v Encouraging Infill Development
v Maximizing Transportation Choice
Coastal sprawl is “the result of low-density residential and commercial development scattered across large coastal land areas”[1]. By redeveloping and reinvesting in historic downtowns and neighborhoods, redeveloping brownfields and greyfields, and encouraging infill development, existing coastal communities can increase population density and create a vibrant mix of land uses that can help accommodate s substantial portion of Virginia’s expected coastal population growth while minimizing the amount of land developed and minimizing related habitat and wate quality impacts on Virginia’s coasts.
High density, mixed-use communities can also help support a variety of transportation options above and beyond private automobiles. Developing mixed-use communities can help create pedestrian friendly environments that encourage and facilitate walking and biking. High-density development can also be organized across the landscape to form hubs of high-density development that can also serve primary mass transit stops. These hubs, often referred to as Transit Oriented Developments, are designed to serve a population, within easy walking distance, that is of sufficient size to allow mass transit like heavy rail, light rail, bus rapid transit, and regular bus routes to operate efficiently and cost effectively.
Case Study: Redeveloping Historic Downtowns – City of Norfolk (Adapted from APA, 2004) |
Norfolk, a once decaying Navy town, has transformed itself into the vibrant, cosmopolitan heart of a metropolitan area of more than 1.7 million people. The City made the leap without help from high tech or high growth by emphasizing planning and by incorporating a huge urban mall to catalyze downtown redevelopment. Only a few years ago, Norfolk’s downtown waterfront was derelict. Granby Street had little to offer except a handful of restaurants, a few low-end clothing shops, and a lot of decaying and empty buildings. Now an estimated 3,000 people live downtown, where once there were only a few dozen. Three major condominium and apartment developments and numerous smaller residential projects are in the works. There is a stage company operating in a historic theater, a club with a capacity of 1,500, an 895-seat performing arts center, and more than 60 restaurants. There is now a community college campus downtown, filling what was once a department store. The crime rate is 40 percent lower than it was 10 years ago, despite an increasing downtown population, and the value of taxable downtown properties in 2004 was 74 percent higher than just seven years earlier. The Norfolk revitalization model calls for solidifying office space, using entertainment to remove the fear factor, clustering of civic, theater, and museums for a regional draw, growing the restaurant base, and adding housing. The vision is a 24-hour, mixed use downtown. The revitalization of dynamic, interesting downtowns, in which residents can live, work, and play, is absolutely essential in successfully balancing future population growth and the protection and enhancement of Virginia’s coasts. |
Encouraging Infill Development
Infill development is the reuse of underutilized or vacant land located in existing neighborhoods. Infill development can improve and protect water quality by accommodating growth on sites that have already been developed and may already be impervious, thus eliminating the need for any new impervious cover and the need to disturb new land during construction. When redeveloped at higher densities, infill sites also provided local governments an opportunity to ensure that more people are located in areas with existing infrastructure, housing choices, and transportation choices (EPA WATER, 2004, pg 27).
The redevelopment of greyfields can help improve water quality while at the same time increasing the value of the land use on the site. Greyfields are abandoned, obsolete, or underutilized properties, such as regional shopping malls and strip retail developments. These sites often have significant redevelopment potential because of their large size, existing infrastructure, and established community presence.
Brownfields are abandoned, idled or underused industrial and commercial facilities where expansion or redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived environmental contamination. Redeveloping brownfields both removes environmental contaminants from the site and absorbs development pressure that would otherwise be directed to greenfields.
Maximizing Transportation Choice
Freeing the residents of Virginia’s coasts from their dependence on private automobiles is critical to protecting water quality and minimizing the impact on coastal environments. At least 27 percent of excess nitrogen entering the Chesapeake Bay is believed to be from atmospheric deposition. Parking lots, roads, driveways and highways account for the vast majority of the impervious surface that accompanies development. Reducing the number of trips residents drive will reduce the amount and size of future parking lots, roads, and highways. Reducing automobile use will also help reduce the atmospheric deposition of nitrogen and other pollutants that enter the atmosphere from as exhaust from cars and trucks and then settle out on surrounding waterbodies or are washed off impervious surfaces into these waterbodies.
Case Study: Providing Transportation Choice in Arlington County (Adapted from American Institute of Architects, 2002) |
Arlington County’s General Land Use Plan focuses growth within a walkable radius of the five metro stations in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor and preserves established neighborhoods and natural areas. Arlington's urban villages emphasize pedestrian access and safety and incorporate public art, "pocket" parks, wide sidewalks with restaurant seating, bike lanes, street trees, traffic calming, and street-level retail.
The transit successes and corresponding environmental performance are impressive. Metro ridership doubled in the corridor between 1991 and 2002; nearly 50 percent of corridor residents use transit to commute. At the end of 2001, the corridor had more than 18 million square feet of office space, 3 million square feet of retail/commercial space, more than 3,000 hotel rooms, and 22,500 residential units—with many more under construction. Creating this development at typical suburban densities could have consumed over 14 square miles of open space compared to the roughly two square mile Rosslyn-Ballston corridor. |
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Metro station locations guide development. Between 1999 and 2002, the corridor, which contains 7.6 percent of the county’s land area and generates 33 percent of its property tax revenue, gained 2,500 apartments and condos, 1.5 million square feet of office space, 379,000 square feet of retail space, and five miles of bike lanes.