Communities like Quarry Falls provide a higher quality of life for residents
Another great article, this time in the Wall Street Journal, shows how expensive oil is forcing Americans to reconsider their suburban lifestyle. Moving closer to work in the city can be a very enjoyable experience.
Matt Overmyer, a resident of a new compact development in Roseville, CA, describes how “he now bikes to the grocery store…and because the houses in his neighborhood are closer together and share a back alley, he interacts with his neighbors a lot more.” Like Quarry Falls, Mr. Overmyer’s community is designed around a village square that will provide shops and restaurants within half a block of his home. His commute to work, formerly 45 minutes long, is now only 15 minutes.
Dave Morris, a developer in the Sacramento area, presented a forecast of the region in 50 years, which showed poor air-quality and ridiculously long commutes, indicating that you could commute faster by bicycle. If suburbs of California continue to develop the way that they have over the last 40 years or so, “the quality of life for communities without jobs nearby would nose dive,” according to Morris.
The future does not have to look this way, though! In another city near Sacramento, Rancho Cordova, residents in townhomes and small houses “can walk to work at nearby office parks. The light-rail line built to commute to Sacramento now serves as a tram for local residents.” This is very similar to what Quarry Falls proposes, which includes places to live, work, and play without having to drive, as well as easy access to the trolley stop for commutes to downtown San Diego and other nearby job centers.
Read the original article for more details:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121538754733231043.html
Here’s a link to a great video on the topic as well:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid452319854/bctid1649956635
Friday, July 11, 2008
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Depleted San Diego Quarry to Become Mixed
Read this Urban Land Magazine article about how "a declining 70-year-old quarry in San Diego, is slated to become a 230-acre mixed-use, walkable, infill community with housing, village shops, businesses, access to the city's light-rail system, and park space -- and with all these elements within a 15-minute walk of one another."
Reversing suburban flight
Americans have begun to feel the effects of rising energy prices. Once upon a time, many considered it more enjoyable and affordable to live in the suburbs and commute into the urban core for work. Now it’s a different story – rising energy prices have forced many people to sell their white picket-fenced suburban homes for condos in the city that provide them with a shorter commute and easier access to public transportation. Quarry Falls is a model for this type of sustainable design. By utilizing an urban, infill site, Quarry Falls will provide a variety of affordable home types while promoting walkability and transit ridership. Interestingly, Quarry Falls offers many of the attractive amenities that people in the past have moved to suburbia to find – parks, open space, walking trails, and a socially-connected community. As energy prices drive transportation costs up, we must begin to think green in our planning and building principles. Read more in this New York Times article.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Ghostburbs
City living more affordable and convenient
The recent mortgage crisis, coupled with the rising cost of fuel, is getting people out of the suburbs and back into the city. People can no longer afford - nor do they have the patience - to travel great distances to/from work, or for shopping. We're seeing more and more people moving to the city where public transportation is available and convenient. In fact, the number of homes built around train stations and public transit is supposed to double in the next 20 years, according to ABC News. Click here for ABC's News clip "Ghostburbs." The Quarry Falls community in Mission Valley will allow people to live closer to work and transportation, while at the same time providing parks, schools, etc., which are things often lacking in urban areas. You get most of the community amenities that people moved out to the suburbs for, but in an urban infill area interconnected with access to greater San Diego.
The recent mortgage crisis, coupled with the rising cost of fuel, is getting people out of the suburbs and back into the city. People can no longer afford - nor do they have the patience - to travel great distances to/from work, or for shopping. We're seeing more and more people moving to the city where public transportation is available and convenient. In fact, the number of homes built around train stations and public transit is supposed to double in the next 20 years, according to ABC News. Click here for ABC's News clip "Ghostburbs." The Quarry Falls community in Mission Valley will allow people to live closer to work and transportation, while at the same time providing parks, schools, etc., which are things often lacking in urban areas. You get most of the community amenities that people moved out to the suburbs for, but in an urban infill area interconnected with access to greater San Diego.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Sudberry Properties 'Village Walk' more than just shopping
Watch the video below to see how Sudberry Properties Village Walk shopping center provides a unique experience for all ages - a great gathering place where people can go to enjoy more than just shopping. Like all of our retail centers, we strive to create a sense of place where people can come together for shopping, music, food, and fun. This interesting video shows how powerful music can be in keeping people happy and amused.
