Measuring Sustainability in Award-Winning Developments

Journal of Urban Design, Vol. 16. No. 1, 105–126, February 2011

‘Living Green’: The Promise and Pitfalls of New
Sustainable Communities

JENNIFER MAPES* & JENNIFER WOLCH**
*Department of Geography, State University of New York at Plattsburgh, Plattsburgh, NY, USA;
**College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

ABSTRACT Until 2008, there was no comprehensive system to measure the sustainability
of new community developments. Many new community projects, however, have won
accolades for their design. This study examines 29 of these projects, in light of efforts to
create indicators to measure sustainability dimensions of new developments. The study
finds that the marketing websites of award-winning projects tend to focus on features that
increase community attractiveness to potential buyers, but do not incorporate a full range
of attributes to enhance environmental and socio-economic sustainability. This suggests
the importance of more systematic rating systems and highlights the complexities of
designing, building and evaluating communities.

Introduction
In 2007, the first homes in Quinn’s Crossing, outside of Seattle, were built as part
of a showcase of innovative urban design in the region. Quinn’s Crossing is
marketed as an ‘eco-friendly’ community of 47 homes, built with preserved open
space and energy-saving construction techniques, “a community dedicated to the
ethos of putting the earth first” (Quinn’s Crossing Eco-Friendly, 2007). Less than a
year later, three homes were burned to the ground by protesters who left a
message in spray paint asserting that the buildings, by virtue of their size and
consumption of once-empty land, were not eco-friendly at all (Whitely, 2008).
‘Green living’, it seems, is the in the eye of the beholder.
In the past 10 to 15 years, a marketing niche has emerged for developers of new
communities, who claim to construct homes and neighbourhoods that are different
from the sprawling subdivisions of the past. These projects are often marketed as
environmentally- and community-friendly and celebrated with awards by
homebuilding associations, urban design teams, and (in some cases) environmen-
tal organizations. They come in a wide variety of forms—from isolated and rural to
connected and urban; from small and affordable to over-sized and extravagant.
The features heralded by those who market these communities are equally varied.
Some are strongly environmental, while others focus on the social aspects of the
development, tying ‘green living’ to a ‘sense of community’. For the consumer, this
Correspondence Address: Jennifer Mapes, Department of Geography, State University of
New York at Plattsburgh, 101 Broad Street, Plattsburgh NY 12901, USA. Email: jennifer.
mapes@plattsburgh.edu

1357-4809 Print/1469-9664 Online/11/010105-22 q 2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13574809.2011.521012

106 J. Mapes & J. Wolch

marketing blurs the distinction between the aesthetic pleasures of New Urbanism
and conservation design, and the true contributions of these communities toward a
greater good.
When these projects were constructed, there were no uniform standards for
measuring their positive impacts—they were designed according to what the
developer believed would be both innovative and marketable as ‘green’,
‘sustainable’ or ‘smart growth’. Some developers leave out what sustainability
promoters argue are among the essentials of new communities, while others add
innovative design features that enhance the overall health of the community and
its region.
Recently, there has been a push to provide uniform guidelines for these new
community projects. In 2007, the US Green Building Council, Congress for the
New Urbanism and the Natural Resources Defense Council began a pilot
programme for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighbour-
hood Development (LEED-ND), a rating system of sustainability practices in new
communities. Neighbourhoods must meet specific requirements to be rated, and
then earn points based on additional features offered. As of January 2010, new
projects could not yet be registered with LEED-ND, but a certification system was
set for public launch later that year. The American Society of Landscape Architects
(ASLA) is also working on guidelines for development projects aimed at
decreasing their environmental impact. The pilot phase of their Sustainable Sites
Initiative began in January 2010.
Within the urban design and planning literature, relatively few recent studies
of new sustainable communities have been done that might provide guidance for
such rating and assessment efforts. Forsyth (2005) looked at early alternatives to
traditional suburbs, including The Woodlands (Texas), Irvine (California) and
Columbia (Maryland), finding that a key challenge facing these communities was
the fact that they required extensive negotiations with regional planning agencies,
and long-term speculative investment that was often unattractive to investors.
Zimmerman (2001) considered Prairie Crossing, a New Urbanist neighbourhood
near Chicago that uses nature as an amenity and sports a variety of ‘green’
features, nonetheless similar to a traditional suburb which does not address social
or economic sustainability (despite what others argue are successes in
environmental education; see Thompson, 2004). The Orlando area’s Celebration,
praised for urban design, has been criticized for its corporate control and lack of
social and economic diversity (Frantz & Collins, 2000; Ross, 2000).
This paper considers what can be learned for future developments—and rating
systems like LEED-ND—from a sample of recently completed developments that
have won awards for ‘sustainability’ or ‘smart growth’. A total of 29 development
projects, designed and constructed before the advent of any recognized ratings
system, are analyzed. This analysis assesses sustainability features emphasized by
the developers in relationship to theoretical literature about sustainable urban
design, and looks more closely at three specific communities. The analysis strongly
supports the importance of industry-wide sustainable development indicators,
given the enormous variation in what communities offer as ‘sustainable’
development. The assessment also provides insight into the complexities of these
communities, suggesting that while it is important to have a set of uniform
sustainability standards, any definitive assessment of these communities necessarily
lies in site-specific, contextual analysis and performance-based evaluations. Finally,
more ambitious community sustainability efforts require additional political

