The Prince of Wales: Value Complexity, Respect Nature, Avoid Technological Hubris
As Kohl Construction endeavors to inject a cluster of cookie-cutter condos into one of the last substantial stands of trees near downtown Northampton, hoping that elaborate stormwater mitigation schemes will keep this swampy ground safe and unpolluted, The Prince of Wales gave a speech to the Foreign Press Association in London on November 25. To unsustainably eat into our natural assets, says Prince Charles, is wrong, as is a disdain for complexity and an excessive faith in technology's power to control our surroundings. Some excerpts:
See also:
Kohl Construction Applies for Special Permit and Site Plan Review
Seeing Like a State: Planning Gone Awry in the 20th Century
Cities tend to be complex organisms, Scott observes, so planners are constantly tempted to try to simplify their task:
Smart Growth vs. "Smart Growth"
The Urban Land Institute includes the following among its Ten Principles for Smart Growth on the Suburban Fringe (PDF):
A Northampton example of this phenomenon is Kohl Construction's proposal...
The problems with Kohl's condo proposal include:
Condo Monotony: The Future of Ward 3?
To maximize profits, the developers have shoehorned units into their lots with little regard to the preexisting appearance of their neighborhoods. The developments feel inward-facing or 'withdrawn', not part of the regular street fabric. These aspects are probably what prompted the "carbuncle" comment from the planning board member.
Northampton's Flood and Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan: Floyd Flood Damage Reported Behind View Avenue; Avoid Building on Filled Wetlands
In the map below, the red flag behind View Avenue (the topmost flag) indicates a flood damage report from Tropical Storm Floyd (1999). This area is in the eastern portion of Kohl Construction's proposed condo site, one of the more elevated portions. We infer that much of Kohl's property may be at risk from heavy rainfall events.
EPA: Wetlands and Flood Protection
Wetlands within and downstream of urban areas are particularly valuable, counteracting the greatly increased rate and volume of surface-water runoff from pavement and buildings...
Photo Essay: 10 Reasons People Like Trees Around Them; Will the Sustainable Northampton Plan Put Urban Trees at Risk?
"Planning for Trees" by Henry Arnold, Planning Commissioners Journal, January/February 1992
A recent survey by the American Forestry Association of twenty American cities found that, on average, only one tree is planted for every four removed...
Our urban centers need to become more attractive to help counter the continuation of a sprawl pattern of development. If the appeal of low density, widely scattered development is derived from the need to be closer to nature, then making trees an integral part of the urban habitat will help make our town and city centers more desirable places to live and work. It is profoundly important to see this linkage between making cities and towns more "liveable" and stemming the continued spread of scattered development across the countryside...
"Green Enhances Growth" by Edward T. McMahon, Planning Commissioners Journal, Spring 1996
...[A 1995 survey by American Lives shows] that "consumers are putting an increasingly high premium on interaction with the outdoor environment through the inclusion of wooded tracts, nature paths, and even wilderness areas in housing developments." In fact, 77 percent of consumers put "natural open space" as the feature they desired most in a new home development.
"Growing Greener: Conservation Subdivision Design" by Randall Arendt, Planning Commissioners Journal, Winter 1999
A national survey of homebuyers conducted in 1994 by American Lives revealed that of 39 features critical to their choice, homebuyers ranked "lots of natural open space" and plenty of "walking and biking paths" as the third and fourth highest rated factors affecting their decisions...
"On the Value of Trees and Open Space" by Elizabeth Brabec, Planning Commissioners Journal, Summer 1993
Trees reduce air pollution by filtering dust out of the air, reduce noise and light pollution, reduce soil erosion and water run off, and aid in climate control. Research has shown that properly placed trees and landscape plantings can save 20 to 25 percent of energy use in the home for both cooling and heating...
Numerous studies have shown that people are willing to pay more for homes that are surrounded by trees and other landscaping. How much more? Depending on the area of the country, anywhere from 3 to 18 percent...
"Green Infrastructure" by Edward T. McMahon, Planning Commissioners Journal, Winter 2000
Just as communities need to upgrade and expand their gray infrastructure (i.e. roads, sewers, utilities), so too, they need to upgrade and expand their "green" infrastructure--the network of open space, woodlands, wildlife habitat, parks and other natural areas, which sustain clean air, water, and natural resources and enrich their citizens' quality of life...
The concept of green infrastructure represents a dramatic shift in the way local and state governments think about green space. In the past, many communities assumed that open space was land that had simply not been developed yet, because no one had filed a subdivision plan for it...
Berkeley, California: Cautions on Infill
In 1990, 60 percent of New Yorkers said they would live somewhere else if they could, and in 2000, 70 percent of urbanites in Britain felt the same way. Many suburbanites commute hours every day just to have “a home, a bit of private space, and fresh air.”