Thinking Green in the Classroom
Students from the Point Loma-based High Tech High School are learning more about sustainable design, green building standards, and architecture through the "Gravel to Green" Quarry Falls project. They're getting to experience what it means to brainstorm and create their own environmentally-friendly designs for Mission Valley's first public school, which will be owned and operated by the world-renowned High Tech High. The new school will be located within Quarry Falls, which has been registered as a LEED-ND pilot project - "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development." View the San Diego Union Tribune article "Blueprints for a Green School" below to see how younger generations have been thinking green and helping to contribute toward the sustainable future of San Diego.
Blueprints for a Green School
By Jennifer K Mahal
UNION-TRIBUNE
May 17, 2008
POINT LOMA – Talk with Dax London about his plans for the future High Tech High Quarry Falls School and you'll hear about sustainable development, green building standards and the basketball court he wants to add to the roof.
London, 15, is one of 45 students at Point Loma-based Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs High Tech High School learning about city planning, environmental awareness, property rights and more through designing a green school slated for Mission Valley.
During the “Gravel to Green” project, students from Isaac Jones and Peter Jana's 10th-grade classes are acting as architects for the 700-student kindergarten-through-eighth-grade charter school planned for a 3½-acre parcel in the proposed Quarry Falls development.
No architect has been chosen to design the school, but officials say it is possible some of the elements from the Gravel to Green project would be incorporated into the campus.
Quarry Falls, which is going through the San Diego planning commission and City Council approval process, is bordered on the south by Friars Road, on the north by Serra Mesa, on the west by Mission Center Road and on the east by Interstate 805.
Developer Sudberry Properties wants to transform the 230 acres of sand and gravel pits, currently mined by Vulcan Materials Co., into a planned community that will include up to 4,510 residences along with retail, commercial and civic space.
High Tech High, which operates eight charter schools in the region, is known for personalized learning, using hands-on projects to engage students.
In teams of two or three, the students will use the requirements for the Quarry Falls campus to create a scaled floor plan, three-dimensional interior and exterior images, a site plan drawing and a building model made of recycled materials.
“It's amazing how easy it is to get them to work on it,” said Jones, who teaches math and science.
The designs have to comply with a rating system set by the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), which gives points for reducing light pollution, building with local materials and using solar panels.
Some of the designs include a rock-climbing wall playground and a greenhouse. Kit Haggard, 15, wants to have a two-story wall of windows, so the students can look out on the light shining through a stand of ficus trees and the nearby bioswale, a creeklike water-cleansing system.
“The question is,” Haggard said, “what do you want future generations to walk away with?”
Gravel to Green, sponsored by Platt/Whitelaw Architects, started at an open house last year, when Jones mentioned that he wanted to do an architecture project. Grijalva was one of the parents in the audience. Her son, Julian, is in the Jones/Jana class.
For 15 years, Grijalva has volunteered with the San Diego Architectural Foundation's Built Environment Education Program, which teams architects and teachers.
Soon after Jones and Grijalva met and started brainstorming, they heard that High Tech High had received a charter from the San Diego Unified School District for a school at Quarry Falls. Grijalva, who has experience designing schools, contacted Sudberry.
The development company is providing site drawings, the environmental impact report, even setting up a tour of the quarry in early April.
Marco Sessa, vice president of development for Sudberry, became one of the first guest speakers to talk with the students. He said they grilled him on everything from traffic to site density.
“I was hammered with questions for two hours,” said an impressed Sessa. “It was the same kind of questions you might get from any planning group in the city.”
Students have also heard presentations by Grijalva, High Tech High facilities director Chris Gerber, the San Diego Planning Department and Platt/Whitelaw architects Jeff Barr and Thomas Brothers, among others.
Barr said he hopes students will come away from the Gravel to Green experience with the ability to really think about their environment.
“To design a building or some physical entity is one thing,” Barr said. “But what (architecture) taught me is how to design your life, to think critically, to go beyond taking everything for granted.”
The project has already given some students a new appreciation for the buildings on the Point Loma campus.
“Everything about the school is incredibly deliberate,” Haggard said, pointing to the window-fronted classrooms and open floor plan.
No architect has been chosen for the Quarry Falls campus, which the developer hopes will break ground in 2010. Carrier Johnson is the architect for the Quarry Falls master plan, but High Tech High will choose its own firm to do the school plans, Sessa said.
The students will present their final designs in June.
“I think there's a strong likelihood that great ideas will make their way into the design,” Sessa said.
Blueprints for a Green School
By Jennifer K Mahal
UNION-TRIBUNE
May 17, 2008
POINT LOMA – Talk with Dax London about his plans for the future High Tech High Quarry Falls School and you'll hear about sustainable development, green building standards and the basketball court he wants to add to the roof.
