The people getting involved with the ScaleDown experiment continuously amaze me.  From well-spoken, emerging community activists to engaged, educated professionals, I am increasingly becoming aware of the power that we have.  Today’s guest blog comes from Dorian Moore, who lives in Olde Walkerville (full bio below).  Thanks Dorian!

Can design heal?

Some architects and planners think so. In some respects that was the charge of the American Institute of Architects’ Sustainable Design Assessment Team (SDAT). The team came to Detroit October 29th- November 1st, 2008 in hopes of fashioning a framework that could help in dealing with the massive change that is going on in the nation’s tenth largest city.

I had the good fortune of being selected as one of the local team leaders. Our role was to provide first hand knowledge of the city to the national team as well as to lead teams of planners to generate ideas and analysis for the SDAT process.

Sustainability, Smart Growth, Green. All these terms are becoming a common part of the public lexicon. Beyond the terminology, though, lies a coalition that is studying the ways in which we can more effectively manage our communities.

Consider these two factoids from the Smart Growth Institute:

Each additional 10 minutes in daily commuting time cuts involvement in community affairs by 10% (Source: Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, by Robert D. Putnam)

In 1997, approximately 113 million people lived in counties that had unhealthy air quality (Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

As a result most families spend more on their cars and gas than on food, Families are finding fewer choices in housing styles, price ranges, neighborhoods, and air and water pollution are important human health concerns. Also, people are finding they have less and less time for involvement in their children’s schools or other civic activities.

Perhaps sustainable urbanism can provide a foundation for an environment where the solutions to these problems can flourish.

WHAT IS THE SDAT?

The Sustainable Design Assessment Team (SDAT) program provides broad assessments to help frame future policies and sustainability solutions. Its principles include having a multi-disciplinary team composed of planners, economists, architects, and environmental engineers who engage the community in a dialogue, that when coupled with their expertise produces policies that can guide a city for the future.

THE SDAT PROCESS

At the core of the SDAT process are the three elements of Sustainability: Environmental Stewardship, Social Equity, and Economic Growth. All planning decisions are made based on all three tenets.

The SDAT team created a checklist of issues by which all ideas and recommendations were evaluated. This check list was developed through interaction with the team leaders and the the local community.

The SDAT local team leaders held a public meeting with community leaders on October 6th, 2008.  The community was represented by clergy, Community Development Corporation directors, local small-scale developers, local politicians and university representatives from Wayne State University and the University of Detroit-Mercy.

The three day “charrette” process was a high energy interactive process whereby the national team representatives began the work of synthesizing the information on Detroit with their background from doing dozens of assessments throughout the country.

The first day of the charrette started with a tour of the city with local team leaders. This tour was especially eye opening for me because, being a life long Detroiter, I felt that I knew every nook and cranny of the city, and yet I was exposed to things I never knew existed, such as the fully functioning farm (complete with goats and cows) located with the city at Catherine Ferguson Academy for women.

Another interesting observation was the potential of the riverfront in the southwest Detroit area near Historic Fort Wayne (the initial outpost for the city). This area is currently being transformed by industry, but the team noted that the type of industries (trucking, logistics, storage) does not capitalize on the location. It was felt that that area could be an excellent location for a water related sustainable industry development.

The day concluded with a public forum consisting of discussions with local community within the study zone. This, along with working sessions that followed, was held at the University of Michigan Detroit Center. A presentation of the SDAT process was done first and followed up with “breakout” sessions run by the local team leaders. The purpose of the sessions was to garner as much insight into the needs, assets, and liabilities of the area as possible in the short period of time that the national team had to conduct the assessment.

The work session with local team leaders explored questions regarding the practicality of addressing the city’s needs via an emphasis on sustainable design as well as addressing short term social and economic conditions within the city. Some believe that the positive momentum of these kinds of efforts can be “game changers” in the perception of a city. This is yet to be empirically verified.

The final public presentation was conducted at the N’namdi Gallery on Saturday night to a crowd of about 100 interested people. The recommendations were received enthusiastically by the audience, although, there were a few attendees that saw the presentation as an opportunity to communicate personal grievances. This is typically the case in these open forums and it is a fact of life when one chooses to be a planner.

It is believed that since the new mayor, Kenneth Cockrel, has a genuine interest in “green” development that these recommendations can work they way into the discussion of the political and economic destiny of the city.

THE SDAT CONCLUSIONS

There were a number of interesting conclusions drawn from the SDAT process. These conclusions centered around the physical size, population density, and potential economy of the Detroit area.

