How the restraints of the future should influence urban planning today.

Phoenix traffic Tomorrow is holding up quite a large sack of uncertainty. What will the price of gas be? How congested will our roads, or our air, become? Will any number of factors make long-distance commuting unthinkable? Will the planet’s ecosystem, under duress from unchecked sprawled growth, lead to a greater sensibility in design, density, and living styles?

How much better for our long-term survival as a species would urban-centric, high-technology, mass-transit population centers be? Look at the math: take an average high-rise condo building on one singular footprint vs. tearing down acres and acres of virgin desert. Put up a sprawling mass of 70-100 stucco tinkertoys to match the housing units of just one high-density building and the realization hits you like a mallet. Simply finding the cheapest buildable land anywhere near a highway was the mantra of the past. Or forget the highway: we’ll build today and hopefully a highway will come (look at what and where Johnson Ranch was when commenced or the west end of today’s Ahwatukee). But the roads aren’t getting bigger, the subdivisions continue their growth, yet city and state revenues are getting smaller. Where is the financing of new roads to be generated (does everyone remember the ghost bridges of the 101 dotting the landscape of the SRPM Indian Community after the construction demise of the 80’s)?. Or who is going to build that once-planned commercial center or take a chance on a retail strip mall when half the homes in these outlying areas of Phoenix could sit empty? Too many factors that supported urban sprawl are changing rapidly for the worse. Our air is turning brown, today’s long commutes were simply unimaginable just a few years ago, the price of gas continues its climb with no ceiling in view, and massive stucco mini-mansions dot the landscape sucking the life out of the desert and consuming electricity and water with an ever-increasing ferocity. Urban living in higher density buildings allows massive savings on energy consumption, mechanical systems, infrastructure costs, commuting times, accidents and bodily injury, and maintains our green environment. Market demands, and the more “individualized” nature of urban development, allow developers to explore new green and high-efficiency technologies, space-saving floorplans and storage designs, and aesthetically-forward buildings. Thoughtful, affordable, and sustainable urban building designs and planning must morph into a dominate influence on tomorrow’s living: or our planet will have much more to say on our myopia.

Green Standards still debated but coming to a location near you!

From MSNBC.com - Going Green:

Want to go green? Take your thoughts off that gas-guzzling SUV for a moment and consider this: The average U.S. home causes twice as much greenhouse emissions as a single car.

That’s right. A typical house requires power for heating, air conditioning, hot water and lighting — enough to cause the emission of tons of polluting carbon gases each year. A typical house is responsible for the emission of more than three tons of carbon annually, compared with about 1.5 tons for the typical car, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that green home building is poised to be the next great sales pitch in America’s environmental renaissance. By 2010, half of new homes built are expected to be classified as “green” as more builders try to appeal to consumers worried about global warming, the environment and rising energy costs. Builders say green homes are more durable and tend to sell much faster than traditionally built houses.

But how do you tell if a “green” home is truly green?

For the full article:
Prepare for confusion - Going Green