Topographical Map Shows How Kohl Condo Proposal Will Eat Into a Rare Stand of Mature Trees in Downtown
Greening Smart Growth: The Sustainable Sites Initiative
The presence of natural elements has several implications for personal and community security. Shared green spaces, particularly those with trees, provide settings for people to interact and strengthen social ties. Residential areas with green surroundings are associated with greater social cohesion in neighborhoods, and neighbors with stronger social ties are more likely to monitor local activity, intervene if problem behaviors occur,[48] and defend their neighborhoods against crime.[49] Residents of buildings with greater tree and grass cover report fewer incidences of vandalism, graffiti, and litter than counterparts in more barren buildings.[50] Likewise, a study comparing police reports of crime and extent of tree and grass cover found that the greener a building’s surroundings, the fewer total crimes were reported.[51]
UMass Press: "Natural Land: Preserving and Funding Open Space"
Preserving areas of nature, open space, and trees and other vegetation can have psychological as well as physical health benefits for local residents. There is a growing body of research which points to the power of nature to restore people from the stress of modern life, including mental fatigue (Kaplan, Kaplan, and Ryan 1998; Frumkin 2001).
The Ecological Cities Project: Greenspace in "The Humane Metropolis"
A metropolis (i.e., metro region or citistate) is considered green if it fosters humans' connections to the natural world -- an idea Anne Whiston Spirn promoted in her seminal 1984 book The Granite Garden. Spirn rejected the idea -- easily absorbed if one watches too many "concrete jungle'' films, or even televised nature documentaries -- that the natural world begins beyond the urban fringe. "Nature in the city,'' she wrote, "must be cultivated, like a garden, rather than ignored or subdued.''
Rutherford Platt, "Regreening the Metropolis: Pathways to More Ecological Cities"
...cities and metropolitan areas, now too large to conveniently escape, must themselves be viewed as incorporating both built and unbuilt environments... And into the bargain, the urban environment will prove to be more habitable, more sustainable, more "ecological"...
Irony of Infill: You Have to Drive to Enjoy Nature
Northampton Redoubt: Urban Ecology, Planting Trees, and the Long-Term View
People in favor of the Kohl subdivision have argued that the North Street area is close to city services and infrastructure plus it's within walking distance to downtown merchants and Bridge Street School. Since Mr. Kohl owns downtown commercial property it makes sense for him to assist in increasing downtown residential density from an economic development point of view. Proponents reason that if all things were equal, five acres of forest lost to development in-town is better than five acres of forest lost to development in the outlying areas. This seems like a valid view, but are all things equal?
If we remove all of our in-town forested areas and wetlands they will likely be gone forever or at least a very long time. We would do well for posterity to err on the side of caution. For example the cost estimate to restore part of the downtown historic Mill River channel runs into the millions of dollars. Had the river's diversion in the 1940s been handled differently, perhaps with a sharper eye towards the future, maybe today we wouldn't be searching for dollars to make its restoration a reality.
There are other aspects of urban ecology that are important as well and we should examine these closely. For instance urban forests provide habitat for birds and small creatures that consume mosquitoes and other insects. Urban forests help to keep our air cleaner by removing pollutants from the atmosphere. They also reduce the size of urban heat islands thereby lessening our need to run air conditioners and fans which traditionally burn fossil fuels.
I’m sure there are many people who know that it is wrong to plunder the Earth’s treasures as recklessly as we do, but the comprehensive world view which we now inhabit persuades us that such destruction is justified because of the freedom it brings us, not to say the profits. In other words, our tendency to consume is legitimized by a view of the world that puts Humanity at the centre of things, operating with an absolute right over Nature. And that makes it a very dangerous world view indeed...
By the arrival of Modernism the West had been held in the sway of a mechanical way of thinking for over two hundred years... the ground was laid for the arrival of those straight, efficient lines of Modernism with the aim of simplifying and standardizing the world, making things as efficient and as convenient as possible...
...complexity is actually key to life. The diversity that made up this complexity was bulldozed away in the pursuit of simplicity, of increasing uniform monoculturalism and, above all else, convenience, creating an instant appeal that continues to fuel the conspicuous consumption and throwaway societies we now see everywhere...
By positioning ourselves outside Nature and believing ourselves to be free without limit to manipulate and control her constituent parts, imagining somehow that the whole will not suffer and can take care of itself whatever we do to its separate parts, we have abstracted life altogether to the extent that our urbanized mentality is now out of tune with the key principles under-pinning the health of any economy and of all life on Earth. And those principles make up what is known as “Harmony”...
