Designing the Sustainable Site

Integrated Design Strategies for Small Scale Sites and Residential Landscapes

Heather L. Venhaus

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781118183434
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architettura
• Subtopic: Pianificazione urbana e paesaggistica

The full-color, practical guide to designing sustainable residential landscapes and small-scale sites

"Going green" is no longer a choice; it's a necessity. Developed landscapes have played a significant role in exacerbating the environmental and social problems that threaten humanity; however, they can also be part of the solution. Designing the Sustainable Site: Integrated Design Strategies for Small-Scale Sites and Residential Landscapes gives site designers and landscape architects the tools and information they need to become a driving force in the quest for sustainability.

Advocating a regenerative design approach in which built landscapes sustain and restore vital ecological functions, this book guides readers through a design process for new and redeveloped sites that not only minimizes damage to the environment but also actively helps to repair it. Designing the Sustainable Site:

• Assists designers in identifying and incorporating sustainable practices that have the greatest positive impact on both the project and the surrounding community, within a regional context
• Uses photographs, sketches, and case studies to provide a comprehensive look at successful green landscape design
• Illustrates how sustainable practices are relevant and applicable to projects of any size or budget
• Demonstrates how built environments can protect and restore ecosystem services
• Explains the multiple and far-reaching benefits that sustainable design solutions can provide
• Assists project teams in fulfilling credit requirements of green building assessment tools, such as LEED, BREEAM, or SITES

With attention to six global environmental challenges—including air pollution, urban flooding and water pollution, water shortages, invasive species, and loss of biodiversity—along with guidance on how to meet these challenges, Designing the Sustainable Site is a practical design manual for sustainable alternatives to small-scale site and residential landscape design.

Figure 1-1: Pudong, the financial district of Shanghai, was primarily farmland and countryside prior to 1993. Today the 467-square-mile Chinese district has a population over 5 million and a density of 10,794 people per square mile (4,168 people per km2).

© Dolina Logan Faulk

Chapter 1

Building a Sustainable Future

Change occurred rapidly in the twentieth century—more so than at any other time period in the history of humanity. Arguably, the most significant change has been the number of people living on earth and depending on its resources for survival. Within a hundred-year time span, the global population grew from 1.6 to 6 billion, and for the first time in history over 50 percent of the population—80 percent in the United States and Europe—is concentrated in urban areas. Cities are hastily expanding to accommodate the rapid influx. In the United States alone, 1.5 million acres (0.6 million hectares) of farmland, forest, or other rural land is being converted to urban development each year (American Farmland Trust 2009). In the coming decades, the rapid population increase is expected to continue, with projections of 7 billion in 2011, 8 billion in 2024, and 9 billion by 2045.

Figure 1-2: Global population growth.

As human populations increase, so do the demands on the earth’s resources. Unprecedented pressure is being placed on the planet’s soils, waters, forests, and other natural capital (Brundtland 1987). It is projected that at current rates, humanity will soon need the capacity of two earths to absorb CO2 waste and keep up with natural resource consumption (World Wildlife Fund 2010).

To maintain their physical and mental health, every individual needs and deserves clean air, clean water, healthy productive soils, opportunities for physical activity and mental respite, and other benefits or “ecosystem services” provided by the natural environment. Historically, we have not required urban sites to function as sustainable and productive ecosystems but instead have relied on wildlands or rural areas to provide the services that sustain human life. Sadly, two-thirds of ecosystem services are now in decline worldwide (UN Foundation 2005).

Urban sites and other developed landscapes can help reverse this trend. A sustainable future for the growing population is not out of reach, but achieving it will require dramatically changing the ways in which sites are developed and maintained. To adequately provide for the next generation, the protection and restoration of ecosystem services must become standard practice for all sites—both urban and rural.

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Ecosystem Services: A Key Attribute of a Sustainable Site

Ecosystems provide a multitude of resources and processes that sustain and fulfill human life. These benefits, collectively known as ecosystem services, are essential to our well-being and are a key attribute of a sustainable site. Examples of ecosystem services include:

• Regulate temperature and precipitation.
• Sequester greenhouse gases.
• Cleanse the air and water.
• Provide habitat.
• Maintain soil health and fertility.
• Retain and store fresh water.
• Control erosion.
• Provide recreation.
• Recycle nutrients.
• Produce food and other raw materials such as timber, medicine, and fuel.
• Mitigate natural hazards such as flooding, wildfire, and drought.
• Provide inspiration, intellectual stimulation, and cultural enhancement.
• Enhance opportunities for mental respite.

Many of the goods and services provided by nature are often taken for granted, in large part because they are supplied for “free” and are not part of our traditional accounting systems. To underscore their importance and inform land-use decisions, scientists have begun estimating the wealth of ecosystem services and have found the monetary value to be an average of $33 trillion per year, or nearly twice the global gross national product (Costanza et al. 1997).

Issues that plague urban environments, such as flooding, urban heat islands, and water pollution, are often caused or exacerbated by the disturbance or removal of natural systems and the benefits they provide. Sustainable sites seek to improve the quality of life of site users and the surrounding communities by creating regenerative systems that protect and restore ecosystem services.

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Regenerative Systems

Figure 1-3: High Line Park, Twenty-sixth Street viewing spur. The elevated public park constructed on an abandoned railway in Manhattan repurposes existing structures and provides a ribbon of green space that restores a variety of ecosystem services in a dense urban environment.

© Barry Munger 2011

The building industry has been an early adopter of the sustainability movement and has documented success in reducing energy, water use, greenhouse gas emissions, and solid waste. Although reducing environmental impacts is definitely a step in the right direction, it is not enough to provide a sustainable future for the burgeoning human population. In addition to doing less damage, we must also reverse the degradation of the earth’s natural resources by creating regenerative and resilient systems that sustain and increase the provision of ecosystem services. Landscape practitioners can lead the green building movement to a higher level of sustainable design by helping project teams realize this goal and integrate living systems into all aspects of the site.

Previously developed sites that have limited ecological or cultural value present the greatest opportunity for the type of regenerative change we need. The redevelopment of environmentally degraded sites, such as greyfields or brownfields, provides a mechanism not only for protecting native ecosystems and agricultural lands (via diversion of development pressure) but also for restoring natural systems and the ecosystem services they provide. Encouraging development within existing communities and developed places also conserves the natural and financial resources required to construct and maintain infrastructure. This stands in contrast to the development of greenfield sites, which has a much greater potential of reducing or destroying healthy, functioning ecosystems and the goods and services they provide. Greenfield development that diminishes ecosystem services ultimately contributes to the global decline of natural capital and the overall benefits humanity receives from nature.

What Is Site Sustainability?

Sustainable development is commonly defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland 1987). It recognizes the interdependency between the environment, human health, and the economy and considers all three when measuring success.

The three pillars of sustainability and their...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Building a Sustainable Future
• Chapter 2: The Sustainable Site Design Process
• Chapter 3: Human Health and Well-Being
• Chapter 4: Sustainable Solutions: Air Pollution
• Chapter 5: Sustainable Solutions: Urban Flooding and Water Pollution
• Chapter 6: Sustainable Solutions: Water Shortages
• Chapter 7: Sustainable Solutions: Invasive Species
• Chapter 8: Sustainable Solutions: Loss of Biodiversity
• Index