Click here for printer-friendly version

	ANALYSIS AND PLANNING AWARD OF HONOR Habitat Trails. Habitat for Humanity: From Infill House to Green Neighborhood Design, Rogers, Arkansas University of Arkansas Community Design Center (UACDC), an outreach center of the School of Architecture, Fayetteville, Arkansas

	"This plan ties everything together and is really well-communicated; beautiful sketches." — 2006 Professional Awards Jury Comments

The project is a green neighborhood development consisting of 17 dwelling units (avg. 1,100 sq ft) at $55 square feet for a non-profit affordable housing provider committed to detached housing.

The development incorporates a range of conservation planning strategies supportive of unit clustering that preserves more than one-third of the site as commonly-held open space. Since the housing provider's previous approach developed one infill home at a time through volunteer labor, the project's goals are to: 1) establish a repeatable model for affordable neighborhood development that solves for economic, environmental, and social metrics; 2) inflect local municipal codes to allow for low-impact neighborhood technologies involving higher densities; and 3) offer high-value residential solutions to underserved populations and their surrounding communities.

The neighborhood is developed in accord with the site's existing hydrological drainage, catchment, and recharge patterns. Stormwater runoff generated by new development will be retained and treated through a contiguous network of bioswale corridors, infiltration trenches, stormwater gardens, sediment filter strips, "green streets," and a constructed wet meadow.

The integration of a constructed treatment landscape with open space substitutes an ecologically-based stormwater management system for the expensive curb-gutter-pipe solution in civil infrastructure. Rather than costing $450/linear foot, street infrastructure costs $250/linear foot while enhancing pedestrian facilities.

Streets are designed as landscapes to calm vehicular traffic and provide stormwater management functions. While curb-gutter-pipe systems transport runoff problems elsewhere, ecologically-based solutions treat runoff in-situ at half the cost and improve local groundwater quality. "Skinny streets" surfaced with pervious grasscrete parking strips and granulated stone pedestrian/parking courts minimize costly, impervious pavement while dampening motorist speeds. Ecological management solutions enhance water quality beyond the minimum detention requirements, dissipate peak flows to prevent flooding, provide erosion and sediment control, and are not prone to the systemic failures common in civil infrastructure. Collateral benefits include enhanced neighborhood aesthetics and pedestrian-oriented environments, additional passive recreation assets, and provision of wildlife habitat. Contrary to civil "pipe and pond" solutions, the street is an integral landscape component in a larger watershed solution.

The project develops an extended "living transect" consisting of public and private ecotones with the porch as a hinge component. House typologies are developed in tandem with neighborhood landscapes. Stormwater bioswale corridors replace the individual green lawn, visually linking porch and street. Porches extend the home's modest internal living space and function as breezeways to promote convective ventilation throughout home interiors. These neighborhood ecotones serve as context-producing systems and cost-effective strategies for achieving quality within affordable parameters.

The project's primary challenge is to develop a sense of place from Habitat's commitment to develop affordable single-family house and duplex prototypes on a greenfield site. Four planning Fabrics are integrally developed: 1) Open Space, 2) Green Street, 3) Hydrology, and 4) Porch-House Typology, keeping in mind Wendell Berry's adage that a "good solution in one pattern preserves the integrity of the pattern that contains it".

Development of site contouring is a direct expression of the site's existing hydrological patterns. Ecological-based (or soft) water management solutions for runoff treatment, conveyance, and recharge are substituted for unsightly and ineffective conventional "pipe and pond" solutions that rely on expensive hard engineering solutions. Ecological solutions express a place-based neighborhood aesthetic.

The project employs conservation planning principles, pooling otherwise private resources to create a shared neighborhood landscape. All homes overlook and share a neighborhood lawn; have access to a wildflower meadow with walking trails; and share a neighborhood plaza with gazebo, playground, and cookout facilities. This amenity-rich neighborhood is a cost-effective way to create home value and provide public services at the scale of a block.

The project's Green Street proposes a new model for combining stormwater services with auto parking, pedestrian facilities, and traffic throughway. This variation of the European "shared street" solves for different paces of movement through use of landscaped auto courts, bioremediation corridors to treat stormwater, neighborhood plaza as street, and sculpted street edges, allowing the pedestrian to claim the street with the same authority as the motorist.

Porches establish an urban and architectural fabric linked to various neighborhood landscapes, based on spatial types and auto storage configurations. As outdoor rooms, porches extend the modest interior home living areas while functioning as an infrastructure upon which the house (due to budget, quality is primarily not contingent on the house) is attached. Porches are responsive to solar and wind flow cycles, being the first element in the houses' convective ventilation cycle.

Feasibility of ecologically-based water management solutions vs. conventional civil "pipe and pond" solutions relies on unique public/private collaborations. Though capital and operating costs are less expensive in ecological solutions, more land area is required, which often doesn't meet commercial developers business model. Non-profit providers are the most likely candidates for advancing green infrastructural solutions since their return on investment accounts for multiple bottom lines, including social and environmental benefits.

The project is a collaboration among the university research community, for-profit and non-profit design organizations, City of Rogers, local corporate community, and Habitat's staff representing prospective homeowners. Green infrastructure solutions were developed in collaboration with ecological engineers (who function "outside the box") and civil engineers operating under the standard management plans known by municipalities. Of the $1.7 million needed, $600,000 has already been secured from local corporate and philanthropic organizations since August 2005.

Development of Green Street solutions entails skinnier streets, incorporation of non-conforming runoff treatment strategies, and alternative impervious surface materials. Presentation before the planning and city commissions should not be the first step in the permitting process. Besides the required meeting with the municipal planning staff, designers should meet with fire departments, water and utilities department, and street department. These organizations essentially govern land development and their collaboration has been critical in receiving variances from the local code. Rather than view city departments as downstream project regulators, designers should establish collaborative relationships with government agencies given their embedded technical knowledge and influence on policy.

1) The local Habitat chapter has adopted "green" neighborhood planning standards for their development model. 2) Local civil engineers have adopted the ecological engineers' water management model as an alternative to conventional, hard-engineered stormwater catchment infrastructure. 3) City of Rogers has approved the project's proposed "green" neighborhood principles as an alternative to existing land development codes.