Livable Cities

Smart Growth in Action: Baldwin Park Naval Base Redevelopment Project, Orlando, Florida

Introduction

This summary illustrates the interdependency of the sustainable design of high-rise residential buildings and their urban habitats in Orlando, Florida. It argues that increased density is commensurate with the goals of sustainability and fosters a livable city with residences, goods, and services concentrated onto a smaller land area. Green design for buildings is achieved by adopting certain strategies such as passive solar gain, high performance façade technology, solar energy, wind energy, fuel cells, smart materials, etc. There is widespread agreement among climate scientists today that human activity mainly through the burning of fossil fuels is one of the principal contributors to climate change (Smith, 56).

The compactness of land uses and the organization of the transportation system determine, to a large extent, how much individuals drive. “The more sprawling and disconnected that houses are from workplaces and shops, the more miles and hours individuals must travel to get from one place to another. If there are no reasonably convenient or affordable alternatives to driving then all of those hours traveling will be spent behind the wheel of a car” (Ewing and Kreutzner, 88). Their findings indicate that organization of the environment affects travel, both in the form of vehicle trip rates and distances traveled. The pollutants that have been attributed to vehicle travel include carbon monoxide (CO), particulate matter (PM), and other toxins, which are harmful in their own right; as well as nitrogen oxides (Cox) and volatile organic compounds (VOC), which combine to form ozone (Frank et al, 173).

The core of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions problem lies in the disparity between the industrialized and developing countries in terms of CO2 emission per individual. The USA at twice the European average is still increasing its emissions which currently stand at 23 percent of the world's total (Smith, 59).

Sustainable Community Design

The idea of community is central to social and ecological sustainability. The materials and energies that constitute ecology forms the shape of communal identity, and these constituent elements are characteristics of the community's scale and size (Williams, 26). Community may be defined as an organism—“a complex structure of interdependent and subordinate elements whose relations and properties are largely determined by their function in the whole” (AIA, 2007, 15).

As cities grow, consideration must also be given to where people will live, especially in densely populated and developed ...