The Roots of a Living City

The mission of Ceres is to mobilize investor and business leadership to build a thriving, sustainable global economy, and to change capital market practices to incorporate long-term environmental and social risks instead of merely relying on short-term returns as a measure of economic health is a key component of our work. Ceres works with more than 130 member organizations that make up the Ceres Coalition to engage with corporations and help achieve the mission.

Why? Ceres has a strong track record of identifying potential investors, companies, and interest groups to expand the adoption of projects like the Living City Toolkit.

HEROhousing works as a catalyst for community development to end rural poverty in the Alabama Black Belt. As a non-profit, HERO (Hale Empowerment and Revitalization Organization) provides economic development, community resources, housing education, and affordable housing construction. When funding is available they also provide youth programming.

Why? HERO is an excellent model for a locally-based (county-wide) organization working to revitalize places that have long been marginalized.

Point of Contact: Pam Dorr

The mission of Keep Tuscaloosa Beautiful is to elevate the spirit and improve the lives of citizens through the care and beautification of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. They work to inspire and educate their citizens to improve the town by preventing litter, and by promoting recycling and beautification. They encourage all citizens to be responsible for caring for the scenic beauty and quality of life in Tuscaloosa. These efforts boost civic pride, livability and benefit our local economy.

Why? Healing a place begins by caring about that place. Few measures in this initiative’s toolkit will work unless people begin to care for their neighborhood.

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, non-profit society of distinguished scholars. Established by an Act of Congress, signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, the NAS is charged with providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology. Scientists are elected by their peers to membership in the NAS for outstanding contributions to research. The NAS is committed to furthering science in America, and its members are active contributors to the international scientific community.

Why? The NAS is a source of independent, objective advice for this initiative.

The National Science Foundation is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare.

Why? NSF supports basic research and people to create knowledge that transforms the future. They are a potential funding source for this initiative.

Rose Town, in Kingston, Jamaica has a fabulous story that every marginalized community needs to know. In the 1960s, Rose Town was worse than marginalized; it was so torn by civil war that the government bulldozed its heart out to keep the warring parties apart. The recovery began in earnest over a decade ago as a result of a visit by Prince Charles, who passionately took up the cause of the neighborhood. This inspiring video tells some of the stories of what has been happening since. Here’s the story of one of the design charrettes that put the process of change in motion.

Why? Few recovering communities anywhere had a lower starting point than Rose Town.

While many places that use the Living City Toolkit may not be located in sprawl, the initiatives below are creating a wealth of tools that aid in the core missions of the Toolkit because both the Sprawl Retrofit movement and the Living City Toolkit are seeking to heal places that haven’t been doing nearly as well as they could. There are three parallel initiatives that aim to take unsustainable places and transform them into those that can be sustained: Sprawl Repair, Suburban Retrofit, and Sprawl Recovery. Leaders and supporters of these initiatives met together recently at the CNU Sprawl Retrofit Council in Miami, where all three of the parallel initiatives joined under the CNU’s Build a Better Burb banner.

The Sprawl Repair initiative was founded by Galina Tachieva, a partner at DPZ. It is the most robust of the three, having produced the Sprawl Repair Manual and an online community whose participants include a number of urbanist leaders.

Retrofitting Suburbia is a book co-authored by Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson. Galina and Ellen recently co-hosted 

The Original Green Sprawl Recovery initiative is just the work of one person for now, and has not yet produced a book, but it may be the most applicable to the Living City Tolkit because it does not have to begin with sprawl. It can begin with any stage of urbanism, including marginalized traditional neighborhoods. Sprawl Recovery is based on three foundations:

The Transect - In order to transform a place, it is essential to have certainty about the mature character of a place, but not necessarily the details. The Transect is a robust system for providing that certainty of character that allows municipalities to approve a sprawl recovery project; the Transect-based SmartCode is the premier model form-based code in the world, and is essential to rebuilding traditional neighborhoods because conventional use-based (and sprawl-inducing) zoning codes make old existing urbanism illegal, and impossible to rebuild properly.

Walk Appeal - The Walk Appeal book is currently in process, and will lay out a sophisticated system of predicting where people will choose to walk. Walk Appeal has some characteristics that are measurable and some that are immeasurable but equally important. The Walk Appeal of a place is a strong predictor of the economic health, environmental health, and public health of the place and its citizens.

The Sky Method - Just as children are not born as mature adults, great cities were never built in their mature condition at the beginning. The Sky Method allows development in many small increments over time. The ability to start small and grow large makes many things possible that would be otherwise impossible post-Meltdown. While it was originally conceived as an ultra-lean method of developing new places, it works equally well with a starting point of either existing sprawl or existing traditional neighborhoods.

The Original Green is the sustainability our ancestors knew by heart. It is essential to build sustainable places before it is meaningful to have green buildings within them. Sustainable places must be nourishable, accessible, serviceable, and securable. Sustainable buildings must first be lovable, then durable, adaptable, and frugal. Everything in the Urban Systems Solution should be built on Original Green foundations, because that’s the only proven way to keep things going in a healthy way, long into an uncertain future.

Why? This initiative is built on Original Green principles.

Point of Contact: Steve Mouzon

The Project for Lean Urbanism is run through the Center for Applied Transect Studies, and has the support of the Knight Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, and the Congress for the New Urbanism. It was founded by Andrés Duany, co-founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism, and Hank Dittmar, former CEO of the Prince’s Foundation for Building Community. A number of white papers have been written, and the project is now moving into the second phase where “pink zones” (places where the red tape is lightened) are established in communities across the country to foster pilot projects in a variety of settings.

Why? Lean Urbanism is a candidate for the operating system for this initiative.