‘Living Green’ 107

and economic incentives, especially in areas such as job provision, affordable
housing and transit.

Sustainability in Concept and Urban Design Practice
Sustainability is commonly defined, following the World Commission on
Environment & Development (1987) as “meeting the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Making
a transition to sustainability involves living within the Earth’s overall biocapacity,
while simultaneously ensuring social equity, political inclusion, and economic
and livelihood opportunities (Mazmanian & Kraft, 1999; Wheeler, 2004). For
different regions of the world, it also implies reduced dependence on resources
appropriated from distant regions and people (Wackernagel et al., 2006).
The quest for sustainability can occur at many scales, from individual to global,
and discussions range broadly from goals to process, from theory to practice
(Mawhinney, 2002). Urban designers tend to focus on what Portney (2003) calls
‘sustainability writ small’—sustainable cities, liveable communities or sustainable
communities. Hempel (2000, p. 48) offers a widely accepted view of a sustainable
community as “one in which economic vitality, ecological integrity, civic
democracy, and social well-being are linked in complementary fashion, thereby
fostering a high quality of life and strong sense of reciprocal obligation among its
members”. While the pursuit of specific goals can lead to conflict between
stakeholders with competing priorities (Campbell, 1996), the overarching goal of a
sustainable community is balance across environmental, social and economic
realms.
Conceptual explorations and the design of prototypical sustainable commu-
nities began with the late 1960s, with planned communities such as Sea Ranch
(Lyndon & Alinder, 2004), Village Homes (Corbett & Corbett, 2000) and the
Woodlands (Spirn, 1984), many of which had ecological features that were
important to their marketing and success. Communities such as Marin Solar Village
(Van der Ryn & Calthorpe, 1986) were also proposed and gained widespread
attention (although never built). Academic interest in the potential of communities
to become more sustainable expanded during the 1990s (Beatley & Manning, 1997;
Lyle, 1996; Roseland et al., 1998; Van der Ryn & Cowan, 1995), case study books are
increasingly common (Benfield et al., 2001) as are websites (for example, Sustainable
Communities Network: http://www.sustainable.org). Eventually, efforts to
translate ideas about sustainable communities to practice emerged, and assessment
of performance via indicators systems, initially developed by community-based
groups (such as Sustainable Seattle), were put to use by progressive municipalities
(Swain et al., 2006).
What can actually be achieved by communities that want to become part of
the sustainability solution instead of the problem? Whether existing or newly
planned, urban communities are embedded in larger metropolitan regions, and
have little control over regional social and economic dynamics. They are limited in
the types of policy tools they can apply, for example, cities cannot sensibly impose
carbon taxes due to the open nature of the urban system, and thus their efforts
should be judged within a framework of nested indicators that acknowledges that
different sustainability challenges must be addressed at different spatial and
governmental scales.


