Site Analysis

Informing Context-Sensitive and Sustainable Site Planning and Design

James A. LaGro

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118416266
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

The process-oriented guide to context-sensitive site selection, planning, and design

Sustainable design is responsive to context. And each site has a unique set of physical, biological, cultural, and legal attributes that presents different opportunities and constraints for alternative uses of the site. Site analysis systematically evaluates these on-site and off-site factors to inform the design of places—including neighborhoods and communities—that are attractive, walkable, and climate-resilient.

This Third Edition of Site Analysis is fully updated to cover the latest topics in low-impact, location-efficient design and development.

This complete, user-friendly guide:

• Blends theory andpractice from the fields of landscape architecture, urban planning, architecture, geography, and urban design
• Addresses important sustainability topics, including LEED-ND, Sustainable Sites, STAR community index, and climate adaptation
• Details the objectives and visualization methods used in each phase of the site planning and design process
• Explains the influence of codes, ordinances, and site plan approval processes on the design of the built environment
• Includes more than 200 illustrations and eight case studies of projects completed by leading planning and design firms

Site Analysis, Third Edition is the ideal guide for students taking courses in site analysis, site planning, and environmental design. New material includes review questions at the end of each chapter for students as well as early-career professionals preparing for the ARE, LARE, or AICP exams.

part I
Context and Approach

Part I of this book presents the rationale for a context-sensitive approach to site planning and design. Chapter 1, “Shaping the Built Environment,” addresses the sustainability imperative and design strategies to create healthier, resilient, and more livable built environments. The chapter also presents a systematic, multiphased approach to place-making at the site scale.

Chapter 1
Shaping the Built Environment

Sustainable design balances human needs (rather than human wants) with the carrying capacity of the natural and cultural environments. It minimizes environmental impacts, and it minimizes importation of goods and energy as well as the generation of waste.

—United States. National Park Service (1993, p. 55)

1.1 INTRODUCTION

About 82 percent of the 312 million U.S. residents—and 50 percent of the planet’s 7 billion inhabitants—now live in urbanized areas (United Nations, 2010). Cities and their suburbs today import vast quantities of both raw and processed resources (for example, energy, water, food) and they export—often to rural areas—massive quantities of wastes (for example, plastics, paper, metals).

Yet, the global economy—with its 12,000-mile supply chains—increases international dependencies and, potentially, reduces the resilience of communities to distant political disturbances and natural disasters (for example, Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami). Sustainability is a global challenge requiring context-specific changes in the structure and function of our built environments. Urban population growth heightens the need for comprehensive interdisciplinary solutions to this contemporary challenge.

1.2 ECOSYSTEM SERVICES

Advances in telecommunications technologies, combined with extensive highway networks and sprawl-inducing land use regulations and subsidies, have greatly loosened the geographic constraints on population distribution and land development spatial patterns.

Transportation costs, markets, and raw materials no longer determine the location of economic activities. We have developed an information-based economy in which dominant economic activities and the people engaged in them enjoy unparalleled locational flexibility. In this spatial context, amenity and ecological considerations are more important locational factors than in the past. Cities located in amenity regions of North America are growing more rapidly than others and such trends will intensify as society becomes more footloose.

(Abler et al., 1975, p. 301)

The earth’s ecosystems perform functions that are essential to human health and welfare. In Functions of Nature, deGroot (1992) classified nature’s functions into four life-supporting categories: production, regulation, carrier, and information services (Table 1-1). Nature’s “infrastructure” helps protect the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink, and it provides an abundance of other “goods and services.” These include food, fiber, water, biodiversity, and energy production as well as the provision of cultural, recreational, and spiritual experiences (Daily et al., 1999; Reid et al., 2005).

TABLE 1-1 Ecosystem services support human civilization by providing a broad range of “goods and services.”

Source: Adapted, in part, from deGroot (1992, Table 2.0–1).

Function	Goods or Services
Production	Oxygen
	Water
	Food and fiber
	Fuel and energy
	Medicinal resources
Regulation	Storage and recycling of organic matter
	Decomposition and recycling of human waste
	Regulation of local and global climate
Carrier	Space for settlements
	Space for agriculture
	Space for recreation
Information	Aesthetic resources
	Historic (heritage) information
	Scientific and educational information

The value of nature’s services to human well-being, and the implications of different management approaches over space and time, are not widely appreciated or even well understood. Consequently, environmental management practice has suffered from an incorrect assumption (Folke et al., 2002, p. 437): that “human and natural systems can be treated independently” [emphasis added]. Many human activities, however, impose detrimental impacts on the earth’s capacity to sustain life. The World Resources Institute (WRI) tracks global environmental trends, and the following findings—among many others—reinforce the global sustainability imperative:

• Tropical forests are shrinking, and the rates of plant and animal species extinction are increasing.
• Groundwater tables are falling as water demand exceeds aquifer recharge rates, and groundwater continues to be contaminated with pesticides and other contaminants.
• Global climate change and warming are occurring, and the sea level is projected to rise by as much as 3 feet (0.91 meter) by 2100.
  Source: http://earthtrends.wri.org/

Hurricanes, floods, and other natural hazards continually threaten human health, safety, and welfare. Yet, many disasters causing the loss of life and property can be prevented, or at least mitigated, by better land use decisions that reduce these risks (H. John Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment, 2000; Mileti, 1999). Dennis Mileti, who led the Heinz Center’s natural hazards risk analysis, concludes in a press release from the National Science Foundation (1999, p.1):

The really big catastrophes are getting large and will continue to get larger, partly because of things we’ve done in the past to reduce risk. . . . Many of the accepted methods for coping with hazards have been based on the idea that people can use technology to control nature to make them safe.

In the United States, hurricanes, flooding, and severe storms contribute about three quarters of the total damages from natural hazards. Per capita losses from natural hazards are outpacing population growth, and if the trend of the past two decades continues, direct losses of $300 to $400 billion are probable within the current decade (Gall et al., 2011).

1.3 PLACE-BASED STEWARDSHIP

The World Commission on Environment and Development (1987, p. 40) suggests that “sustainable development seeks to meet the needs and aspirations of the present without compromising the ability of those to meet those of the future.” Concern over climate change, in parti...