Planning Tomorrow's Military Installations	.
Mark L. Gillem	Author Info

Abstract

Introduction

The Role of Installation Planning

While many planners may relish the thought of working in an atmosphere where they could exercise greater influence, the reality is that planners in the Air Force have generally failed to take advantage of the situation and create truly successful places. To the contrary, they have simply accepted the status quo in terms of planning practice and continue to promulgate the questionable policies that created the auto-dependent development found across the United States. On military installations, these policies lead to places that fit Ewing's (1997) version of sprawl: few significant centers, low average densities, and wide gaps in the urban fabric. Air Force planners typically generate land-use plans that isolate seemingly compatible functions like housing and community services. Air Force traffic engineers plan roads and parking areas that cover the landscape with asphalt and concrete. Air Force architects design freestanding, single-use, single-story buildings surrounded by paving or unusable open space. Land conservation, pollution prevention, force protection, and quality of life issues have been afterthoughts. Today, however, these concerns are gaining importance as the Air Force begins planning for installations of the future. Purchasing additional land is rarely a viable option in today's constrained funding atmosphere. Yet, many installations not affected by the latest round of base closings are growing as they accept missions relocated from closed bases. Accommodating this growth, while staying within existing base boundaries, is a growing challenge. Furthermore, protection of U.S. military forces is a vital concern as the threat of global terrorism increases. The Khobar Towers bombing in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia in June 1996, which killed 19 military personnel, heightened the military's awareness of terrorist attacks. Also, since the 1980s, environmental concerns have changed the way many Air Force organizations operate. In FY 1996, the Air Force spent nearly $1 billion in environmental cleanup, compliance, and pollution prevention measures (Rothenberg, 1997). From purifying contaminated water sources to improving air quality, Air Force planners are now looking for ways to reduce mission impacts on the environment. Quality of life issues are another key area of concern for planners as they hope to improve Air Force installations. Planners can enhance quality of life by designing excellent installations where Air Force personnel live in attractive neighborhoods, work in quality facilities, and have easy access to community activities.

The comprehensive planning effort on Air Force installations begins with the development of the installation General Plan. This plan consists of four major components addressing composite constraints and opportunities, land use, transportation, and capital improvements. The General Plan is a required document and it must accurately represent the structure and character of an installation. To help planners create more effective General Plans, the Air Force recently outlined key physical planning principles in a brochure titled Achieving Design Excellence. While many of the principles echo those articulated by advocates of 'New Urbanism,' they follow successful land use and development patterns found at military installations. Interestingly, planners developed many of these installations, from the Presidio in San Francisco to Randolph Field in San Antonio, before 1940. The planning efforts since then have been less remarkable. However, many of the requirements are as valid today as they were in the 1930s. Most Air Force installations still have an airfield, industrial zones, administrative functions, a variety of housing types, retail districts, and recreational areas. In effect, an air base is somewhat like a small town with its own employment base, community services, and functional requirements. Fortunately, military planners are beginning to learn lessons from successful installations and are now applying those lessons, where appropriate, to today's bases. While planners must address variations in weather patterns, site conditions, regional architectural languages, and mission requirements, Achieving Design Excellence encourages the use of general principles modified for local conditions. In the following sections, the key physical planning principles discussed in Achieving Design Excellence are presented with examples from case study projects where these principles have been applied recently.

Uncover a Unifying Element

Beginning a General Plan with a recognition that there is an important element at a site worth highlighting as a structure for future development may be the hardest task facing military planners. Since most bases have experienced several decades of growth, layers of poorly planned development may obscure possible unifying elements. Moreover, uncovering these elements may be difficult if it requires relocation of existing land uses or demolition of occupied facilities. The benefit, though, can be worth the effort. Like architects who espouse critical regionalism, identifying and working with a site's unifying element respects the history and culture of the place. In too many instances, military planners have ignored the unique characteristics of a place and imported inappropriate planning solutions. Aviano Air Base in northern Italy is one example. While planners could have learned valuable lessons from the nearby Italian towns, they imported key features of the plan from the United States. For example, clearly segregated land uses support numerous single-story, flat roofed facilities. As shown in Illustration 1, the facilities are scattered around the site with no apparent order and contribute to an ill-defined transportation network. Recent planning efforts there, however, have attempted to restructure a portion of the base around a new piazza bisected by a narrow pedestrian street (see Illustration 2). While alleviating traffic congestion and responding to a need for improved pedestrian access around the base, the piazza and pedestrian street will also become the unifying element for the base and contribute to an improved sense of place.

