Regional and Urban Design Committee

Shaping communities with Open Space

  • 1.  Shaping communities with Open Space

    Posted 04-05-2015 10:21 PM
    This message has been cross posted to the following Discussion Forums: Committee on the Environment and Regional and Urban Design Committee .
    -------------------------------------------

    Reshaping Growth Centers with Open Space 

    Ostensibly, smart growth emerged as a way to save nature and preserve open space. Draw a growth boundary, went the thinking, on one side is human development and on the other is nature. Natural lands seemed too threatened by the insatiable growth of roads, subdivisions and roadside businesses to let it go on forever. Of course, it has gone on anyway. In Maryland, the total land area developed in the 30 years between 1970 and 2000 exceeds all lands ever developed before 1970. And now as we write in 2015, one might think that the smart growth laws have hardly made a dent. On March 25 I noted on my Daily Blog:
    Footprint of Atlanta versus Barcelona (same number of residents)

    Aerial comparisonbetween typical US development pattern
    and atypicalGerman small town
    As someone who has written again and again about sprawl and how it bankrupts American communities and economies, I was very pleased to see this report mentioned in today's CityLab with the following somewhat bulky title:
    Analysis of Public Policies That Unintentionally Encourage and Subsidize Urban Sprawl 
    The original discussion of protection of natural lands, resulting in the Oregon growth boundary and the Baltimore County URDL line, both implemented as early as the Seventies, was followed by a broader discussion of sustainability and efficiency considerations. Traffic seemed to become worse and worse the further out people fled from it. Just as available lands....Read full article
    -------------------------------------------
    Klaus Philipsen FAIA
    Archplan Inc. Philipsen Architects
    Baltimore MD
    -------------------------------------------