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Eric Corey Freed is the author of Green Building & Remodeling for Dummies, an architect and representative of the nonprofit group, URBAN RE:VISION. He was recently at the Green Cities conference in Orlando talking about his vision of urban development and the project that he is the moderator for: RE:VISION Dallas.

I think every city should be looking at ways to become a sustainable city that is not “anti-growth” or “pro-growth,” but “smart growth.” Every city reinvents the wheel. When it came to their planning code, they copied someone else’s model. But instead of sharing knowledge between each city as to what works and what doesn’t work, they continue on as if they live in a vacuum.

Our measurement of growth is that you continue growing, but in nature that doesn’t happen. Animals don’t keep getting fatter and fatter until they explode… and so our cities shouldn’t. They should grow to a certain size and then stop when they are sustainable. But we haven’t done that. We have presented the idea that it’s an either/or. Either you live in the city or you live in the suburbs … and there’s nothing else in between. In truth, there’s a third alternative; which is fixing the city and changing the suburbs to make it a much more sustainable model that doesn’t force people to drive further and further every day. It’s not just the driving that’s the issue, but all the things that are associated with it … the further reach of materials and services, such as groceries. These things compound itself. People, I think, are too fixated on their very linear approach. It’s not that the consumer doesn’t have to drive far for groceries; it’s the supermarket that is required to drive further to get the groceries to the supermarket. And then all of the people who work there have to drive further to get to work. These things are all connected and we tend to forget all of that.

Tract-house suburbia is about maximizing profits and not about creating any sense of community. The developers put a gate around the community and add a clubhouse and say, “See, we have a sense of community.” No, those are amenities that you had to do because you had to sell the units. I think any city should start to look at its planning code. With “smart growth,” you will need to see a change of incentives from a development level and a government level to where it meets in the middle. Instead of a developer coming in and just building things to sell with no responsibility after that, the developer will come in and create new green structures. Homeowner associations will have a vested interest in the sustainability of the entire community. Not just in terms of energy use and water use, but in terms of life span and durability (i.e. how happy people are in the place). We can change these ownership models; that way it’s not the developer building as cheaply as possible but instead the developer building it as smartly as possible and getting rewarded for doing so.

We need to change the regulations of the utility commissions so the developer can power the community the way it sees fit. The developer can go into the utility business and can put solar in the development to feed energy to the homes. The homeowners would still be paying the same price as it did with fossil fuels to the developer, but the developer would be seeing long term residuals coming in from that. … Over time the homeowners association could add more solar if it wanted to create more energy or create a surplus of energy and produce income for the community. So imagine that you could live in a community where you didn’t have to have condo fees or homeowners association fees because your investments in solar would be paying itself so well that you don’t need to charge for services.

Laws that govern homeowner’s associations also should be changed. They are one of the biggest roadblocks to sustainability. We have people who want to put up solar panels, but the homeowners associations won’t allow it due to visual reasons. It’s ridiculous. Policies at a local and state level need to be in place to make that happen. Cities need to turn the corner. Cities like Orlando, Oakland, and Chicago…are examples of how it transforms its existing structure into being a sustainable city. Other examples of that are cities like Greensburg, Kan., where the citizens believe that they have a chance to create a thriving town in an otherwise faltering economy. In Denver, Colo., there is a building downtown where you can trace everything else back to that one development of revitalization of the city of Denver.

URBAN RE:VISION — it’s this based on the idea that we can build something that will be attractive enough to draw people in and other developers will be inspired to do the same. We create design competitions that are open for everybody. They are designed to foster innovation and creativity. Mayor of Dallas Tom Leppert gave us a city block and said, “Build here.” We had over hundreds of entries and three were chosen to present to the developer who is going to build one of them. It will be a model block of sustainability for the rest of the country to follow.

Currently we seeking other cities willing to allow someone to come in and take the time and nurture it. We don’t just want any block; we need to find a block that is really standing in the way of progress. If that one block is developed, then you can look at it and really imagine other blocks that will come in the near future.

What we need, more than anything, is political support of the city. There’s a difference between some mayor standing up at a press conference and saying, “Yeah, we like what Urban RE:VISION is doing” and a mayor actually getting behind it and making it happen. I’m really just trying to set a precedent in every place that we work in hopes that it will not only inspire others to do the same, but to open the doors for others. If I can do, then others should be able to do it.

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