'GREEN' IN VAIN?

Guest Column

Sarasota's Downtown Core (DTC) has a unique opportunity to become the highest contributor toward the preservation of our natural environment and resources, if only we have the courage of our convictions.  Which convictions?  Those defined by the community and reflected in the adoption of the Downtown Master Plan 2020.  Not by importing a suburban green band-aid vision of shrubbery, grass and berms into our vital commercial core, but rather by supporting a properly designed urban center that recognizes the importance of the long-term viability of our downtown.

Countries all over the world have welcomed New Urbanism, which is simply a reintroduction of the theories our cherished older towns and cities embraced before succumbing to society's relentless 100-year obsession with the automobile and technology.  Sarasota made history by being one of the first cities in the world to adopt a downtown land use code based on the New Urbansim-based SmartCode.  The SmartCode supports community vision, local character, conservation of open lands, transit options, and walkable and mixed-use neighborhoods.  Before we abandon these higher objectives arguing over the removal of a thin strip of grass or a black olive tree or two, perhaps some fundamental review is in order.  If you can forgive the technical nature of the conversation, here are important lessons here for us in Sarasota.

New Urbanists identify the differences among nature, rural land, neighborhoods, towns and cities by indexing human habitat area by 'Transect'.  There are six Transects professionally called T-1, T-2, T-3, T-4, T-5 and T-6.  Transect One (T-1) is the most natural environment, void of human habitat, with T-6 as the most urban environment humans inhabit.  Both T-1 (Natural Land) and T-6 (Urban Core) are the healthiest environments from a sustainability standpoint, with T-3 (Sub-Urban) and T-4 (General Urban) having the most impact on our environment.  New York City, particularly Manhattan T-6 zone is America's poster child for protecting the environment, because its density saves land, efficiently uses energy and attracts billions of people.

Each 'Transect' has a comprehensive list of what does, and does not, make up its unique built character.  For example, one expects to see a farmer in a barn milking a cow in a T-2 zone, which is farmland, but would not expect to see that in the DTC T-6 zone.  Therefore, the city does not allow milking cows or building barns on Main Street - at least one yet!

Many of the city neighborhoods are T-4, and on top of their environmental impact, much of the human habitat we created in Florida does not support a good quality of life.  Automobiles generate 30-60% of the carbons warming the air.  The average suburban household travels 14 car-trips a day and many Americans walk only four minutes a day.  Calibrating our T-6 DTC with T-1 through T-4 environmental tools eliminates the benefits of our T-5 and T-6 culture.  

We have built areas that have lost almost all sense of community by virtue of their separation.  The DTC and surrounding neighborhoods are supposed to be the opposite of that by being inclusive, cozy and compact.  A well designed downtown can include beautiful public spaces without becoming suburbia.  Amazingly, our small downtown is capable of achieving a place that embraces a vast variety of people in close proximity, but only by putting the right components in the right place.  Such as, a LEEDS building is wonderful, but not so wonderful if it is a Wal-Mart that requires its customers to travel miles to get to it.

Said more simply, it is vital to our future that the larger planning principles that are so widely embraced, and that have guided our planning during the early days of this millennium, not be forgotten or abandoned over the politically correct battle to save every individual tree or patch of grass.  Until be embrace a real Downtown Core surrounded by urban neighborhoods, we will continue to be driven by our suburban-sprawl mentality and to use the word 'green' in vain.

Denise Kowal