My Built Environment: Good, Bad, and Really Ugly

One of the ideas to come out of Mayor Hickenloopers “Greenprint Denver” initiative is to plant a million new trees within the metro area over the next 20 years. I find that idea plausible, but I do wonder what the paremeters are. Are these trees to be planted in existing areas, or does that include new developments as well? If it includes new developments, then it will be fairly easy to meet that goal. However, if these are planted in existing areas, then this will make a significant difference in the tree cover. This is good. Trees not only provide shade, they help to reduce the heat sink created from urban development, they help in reducing carbon dioxide by converting that gas back to oxygen, and trees beautify streets, parks, yards, and just about any other area.

One area though that I feel is left out of the picture is water conservation, and creating sustainable landscapes. Watering turf grass in particular is a huge drain on our water resoureces. What can we do though? A big part of it is making a paradigm shift in our collective society about what we consider a nice landscape. Most of us still have the New England mentality that a brilliant green grass is the only acceptable ground cover. But does it have to be? First of all, as a whole, we put way to much water on turfgrass. Part of it is due to outdated and inefficient irrigation systems. Part of it is due to the fact that we don’t like to see any brown on our lawns.

I think we are going to have to get used to the idea that our lawns can get a little brown during the heat of summer. Another way to change, is to only plant water thirsty lawns where they actually get used. Do we really need to plants of arterial street edges with grass that only gets looked at as we zoom by at 40 miles per hour? I think not. In those places, we need to start planting drought tolerant grasses that are suitable to our climate. I found such an example in the Ridgegate project in Lone Tree. Another option is actually plant more perennials and shrubs. Sure these cost more in the up front installation, but they certainly use less water than turfgrass, and don’t cost any more to maintain than the lawn does. But it does take a new way of thinking. Here at Vignette Studios, we have four projects on the boards where we are taking a hard look at the landscaping and looking for ways to conserve water. Three are new projects, and one is a remodel of an existing condominium complex. More to come on this though.

These are just some of my ideas, I would welcome more comments and thoughts from others!

Sustainability. That is the current buzzword of the day in the environmental world, as well as life in general these days. We all hear about creating a sustainable economy, a sustainable tax base, a sustainable energy supply. We even hear about sustainable development. But is anything really sustainable? Wikipedia defines sustainability as seeking “to provide the best outcomes for the human and natural environments both now and into the indefinite future”. But is anything that the human race do really sustainable? In my view, the only way that humans can really be sustainable was during the hunting & gathering era which we grew out of eons ago. Lets face it, with our current population levels (which are growing rapidly), we will consume resources on this planet and make an impact.

However, we can make efforts that reduce our impact, minimize waste, and conserve resources as compared to the way we have been living. As a society, we can consiously make efforts to use less energy, drive less, conserve water, live in tighter quarters, etc. This is what I think we mean when we use the term “sustainable”. It is simply a new word for conserving.

With this context in mind, I do believe in sustainable development, sustainable landscaping, and other measures as they relate to the built environment. To start with, I think there are things we can do to make our cities more energy efficient. Recently the mayor of Denver, John Hickenlooper, touched on this with his “Greenprint Denver” initiatives outline during his recent “State of the City” address. In this initiative, for example, he calls for replacing some of the worn out city vehicles with hybrids. Another example is to use the methane generated from old landfills to generate electricity. Another idea that has been touted by others is to place Photoveltic systems on city buildings, primarily the Colorado Convention Center.

Another idea that he had was to plant a million new trees within the metro area over the next 20 years. Of course he did also address some of the issues of conserving water to water all those new trees, but he didn’t go deep enough.

These are just some of my ideas, I would welcome more comments and thoughts from others!

The other day, I was driving through a neighborhood in the Denver Metro area (I won’t name it), and what I saw was very sad. This is a neighborhood that is very much on the verge of ruin. Many of the homes were unkempt, many more vacant with several foreclosures evident in the neighborhood. This is a neighborhood very much in trouble, with many residents down on their luck with probably many on the poverty level. My question is what happened? This neighborhood was largely built in the late 70’s through the 80’s, so it isn’t that old. It was also built by several large builders (some local, and some national) with a large variety of homes styles from entry level to executive level. The impoverishment was spread across the board though, in all home styles.