Strive for Simplicity

What makes a plan simple? Lyndon and Moore write about shapes that remind; they note, "The simpler, self-referencing forms of Euclidean geometry turn the mind inward to the discovery of consistencies, hierarchies, and centers, to constructs of self-regulated thought" (1994, p. 235). Likewise, it may be in what Lyndon and Moore term axes that reach; they found that builders of the past ". . . recognized the organizational power of the axis and arranged palaces and civic spaces along lines that lead through entire complexes, even cities . . ." (1994, p. 7). Whether planners use simple, recognizable shapes, strong axes, or other means to achieve simplicity, the point is that places should be understandable to their occupants. Planners can learn from Lynch's (1960) concept of legibility that stresses the importance of clear, recognizable cityscapes. Air Force planners recently tried to simplify the master plan at Kelly Air Force Base's Security Hill in San Antonio. At Security Hill, layers of physical blight buried a potentially simple planning composition. Dumpsters, parking, condensing units, and outbuildings had, over time, monopolized an area that could serve as a 'campus quad.' The recently revised master plan calls for removal of these elements and creates a new, rectangular quad located at the junction of two new pedestrian axes as a way to bring order to an otherwise confusing environment.

Encourage Mixed-Use

While this principle may sound simple in theory, applying the idea has been difficult on Air Force bases. One problem has been in the definition of "like uses." In the past, planners adhered to a rigid definition and only allowed pure land use zones. Unaccompanied housing units for junior enlisted personnel were in one zone. Accompanied housing units for families were in yet another zone. Retail activities were in a third zone. Today, the lines between zones are becoming less rigid. For instance, if residential, retail, and employment zones are mutually supportive then collocation may work well. At one installation, the planners replaced the existing land-use plan and its nine discrete zones with a simpler version consisting of three mixed-use development districts: airfield; industrial; and mission support.

Planning for vertically integrated facilities is even more problematic. Due to rigid funding categories, differing timelines for occupancy, and a culture of individual buildings for every organization, the idea of grouping similar functions in one facility or even on a site has been met with resistance. For example, the using agencies rejected a proposal at Aviano Air Base to collocate a recreation center and library in one, three-story facility. The limited land area on the base and the financial savings of a mixed-use facility, which totaled 10% of the construction cost or nearly $1.1 million, initially justified the proposal. The users, though, insisted on two single-story buildings in isolated areas of the base. Fortunately, at Security Hill, the concept met with early approval from the base leadership and using agencies. Planners called for several mixed-use facilities that placed public functions on the ground level and private functions on second and third levels. In one case, designers located a tavern below lodging rooms and, in another, designers placed apartments above a recreation center. These more efficient facilities allowed planners to better use the available land area and bring the functions closer together thereby reducing the distance required for pedestrian travel.

Increase Density

Without elaboration, this principle alienates many Air Force personnel who picture high-rise buildings and overcrowded streets. The reality is that planners can find a balance between a density that supports pedestrian activity and one that overpowers such activity. On bases, this can translate into compact development with two and three-story facilities set closely in mixed-use districts. As defined by Ewing, "Compact development requires some concentration of employment, some clustering of housing, and some mixing of land uses" (1997, p. 108). One study noted by Calthorpe (1993) found that families in a compact neighborhood drove their vehicles an average of 15,707 miles annually and their counterparts living in a typical 'sprawl' development drove 31,291 miles annually. This 50% reduction in total Vehicle Miles of Travel (VMT) leads directly to improved air quality. If military installations mirrored these compact developments, the air quality impacts would be substantial. For example, one study found that compact development at Luke Air Force Base outside Phoenix, AZ could translate into a 25% reduction in total VMT and reduce annual automobile emissions by nearly 700,000 pounds (Gillem, 1997). Additionally, increasing densities at the core of an installation would leave more of the perimeter open as a buffer between the base and off-base development. These natural open areas have numerous benefits including flood control, groundwater recharge, and wildlife habitat conservation (Ewing, 1997). Also, these buffer zones provide military installations the best type of defense against terrorist attacks: stand-off distance. A study sponsored by the U.S. Air Force (1997b) found that if planners could have increased the stand-off distance between the threat and the Khobar tower site from 80 feet to 400 feet, serious damage and casualties would have been minimized. The study concludes, "While many different measures can be used to provide force protection in facility site design, distance is the most effective and desirable tool because other measures vary in effectiveness, are more costly, and have unintended consequences" (U.S. Air Force, 1997b, p. 18).

