This report studies the specific case of Highland Redevelopment as if would pursue a LEED ND certification. It highlights the major issues observed to fulfill compliance of LEED ND minimum requirements as it is proposed, as well as the importance of achieving this certification as a means to define a performance level of the development. / text

Smart Growth is a comprehensive approach to planning that aims to shape more compact and well-connected communities across the United States. Among its principles are leveraging existing infrastructure, developing around transit, providing a mix of housing types and price ranges, and increasing community participation in the planning process. However, research suggests the comprehensive approach at times obscures potential tensions between these principles, in particular when Smart Growth principles are applied to a specific property. This is the case in Austin, Texas’ Lamar/Justin Lane TOD, where the City of Austin is currently evaluating development scenarios for a publicly-owned 5.6 acre parcel located within the TOD area. How equity and access is addressed in Smart Growth comes to fore in conversations between the City and affluent, neighborhood residents. This report examines the history of Smart Growth, reviews its implementation in cities across the U.S., and considers how the City of Austin may learn from other cities. / text

Oregon's Statewide Planning Goals embody Smart Growth in their effort to revitalize urban areas, finance environmentally responsible transportation systems, provide housing options, and protect natural resources; yet the State defers to its municipalities to implement this planning framework. This research focuses on Goal 14 (Urbanization), linking most directly to Smart Growth Principle 7 (Strengthen and Direct Development toward Existing Communities). It assesses Eugene's, Keizer's, Salem's, and Springfield's growth management policies that specifically target infill development of single family homes against this Goal and Principle. Though these municipalities must demonstrate consistency with the same Goals (see Supplemental File 1 for this context), this research questions whether sufficiently different policy approaches to curtailing sprawl yield significantly different results. The primary analytical method is a logistic regression that uses parcel-level data to understand how administration affects development by isolating these policies' direct effects on observed outcomes (see Supplemental File 2 for this theory).

Development over the past sixty years has created patterned growth and expansion outward from city centers, separating residences from commercial areas and employment centers. This separation of land uses has increased automobile dependency, which increases vehicle miles traveled and associated greenhouse gas emissions. California Senate Bill 375 mandates the development and implementation of a “Sustainable Communities Strategy” in order to plan regional land use and transportation in a coordinated fashion. In coordination with this effort, the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments (AMBAG) is developing the Regional Implementation Plan for Smart Growth Development Strategies, which entails the identification of smart growth strategies that offer the greatest potential to reduce vehicle miles traveled and meet the 5% greenhouse gas emissions reduction target for the Monterey Bay Area. The major goal of this project was to assist AMBAG in determining the political feasibility of smart growth development strategies and identifying the most feasible strategies for the region. Political feasibility was determined by two factors: 1) support from the public/stakeholders, 2) “low-hanging fruit” potential, and one technical criterion: the potential to reduce vehicle miles traveled and the associated greenhouse gas emissions. The Regional Advisory Committee provided ten months of knowledge and expertise on stakeholder opinions v about strategies, barriers, circumstances for gaining stakeholder support, and resources for implementation. Additionally, survey results from planning directors the “low-hanging fruit” strategies. The quantified VMT/GHG reduction potential of smart growth strategies was another evaluation criteria and was used to inventory quantified reduction measures and their ranges of potential. The analysis identified seventeen strategies that met a set of thresholds for political feasibility. Based on these results, it is recommended that AMBAG consider these strategies in the development of their plan, by addressing the barriers to implementation, the conditions or circumstances for overcoming those barriers and gaining support from stakeholders, and developing the resources to assist jurisdictions with implementation.

This document is a professional project and academic companion piece completed to partially fulfill requirements for the attainment of a Masters in City and Regional Planning at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. The project is the City of King West Broadway Master Plan (Plan). The Plan was completed over the course of a year for a real-world client (The City of King) and provides new form-based code recommendations in the Plan Area. The Plan is included as Appendix A. The companion piece is intended to provide additional background research that was conducted during the planning process, but omitted from the final project. In the companion piece, I first explain why I selected the WBMP for my professional project. Next, I elaborate on the sources and inspiration for the goals of the project that are listed in the plan including grant requirements, input from the public, and current planning practices. Finally, I provide background research and justifications for two parts of the plan that have little reasoning in the text: mobilehome relocation law and the suggested development standards.

This report uncovers relationships between water quality and quality of life (QOL) through urban design. It shows that Smart Growth (a type of urban design) is a reasonable management practice for stormwater that can also positively affect our quality of life. This study is meant to support and inspire further research on how to link quantitative measurements of QOL with quantitative measurements of water quality through urban design characteristics. The report will introduce an ongoing study by PhD candidate, Suzanne Pierce, as her and her team currently combine water quantity/quality science with decision making. They are using the stakeholder process I served on, The Barton Springs Regional Water Quality Plan 2005, as a test bed for their creation. My hope is that this study will serve as a collection of data that Pierce’s group can draw from as they get closer to illustrating design choices for stakeholders as well as linking those choices to water quality and QOL. / text

As a means of promoting “smart growth” in the United States, Transit-Oriented Development has become a significant strategy for planners to solve urban problems. Most researches and studies discuss transit-oriented development on a single node level, which created some barriers during the implementation process. This report demonstrates transit-oriented development on a corridor level to optimize its benefits. Three case studies, which are in the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Area, San Francisco Bay Area and Dallas Region, are used to illustrate different typologies of transit-oriented development corridors and to analyze significant planning principles for transit-oriented development at a regional or sub-regional level. / text