However, both existing and new communities can make a difference. Existing
buildings and infrastructure can be retrofitted, infill housing can be built, or urban
land can be remediated and reused. New communities can also offer alternatives
to traditional low-density suburbs, utilizing urban design tools and land use
planning strategies. Any typology of such strategies would include smart growth,
transit-oriented development, New Urbanism, eco-villages and conservation
subdivisions. Each has a somewhat different emphasis, but many share similar
features, are combined in actual developments (for example, transit-oriented eco-
villages) and together fall under the more general rubric of ‘sustainable
communities’.
No single approach offers a panacea. Smart growth developments, for
example, are often the outcome of uneasy compromises between developers,
environmentalists and local jurisdictions, each of which has different ideas of what
‘sustainable’ means in practice. Typified by clustered housing, walkable, mixed
use town centres, New Urbanist or traditional neighbourhood design (TND)
aesthetics, and open space set aside for habitat conservation, they are usually sited
at the urban fringe where they promote auto-dependence and habitat
fragmentation as well as socio-economic segregation (Bunce, 2004; Filion, 2003;
Gearin, 2004; Kruger, 2007). Some studies suggest the advantages of New
Urbanism with respect to environmental protection (for example, water manage-
ment; see Berke et al., 2003), but such communities have yet to be subjected to
rigorous sustainability performance evaluations.
Nonetheless, new communities will continue to be developed. They can
become ‘sustainable’ communities if designed using high-performance buildings,
green infrastructure, and alternative transportation systems that reduce energy
use and minimize pollution and waste; offer enhanced access to economic and
business opportunities; and provide a mix of housing and community facilities
that encourage social diversity and cohesion and the evolution of an inclusive
civic culture.

Considering ‘Sustainable’ Communities
Many assessment systems have been developed for localities, based on indicators
linked to environmental, economic and social aspects of sustainability. Most of
these systems set goals and track performance following interventions in local
policy, agency operations and municipal management (Bertone et al., 2006).
However, new private developments built within a larger locality seldom subject
themselves to the articulation of specific sustainability goals or indicator/perfor-
mance assessment beyond those needed to obtain entitlements and permits. For
those communities constructed before (or without) LEED-ND, assessment relies
upon the self-reporting of the developer or site visits by outside experts. There are
few incentives for the early and ongoing collection of data on sustainability
indicators.
Thus the characterization of projects as ‘innovative’ often involves a reliance
upon awards and accolades given by urban design, planning or environmental
organizations (such as the Natural Resources Defense Council), state, local or
federal governments (for example, the US Department of Energy), and/or
developer organizations (like the Urban Land Institute)—groups that have very
different views of what it means to be ‘sustainable’ or ’smart’. Moreover, to make


their lists of ‘green’ communities and awards for sustainability, these organizations
utilize broad selection criteria and then rely on case study and developer-provided
information to identify winners. For example, ULI has made 10 annual Awards for
Excellence since 1979, on the basis of “leadership, contribution to the community,
innovations, public/private partnership, environmental protection and enhance-
ment, response to societal needs, and financial success”.
But are new projects lauded for sustainability or smart growth actually
‘sustainable communities’? At one level this question is impossible to answer
despite its fundamental significance because there is little empirical performance
assessment of new developments (for example, measurement of building
efficiency or reduction in auto use). Even with the advent of LEED-ND, rated
communities will not be subject to rigorous monitoring.
At another level, it is vital to understand perceptions of community
sustainability. How are developers using sustainability to market new commu-
nities, and what aspects of community design are offered, or not offered, to
consumers as part of their ‘sustainability’ package?
To address these more limited questions, the authors compiled a group of
award-winning communities and compared their characteristics—as marketed to
potential residents—to generally recognized sustainability goals and objectives.
The projects selected for analysis received awards or recognition for their ‘smart
growth’ or ‘sustainability’ concept and/or features within the past 15 years, a time
period during which these concepts were first recognized as important for new
development. The selections are limited to those that have been completed, or are
nearly complete, rather than those celebrated for their design concept only. They
are also limited to projects that involved the construction of new buildings by an
individual developer or development group rather than changes made in a pre-
existing municipality.
It should be noted that some of the most innovative designs of small-scale
neighbourhoods have come from small-scale eco-villages that attempt to integrate
the environmental, social and economic through the development of ‘intentional
communities’. While these communities can offer guidance and inspiration to
larger developers, the focus here is on projects larger than 100 acres. Such new
communities are important in that their size contributes to their ability to disrupt
the ecosystem (both human and environmental) where they are constructed, and
they attract a resident population that is more reflective of the general home-
buying population than those who self-select to live in eco-villages.
Ultimately, 29 award-winning projects meeting these criteria were identified,
most appearing as recipients of awards from environmental, land use,
construction, realty and architectural groups including the Urban Land Institute,
US Environmental Protection Agency, National Association of Homebuilders, and
Terrain.org (a national on-line journal) (Figure 1).1
The broad range of organizations recognizing communities as leaders in
urban design illustrates the dilemmas of those seeking to invest or reside in
development projects that are truly making strides toward sustainability goals.
The practice of ‘greenwashing’, whether to purposely mislead consumers or
through the over-simplification of the complex environmental effects of a good or
service, has been documented in a wide variety of corporate advertising
campaigns, and this includes the real estate sector (Corbett, 2006; Greer & Bruno,
1996; Tokar, 1997).


