Tag Archives: regional planning

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.

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HUD to start scoring grant applications using LEED ND. So what does that mean?

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The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD recently announced that they would start scoring grant applications by their “location efficiency” and use LEED for Neighborhood Development as a tool to do so.  Location efficiency means new projects would have greater accessibility to surrounding jobs, commercial areas and transportation options.

HUD distributes over $3 billion in grants, so this policy change could potentially have a big impact on where and how new housing gets built.  HUD provides many affordable housing programs, builds public housing, oversees the FHA, and regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

So what does it mean that they will begin scoring applications with LEED ND?  The details aren’t out yet, but the rating system certainly has a lot to say about location efficiency as well as what locations are appropriate for development based on environmental significance.  So, where might future HUD grantees be able to propose projects?  Well, location efficiency will likely make up only one of many scoring categories, and I would be surprised if projects could be rejected solely based on poor location.  However, we could start with the assumption that those locations that meet at least all the prerequisites for LEED ND would score highest.

In the next series of posts, I’ll look at what locations in the Twin Cities metro meet the prerequisites for LEED ND, as best as I can without having real project details.  This exercise isn’t just about HUD, the goals of LEED ND are to promote smarter growth, make more energy efficient communities, provide real transportation options and generally build stronger, more sustainable communities.  Thinking about the locations in the metro that are eligible for LEED ND is another way of thinking about where new growth should be planned that could provide the most sustainable outcome.  If anyone ever wanted to do true regional planning, perhaps this is a place to start.

America 2050: President Obama, Please Don’t Mess Up the New New Deal

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Megaregions

Megaregions

By now everyone knows about Obama’s pledge to spend a boatload on roads, bridges, schools and energy efficiency to stimulate the economy (despite my failure to blog about it).  Well, America 2050 has already developed a plan for that plan.  They have an interesting 5 1/2 point plan for spending what could turn out to be $1 trillion with concise titles like “FIX” and “GREEN”, but what I found more interesting on their site was the organizations focus on “megaregions”:

A major focus of America 2050 is the emergence of megaregions – large networks of metropolitan areas, where most of the population growth by mid-century will take place. Examples of megaregions are the Northeast Megaregion, from Boston to Washington, or Southern California, from Los Angeles to Tijuana, Mexico. They comprise multiple, adjacent metropolitan areas connected by overlapping commuting patterns, business travel, environmental landscapes and watersheds, linked economies, and social networks. At least ten megaregions have been identified in the United States.

In Europe and Southeast Asia, governments are investing tens of billions of dollars in high-speed rail and goods movement systems to connect networks of cities in what are termed “global integration zones.” These counterparts to America’s megaregions are increasingly being viewed as the new competitive units in the global economy, where knowledge workers can move freely among urban hubs. Economic regeneration strategies are also being deployed at this scale, to transition former industrial regions to the new information economy.

The Saint Cloud-Minneapolis-Rochester area kind of stands on its own when looking at the map above, but it is included in the “Great Lakes” megaregion.  It makes me wonder what the Twin Cities would look like if we had a true high-speed rail connection to the Milwaukee-Chicago megalopolis.  Supposedly we only need to wait five more years, until then we’ll have to settle for cheap airfares on Southwest.