Cette recherche amorcée par l'étude du cas de Sutton avait pour objectifs de décrire les mécanismes de Smart Growth permettant de concilier la protection du territoire avec l'accessibilité à l'habitation avant d'analyser leur portée, leurs limites et leur potentielle applicabilité au milieu rural. Au premier degré, l'analyse a permis de mettre en évidence la grande variété des mécanismes existants et la rareté de stratégies d'ensemble structurant leur application. Au second degré, le niveau d'intégration des outils de contrôle spatial et économique du développement, la marge de manoeuvre légale concédée aux municipalités par les paliers supérieurs de gouvemement, les valeurs sociales et la capacité d'organisation des collectivités ont été identifiés comme les principaux facteurs influant sur la portée et les limites potentielles de ces mécanismes. Le poids du tourisme et de la villégiature dans l'économie des collectivités rurales sous pression a été ciblé comme une contrainte majeure à leur mise en oeuvre dans ce type de contexte. La dépendance des municipalités aux revenus de taxes foncières et une logique économique basée sur une croissance soutenue de la richesse - foncière, entre autres - ont par ailleurs été identifiées comme des facteurs limitant fortement la portée potentielle des stratégies visant à améliorer l'abordabilité de l'habitation. En conclusion, les potentiels d'application au contexte de Sutton sont évoqués sous la forme d'une recherche-action visant à la mise en oeuvre des mécanismes les plus prometteurs.

Increasing concerns about climate change have attracted global interests in reducing auto travel. Regional average vehicle miles traveled (VMT) vary across the urbanized areas in the U.S., suggesting a potential influence of development patterns on greenhouse gas emission. To explore the contribution of development control to driving reduction at the regional scale, this dissertation estimated impacts of urban form on two travel outcomes at the metropolitan scale: daily vehicle miles traveled (DVMT) per capita and daily transit passenger miles (DPMT) per capita. To overcome major problems of previous studies, i.e., lack of generalizability and multicollinearity, a cross-sectional analysis of 203 U.S. urbanized areas was conducted, using directed acyclic graph and structural equation modeling. A literature review revealed gaps in the previous research: while individual-level behavioral studies have identified distance from the center as the most influential factor on VMT, regional-level studies have not reflected this relationship and failed to deliver effective implications for land use policies. A method to identify regional centers was evaluated to appropriately measure polycentric urban structure of contemporary metropolitan areas. The evaluation found that lower density cutoff, wider reference area, and equal treatment between central business district (CBD) and subcenters yielded better performance in McMillen's two-stage nonparametric method. Results also showed that for polycentric areas, the use of a polycentric model produced a better model fit than the monocentric model. Major findings of this dissertation include 1) higher regional concentration, greater local density and less road supply per capita lowered VMT, and 2) higher local density and more transit supply per capita increased PMT. These results imply that different approaches to development control are needed for different sustainable transportation goals - intensifying regional centers such as infill developments for VMT reduction, and compact neighborhood development approaches, such as transit oriented development for transit promotion. However, CBD has a limited capacity and indiscreet compact developments at the urban fringe can lead to decentralization from the regional perspective, and consequently result in increased VMT. This study suggests polycentricism as a potential solution for the contradictive development principle. By allowing dispersion and concentration at the same time, urban form control at the regional level will be more beneficial than conventional local-level control.

Increasing urbanization has serious implications for resource and energy use. One of these resources is drinking water. The increased amount of impervious surfaces associated with urban development is responsible for increased runoff during rain events, which may have a negative impact on the quality of nearby bodies of water, including drinking water sources. The growing populations associated with urbanization require a higher water demand. In addition, urban drinking water systems use energy to collect, treat, and distribute a safe reliable effluent to users. Therefore, this study focuses on the degree to which urbanization influences the embodied energy of drinking water in the city of Tampa via three objectives: (1) determine the degree to which the embodied energy of drinking water treatment is influenced by water quality possibly caused by urbanization, (2) determine the influence of urban form on the embodied energy of water supply, and (3) determine the effect of the state of water infrastructure on the embodied energy of drinking water. The influence of the water quality of the Hillsborough River Reservoir on the embodied energy of drinking water at the David L. Tippin Water Treatment Facility was determined and quantified via statistical analysis methods and life cycle energy analysis. Results show that energy due to electricity and fuel use (direct energy) is responsible for 63% of the embodied energy of drinking water treatment in the city of Tampa. However, the 37% of energy due to treatment chemical usage (indirect energy) is substantial and most influenced by influent water quality. Two constituents, total organic carbon and conductivity, are responsible for influencing 14.5% of Tampa’s drinking water treatment embodied energy. The effect of smart growth on the embodied energy of water supply was studied via the comparison of four future development scenarios within the Tampa WSA. The water consumption was estimated for each scenario and integrated into EPANET, a water distribution modeling software. After running each scenario, the embodied energy was calculated. The smart growth scenarios had 1-4% higher embodied energies than the business-as-usual scenario (urban sprawl). This was due to the location of added demand relative to the location of the water treatment facility. Nevertheless, while smart growth does not inherently minimize the embodied energy of water supply, it can result in the minimization of per capita water use due to the addition of more multi-family homes. About 16 pipe replacement scenarios were used to determine the degree to which the state of water infrastructure affects drinking water supply embodied energy. These scenarios were simulated using EPANET. The replacement of all pipes in the city of Tampa is estimated to result in an embodied energy decrease of about 20%. However, taking into account the energy use associated with pipe installation, only replacement of pipes that are older than 20 years with recycled ductile iron yields a net energy savings. The results of these studies show the influence of the roles that influent water quality, future urban development and infrastructure condition play on the embodied energy of drinking water in the Tampa WSA. However, future studies could look more in depth into these relationships via more definitive studies on the effect of land use on the Hillsborough River, and expanding the future development scenario studies to the metropolitan scale.