I see Hong Kong as a model of smart growth management and land use planning. It’s a city were policy dictates that development must concentrate on only 25% of the land area, with the remaining 75% preserved as open space. This policy ensures that the region’s lush green spaces remain intact. It also maintains scarcity and high land values in developable areas. This is crucial to the local government because its primary source of income is land leasing.

Looking at development in Hong Kong through Western eyes, I noticed another impact of the city’s tightly concentrated density: the compact clustering of residential and working populations supports a diverse, competitive, and often ingenious retail community.

My first up-close encounter with the retail streetscape occurred in Tsim Sha Tsui, an upscale neighborhood on the Kowloon side of Victoria Harbor (map). What struck me most was the extreme permeability at the pedestrian level. Few storefronts at the ground floor, save a handful of banks and higher-end boutiques, have full walls. Separated from the sidewalk by only a few inches of floor height, merchants do business in cheerful cubicle-sized spaces under fluorescent lights while people flow past, around, in and out. Read more…

In 2009, The National Trust for Historic Preservation launched its Preservation Green Lab. Based in Seattle and headed by developer and urban policy consultant Liz Dunn, the Lab’s mission is to work with cities to develop new policies that leverage the value of the existing building stock as a resource for achieving cities’ overall sustainability and climate action goals.

As Dunn says, her work is founded on a belief that “existing buildings can be made to perform very well environmentally (and many of them already do)  but they also contribute to social and economic uses that cities care about when they think broadly about sustainability — including affordability, walkability, opportunities for local businesses, and overall quality of life.”

According to the Lab, district energy is one of the most promising solutions for bringing valuable old buildings up to new standards. District energy systems generate thermal energy at a central plant and distribute it to a group of buildings via underground pipes carrying hot or cold water. These systems are widely used throughout Northern Europe and are common in the U.S. for large campus-based institutions like hospitals and universities that benefit from economies of scale. Pioneering projects, including cities like St. Paul, Minnesota, Portland Oregon and West Union, Iowa, have brought renewed interest to the time-tested system. I recently sat down with Dunn to learn more about the Lab’s vision for district energy, and its work to craft policies that will help put historic districts on a new path to sustainability. Read more…

Ed Mazria, known to American architects for his 2030 Challenge to clean up the environment through sustainable practices, recently joined select members of the DLR Group at the Island Wood campus on Bainbridge Island, Washington to help them design a fictional middle school. Six different designs would be proposed to suit six different locales in an exercise that was part of the architecture firm’s annual company-wide educational retreat, focused this year on building skills to pursue the 2030 reduction targets. My interest piqued by the opportunity to watch Mazria in his designer’s role, I ferried to the island from Seattle one early morning to take in the day’s events. Read more…