The SDAT team saw the population of Detroit leveling off at about 550,000 people (about 20%) smaller than its current size. Since the size of the city is significantly larger than it needs to be (see graphic) the challenge was how to view that as an asset as opposed to a liability. The first step was to understand the city’s other assets by observing the city as it is in a non-judgmental manner.

Once the assets were clarified the next step was to generate a land use policy. This land use policy needs to be based on the idea of preserving the urban vitality of the city. This could be achieved through the following actions:

1. Protect the architectural heritage

2. Green the community

3. Urban Villages surrounded by green

Understanding and defining the land use sets the framework for dealing with the next important issue: Detroit Needs Jobs. What are the Industries that can be tapped? The SDAT team identified food, agriculture and renewable energy resources as two areas that Detroit could immediately tap into.

With Detroit’s access to water and Michigan’s flat landscape that is conducive to wind power, a renewable energy strategy was a no-brainer. The excess of vacant land made it easy to envision a cityscape where controlled farming could become a reality.

We are not talking about reconfiguring the urban pattern to achieve this. The existing street and block structure (approximately 220’ x 400’; about the size of a traditional block in the Walkerville area) could easily be adapted to work for small scale planting and farming.

The result is a ten year, 3 phase plan that radically transforms the city from an industrial negative to a 21st century economic leader. The goal being to create the “Smarter” city by:

1. Increasing density in urban village areas

2. Entering the green market now

3. Reconfiguring land

4. Improving connectivity between the “villages” of the city

Finally implementation strategies were developed to ensure that the assessment recommendations would have a chance of survival after the departure of the team. We should note here that NO PLAN has a chance of survival if it does not have a “champion”. There must be someone with the political clout (not necessarily a politician) to “bird dog” the process. This person must have access to the public and private sector parties that can make the plan happen. This person must be persuasive, charismatic, and above all persistent.

THE “CITY OF OPPORTUNITY”

What might we learn from this process as Windsorites?

Now Windsor does not have all of the vacant and open space issues Detroit has and I don’t want to approach this from the stand point of “Oh, look what can happen, Windsor. You don’t want to become Detroit!” I would rather focus on the lessons learned and how Windsor can benefit from the conclusions of this exercise.

This kind of strategic approach can help focus efforts leaving room for flexibility and “experimentation” within the urban environment. Keep in mind many experiments fail; with this strategic approach failed experiments can be wiped clean. This creates what I term the “City of Opportunity”.

I thought of this term one day while driving through Windsor and seeing the reuse of the old C. G. Desantais school as the Science Center. I have always been rigid in what I felt was good civic planning, but this one instance got me thinking about the fact that in our rapidly declining urban areas we are constantly fighting against what we term reactionary planning in hopes of attaining the ideal development. My thought on the City of Opportunity is one that evaluates planning proposals based on their inherent value (social, not economic, this is the key distinction) to the community. It focuses us on the what and the when rather that the where.

The City of Opportunity approaches city development that promotes sustainable urban settlement patterns and open space preservation/allocation based on environmental and social priorities. Sustainable urbanism features innovative flexible prescriptions for highest marketability, mixed housing types and land uses, and minimal disturbance to the existing topography and ecosystems.

Where, one may ask, has this process been executed before? There are numerous cities, of various sizes, that have been the beneficiaries of this assessment process. For a view of those cities click here.

Each SDAT assessment builds off of the unique characteristics of place and positions the selected community for positive growth into the future.

Dorian Moore has been involved in a wide range of architecture and urban planning projects. Recently, Mr. Moore was among a select group of architects and planners invited to Mississippi as part of the Governor’s Renewal Forum. Mr. Moore spent a week as a member of the charrette planning team for 11 cities along the Gulf Coast that were ravaged by hurricane Katrina. Mr. Moore was also part of an international team of designers assembled to provide a vision plan for Toronto’s former Port Lands lakefront area.

Mr. Moore was featured on the public affairs television programs Spotlight on the News and Back to Back discussing architecture and urban design in Detroit. He has also lectured at the University of Toronto campus to the Congress for the New Urbanism and at the University of Michigan on the urban environment.

Mr. Moore has taught architecture and urbanism at University of Detroit-Mercy, Lawrence Technological University, and Wayne State University.

Mr. Moore was educated at the University of Michigan and the Technical University, Vienna, Austria. He was selected AIA Detroit Young Architect 2002.

Tags: detroit, guest blogger, planning, sustainable development, urban agriculture, Urban Design