Measuring The New Urbanism With Community Indicators

Eliot Allen, AICP
Copyright 1997 Allen

Communities across North America are rapidly embracing the "New Urbanism" or neotraditional development movement. Many planners and developers are arguing that suburban-style low-density sprawl degrades quality of life with traffic congestion, loss of open space, and lack of community cohesion, and that neotraditional planning can restore both the physical social values of pre-World War II neighborhoods with emphasis on land-use diversity, pedestrian and transit travel, and social interaction. These principles and their possible outcomes are being debated in dozens of regions and communities across the U.S. and Canada where neotraditional development standards and project proposals are under evaluation.

The Canadian city of Kamloops, British Columbia is typical of communities trying to gauge the benefits claimed for New Urbanism. With a high quality environment and robust economy, Kamloops' current population of 75,000 is expected to grow as much as 60% over the next 20 years, and citizens are anxious to know how to accommodate this growth without degrading community livability. To help sort through the rhetoric of New Urbanism, Kamloops decided to use an indicators approach that adapted the municipality's geographic information system (GIS) to measure the physical conditions advocated by New Urbanists. Using INDEX software for community indicators, stakeholders linked customized measurements of the built environment to the City's GIS database to test alternative land-use plans and neighborhood designs for New Urbanism qualities. The major objectives of this approach included:

Visual and geographic depiction of indicator results to make them more comprehensible and interesting to citizens and decision-makers. Stakeholders did not want to see results disappear into another statistical report on a shelf.
Greater accessibility to indicators through a computer model that widens public involvement and encourages collaborative action. For example, interactive versions can be used at neighborhood meetings and posted on a community web page.
"Institutionalization" of indicators as an integral part of the official community development process. This method embeds them in such a way that citizens and officials come to expect indicator reports as a normal part of decision-making about growth and new development.
Maximizing the community's existing investment in its GIS hardware database. These are of enormous value in "jump-starting" an indicators system without major start-up expense, and for involving key staff with detailed knowledge of local data.

As part of a municipal land-use plan update, the project team selected 30 indicators to be measured by the software. Most of these were derived from New Urbanism principles, but several also focused on parallel local concerns about energy efficiency and pollution prevention. The project's implementation strategy is to build initial public familiarity and support for this set of physically-oriented indicators, and to then follow over time with system expansion into related social, economic, environmental indicators.

As customized for Kamloops, the system will be applied at two levels: citywide and individual neighborhoods. At the citywide level, indicators measure the effects of broad "macro" land-use alternatives and establish benchmarks for gauging long-term citywide progress. The same functions can be performed at the neighborhood level, but at a much finer grain of "micro" measurement. Figures 1 and 2 describe a sampling of the system's first application in the Upper Sahali neighborhood, an area on the suburban fringe of Kamloops already developing in a low-density, auto-oriented pattern as represented by the "conventional" design. Using INDEX, the project team was able to quickly test several alternative New Urbanism or neotraditional designs to gauge improvements over the conventional case.

Figure 1: Upper Sahali Neighborhood Indicators

Goal Achievement
+ Improvement Decline
- Decline
o No change

Element	Indicator	Definition	Base Case Design	New Urbanism Design	% Change	Change Direction
Urban form And Use	Parcel texture	Average size of all parcels in sq.m.	875	652	-25	+
	Street grid texture	Ratio of blocks per hectare versus an ideal of one block per 0.5 hsctare.	0.13	0.88	577	+
	Land-uss diversity	Number of land-uses.	6	10	67	+
	Neighborhood completeness	Percent of key services present.	38	85	124	+
Housing	Single family land parcelization	Average size of single family residential parcels in sq.m.	692	477	-31	+
	Single family dwelling density	Dwelling units per net hectare of land designated tor single-family use.	14.5	21.0	45	+
	Mufti-family dwelling density	Dwelling units per net hectars of land designated for multi-farnily use.	50.6	46.3	-10	-
	Average residential density	Dwelling units per net hectare of at land designated for al! Residential uses.	16.6	26	57	+
	Convenience shopping proximity	Percent of dwellings within 400 m. of a convenience market.	58	60	3	+
	Recreation proximity	Percent of dwellings within 400 m. Of a school yard or park.	28	49	77	+
	Transit proximity	Percent of dwellings within 400 m. of a transit stop.	96	97	1	+
Employment	Job balance	Ratio of jobs versus dwelling units.	0.03	0.04	17	+ <
	Employment density	Employees per net hectare of land designated for employment uses.	6.9	35	407	+
	Commercial building density	Average non-residential building floor area ratio.	0.40	0. 90	125	+
Travel	Street connectivity	Ratio of street intersections versus intersections and cul-de-sacs.	.53	0.84	58	+
	Transit-oriented residential density	Average number of dwellings within 400 m. of transit stops.	17.2	27.8	26.8	+
	Transit-oriented employment density	Average number of employees within 400 m. of transit stops.	6.9	35	407	+
	Pedestrian network coverage	Percent of total street frontage with sidewalks	45	100	122	+
	Pedestrian crossing distance	Average street width curb-to-curb in m.	9.9	10.5	6	-
	Pedestrian/traffic Interface safety	Percent of Intersections equipped with calming devices or signals	0	18		+
	Bicycle network coverage	Kilometers of designated bicycle routes divided by total neighborhood hectares.	0	0. 02		+
	Residential off-street parking supply	Average number of off-street parking spaces per dwelling unit.	1.9	1.6	-16	+
	Auto distances traveled	Average daily personal vehicle kilometers traveled per resident	44.4	42.3	-5	+
Energy	Total consumption	Energy consumed by residents for all purposes in GJ per resident per year.	110	104	-5	+
	Neighborhood self-reliance	Percent of energy produced in neighborhood vs. total building demands.	0	8.5	-5	+
Water	Service density	Total persons served per meter of water lines	4.2	3.4	-19	-
	Household consumption	Wafer consumed tar residential purposes in liters per resident per day.	505	181	-64	+
Solid Waste	Residential generation	Solid waste generated residentially in kg per resident per day.	1.4	1.0	-29	+
Pollution	Air Pollution	Carbon monoxide emitted from all sources in kg per resident per year.	76	67	-12	+
	Global Warming	Carbon dioxide emitted from all sources in kg per resident per year.	7806	6788	-13	+

Figure 2:

Figure 3 shows how the system can identify both strength and weaknesses in a given scenario. In the neotraditional case, planners successfully lowered multi-family dwelling density to accommodate neighbor concerns about too many apartments, but were still able to achieve a transit-friendly net increase in overall residential density through smaller single-family parcels. Alternatively, the model revealed that a desired increase in street grid texture may be too much of a good thing since increased street footages make water service density and pedestrian crossing distance indicators decline slightly. With this type of feedback, stakeholders are equipped to efficiently iterate to a final design. Once a neighborhood's plan is finalized, it can be remeasured at the citywide level to evaluate the cumulative effect on the community's overall benchmarks.

Figure 3:

In terms of project outcomes, the Kamloops planners have now used the indicator system to help select a preferred citywide 2010 land-use scenario that is measurably more resource-efficient and sustainable than the previous plan. At the neighborhood level, indicators are being used to develop spatial and performance standards for mixed-use centers at strategic nodal locations on the local transit system. Perhaps most importantly, Kamloops has incorporated indicators into its official development review process. The durability of this approach is expected to encourage more livable proposals for community growth, and to provide quantifiable assurances to citizens that incremental progress is actually being made toward long-range goals.

Eliot Allen, AICP

Criterion Planners/Engineers

Portland, OR