys, and the front loaded driveways were appropriately tapered. There were few side streets. The lots might have been 20% larger than in a Smart Growth high density plan, but the street layout might have had about 30% less linear feet of street compared to a Smart Growth grid layout. In the south, where the typical suburban lot is about the same size as that high density lot, the numbers favor the conventional layout even more; the total paved surface area could be 50% or more lower. So, the Smart Growth/New Urban plans place a greater burden on the tax payers to municipally maintain (more) paved surfaces.

    A Final Consolation…

    In reality, fire and police departments, as well as traffic engineers, review suburban development plans. And often the original high-density narrow street proposal doesn’t make it all the way to approvals. With or without the popularity of Smart Growth and New Urbanism, a much wider paved section or a compromised width is often the ultimate result.

    Rick Harrison is President of Rick Harrison Site Design Studio and author of Prefurbia: Reinventing The Suburbs From Disdainable To Sustainable. His websites are rhsdplanning and prefurbia.com.

  • Why Today’s Green Era May Fail

    Much of the debate about ways to create a landscape of green homes today has focused on the new tax credits for residential energy efficient windows, solar panels and geothermal options. Passive solar and other design methods which make more sense have yet to qualify for tax credits. If history is any guide, this is an error that may take us down the wrong path.

    Yesterday And Today

    To best understand the direction of today’s green movement, let’s remember the first green era, when the Carter Administration offered a 50% tax credit to solve our energy consumption and pollution problems. The most prolific of the tax financed energy saving devices were unsightly rooftop solar water heaters that marred the suburban landscape. Those solar units cost $5,000 or more installed (1983 dollars). So you, the tax payer, financed $2,500 per home. Unfortunately the heaters had a short life span. Over a decade most wore out and disappeared. The good news was the developed landscape looked better without those things … the bad news was the tax payers likely paid billions for systems that quickly failed.

    Back then, I too was a participant in this green era. I built a 1980’s state-of-the-art home: Passive solar, earth bermed, with a 10kW Bergey Wind Generator, of which the tax payers reimbursed me $13,000.

    With “passive” solar, the sun heats up a dark brick floor in the home, which in turn heats the home on a sunny winter day. In the picture here, you can see the south-facing windows, which allow the sun through to heat the dark tile floors. The bricks were built upon a thick concrete base which stored heat over-night; this is known as the “battery”. No complex systems are needed as the home itself is the collector. It proved to work well.

    The City of Maple Grove, Minnesota, where the home was located, had passed a Wind Generator Ordinance allowing a 100 foot tall wind system to be built on a small city lot with just a permit. Perhaps it was the first city in the country with such a ruling.

    So we constructed a 100’ tall tower with a 10kW Bergey Wind System with its 23 foot diameter blades. A quarter century before today’s Green movement, we had a “Net-Zero” home (it produced more energy than it used).

    The neighbors however, were not enthused, and waged a war against the city, resulting in Maple Grove being the nations first city to repeal a Wind Generator ordinance. Years after the construction, the City made a large offer and bought the generator from me. There was no recovery from the tax laws, so I got to keep the $13,000 credit.

    In 1983 this home cost about $121,000. Twelve years later it was appraised at $186,000. It’s architectural oddity severely limited it’s resale potential. In those years of good home appreciation, had it been a conventionally built, the nearly 4,000 sq.ft. lake front home should have been worth a minimum of $350,000. I had lost nearly $200,000 by going green. In fairness the loss was due to the underground construction and lack of curb appeal, and had nothing to do with its passive solar design, which is why we used passive solar again on our new home.

    Late in 2008, I found myself building Green again, this time as a requirement of a land purchase I made from the City of St. Louis Park, Minnesota. I had to agree to build to MNGreenStar certification, a derivative of LEED modified for severe cold climates.

    This time, in a similar situation to the ‘80s, the housing market downturn coincides with an increase in energy awareness and we have a government controlled by the Democratic Party. We have not found any new Green solutions that simultaneously reduce both initial housing costs and energy consumption. It seems that higher an EnergyStar rating on an item, the more expensive it becomes. The option today still remains to pay more now, for the promise of reduced costs later.