...we have either ignored or simply forgotten how profoundly “health” depends upon organisms operating in harmony with their surroundings and within the cyclical rhythms of Nature...
In cutting ourselves off from Nature we cut ourselves off, more and more, from what we are...
See also:
Kohl Construction Applies for Special Permit and Site Plan Review
Seeing Like a State: Planning Gone Awry in the 20th Century
Cities tend to be complex organisms, Scott observes, so planners are constantly tempted to try to simplify their task:
Once the desire for comprehensive urban planning is established, the logic of uniformity and regimentation is well-nigh inexorable. Cost effectiveness contributes to this tendency... [E]very concession to diversity is likely to entail a corresponding increase in administrative time and budgetary cost... (p.141-142)In Northampton, the simplification du jour appears to be a drive to segregate our open space to the periphery, while weakening greenspace preservation in the more urban districts where it is already scarce.
Smart Growth vs. "Smart Growth"
The Urban Land Institute includes the following among its Ten Principles for Smart Growth on the Suburban Fringe (PDF):
...According to Jim Constantine, a market specialist who does “curb appeal” surveys for developers, “Consumers are turned off by cookie-cutter subdivisions and the homogenous look of houses.” Increasingly, buyers are attracted to vernacular and historical house styles that characterize their immediate area or region...Alas, developers often seize on convenient aspects of Smart Growth that align with their profit goals and disregard others. A common result appears to be overlarge developments, inapt developments, and/or excessive density. These are major bones of contention in Los Angeles and Berkeley, to give two examples.
A Northampton example of this phenomenon is Kohl Construction's proposal...
The problems with Kohl's condo proposal include:
- It threatens green infrastructure by putting roads and structures as close as 35 feet or less to a wetland. Scientific evidence indicates that substantial disturbance within 50 feet puts wetland ecology at risk and threatens water quality. In addition, the condos themselves appear to be at risk of flooding.
- It goes against the existing character and diversity of housing stock in the neighborhood by offering a monotonous, cookie-cutter design scheme with little sense of place.
- As Daryl LaFleur observes, "the Kohl North Street area development proposal includes row house condominiums set to the rear of parking lots, not free standing detached single family homes that front the 'street', which would better match the existing neighborhood and is also a tenet of Smart Growth."
Condo Monotony: The Future of Ward 3?
To maximize profits, the developers have shoehorned units into their lots with little regard to the preexisting appearance of their neighborhoods. The developments feel inward-facing or 'withdrawn', not part of the regular street fabric. These aspects are probably what prompted the "carbuncle" comment from the planning board member.
Northampton's Flood and Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan: Floyd Flood Damage Reported Behind View Avenue; Avoid Building on Filled Wetlands
In the map below, the red flag behind View Avenue (the topmost flag) indicates a flood damage report from Tropical Storm Floyd (1999). This area is in the eastern portion of Kohl Construction's proposed condo site, one of the more elevated portions. We infer that much of Kohl's property may be at risk from heavy rainfall events.
EPA: Wetlands and Flood Protection
Wetlands within and downstream of urban areas are particularly valuable, counteracting the greatly increased rate and volume of surface-water runoff from pavement and buildings...
Photo Essay: 10 Reasons People Like Trees Around Them; Will the Sustainable Northampton Plan Put Urban Trees at Risk?
"Planning for Trees" by Henry Arnold, Planning Commissioners Journal, January/February 1992
A recent survey by the American Forestry Association of twenty American cities found that, on average, only one tree is planted for every four removed...
Our urban centers need to become more attractive to help counter the continuation of a sprawl pattern of development. If the appeal of low density, widely scattered development is derived from the need to be closer to nature, then making trees an integral part of the urban habitat will help make our town and city centers more desirable places to live and work. It is profoundly important to see this linkage between making cities and towns more "liveable" and stemming the continued spread of scattered development across the countryside...
"Green Enhances Growth" by Edward T. McMahon, Planning Commissioners Journal, Spring 1996
...[A 1995 survey by American Lives shows] that "consumers are putting an increasingly high premium on interaction with the outdoor environment through the inclusion of wooded tracts, nature paths, and even wilderness areas in housing developments." In fact, 77 percent of consumers put "natural open space" as the feature they desired most in a new home development.
"Growing Greener: Conservation Subdivision Design" by Randall Arendt, Planning Commissioners Journal, Winter 1999
A national survey of homebuyers conducted in 1994 by American Lives revealed that of 39 features critical to their choice, homebuyers ranked "lots of natural open space" and plenty of "walking and biking paths" as the third and fourth highest rated factors affecting their decisions...
