Certifiable urbanism?

Since the Charter of the New Urbanism was written, people have argued about how well development projects fulfill its principles. Homebuyers, investors, and public officials all want to know if a project is real New Urbanism. Various individuals and groups offer checklists, scorecards, and other ways of grading New Urbanism. A number of efforts by CNU members are grappling with creating systems for judging projects. Emerging systems Each type of emerging certification system embodies a unique perspective and goal. In this issue, New Urban News releases its annual survey of neighborhood-scale new urbanist projects, a list that is based on a basic form of certification. Urban designer Ray Gindroz has created a method of judging how well a project meets each principle in the Charter that has been used for the Charter Awards program. Architect and planner Jeff Speck wrote the Lexicon Short List, which judges projects on a 50-point scale. Participants at CNU III developed an informal system called the Restaurant Guide, which outlines how to judge projects. Attorney Nathan Norris has been pulling together various standards, with the goal of helping homeowners predict whether a development will live up to New Urbanism’s reputation for walkability, mixed uses, and connectivity. The Smart Growth Scorecard by developer Will Fleissig is meant to help advocates and public officials decide whether a project is worthy of support. In a similar vein, the Natural Resources Defence Council has developed a system for the State of New Jersey to help the government decide whether projects are worthy of a smart growth tax credit. Performance measures In a related effort, CNU is partnering with two other organizations to see if standardized performance measures for environmentally sound new urbanist development can be created. Environment Task Force leaders Kaid Benfield and Doug Farr are working with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), which supervises the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standard for building environmental performance. Benfield and Farr, together with the NRDC and USGBC, are now beginning to collect and analyze these diverse standards. The next step, pending adequate funding support, will be to bring a variety of stakeholders and experts in to help develop a unified standard. Developing and testing the standard is expected to be a multi-year process. Their goal is an addition or alternative to LEED that can judge the environmental performance of whole projects. As Benfield wrote in a prospectus for the project, “Just as the marketplace has benefited by a system that defines what is ‘green’ about green buildings, it will benefit from a sophisticated set of criteria that collectively define what is ‘smart’ about smart growth, along with a system that will recognize and publicize developments that meet the criteria.” CNU wants to give its members and the public objective standards for judging development projects and plans. Any standard will face challenges to creation and acceptance. Some of the key questions: How much weight should be given to each principle of the Charter? How can standards reward performance, rather than prescribing particular designs? What aspects of urbanism lend themselves to quantitative standards, and how does one judge intangibles like good design? Is it possible to judge local and regional plans, as was suggested at the Santa Fe Council on Codes? People interested in helping with this initiative should contact CNU: cnuinfo@cnu.org, 415 495-2255.