The Via Verde project was a response to several challenges for the South Bronx community of New York City: lack of high-quality affordable housing and high rates of asthma and obesity. Delivered through a public-private partnership with a complex financing model, Via Verde offers affordable high-quality homes for a broad range of income levels. Based on existing case study reports, its most successful features are the health-focused amenities and sustainable design, alongside the project’s value in changing perceptions about high-rise housing in America.
Green roofs and food gardens are planted on the rooftops of each building – the organising design feature behind the project’s name, Via Verde, meaning green way in Spanish. The project was the winning design in the New Housing New York Legacy Project (NHNY) competition. The multi-award-winning project is hailed as ‘a model for affordable, green, and healthy urban living’ by the Urban Land Institute.(1)
Given the long timespans of urban regeneration projects – spanning decades from initial plans to completion – I happened upon New Zealand’s largest renewal project at just the right time. Wynyard Quarter is well along its transformational journey from an industrial port into a very liveable and sustainable community.
In April 2018 it was already clear that Auckland’s planners have used fantastic public realm design and amenities to turn the port into a welcoming, walkable and fun neighbourhood. Having visited or worked on some of the world’s leading portside developments in Sweden, Hammarby, BO01 and Masthusen, I can see that this project will likely become a case study in sustainable design and development.
Kia Ora, Welcome to Wynyard Quarter sign
Walking from Auckland’s CBD you’re drawn west, past the ferry terminal and under the New Zealand’s Team America’s Cup Yacht at the Maritime Museum. You enter Wynyard Quarter by passing rows of luxury yachts and crossing a pedestrian drawbridge. As you approach, there are meanwhile uses, pocket parks and information boards drawing attention to the redevelopment. There will be 500 homes and 48,000 sq meters of commercial space in the central area of the quarter, much of which is starting to take shape now.
Visiting with my young family, we walked straight past the lovely waterside bars and restaurants to Silo Park. There is something here for all ages. A water feature, basketball net, and ‘under the sea’ themed playground were being enjoyed by children, teenagers and adults. Posters advertised outdoor concerts and an open-air cinema project against one of the silos. My favourite part was walking up the gantry, a bridge-like structure with multiple levels and partly covered in plants. It offered fantastic views of the emerging neighbourhood and the harbour bridge beyond.
The view from the gantry looking down on Hamer Street and the playground.
There are many planning frameworks setting out the ambitions and development requirements for Wynyard Quarter on the Panaku Development Auckland website. The project’s Sustainable Development Framework aims to move beyond zero net energy, water and waste impacts to a built environment that positively contributes energy and water and is ‘restorative’. Among other requirements, homes have a minimum target of 7 Homestar rating1 while commercial buildings will need to reach 5 Green Star rating2.
The city wants Wynyard Quarter to be a place where residents are proud of their contribution to a ‘more sustainable future’. This project has the most sophisticated monitoring system that I’ve ever seen for a masterplanning project to showcase its progress against sustainability goals, called Wynyard Quarter Smart.
Users of this online interactive tool can view information on a map of the neighbourhood or through navigating different theme areas, such as ‘Transport, Movement & Connectivity’. It’s fantastic to see that the project managers are reporting their progress throughout the renewal project.
Screenshot of Wynyard Quarter Smart online interactive monitoring tool
This regeneration project is leading practice in many areas, incorporating smart systems and adopting ambitious goals for sustainability and health. Just reporting what I saw on my brief visit, here are some of the outstanding design and planning features that will support the developments’ goals for generations to come:
Infrastructure first: The housing development is just beginning but even early residents will be able to adopt healthy and sustainable behaviours such as walking or cycling because the street infrastructure is already in place to support this. There are also plenty of things to do in the area so that people will have reasons to interact and develop a sense of community.
Public realm design for all ages: People of all ages and abilities will find the parks and amenities around Silo Park to be fun and accessible. The gantry structure has a lift and stairs so wheelchair users or parents with buggies can see the outstanding views from the top deck.
Safe streets: The crossing points are clearly marked and level. The pavements are wide and allow plenty of space for pedestrians and cyclists.
Sustainable drainage: The sustainable drainage systems contribute to the landscape aesthetic and filters water.
Identity – marine and industrial heritage: This place has a very strong sense of identity that comes across through the design of the public realm – buoys floating in grass, the gantry, the ‘under the sea’ playground, the remnants of train tracks, and of course the silos.
Wynyard Quarter is a great place to visit, live or work. If you’re planning a similar project in your city, it would be well worth exploring their approach to sustainability and the incorporation of health and social wellbeing principles. It has already won an ‘Excellence on the Waterfront’ award in the Comprehensive Plans category in the USA.
The silos, sustainable drainage and buoys floating in the grass
New Zealand Green Building Council’s standard for sustainable healthy homes, https://www.nzgbc.org.nz/homestar
Green Building Council Australia’s standard for sustainable buildings, https://new.gbca.org.au/green-star/
An international research network launched a report on their research of over 43 urban sustainability frameworks at a conference in London last Friday.(1) BRE’s sustainability standard for masterplans was included in the research and I was asked to present in a panel session about whether the quantity and variation of assessment frameworks was problematic or useful. The research showed that 34 out of the 43 frameworks were published between 2008 and 2013 leaving me to wonder why and how this focus on standards, benchmarking and assessment has grown so dramatically. Why are people measuring urban sustainability and who should be trusted with this task?
