Tools for Transportation Projects: Best Practices from Thriving Communities
Learn how you can use transportation infrastructure as a tool for community transformation.
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“The fragile ecology of a city neighborhood and the fragile ecology of the Arctic stand or fall together.”
Resilient Downtowns
Street design is among the most important environmental decisions a community makes, affecting everything from clean air and water to efficient land use and the quality of animal, plant, and human life. A well-designed, people-oriented street encourages environmental sustainability by emphasizing the inherent green features of Main Street districts, including the compact blocks, density, and green spaces that make them walkable and accessible.
Retaining the compact layout of historic cores, incorporating green and efficient streetscape elements, and reusing older and historic buildings — all core tenets of people-oriented streets — positively contribute to the environmental sustainability and resilience of downtowns and neighborhood commercial districts.
Adverse effects of car-oriented streets can include:
- Greenhouse gas emissions
- Flooding due to impermeable road surfaces
- Water pollution from heavy metal and toxic chemicals
- Habitat loss and fragmentation
- Heat Island Effect
- Resource consumption
People-oriented approaches can result in these environmental benefits:
- Reduced climate impact
- Biodiversity, flood control, and water management
- Resilience
- Energy efficiency and resource preservation
- Cooler surface temperatures
Resources
- The Center for Neighborhood Technology
- Badger, Emily (CityLab) — The Way We Build Cities Is Making Them Flood
- Environmental Protection Agency
- EnvironmentalScience.org — The Environmental Impact of Roads
- Global Designing Cities Initiative — Streets for Environmental Sustainability
- Institute for Transportation and Development Policy — Climate and Transport Policy
- National Trust for Historic Preservation
- America Saves: Communities Saving Energy Together
- Atlas of ReUrbanism: Buildings and Blocks in American Cities
- The Greenest Building: Quantifying the Environmental Value of Building Reuse
- Older, Smaller, Better in Tucson
- Older, Smaller, Better: Measuring how the character of buildings and blocks influences urban vitality
- Realizing the Energy Efficiency Potential of Small Buildings
- Oklahoma Main Street Program — Historic Building Energy Efficiency Guide
- Partnership on Sustainable Low Carbon Transport — Documents
- Project Drawdown — Transport Mass Transit
- Project for Public Spaces
- Poon, Linda (CityLab) — Urban Flooding Is Worryingly Widespread in the U.S., But Under-Studied
Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities - Union of Concerned Scientists
- U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit — Transportation
- U.S. Green Building Council — LEED for Neighborhood Development
- Walls, Ginette and Etter-Wenzel, Cassandra (TheCityFix) — With Transportation Data, These Cities Became More Sustainable and Socially Inclusive
- World Resources Institute
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