Amid all the debate about land use and the benefits of
high-density versus low-density development, it’s refreshing to see some
examples of how to get it right. Kaid Benfield, the director of the National
Resource Defense Council’s Smart Growth Program, recently posted a slide show
illustrating some excellent examples of Smart Growth. Put together by
Rachel Sohmer of the NRDC, the slides illustrate neighborhoods around the
country that have successfully incorporated Smart Growth.
The idea, paradoxical at first, is
that high-density development is good for the watershed—or at least it can be,
if we get everything else right as well. Although higher-density developments
have a greater percentage of impervious surface than low-density ones—picture a
neighborhood with 40 residences per acre and then one with only five per
acre—when we look at the watershed-level picture, we actually find less
impervious cover.
Those spread-out houses need more
infrastructure to link them—more roads, longer driveways. If we consider the
difference between 40 individual one- or two-story houses and the same 40
families living in a single high-rise building, the difference is more
pronounced. An article
in our October 2007 issue offers data from Grand Rapids, Michigan, to illustrate
the differences in detail.
The trick to get this to work is
that we must leave much of the area that would have been taken up by low-density
development as open space. The slides show how this can be done, as well as some
other benefits of Smart Growth in action.