Standards serve multiple functions and depending on the nature of the standard, can have benefits for industry, government and citizens (or consumers if we’re talking about products or houses). The Top Dog standard for sustainable cities is considered to be ISO 37210:2014 Sustainable Development of Communities: Indicators for City Services and Quality of Life. A panel discussion in a Liveable Cities Singapore conference last October asked why this standard is used. Terry Hill, ISO President and former Chairman of Arup Group, said that it ‘is both “comprehensive” and “comparable”, enabling a method to compare cities as diverse as Mumbai and Manchester.’(2) Although comparison would only be possible if both cities had data for the same indicators (outside of the core indicators) and reported on these in a publicly accessible manner. Increasingly, I think cities will seek to publish these results in response to increased citizen demand for transparency from government. International comparisons are great for major cities that are looking to compete for talent and investment internationally. But that is not the only reason to measure urban sustainability.
Arguably, a more important reason to gather appropriate data and benchmark performance is for the city’s own use in checking whether its policies and services are meeting local needs. Sustainability indicators can be used by cities to inform and monitor policies and investment priorities. All of the following reasons are also relevant (taken from a scoping report on developing a UK Health Poverty Index (3) with some explanation from me in brackets):
‘bidding for cash grants and special status
support and context for clinical governance [or governance of other services]
broad population health measurement [or measurement of other factors]
targeting services
resource allocation
examination of rural poverty [and urban]
monitoring and evaluation
performance management
visualisation of the extent and contrasts of deprivation in geographical areas using mapping and graphical analyses’ [or other factors]
When it comes to the scale of neighbourhoods, similar data and indicators are useful to understand and examine sustainability. BREEAM Communities (and its international competitors like LEED Neighbourhood Development) are focused on guiding the design of new development to be more sustainable. BREEAM Communities aims to improve the process of planning and designing a new community, including: involving the community and relevant stakeholders in design; considering sustainability holistically; and creating transparency about developer commitments on sustainability. It was odd to me that these frameworks were compared in the wider research with city sustainability indices like Siemens’ Green City Index which appear to be more of a marketing tool for the company’s services than a framework to help cities improve performance.
Many international consultancies and technology providers have introduced sustainability/smart city indices. I note that apart from IBM and Siemens, these are not listed in the research:
Sustainable Cities Index, ARCADIS
Green City Index, Siemens
Smart City Assessment Tool, IBM
City Resilience Framework, Arup (supported by Rockefeller 100 Resilient Cities)
Disaster Resilience Scorecard for cities, AECOM/IBM
New Resource Economy City Index, Accenture and Chinese Academy of Science (CAS)
Global Cities Index and Emerging Cities Outlook, ATKearney
Innovation Cities Index, 2thinknow
These indices or frameworks may fall on a spectrum of transparency and usability by city management. Judging by the press coverage of ARCADIS’s recently launched Sustainable Cities Index, these are powerful marketing and PR tools. And further inferring from the cost of investment in developing these indices, I imagine that they are also very useful for selling consulting services, infrastructure and technology.
As a conference panellist, I concluded that these frameworks have multiple purposes and are used by cities, planners, developers (etc.) for various reasons. Depending on the objective under question, multiplicity can be problematic or irrelevant. One delegate asked during a plenary session whether the research team still believes in urban sustainability frameworks. Following amusement from the audience and speakers, the response was generally supportive of the tools but encouraged international collaboration of independent organisations to look at reducing the number.
Tomorrow’s City Today: Prospects for Standardising Sustainable Urban Development conference speakers
References
1. Simon Joss, Robert Cowley, Martin de Jong, Bernhard Müller, Buhm Soon Park, William Rees, et al. Tomorrow’s City Today: Prospects for Standardising Sustainable Urban Development. London: University of Westminster; 2015.
2. Centre for Liveable Cities Lecture Series. Of Standards and Cities. Singapore: Centre for Liveable Cities Singapore; 2014 Oct.
3. Dibben C, Sims A, Noble M, Hill A, Goldacre M, Surrender R, et al. Health Poverty Index Scoping Project [Internet]. Oxford: University of Oxford and South East Public Health Observatory; 2001 [cited 2015 May 20]. Available from: http://www.sepho.org.uk/Download/Public/5355/1/hpi_report.pdf
The jury is out in Britain about whether or not we should have standards for housing. This is because the current government is all about cutting red tape. The term ‘standard’ can be ambiguous. Depending on the context, ‘standards’ could mean principles of quality or requirements (as in ‘she has high standards when it comes to men’). Or ‘standards’ could be interpreted as quasi-regulations (as in ‘we could have avoided the horse meat scandal if we had tougher standards for the food supply chain’). According to Scott Steedman, Director of Standards at the British Standards Institute, BSI standards are about knowledge. They shouldn’t be interpreted as regulations, benchmarks or specifications. So if standards aren’t benchmarks and specifications do we need them to achieve decent quality homes? And if the answer is no, what do we need? Continue reading “Do standards achieve higher quality homes?”
When was the last time you read up on the Code for Sustainable Homes? A few years ago? Never? There is a lot of bad information floating around the planning world about how England is going to reduce carbon emissions through the Code for Sustainable Homes. For the uninitiated, the Code (for short) is a sustainable building standard for new homes and most planners (and planning inspectors) hold a lot of misconceptions about it.
Misconceptions abound because reducing carbon emissions from buildings costs money and everybody has something to say about it. But also because it’s a very technical area and not many planners have the background or time to question the information they receive on this topic.