London, 15, is one of 45 students at Point Loma-based Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs High Tech High School learning about city planning, environmental awareness, property rights and more through designing a green school slated for Mission Valley.
During the “Gravel to Green” project, students from Isaac Jones and Peter Jana's 10th-grade classes are acting as architects for the 700-student kindergarten-through-eighth-grade charter school planned for a 3½-acre parcel in the proposed Quarry Falls development.
No architect has been chosen to design the school, but officials say it is possible some of the elements from the Gravel to Green project would be incorporated into the campus.
Quarry Falls, which is going through the San Diego planning commission and City Council approval process, is bordered on the south by Friars Road, on the north by Serra Mesa, on the west by Mission Center Road and on the east by Interstate 805.
Developer Sudberry Properties wants to transform the 230 acres of sand and gravel pits, currently mined by Vulcan Materials Co., into a planned community that will include up to 4,510 residences along with retail, commercial and civic space.
High Tech High, which operates eight charter schools in the region, is known for personalized learning, using hands-on projects to engage students.
In teams of two or three, the students will use the requirements for the Quarry Falls campus to create a scaled floor plan, three-dimensional interior and exterior images, a site plan drawing and a building model made of recycled materials.
“It's amazing how easy it is to get them to work on it,” said Jones, who teaches math and science.
The designs have to comply with a rating system set by the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), which gives points for reducing light pollution, building with local materials and using solar panels.
Some of the designs include a rock-climbing wall playground and a greenhouse. Kit Haggard, 15, wants to have a two-story wall of windows, so the students can look out on the light shining through a stand of ficus trees and the nearby bioswale, a creeklike water-cleansing system.
“The question is,” Haggard said, “what do you want future generations to walk away with?”
Gravel to Green, sponsored by Platt/Whitelaw Architects, started at an open house last year, when Jones mentioned that he wanted to do an architecture project. Grijalva was one of the parents in the audience. Her son, Julian, is in the Jones/Jana class.
For 15 years, Grijalva has volunteered with the San Diego Architectural Foundation's Built Environment Education Program, which teams architects and teachers.
Soon after Jones and Grijalva met and started brainstorming, they heard that High Tech High had received a charter from the San Diego Unified School District for a school at Quarry Falls. Grijalva, who has experience designing schools, contacted Sudberry.
The development company is providing site drawings, the environmental impact report, even setting up a tour of the quarry in early April.
Marco Sessa, vice president of development for Sudberry, became one of the first guest speakers to talk with the students. He said they grilled him on everything from traffic to site density.
“I was hammered with questions for two hours,” said an impressed Sessa. “It was the same kind of questions you might get from any planning group in the city.”
Students have also heard presentations by Grijalva, High Tech High facilities director Chris Gerber, the San Diego Planning Department and Platt/Whitelaw architects Jeff Barr and Thomas Brothers, among others.
Barr said he hopes students will come away from the Gravel to Green experience with the ability to really think about their environment.
“To design a building or some physical entity is one thing,” Barr said. “But what (architecture) taught me is how to design your life, to think critically, to go beyond taking everything for granted.”
The project has already given some students a new appreciation for the buildings on the Point Loma campus.
“Everything about the school is incredibly deliberate,” Haggard said, pointing to the window-fronted classrooms and open floor plan.
No architect has been chosen for the Quarry Falls campus, which the developer hopes will break ground in 2010. Carrier Johnson is the architect for the Quarry Falls master plan, but High Tech High will choose its own firm to do the school plans, Sessa said.
The students will present their final designs in June.
“I think there's a strong likelihood that great ideas will make their way into the design,” Sessa said.
Friday, February 15, 2008
How Much We Drive
Communities such as Quarry Falls that are located near mass transit and offer alternative modes of transportation - like interconnected streets, pedestrian and biking trails - are a crucial part of our environment and future.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, it’s increasingly more important to provide homes close to jobs and transportation so that we don’t have to rely on our cars or continually congest our streets with commuters.
Sustainable, interconnected communities will be a crucial part of sustaining our environment and providing a high quality of life for ourselves and generations to come.
According to the article “from 1977 to 2001, the number of miles driven every year by Americans rose by 151% -- about five times faster than the growth in population.” That’s a huge jump.
The concept behind Quarry Falls is a huge leap forward in closing the gap between petroleum consumption, air quality and the land use debate. In fact, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the nation’s leading environmental organization, is turning their efforts to lobbying Congress to promote development that is designed around mass transit options.
Check out the WSJ article below:
Wall St. Journal
February 4, 20
EYES ON THE ROAD
By JOSEPH B. WHITE
Next Phase of Energy, Climate Debate Will Be About How Much We Drive
February 4, 2008
I lead a double life.