    With most Green ratings there is a list of requirements (with MNGreenstar the “list” is 36 pages long in tiny sized fonts) the builder must contend with to earn “points”. MNGreenstar is modeled after LEED which also contains many “social engineering” requirements.

    I also had my builder, Creek Hill Custom Homes, apply for National Association of Home Builders “Green” certification. My Certification comes with a HERS Rating of 59. I have no idea what that means but I’m told it’s pretty good. It’s on an EnergyStar sticker for the entire house.

    Why Passive Solar instead of Geothermal?

    Since Passive Solar is a very low cost design method and our home has a large unobstructed southern exposure, it simply made sense. This first winter the passive solar was inoperable because we discovered Anderson delivered the wrong glass, reflecting the suns energy out, not letting it in. Regardless, our first gas bill for the January 2009 winter (most days the high was below zero) heating period bill was only $200 at a nice and toasty 72 degrees . We used a conventional 95% Bryant HVAC system with a 3 phase air exchanger, plus a separate gas heater for the garage, a 14,000 BTU Fireplace, and three separate gas cooktops – and 3,600 sq.ft. to heat.

    Considering that the average home sells every 6 years, a home buyer is not likely to recover the initial investment on a $20,000 to $60,000 geothermal system, leaving the cost benefit a future home buyer. There is likely to be a significant long term mortgage on the home, so the interest on a $40,000 geothermal system might eventually add up to over $100,000.

    According to a December 2008 study and report by Oak Ridge Laboratory for the US Energy Department, Geothermal Systems should reduce energy consumption 30% to 35% compared to typical conventional systems (not specifying what “typical” means). On our home savings in January, the coldest month in a decade, would have been only $66. At best we would save $500 annually with Geothermal. If we spent an extra $40,000 for geothermal payback ( even after factoring in the new 30% tax credit) it would take almost half a century ( without factoring interest). I’d be 108 years old by then.

    Had Anderson delivered the correct glass, our heating bill would have been much less than an active complex system (geothermal); there are no moving parts to passive solar.

    Sustainable Green

    We need efficient housing for the mass market home buyer at attainable pricing to make the largest difference. We desperately need many more newer and better technologies and methods than we have today. This will take the same type of research and development effort that the automotive industry maintains to be competitive. Twenty five years ago our government spent enormous amounts of tax payer dollars on grants for programs that no longer exist. We are entering a new era where government will likely make huge funds available for energy related technologies.

    How did the housing industry respond when consumers stopped buying? Why didn’t builders respond by going back to the drawing board to develop innovative and efficient affordable home construction? Where has that good old American innovation gone? We need real solutions that work this time around and we need them to be at prices the average home buyer can afford.

    Those applying for grants should show proof of concept of ideas in working prototypes before any money is released to reimburse their efforts. Even then, green still won’t take off unless this next problem is solved.

    Appraising the Situation… Or Not.

    This may come as a shock, but the home appraisal business does not factor in green at all. Not even those items that actually can clearly demonstrate a quick payback. Certainly a soy derived counter top (with questionable service life) won’t win over the bank, but there are sustainable green solutions. So, what good does winning Silver, Gold or Platinum Green Certification mean if the home is not worth a cent more for financing? To the average consumer what’s most important is valuation for financing. Because the appraisals give no extra value for highly energy efficient homes, lenders see no advantage to green certification. Fix the appraisal and mortgage side of green and there is hope.

    Are we Headed In The Wrong Direction?

    In some ways these difficult to comply with “go for the Gold” certification programs create roadblocks to success by adding unnecessary complexity and costs. The new tax credits for energy efficient windows, solar panels, geothermal, and wind energy ignore passive solar and other design methods which make more sense, yet earn no tax credits. New home construction is much easier than retrofitting an old home to be efficient, yet there are few tax benefits if building new. The middle class is unlikely to finance home improvements even with a 30% tax credit. Most likely only the wealthy can access funds to retrofit a home today, and take advantage of the tax credits. If we continue on the current path, this green era will fail, and in another quarter century the next generation will try again.

    Rick Harrison is President of Rick Harrison Site Design Studio and Author of Prefurbia: Reinventing The Suburbs From Disdainable To Sustainable. His websites are rhsdplanning.com and April 19, 2009