Sustainable Land Development Today - June 2008 - (Page 16)

MULTI DISCIPLINARY DEVELOPMENT Integrated Planning: The Key To Developing Sustainable Planned Communities By Steven Kellenberg Developer “A” built a LEED® Silver– certified mixed-use project in Cincinnati that cost him ten percent more to build than conventional construction. Across the street, developer “B” achieved a LEED Gold certification on his mixeduse project of the same size and incurred only an additional cost of three percent for the higher certification. What made the difference? One item that made a significant difference was a much-touted procedure called integrated design: a strategy that interlinks and balances a project’s context, ecology, site planning, infrastructure, landscape, and building design into a form that in totality exceeds the performance of its individual components. Integrated design has two dimensions. The first involves the design process itself, which requires collaboration between multiple disciplines and stakeholders, especially during the initial stages of planning. Rather than working in isolation, designers are challenged to consider new strategies, systems, and products that better support a sustainable outcome and lead to a “better fit,” in the community and in its natural systems. The second dimension is about interrelationships: how natural systems, infrastructure, and building design affect one another so that high levels of performance in one system can be leveraged to reduce the costs or improve the performance of others. This is called whole systems thinking. Achieving and exploiting as many of these linkages as possible is the goal of integrated design, but it is not possible without a shift in process. Initial forays into green building have led many to believe that it is exorbitantly expensive. Checklists and certification programs prompted designers and developers to stack one energy-saving or water quality element on top of another, each at an incrementally higher cost. Often, these costs broke the back of the project, forcing it to retreat to more conventional practices. More recently, numerous projects have shown that through planning in a more integrated manner, synergies can be identified and exploited to leverage both economic and environmental paybacks. Integrated design reduces the cost of being green. And with most states and cities moving ahead to require not only that their own buildings are built green but also many others, the ability to meet sustainable benchmarks without sacrificing the bottom line may become vital. How does all of this relate to largescale land development? The principles are fundamentally the same. If we think in a more holistic, integrated manner about our sites’ natural systems, community context, urban form, and water/mobility/energy infrastructures, we should be able to achieve a higher level of sustainability at a lower cost. nancial parameters and appropriate adjustments are made. The problem with this approach is that there is no tracking or exploitation of the interrelationships among systems, either built or natural. Nature is not linear—it is cyclical and interconnected. Any impact on land form, soils, sunlight, hydrology, flora, or fauna ripples through the others, often with unforeseen consequences. Cutting-edge projects today are incorporating highperformance development practices, such as low-impact stormwater design, green streets, reduced water landscape systems, and energy conservation and generation, allowing savings and environmental benefits from each system. Getting Started So how does this process work? A few key steps follow. Integrated design starts with shifting the project team’s mind-set. The team must open up to a slightly different view of the world, one where interconnection and cause/effect are part of every decision. If this adjustment does not occur, the team frequently will abandon highperformance practices in the face of schedule constraints, budgetary constraints, or others’ contrary attitudes. The mindset shift must occur at the top as well; otherwise the team will not be empowered to make tough decisions. Another early requirement is that all the needed team members are on hand from the beginning. Traditionally, ecologists are used only to get the wetland permit, the landscape architect comes on at the end to “shrub things up,” and the The Process Historically, planning for large projects has been linear, starting with land acquisition, market analysis, engineering, and political constraints, and followed by conceptual planning, project refinement, and detailed drawings and construction. At each step of this process, plans are compared with market and fi- 16 June 2008 Sustainable Land Development Today

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Sustainable Land Development Today - June 2008 Contents Our Voice Editorial Board SLDT Resources Where Rubber Meets the Road Integrated Planning: The Key To Developing Sustainable Planned Communities Win-Win For College and Community Industry Spotlight: Transoft Unique Organization, Unique Opportunity New Preferred Provider Comments from the Austin Conference Welcome New Members New Knowledge Project Articles Books Going Green Business Management Risk Management Surveying and Mapping Industry News Products/Services Showcase Advertiser Index Classifieds The Last Word

Sustainable Land Development Today - June 2008

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