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Conservation-Based Design Conference with Randall Arendt
In June 2007, the Avon Hills Initiative sponsored "Choosing Our Future: Conservation-Based Development in Minnesota" with Randall Arendt. Below are two articles about the well-received event. Pictured: Arendt, center, assists attendees with a hands-on design project.
AHI Sponsor Conservation-Based Design Conference
by Tom Kirzeder. Originally published in the Summer 2007 AHI Newsletter.
On June 28, over 200 people attended “Choosing Our Future: Conservation-Based Development in Minnesota.” The conference featured Randall Arendt, internationally recognized land use planner, site designer, author and advocate of low-impact conservation subdivisions.
The conference was catered towards builders, city, county and township boards, planning commissions, developers, environmental advocates, land owners, realtors, bankers, natural resource professionals, planning professionals, and other interested citizens.
Throughout the day, Arendt focused on two major issues: (1) the importance of preserving the natural character and resources of rural areas while still providing home sites and (2) assuring green space and outdoor recreation in urban developments. He addressed these issues in a variety of ways, ranging from lectures to hands-on activities, case studies to question and answer sessions.
Arendt pointed out early on how important the topics of conservation-based design and development really are in today’s society. Through several provocative presentations on conservation design for rural and urban, as well as woodland, river, lake, and agricultural areas, Arendt eagerly and sometimes amusingly shared his knowledge with his audience.
With hopes to arouse within people the desire to begin thinking about the consequences of our current methods of urban and rural development, Arendt invited participants to step away from current methodology and begin to focus on the processes and techniques that enable developers and local officials to work together towards a development plan that preserves natural assets and rural character.
Messages from Arendt’s lectures include:
· We need to stay true to what we really want. If your community has prepared a comprehensive plan that includes a goal of protecting open spaces, as most do, make sure your ordinances work to protect them. Why waste your time drawing it up in the plan if you’re not serious about making it work?
· Don’t become engrained in the ideas of conventional development. Conservation subdivisions are designed around each site’s most significant natural and cultural resources, with their open space networks being the first element to be protected. This can all be done while keeping the subdivisions generally “density neutral.” So why not do it?
· When developing rural areas, at least 80 percent of the land should be targeted for open space. In urban areas, 30-70 percent should be preserved as open space. Make places more desirable to live in.
· There is strong evidence that the market will support conservation subdivisions. There are multiple economic incentives to this approach including: greater variability in lot size, added value of proximity to green spaces, reduced street costs, reduced site grading costs, and greater attractiveness to buyers. If it will save money and look better… why not?
· Make piano key development the conditional use, and make conservation subdivisions the standard.
By following these take-home messages and steps to conservation development, we can help to ensure that despite the future pressures for development, we can conserve our special open spaces and natural resources and at the same time achieve our development objectives.
Sponsors for this event included: Avon Hills Initiative, Bush Foundation, City of St. Cloud, College of Saint Benedict, CR Planning, Inc., The Initiative Foundation, Lumber One, The Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, MN Department of Natural Resources, Minnesota Forest Resources Council, The Mississippi River Renaissance Corridor, The Nature Conservancy, Saint John’s Abbey, Saint John’s Arboretum, Saint John’s University, Stearns County Dairy Advising Committee, Stearns County Environmental Services, and St. Rosa Lumber, Inc.
Tom Kirzeder is a senior environmental studies major at CSB/SJU. He is an intern at Minnesota Forest Resource Council.
Collaboration to Protect our Land and Water Resources
by Emily Franklin. Originally published in volume 10, number 4 of Sagatagan Seasons.
He makes it seem so easy!
This was the feeling I left Saint John’s Arboretum with on a summer afternoon in late June after attending Choosing Our Future: Conservation-Based Development in Minnesota, an event hosted by Saint John’s Arboretum. The day-long event featured one of the most established authorities in the country on conservation design and development, conservation planner Randall Arendt.
I attended the event on behalf of my organization, the Minnesota Environmental Initiative (MEI), an environmental nonprofit based in Minneapolis. MEI is a unique organization with the mission to bring together diverse stakeholders to develop solutions to environmental problems through dialogue and collaborative problem-solving. With no lobbyists on staff, our sole job is to develop projects, that engage partners from business, government, and nonprofits in order to reach consensus on a wide range of environmental issues. The premise of this structure parallels how humans interact with the natural environment. Scientists alone, policy makers alone, or even corporate business leaders alone cannot solve environmental problems. Input from a wide range of sectors is needed in order to reach integrated solutions.
One of my current projects at MEI, appropriately named Growth Pressures, emerged from an event MEI hosted centering around the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and Ameregis report Growth Pressures on Sensitive Natural Areas in DNR’s Central Region. The purpose of the report was to determine through the use of GIS mapping where sensitive natural areas remained in the central region and to assess how anticipated growth patterns in the region might affect them. Stearns County is included in DNR’s central region and is one of six designated nonmetropolitan area counties. This 17-county area which includes the seven-county metropolitan area is home to nearly two-thirds of the state’s population and is projected to grow significantly in the next fifteen to twenty years.
MEI hosted a convention on the report in order to begin to discuss the potential implications upon land and water resources if communities in the region are not adequately equipped to plan for growth. State elected officials, local elected officials, local staff, as well as representatives from the business and nonprofit communities participated in the convening. One of the common themes that emerged from the gathering centered on the nexus of state land use and water policies and the direct link between actions on land and effects upon both water quality and water quantity. With these common themes in mind, I came to the conservation design event with some very broad questions: Who is missing in the conversations about alternative land use practices? What are the barriers to effective land use planning? What is driving inappropriate land-use decisions the most? How can conservation design not only increase open space and protect land resources, but also protect water resources? There were a few things I took away from the Conservation Design event at Saint John’s Arboretum that have helped me to think about growth pressures in a broader context.
During the afternoon session of the Conservation Design event, Randall Arendt lead the two hundred attendees through an exercise in conservation design. Conservation design requires planning around the natural landscape and determining density of development not by lot size, but by the actual carrying capacity of the land. Split into groups of 6-8 people, each group had a large map of an existing landscape. Each group was tasked with 1) identifying primary conservation areas and secondary conservation areas; 2) placing a discreet number of home sites; and 3) connecting the home sites with streets and trails. With my group composed of representatives from local government including both elected and staff and the nonprofit sector, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit “at home,” as my day-to-day work with diverse partners had followed me up to Saint John’s.
The diverse experiences and backgrounds of my group members yielded important issues and questions surrounding our chosen design solution. I looked at the map and immediately was drawn to preserving as much open space or natural areas as I could, while I thought about where to place homes and streets. Individuals in my group from local government units brought up “real world issues” like whether or not the fire department would approve of alternative street sizes for emergency access purposes.
While my gut reaction to implementing conservation design tools was, “It seems easy,” the reality is that planning, zoning, and development with regard to projected growth patters is extremely complex. The Conservation Design event reinforced my understanding of how important it is to have stakeholders from all backgrounds involved, particularly with regard to identifying barriers and solutions to nontraditional planning and zoning, and the new ideas conservation design tools present.
Emily Franklin is a project coordinator at Minnesota Environmental Initiative. She was the first writer/office coordinator fellow at the Arboretum, and she made it seem so easy.