Two recent projects applied this principle. First, at Ellsworth Air Force Base in Rapid City, SD, planners have redrawn the base's master plan to bring planned new housing within a five-minute walk of core commercial and administrative areas. Existing, low-density housing located at the base's periphery needs replaced due to age and deteriorating structural conditions. Rather than continue a planned growth pattern that would locate the replacement houses even further from the center of the base, the revised plan uses vacant land at the core once considered unusable because of the small increments available. While these increments may be unattractive to private sector developers interested in large and uninterrupted tracts of land, they are of appropriate size to create small, identifiable neighborhoods housing 50 to 100 families each. The residential neighborhoods will also knit together isolated employment and commercial zones. The second example is the new master plan for Youngstown Air Reserve Station in northeast Ohio. To incorporate anticipated mission expansion, planners considered purchasing 450 acres of agricultural land and converting that land into mission support areas. However, by increasing development density and coordinating new construction with needed demolition, planners determined the base's existing area could accommodate the new mission requirements. This will result in an $11 million cost avoidance for land acquisition and infrastructure extensions.

Cluster Related Activities

This principle helps planners increase densities while promoting pedestrian activity. It is, however, at odds with the way planners have sited facilities at most installations. Typically, planners develop a land use map that 'fences in' standard zones. These zones usually have undeveloped areas and when a requirement surfaces that meets the zone's land use classification, planners site it in one of these undeveloped areas. The landscape architects and architects further hamper any sense of clustering by surrounding the required facility with parking and landscaping. Bases become no more than an assortment of freestanding and isolated facilities. However, as noted by Ewing (1997), the idea of neighborhoods clustered around a town or village center is especially appealing. For military installations, another benefit of clustering is enhanced force protection. The Air Force recommends that planners cluster functionally compatible facilities with similar threat levels. This reduces the perimeter area requiring protection, provides compact security areas, and limits access points to serve multiple facilities (U.S. Air Force, 1997b).

At Aviano, the clustering of mixed-use facilities around the planned piazza gave definition to the piazza, supported visual control over public spaces, and promoted an increased density of development. Projects sited at the perimeter of the installation, within three meters of a public road, could relocate to the interior, thereby increasing the stand-off distance. At Ellsworth, planners sited a new education center in an area with an underused parking area and a facility scheduled for demolition. The location, next to an existing theater and library, created a cluster of supportive activities centered on a new community green. However, taking away any parking, even rarely used parking, is a political challenge. Also, coordinating new construction with planned demolition increases a project's difficulty. This type of planning requires carefully orchestrated development and is often avoided due to the time and effort required.

Define Outdoor Spaces

While the application of many of these principles requires new thinking on the part of installation leadership, military planners, and facility users, many of these ideas can be implemented before the involvement of architects. This principle, however, requires the active support of architects. They need to view buildings as secondary elements that enclose space both inside and out rather than primary objects in the landscape. To many architects, especially those who support 'modernism,' this concept may seem extreme. As Kelbaugh notes, "Modernism celebrated buildings as freestanding objects. These sculptures were . . . difficult to work into existing fabric" (1997, p. 93). The results of viewing architecture as a supporting element in an integrated development plan, though, can be impressive. During the planning process at Security Hill and at Youngstown, when asked to describe the ideal planning solution for their installation, participants in the on-site planning charrettes described a campus-like environment. Site investigations at college campuses of a similar size to these installations revealed that the buildings shape outdoor space through their siting, orientation, and layout. Applying this principle results in some significant changes to typical setbacks. To give shape to a street, building edges must be brought closer to the curb and parking should be set behind the facilities. To give shape to a commons or neighborhood green, individual buildings must be generally aligned along a build-to-line that wraps the public space on several sides. To give shape to a courtyard, elements of a building must be arranged in wings that wrap the outdoor space. Numerous designers articulate this principle in complementary ways (Nelessen, 1994, Calthorpe, 1993, Alexander, et al.1977, Gehl, 1980/1987). Perhaps Alexander, et al. describe this principle best when they state, "Outdoor spaces which are merely 'left over' between buildings will, in general, not be used. . . . Make all the outdoor spaces which surround and lie between your buildings positive. Give each one some degree of enclosure..." (1977, p. 522). In the new master plan at Security Hill, projected new construction and renovation projects will be designed according to this principle. Planners sited several new facilities with the express purpose of giving shape to the new commons area. To do this, architects and planners worked together from the earliest stages of master plan development to define the needed shape of the commons, program new facilities, modify the land use plan, and develop facility footprints supportive of the overall master plan. For the plan at Youngstown Air Reserve Station, designers followed a similar process. The master plan, land use plan, and facility designs evolved together during the on-site workshops and model building sessions. In the mission support district, planners grouped complementary functions in mixed-use facilities to create a pedestrian-oriented campus environment (see Illustration 3). Throughout the process, designers kept focused on using the buildings to define useable outdoor rooms.

