While the Government stimulus package calls for massive upgrades and retrofits to make hundreds of thousands of buildings more energy efficient, we should take time to look out these windows before loosening the frames to add a triple glaze.

Surely, our viewshed needs to clear out. For instance, it’s fortunate that the credit crunch has stopped the proliferation of soulless commercial strip centers. They will continue to ruin the visual quality of our communities for years to come. Poor designs and lack of enforcement have left neighborhoods with inferior building colors and materials, cluttered storefronts, overt signage and lighting, inadequate parking and retail redundancies of coffee, fast food and drugstores.

The shift towards urban infill allows us to forget our mistakes in the suburbs and the lure of TOD and affordable housing are questionable right now. Los Angeles is a good example. Inexpensive land is a motivator, but there is virtually no environmental mitigation that can be crafted for the cumulative effects on people regarding summer heat, urban glare, wind, shadow and noise. Or on social issues with the lack of urban recreation (other than private gyms), availability of healthcare and school choices, concern for personal safety, garden space and owning a pet. You either accept it or you don’t.

Look out an airplane window and see the quiet solitude of people living throughout the land that are already untethered - but connected. To preserve and enhance this choice, now is the time to retrofit suburban communities that we’ve already built - not abandon them. New ones, age-in-place ones, ethnic ones, wealthy ones, underprivileged ones - you name it. To start, there needs to be neighborhood based micro-economies for home offices, small businesses and telecommuters so they can centralize locally, share services and connect through today’s ubiquitous technology. This will immediately reduce transportation demand.

Second, we need to retrofit existing neighborhoods so people can get access to affordable primary health care, health insurance and a variety of nearby school choices for all types of learning within walking distance from where they live today. We pay for this by having developers, homebuilders, insurance companies, schools and our government work together by:

• Building affordable SMART homes and passing the energy savings on to homeowners;

• Using a portion of the first-time home buyer tax credit to purchase health savings accounts;

• Creating a ‘quality of life retail mix’ based on health, business and education;

• Limiting unnecessary earth moving, grading and infrastructure to design with nature

• Living within our means for a decade or so and realizing that ‘small is the new big’;

It’s time that planners, developers, home builders and community agencies peek out of their own business silos to think about how to retrofit neighborhoods so people can incubate, launch innovation and stay healthy - all with a few steps of their front door.

RICK ABELSON
is a Director at Online Land Planning, LLC and a ULI Council Member