Sustainable Land Development Today - November/December 2007 - (Page 24) SUSTAINABLE REDEVELOPMENT facilities of the University of Texas at Austin, and the administrative headquarters of Dell Children’s parent, the Seton Family of Hospitals, a unit of Ascension Health. Mueller and the City of Austin are currently exploring how this medical presence can work in synergy with the sustainable focus of the project to create a model “healthy community,” highlighting the public-health advantages, as well as the better known benefits, of sustainable development. Now, these individual green-built projects would be less impressive and effective if they were set in a traditional development pattern that encouraged auto use, threatened surface and groundwater resources, or had other hallmarks of ill-designed “sprawl.” The green urbanism concept for Mueller tackles those issues head-on. In the words of the master plan, the Mueller vision “challenged the city to create a district that would be a model for responsible urban development — an alternative to land-consumptive and automobile-dependent patterns throughout the region that could influence the form and pattern of growth within Austin.” Mueller’s urban-infill location, within minutes of the city’s major destinations — downtown, the State Capitol complex, and the main UT campus — does a great deal to realize these goals all by itself. The Mueller community vision builds on these advantages by incorporating bus and future rail transit and encouraging walking and bicycling, with dedicated walkways and bike paths along every street and trails throughout the development. The Mueller Central information center Much of the new street infrastructure includes recycled material from the former airport runways. As for utility infrastructure, Mueller is served by the Austin Water Utility’s initial reclaimed-water system, allowing the use of recycled “greywater” for irrigation and other non-potable uses. And Austin Energy has constructed an innovative, self-contained energy-efficient mini-plant to provide power, heating, and cooling to the Dell Children’s campus. As well, Mueller features solar installations both on individual homes and on commercial and civic structures such as the new Ronald McDonald House that serves the hospital — the first facility in that national network to incorporate solar as part of initial construction. Continued on page 26 Circle 178 • or www.LandDevelopmentToday.com/adinfo 24 November/December 2007 Sustainable Land Development Today http://www.geobrugg.com http://www.geobrugg.com http://www.LandDevelopmentToday.com/adinfo
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.