Promote Pedestrian Activity

By now, the growing chorus of planners advocating a return to pedestrian-oriented planning is difficult to ignore. Additionally, the prescription to plan environments based on a five or ten minute walking distance is worth considering. Numerous authors define this as a distance between 1200 and 1500 feet (Nelessen, 1994, Calthorpe, 1993, Alexander, et al., 1977). When the distance exceeds this limit, people will most likely drive. Distance, however, is only one factor that encourages pedestrian activity. The walk must be a pleasant one as well. This requires more than building sidewalks and adding 'human-scaled' lighting. For successful pedestrian activity, community services, facilities, and jobs need to be within walking distance; the pedestrian network must be designed using an appropriate width to height proportion; and there should be a continuity of building edges, pavements, and landscaping (Nelessen, 1994). Fortunately, if the above principles are adhered to, this principle will almost automatically be met. A unifying element gives order and interest that supports pedestrian activity. Simplicity in the plan makes the environments legible and therefore more easily walkable. Mixed-uses and increased densities bring land use zones and functions within walking distance. Clustering related activities brings functions even closer together and, within those clusters, planners can use the facilities to define useable outdoor spaces.

In the future, promoting pedestrian activity on military installations may be easier than it is currently. The distance between land uses and facilities on most installations make walking impractical. Moreover, many people rightly question the wisdom of planning bases around pedestrians where the environment is hostile. Remote installations in Alaska, Iceland, and Greenland may require unique planning solutions to achieve this principle. In many cases, however, bases are located in regions where a five-minute walk is acceptable most of the year. Furthermore, since tomorrow's installations will likely be smaller due to outsourcing and privatization of many military functions, the distance between facilities will shrink and walking will likely gain acceptability. The project at Youngstown may be an excellent precursor to the model military bases of the future may follow. The typical active duty installation encompasses, on average, 6,000 acres with functions spread across the area in a low-density arrangement. At Youngstown, the base area is only 403 acres and most of the development occurs within a 1500 foot radius of the installation's center. Along with minimizing the need for future land acquisition, the master plan for Youngstown also benefits from a 40% reduction in parking requirements due to the plan's walkability. More importantly, the planning and architecture combine to create a memorable, human-scaled environment.

A Synergistic Relationship

Note. The views presented here are those of the author and not those of the United States Air Force.

References

Calthorpe, P. (1993). The Next American Metropolis. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

Ewing, R. (1997). Is Los Angeles Sprawl Desirable? Journal of the American Planning Association. 63, 1. 107-118.

Gehl, J. (1987). Life Between Buildings - Using Public Space. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. (Original work 1980).

Gillem, M. (1997). Breathing Easier: Improving Air Quality Through Effective Land-Use and Transportation Planning. Proceedings of the Joint Service Pollution Prevention Conference (pp. 483-488). Washington, DC: American Defense Preparedness Association.

Kelbaugh, D. (1997). Common Place: Toward Neighborhood and Regional Design. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Lynch, K. (1960). The Image of the City. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Lyndon, D., & Moore, C. (1994). Chambers for a Memory Palace. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Nelessen, A. C. (1994). Visions for a New American Dream. Chicago: American Planning Association.

Rothenberg, K. (1997). [1991-2003 Environmental Funding Profile]. Unpublished data.

U.S. Air Force. (1997a). Achieving Design Excellence. [brochure]. Washington, DC: U.S. Air Force.

U.S. Air Force. (1997b). Installation Force Protection Guide. [brochure]. Washington, DC: U.S. Air Force.

U.S. Government. (1969). National Environmental Policy Act. (Sec. 102-PL91-190). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Mark L. Gillem
Air Force Institute of Technology