Category Archives: LEED ND and Regional Planning

Explore The Twin Cities LEED ND Maps

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View Full Screen

For a while I’ve been looking for a better way to display the maps I made for the LEED ND and Regional Planning series.  After some experimentation with the Google Maps API, I’ve got something functional.  There have been a few times when I’ve been presenting this topic and wished I had a way to pan around the metro and zoom in on specific areas.  This works well.

I haven’t quite figured out how to do a legend yet, so here’s the key: red areas are those place that are likely eligible for LEED ND based on the Smart Location and Linkage prerequisites. Areas in yellow may be eligible if the local comprehensive plan guiding (and accompanying zoning) were changed to allow density consistent with LEED ND requirements. View the map full screen.

For the full run-down on how I developed these maps, check out the whole LEED ND and Regional Planning series.

What locations in the Twin Cities are eligible for LEED ND: Part 4

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Areas in the Metro Eligible for LEED ND

As part of a series, I’ve been exploring what locations in the Twin Cities metro are eligible for LEED ND based on the land use characteristics.  These locations could be considered “location efficient”, a concept which has gained importance recently due to changes in federal policy that direct the expenditure of federal money.  The benefits of location efficiency include “connecting conveniently and affordably to jobs, schools, shops and other amenities through a range of transportation options”, according to HUD Secretary Donovan.

I would argue that we can also use LEED ND as a guide for growing our region more sustainably.  The requirements of the rating system can show us where it would be appropriate to target future growth, what areas should be preserved until sufficient infrastructure is available, and what areas are totally off-limits.  HUD, DOT and EPA are promoting a similar line of thinking with their recent partnership on Sustainable Communities and corresponding grant opportunity. Continue reading →

What locations in the Twin Cities are eligible for LEED ND: Part 3

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Traditional Neighborhood Design - Minneapolis 1892

In an ongoing series, I’ve been trying to define areas of the Twin Cities metro that are “location efficient” using the USGBC’s LEED ND rating system.  The previous posts focused on those requirements of LEED ND that cannot be met through the design of the project itself: features of the built and natural environment that determine a minimum eligibility for LEED ND based on location.  This resulted in a map of areas in the region that met this basic level of “location efficiency”.

However, there are a few other requirements of LEED ND that can technically be met through the project design, but may not be able to be met in reality based on the existing built environment, or the current planning or zoning rules in a particular location.  For example, LEED ND requires a minimum density for both residential and non-residential uses.  Technically the density of the project is controllable by the project designer, however, if a city has land use regulations in place that only permit densities lower than what is required by LEED ND, plan and zoning amendments or variances would need to be granted before the project could go forward, all of which are not certain.  Many communities are averse to the levels of density required by LEED ND, and therefore elected officials would be unlikely to grant such changes to land use regulations. Continue reading →

What locations in the Twin Cities are eligible for LEED ND: Part 2

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After HUD announced that they would begin scoring grant projects on “location efficiency” using LEED ND as a guide, I got curious as to what that might mean for the Twin Cities region. In Part 1 of the series, I began looking at what requirements LEED ND has for “location efficiency” and came up with a map that identifies areas of the region that are basically off-limits due to special environmental or land use characteristics. This was based on prerequisites 2 – 5 in the Smart Location and Linkage topic area of LEED ND. This post will focus on the last prerequisite in Smart Location and Linkage: Smart Location.

This exercise isn’t supposed to be just about HUD, but about what planning in our region might look like if location efficiency, smart growth and infill development were prioritized over greenfield development.

Continue reading →

What locations in the Twin Cities are eligible for LEED ND: Part 1

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In a previous post, I talked about the news that HUD will begin scoring grant applications based on location efficiency, and using the LEED ND rating system to do so.  While it is not yet clear what exactly HUD means by this, we can do our own exercise to look at the ND system, compare it to the existing built environment and see what locations in the Twin Cities might be eligible.

This isn’t just about HUD and their projects, it is a way of determining what the best locations are for new development that would ensure compact, contiguous development that makes the most efficient use of infrastructure and has multiple transportation options.  Or in other words, it’s a method to begin planning a more sustainable region.

Before the analysis, a little background on LEED ND is appropriate:

The rating system is divided into five topic areas:

  • Smart Location and Linkage
  • Neighborhood Pattern and Design
  • Green Infrastructure and Buildings
  • Innovation and Design Process
  • Regional Priority Credit

The first three topic areas have prerequisites, or requirements that a project must meet in order to be eligible.  All the topic areas have credits, from which a project proposer can choose to achieve to meet the various certification levels (Certified: 40, Silver: 50, Gold: 60, Platinum: 80).

While the LEED ND system is long and complex, there is really one topic area of the five in the rating system that deals with location and what land is off-limits versus eligible: Smart Location and Linkage (SLL).  In this topic, there are five prerequisites and nine credits.  For the purposes of this exercise, we’re going to be looking at just the prerequisites for LEED ND SLL, because once you get into credits, you have to start making lots of assumptions about how the project will be designed and what features it will contain.  In addition, the other four topic areas deal primarily with the design of the project, or what is inside the project boundary, something we can’t know until a project is proposed.  We want to know just what locations are at minimum eligible, and that means focusing on prerequisites in SLL.

Read on for the details of Smart Location and Linkage and the results.

Continue reading →