Monday through Wednesday, I get to work by walking a block and a half from a high-rise apartment building to a stop on Washington, D.C.'s Metro subway. I emerge three stops later a half block from my office.
My commute is pretty close to a zero petroleum experience (never mind how the Metro gets its electricity.)
The rest of the week, I am back in Detroit, where I return to the 20th century. I drive about 20 miles to my office, which is located by the side of a freeway in a suburban "edge city." I sometimes walk to a sub shop for lunch, but it's an arduous slog along busy four lane streets that sometimes have sidewalks, and sometimes don't. To get just about anywhere from my office requires another car trip.
It turns out I am straddling the frontier of the next big debate over the role of the automobile in America. Congress and President Bush late last year agreed to order car makers to boost the average fuel efficiency of new vehicles to 35 miles per gallon by 2020.
Last year's energy debate centered around CAFE, the acronym for Corporate Average Fuel Economy. The next phase of the energy/climate change debate over cars will force us to learn another piece of technical jargon: VMT, or vehicle miles traveled.
Car makers and consumers will bear considerable costs to switch to a fleet of cars that meets the 35 mgp CAFE goal. But that might not result in a significant reduction in U.S. petroleum consumption or cut the CO2 we add to the atmosphere if we keep driving more and more miles.
From 1977 to 2001, the number of miles driven every year by Americans
rose by 151% -- about five times faster than the growth in population,
according to data compiled for a 2006 report to the U.S.
Department of Transportation written by Stephen Polzin, a
transportation researcher at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
The reasons for the big growth in miles traveled are pretty obvious if you don't live in the center of a big city endowed with functioning public transport. To make space for ever larger suburban homes, housing developers pushed further and further from city centers and shopping areas. New neighborhoods often had street layouts cluttered with cul de sacs that forced people to drive farther to get to main roads or stores. Local zoning laws -- reflecting the preferences of residents -- tended to separate commercial and residential uses, and single family from multi-family dwellings.
Meanwhile, the bulk of the money spent on transportation infrastructure was directed to building more and bigger highways. We could have subsidized bullet trains and more light rail systems, but we didn't.
Now, many of the environmentalists, politicians and scientists who made the case for boosting vehicle fuel efficiency are turning their attention to the problem of how much we drive -- and the legacy of 20th century land use and transportation choices.
Just how much more driving Americans will do is a matter of some debate. Higher gas prices, changes in demographics, and a recent upturn in urban redevelopment aimed at luring empty nesters back to city neighborhoods all could result in vehicle miles traveled growing more slowly in the future than it did during the past 30 or so years.
Still, the U.S. Department of Energy projects that miles driven will keep increasing in coming years, and by 2030 could grow by 59% compared with 2005 levels -- still outpacing population growth, though not by as much in the last three decades of the past century.
That means even though we'll be driving vehicles that slurp less petroleum per mile, carbon dioxide emissions could grow by as much as 41%, according to a report titled "Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change," published by the Urban Land Institute.
Deron Lovaas, a transportation researcher with the Natural Resources Defense Council, predicts that the debate over how to curb driving will come to the fore next year, when Congress is scheduled to debate a massive bill to fund transportation projects using federal gasoline tax revenue. The NRDC and other environmental groups, fresh from their victory in the fuel-efficiency debate, are turning their attention to issues such as reforming land use rules to promote denser development and concentrating more public spending on better mass transit systems for metro areas, he says.
Meanwhile, the Energy Department, in response to a 2005 congressional mandate, has enlisted an arm of the National Academy of Sciences to study how travel behavior will change as people live in communities that are designed to have different services closer to their homes, and more homes closer together.
How all this will affect the experience of driving and what we want to drive is a problem that's starting to keep executives of big car companies up at night. If you live the way I do in Washington, you don't really need a $35,000, all-wheel drive luxury wagon. On the other hand, the challenge of dictating to Americans where and how they should live is a problem that will likely keep politicians up at night. There's a reason why so many of us live in big single-family houses, and it's not because living in a small apartment wasn't available as an alternative.
As for me, I think it's time for a pair of new shoes.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, it’s increasingly more important to provide homes close to jobs and transportation so that we don’t have to rely on our cars or continually congest our streets with commuters.
Sustainable, interconnected communities will be a crucial part of sustaining our environment and providing a high quality of life for ourselves and generations to come.
According to the article “from 1977 to 2001, the number of miles driven every year by Americans rose by 151% -- about five times faster than the growth in population.” That’s a huge jump.