"On the Value of Trees and Open Space" by Elizabeth Brabec, Planning Commissioners Journal, Summer 1993
Trees reduce air pollution by filtering dust out of the air, reduce noise and light pollution, reduce soil erosion and water run off, and aid in climate control. Research has shown that properly placed trees and landscape plantings can save 20 to 25 percent of energy use in the home for both cooling and heating...
Numerous studies have shown that people are willing to pay more for homes that are surrounded by trees and other landscaping. How much more? Depending on the area of the country, anywhere from 3 to 18 percent...
"Green Infrastructure" by Edward T. McMahon, Planning Commissioners Journal, Winter 2000
Just as communities need to upgrade and expand their gray infrastructure (i.e. roads, sewers, utilities), so too, they need to upgrade and expand their "green" infrastructure--the network of open space, woodlands, wildlife habitat, parks and other natural areas, which sustain clean air, water, and natural resources and enrich their citizens' quality of life...
The concept of green infrastructure represents a dramatic shift in the way local and state governments think about green space. In the past, many communities assumed that open space was land that had simply not been developed yet, because no one had filed a subdivision plan for it...
Berkeley, California: Cautions on Infill
In 1990, 60 percent of New Yorkers said they would live somewhere else if they could, and in 2000, 70 percent of urbanites in Britain felt the same way. Many suburbanites commute hours every day just to have “a home, a bit of private space, and fresh air.”
Topographical Map Shows How Kohl Condo Proposal Will Eat Into a Rare Stand of Mature Trees in Downtown
Greening Smart Growth: The Sustainable Sites Initiative
The presence of natural elements has several implications for personal and community security. Shared green spaces, particularly those with trees, provide settings for people to interact and strengthen social ties. Residential areas with green surroundings are associated with greater social cohesion in neighborhoods, and neighbors with stronger social ties are more likely to monitor local activity, intervene if problem behaviors occur,[48] and defend their neighborhoods against crime.[49] Residents of buildings with greater tree and grass cover report fewer incidences of vandalism, graffiti, and litter than counterparts in more barren buildings.[50] Likewise, a study comparing police reports of crime and extent of tree and grass cover found that the greener a building’s surroundings, the fewer total crimes were reported.[51]
UMass Press: "Natural Land: Preserving and Funding Open Space"
Preserving areas of nature, open space, and trees and other vegetation can have psychological as well as physical health benefits for local residents. There is a growing body of research which points to the power of nature to restore people from the stress of modern life, including mental fatigue (Kaplan, Kaplan, and Ryan 1998; Frumkin 2001).
The Ecological Cities Project: Greenspace in "The Humane Metropolis"
A metropolis (i.e., metro region or citistate) is considered green if it fosters humans' connections to the natural world -- an idea Anne Whiston Spirn promoted in her seminal 1984 book The Granite Garden. Spirn rejected the idea -- easily absorbed if one watches too many "concrete jungle'' films, or even televised nature documentaries -- that the natural world begins beyond the urban fringe. "Nature in the city,'' she wrote, "must be cultivated, like a garden, rather than ignored or subdued.''
Rutherford Platt, "Regreening the Metropolis: Pathways to More Ecological Cities"
...cities and metropolitan areas, now too large to conveniently escape, must themselves be viewed as incorporating both built and unbuilt environments... And into the bargain, the urban environment will prove to be more habitable, more sustainable, more "ecological"...
Irony of Infill: You Have to Drive to Enjoy Nature
Northampton Redoubt: Urban Ecology, Planting Trees, and the Long-Term View
People in favor of the Kohl subdivision have argued that the North Street area is close to city services and infrastructure plus it's within walking distance to downtown merchants and Bridge Street School. Since Mr. Kohl owns downtown commercial property it makes sense for him to assist in increasing downtown residential density from an economic development point of view. Proponents reason that if all things were equal, five acres of forest lost to development in-town is better than five acres of forest lost to development in the outlying areas. This seems like a valid view, but are all things equal?
If we remove all of our in-town forested areas and wetlands they will likely be gone forever or at least a very long time. We would do well for posterity to err on the side of caution. For example the cost estimate to restore part of the downtown historic Mill River channel runs into the millions of dollars. Had the river's diversion in the 1940s been handled differently, perhaps with a sharper eye towards the future, maybe today we wouldn't be searching for dollars to make its restoration a reality.
There are other aspects of urban ecology that are important as well and we should examine these closely. For instance urban forests provide habitat for birds and small creatures that consume mosquitoes and other insects. Urban forests help to keep our air cleaner by removing pollutants from the atmosphere. They also reduce the size of urban heat islands thereby lessening our need to run air conditioners and fans which traditionally burn fossil fuels.
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