Now I happen to know that these same builders built the exact same homes in other neighborhoods throughout the metro, and that these communities are very well maintained and desireable places to live. So what happened? What forces cause two very similar neighborhoods to follow very different paths? One neighborhood stays a very desireable place to live, and where home values are maintained. Another seemingly deteriorates literally overnight. I do know that the homes prices in this neighborhood were lower from the get go, due largely to a differnce in land costs, for the same home. But is that the only answer? Or are there other larger socioeconomic factors at play? How do we as community builders try to keep this from happening? Is there anything? I ask, because I dislike it when a community I have worked on goes into decline..for any reason. (No I had nothing to do with this community, well before my time). Any thoughts?

And now…the rest of the story.

The Rivermark community has a true town center…one of the few that I have seen in new urbanist communities that is pulled off almost flawlessly. This town center has it all, a grocery store, in line retail, stand alone restaurants, fast food, and a hotel. Again, this is a very well thought out town center. The architecture was superb (and it blended with the residential), the pedestrain plazas were well executed, and the parking lots were broken up into smaller segments, making it visually appealing, and pedestrian friendly.

One of the big things that I was really impressed with, was how well the commercial architecture was integrated with the residential community. Take for example, the rear of the Albertsons grocery store. Very careful attention was paid to the massing of the building. What is normally a blank facade was broken up by varying the depth of the building, raising and lowering the parapet of the building, and most importantly, just varying the color of the walls. Another thing they did was screen the service areas, using the walls to blend those areas with the buildings. In addition, there was landscaping which further softened the buildings. A big thing to point out, is that this was all done with minimal setbacks from the ROW, and not wasting land with unuseable turfgrass.

As I mentioned before, the pedestrian areas were very well thought out. They didn’t spend a lot of money on fancy paving patterns, materials, or colors. Instead they chose to keep it simple, using a simple diaganol scoring pattern with standard concrete. What they did do though, was actually allow ample room for merchants to display there wares, have some outdoor seating, and allow pedestrians to walk. It wasn’t cramped like a lot of storefronts are. They also integrated planting areas, street trees, simple seating, light poles and banners in one integrated area. This makes the whole center flow together.

Finally I want to talk about the parking. I was very impressed with how they were able to break up what are usually massive parking lots into smaller blocks, and well landscaped. This pictures shows the entrance and parking right in front of the Albertsons store…and they actually had head in parking right in front of the store. I like this because it gives people a chance to walk out of the store and collect themselves without being thrown right into the traffic lane. (The target store where I live is the worst…the doors are all of 6 feet from the traffic lane…but I digress). They were actually able to pull off a true village streetscape. But, the parking also brought up my only gripe with the whole project…there wasn’t enough of it. We decided to have lunch here at the Red Robin restaurant, dropped off my wonderful wife to hold a table, and then the kids and I drove around all the parking lots about 5 times, and never did find a place to park. We wound up having to park about 5 blocks away in front of residential homes. It wasn’t all that bad, since it was a pleasant walk. I am also all in favor of reducing parking, as I believe that most places are overparked. But this took it to the other extreme. In all fairness though, I have only been here once, at lunchtime. And the commercial area happens to be accross the street from a major Sun campus. So, I have no idea if the parking shortage was an extreme case, or if it happens on a regular basis.

There you have it. My thoughts on one of the best communities and examples of new urbanism that I have found to date. I hope you enjoyed it!

At long last, I will get to part II of my discussion of Rivermark. This time we are going to focus on the residential component of the development. My overiding comment on the residential component is WOW!

As previously mentioned, this development had three different national builders, with about 5 product lines. These included two series of townhomes, alley load cluster homes (detached single family), alley load single family, and front load single family. All of the product integrated extremely well together, with similar, yet distinct, architecture, colors, and materials. What I was really impressed with was how well they were able to pull off high density. For example, the alley load cluster homes (2-3 stories tall) all had front doors facing a common walkway. While the homes were only about 20 feet apart face to face, all the homes had front courtyards, a 3 foot tall courtyard wall, which lined the sidewalk, and perennials between the walls and the walk. In fact, landscaping was used extensively to help mitigate the effects of high density. Course, California also has the luxury of a huge plant pallete, and a year round growing season.

The homes were also pulled up close to the street, and the small front yards were well landscaped with an abundance of shrubs, roses, and perennials, with turf grass relegated to the parkway strips, and pocket parks. This is a lesson we can all learn. The traditional front lawn is a waste, not big enough to be useable, not really liveable, and it takes a lot of resources to keep alive; time, money, and water. I think we should pull all houses closer to the street, eliminate the lawns, and in the process make the streets more lively!

That is all for now, up next: Riverside commercial.