The concept behind Quarry Falls is a huge leap forward in closing the gap between petroleum consumption, air quality and the land use debate. In fact, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the nation’s leading environmental organization, is turning their efforts to lobbying Congress to promote development that is designed around mass transit options.
Check out the WSJ article below:
Wall St. Journal
February 4, 20
EYES ON THE ROAD
By JOSEPH B. WHITE
Next Phase of Energy, Climate Debate Will Be About How Much We Drive
February 4, 2008
I lead a double life.
Monday through Wednesday, I get to work by walking a block and a half from a high-rise apartment building to a stop on Washington, D.C.'s Metro subway. I emerge three stops later a half block from my office.
My commute is pretty close to a zero petroleum experience (never mind how the Metro gets its electricity.)
The rest of the week, I am back in Detroit, where I return to the 20th century. I drive about 20 miles to my office, which is located by the side of a freeway in a suburban "edge city." I sometimes walk to a sub shop for lunch, but it's an arduous slog along busy four lane streets that sometimes have sidewalks, and sometimes don't. To get just about anywhere from my office requires another car trip.
It turns out I am straddling the frontier of the next big debate over the role of the automobile in America. Congress and President Bush late last year agreed to order car makers to boost the average fuel efficiency of new vehicles to 35 miles per gallon by 2020.
Last year's energy debate centered around CAFE, the acronym for Corporate Average Fuel Economy. The next phase of the energy/climate change debate over cars will force us to learn another piece of technical jargon: VMT, or vehicle miles traveled.
Car makers and consumers will bear considerable costs to switch to a fleet of cars that meets the 35 mgp CAFE goal. But that might not result in a significant reduction in U.S. petroleum consumption or cut the CO2 we add to the atmosphere if we keep driving more and more miles.
From 1977 to 2001, the number of miles driven every year by Americans
rose by 151% -- about five times faster than the growth in population,
according to data compiled for a 2006 report to the U.S.
Department of Transportation written by Stephen Polzin, a
transportation researcher at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
The reasons for the big growth in miles traveled are pretty obvious if you don't live in the center of a big city endowed with functioning public transport. To make space for ever larger suburban homes, housing developers pushed further and further from city centers and shopping areas. New neighborhoods often had street layouts cluttered with cul de sacs that forced people to drive farther to get to main roads or stores. Local zoning laws -- reflecting the preferences of residents -- tended to separate commercial and residential uses, and single family from multi-family dwellings.
Meanwhile, the bulk of the money spent on transportation infrastructure was directed to building more and bigger highways. We could have subsidized bullet trains and more light rail systems, but we didn't.
Now, many of the environmentalists, politicians and scientists who made the case for boosting vehicle fuel efficiency are turning their attention to the problem of how much we drive -- and the legacy of 20th century land use and transportation choices.
Just how much more driving Americans will do is a matter of some debate. Higher gas prices, changes in demographics, and a recent upturn in urban redevelopment aimed at luring empty nesters back to city neighborhoods all could result in vehicle miles traveled growing more slowly in the future than it did during the past 30 or so years.
Still, the U.S. Department of Energy projects that miles driven will keep increasing in coming years, and by 2030 could grow by 59% compared with 2005 levels -- still outpacing population growth, though not by as much in the last three decades of the past century.
That means even though we'll be driving vehicles that slurp less petroleum per mile, carbon dioxide emissions could grow by as much as 41%, according to a report titled "Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change," published by the Urban Land Institute.
Deron Lovaas, a transportation researcher with the Natural Resources Defense Council, predicts that the debate over how to curb driving will come to the fore next year, when Congress is scheduled to debate a massive bill to fund transportation projects using federal gasoline tax revenue. The NRDC and other environmental groups, fresh from their victory in the fuel-efficiency debate, are turning their attention to issues such as reforming land use rules to promote denser development and concentrating more public spending on better mass transit systems for metro areas, he says.
Meanwhile, the Energy Department, in response to a 2005 congressional mandate, has enlisted an arm of the National Academy of Sciences to study how travel behavior will change as people live in communities that are designed to have different services closer to their homes, and more homes closer together.
How all this will affect the experience of driving and what we want to drive is a problem that's starting to keep executives of big car companies up at night. If you live the way I do in Washington, you don't really need a $35,000, all-wheel drive luxury wagon. On the other hand, the challenge of dictating to Americans where and how they should live is a problem that will likely keep politicians up at night. There's a reason why so many of us live in big single-family houses, and it's not because living in a small apartment wasn't available as an alternative.
As for me, I think it's time for a pair of new shoes.
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