PCRD

Brookings Institution Tracking Recovery in the Great Lakes Region

Brookings Institution has a useful series on how the major metropolitan areas in the US are responding to economic changes that signal the ending of the current deep recession.  As part of this series, the Brookings Metropolitan Policy program is keeping track of the Great Lakes major metro areas and also the Mountain areas.  For a summary of the findings on the Great Lakes metros, go here. The entire report can be downloaded as a PDFf at the same website.

Urban Planning Tools for Climate Change Mitigation

Posted by Indraneel Kumar

Climate change is a much accepted and scientifically proven fact within the development planning framework. The way we grow our cities and communities have an irreversible impact on the climate. However, there is a lack of tools and know how, which look into mitigating climate change impacts through sound urban and regional planning.

A recently published report from The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy addresses this much needed resource- a tool box for urban planners to address the climate change issue. While arrangement of land uses and transportation system at a community level does impact household travel patterns and hence the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the study finds that the climate change should be addressed at the local as well as regional levels. The report includes four case studies and shows how the tools have been used to inform policy decisions at the regional level.

Research indicates that land use and transportation strategies can mitigate GHG emissions substantially. The report includes an example of Portland (Oregon) metropolitan area, where by utilizing growth management and growth control strategies and by providing mass transportation options, such as transit, the GHG emissions are retained at the level of 1990 whereas the population has increased by 16 percent. The report also includes a research The Vulcan Project  by Purdue University, which estimates carbon dioxide emissions at a raster grid-cell level for the whole of USA. Read the whole report here. 

RUrbanism: Sustainable Integration of Rural and Urban Communities

Posted by Indraneel Kumar

Climate change, green house gas emissions, and energy and food securities are highly debated and recognized issues globally. What will cities of the year 2100 will look like? How shall we plan and design for sustainable communities 100 years from now? The International Gas Union held a worldwide competition in 2003 and one of the three award winning projects was Goa 2100 planning based on RUrbanism or rural-urban sustainability framework .

The Goa 2100 was recognized for using sustainability concepts such as ecological footprint, material life-cycle analysis, optimal densities and built-form analysis, and time-budget analysis into planning and designing a city. The planners found that based on availability of renewable, recycling capacity and other resources within the region, Goa should have densities between 150 and 300 persons per hectare and buildings should be six-stories high. By the way, our neighbor, Vancouver, British Columbia won the 1st Place in this competition. The cities (PLUS) award winning entry involved 500 experts and 30 cities across Canada in a 2-year long planning and design effort. Read more here. Planning for sustainability requires innovative approaches and these projects reflect those ideas.