Transforming Our Cities

Q & A with NRDC's Kaid Benfield

Kaid Benfield, the director of NRDC's smart growth program, also writes regularly about development, community, and the environment at switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield.

OnEarth: Some of Diana Balmori's most ambitious work has been done in New York City. How would you rank New York generally among American cities in terms of its environmental performance?

Benfield: New York is way ahead of the rest of the country. This is because of its density, walkability, and extensive public transit system. As David Owens's iconic 2004 New Yorker article, "Green Manhattan," explained, it is by far the greenest city in the United States on a per capita basis and one of the greenest in the world. Manhattan residents emit, on average, only 29 percent as much carbon dioxide as the average American. (http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/hello_my_name_is_kaid.html) People have no idea how much a citizen of, say, Atlanta might envy New York's walkability. As far as land use is concerned, Phoenix, with less than half Manhattan's population, occupies 200 times as much land.

I'm not familiar with all of New York City's environmental policies, but I get the impression that the city is doing a decent job of creating incentives for green affordable and mixed-income housing, two of my favorite examples being Melrose Commons and Via Verde, both in the Bronx. (http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/five_more_green_apples_for_nyc.html) The latter is the best example I know of a green-roof residential project, by the way. The city is also doing a decent job on parks. For example, the High Line, a one-and-a-half-mile-long stretch of abandoned elevated railway on the West Side of Manhattan, is being turned into a park, with Balmori's involvement. That project is on its way to becoming a reality. [see http://www.thehighline.org/]

OE: Which cities have gone furthest to embrace smart-growth principles? There's been a lot of talk about Chicago, for instance, which OnEarth will be covering in one of its future issues.

Benfield: It's difficult to rate cities per se on smart growth, because the issues that smart growth seeks to address require regional, not municipal, approaches. (http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/its_time_to_adjust_to_the_new.html) Unfortunately Chicago's heralded Climate Plan is completely silent on the point, as I wrote last fall (http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/linking_the_chicago_climate_pl.html)

Metro Chicago does have a good plan, but I don't know that there's much authority behind it. Elsewhere in North America the best I have seen was done by the government of Ontario for the region around Toronto: a real plan with legal clout based entirely on smart growth principles (http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/bestlaid_plans_ontario_gets_it.html) Portland, Oregon, Sacramento, and the Twin Cities are other good examples where regions have come together around meaningful planning. For green roofs and such, which I do advocate even though their relationship to smart growth is indirect, Seattle's program is terrific (http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/seattles_green_factor_absorbin.html)

OE: One of Balmori's frustrations is bridging the gap between her grand-scale reimagining of urban design and the practical implementation of her ideas. Is that common among architects, designers and smart-growth advocates?

Benfield: To an extent, that's a glass half-full or glass half-empty situation. While the jurisdictional challenges to doing anything on a regional scale are immense, there also has never been more awareness and energy around the issues. SB375, which was passed by the California legislature in 2008 and is designed to limit urban sprawl and promote dense, sustainable development, is going to force regional planning and, to an extent, design around environmental objectives. Probably not in a way that would satisfy a world-class designer with big visions, but it may not be realistic to expect human settlements to evolve according to grand-scale imagining. They evolve in increments. Urban big thinkers like Jane Jacobs would probably argue, were she alive today, that is how it should be. We do need to put a better framework on it, like Ontario is attempting to do, but there is something to be said for humility in the way we approach these things.

That said, one of my favorite projects, the Atlanta Beltline, is a larger-scale-than-usual project. I think it may be stalled at the moment for funding, but it is a wonderful idea that has a lot of backing. (http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/the_countrys_best_smart_growth.html.)

OE: Balmori's work is very international in scope. She's doing a lot in Asia and Europe especially. What are some examples of foreign cities that you think offer models or inspiration for American planners and designers?

Benfield: I wrote a blog post last year on Amsterdam (http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/amsterdam.html) Curitiba, Brazil, is another city that gets great marks from urban pundits, primarily for its innovations in transportation.

OE: Balmori told our reporter that she sees herself primarily as an artist, and that she's very concerned to achieve a marriage between aesthetics and functionality. From the point of view of urban residents, how important are the aesthetic aspects of their living environment?

Benfield: I actually wrote a post about this a couple of months ago, entitled "Does beauty matter?" (http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/in_sustainable_communities_arc.html) I think the answer is yes, elusive though a collective definition of beauty may be. I addressed a convention of landscape architects last week, and one of my central points was that they are often the key to turning a merely OK project into a good one, or a good one into a great one.