Dan Burden speaks about building walkable communities

Dan's Burden's presentation about livable, walkable communities is well timed given our collective need to reduce our carbon footprint by driving less. One neighborhood solution that's growing in popularity is the New Urbanist town. There are now hundreds of these walkable communities in the U.S., some in urban locations near mass transit and others in suburban and rural locations with an emphasis on agriculture. A universal design principle is the placement of homes within a 1/4 mile radius of the town center or transit stop. This means residents can walk to the town plaza to gather with neighbors, shop at the grocery store and other retail outlets, see their doctor, drop off a child at daycare, get their hair trimmed, have tea or coffee, jog in the park, etc.

A good example of a New Urbanist walkable town I've visited is Oshara Village in Santa Fe, NM. About 40 energy-efficient homes are built so far with environmental sustainability a requirement for all of the 750 planned homes and the commercial buildings. The town has a water reclamation plant that recycles water from the homes to landscape plants and trees in the 470-acre neighborhood, of which half the land is being preserved as open space.

An energy study done about Oshara found about a 50% energy and cost savings from green homes and between 60 to 80% less driving and energy savings in a walkable mixed-use community. Their website www.osharavillage.com has a downloadable energy use study by the non-profit New Village Institute; also a 10-minute DVD "The Oshara Model" summarizing the findings and discussing the value of walkable communities. Another good resource is the Congress for the New Urbanism: www.cnu.org.

Neshama Abraham Boulder, CO Neshama@abrahampaiss.com

posted by Neshama on 12/17/2008 1:03 pm

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