Bringing Sustainability and Urbanism Together

From Architecture Week by Daniel K. Slone, exploring the intersection between sustainable development and urban development:

It is not, however, intuitively obvious to everyone why high-density, extensively hardscaped projects would be good for the environment.

First, there are some adverse consequences that do accrue if density is merely clustered without appropriate design. Aggregate air and water (surface and groundwater) impacts may be more significant and harmful than smaller, dispersed impacts that are more easily diluted and absorbed.

Second, numerous projects are advanced as urbanist projects despite the fact that they do not meet the basic criteria for urbanist projects. Often the ways these projects have been diluted or hybridized means that they cannot deliver the hoped-for benefits of urbanism, including the environmental benefits. In some instances, projects pretending to be New Urbanism have been simply a pretty way to sprawl or to deliver density without parks or connected streets, and are designed in such a way that few social or environmental benefits occur.