Figure 1. ‘Sustainable’ communities included in study

Data Collection
Those marketing ‘green’ communities offer their own assessments of ‘sustainable’
characteristics, and many offer no quantitative evidence of land preservation or
restoration, green building or affordable housing, for example. Nevertheless, the
information provided by developers through marketing material available on
their websites offers important insights into their urban design features, especially
those that developers, implicitly or explicitly connect to smart growth or ‘green
living’ (see Appendix A for website addresses). These data are used to consider
how sustainability concepts and principles translate (with varying degrees of
success) to design practices on the ground.
Data from marketing websites for the development projects were gathered
and analyzed using content analysis. A catalogue of key phrases was developed,


with phrases selected to reflect the most common sustainability concepts used by
those marketing the communities. Only those phrases mentioned on more than
five websites were included in the catalogue. Phrases typically matched our
catalogue exactly, with some exceptions, such as those pertaining to concepts such
as ‘proximity to urban centre’, the wording of which varied somewhat. Similar
methods were used in analyzing the imagery used by the websites to gain a better
understanding of how developers were marketing their projects. Thus the
quantitative data examined only whether a website mentioned a phrase or used a
certain type of imagery, not the emphasis put on these characteristics.
Clearly, not all community characteristics are advertised on developers’
websites. For example, one project, Belle Creek, received an award from ULI for its
provision of 51% affordable housing (Steuteville, 2006; ULI, 2002). However, in
2006, its marketing website offered only a ‘mortgage calculator’, which suggested
an interest in providing affordable homes to residents. (The website has since been
replaced by an intra-community ‘dot-org’ website, and therefore is not included in
this study.) This analysis, therefore, is presented with the caveat that developments
may offer more sustainability features than we have been able to document.
Nevertheless, the characteristics that are actually marketed are important in
understanding the nature of the places studied and especially how developers
selectively incorporate aspects of sustainability into their image-making and
marketing strategies.
Using these data, the paper describes the most commonly marketed
sustainability features of these communities, situating the phrases and imagery in
three categories: neighbourhood, environmental and aesthetic. Aspects of marketing
that focused on more than one category, such as ‘open space’ (environmental/aes-
thetic) were listed under both categories. Following this description, consideration is
given to the extent to which the communities follow the spirit of sustainability
guidelines, particularly those advanced by LEED-ND.
By examining the marketing websites of development projects that have won
one or more award for ‘smart growth’ or ‘sustainability’, the paper researches a
broad range of academic assessments of the characteristics of this type of
development. Insights are also offered into what features developers believe will
sell to those looking to ‘live green’. Together, the findings portray the ‘look and
feel’ of a sample of today’s award-winning communities, and reveal the
discontinuities between how they are marketed and the imperatives of sustainable
urban design. Consideration is then given to lessons learned from amenities
offered in specific individual communities, and the paper concludes by offering
an assessment of what these already-built communities can offer to under-
standings or assessing new community development projects.

Selling ‘Sustainable’ in Award-winning Communities
There are three common threads found in marketing websites for these
communities, in varying degrees (Figure 2). A focus on neighbourhood, where
design characteristics are aimed at building a stronger sense of community and
sense of place; environment, including ‘green building’ and ‘green space’; and
aesthetic, in which the community’s appearance is touted by developers. Websites
often either explicitly mentioned New Urbanism or used phrases associated with
this urban design movement such as ‘mixed use’ and ‘pedestrian-friendly’. This
focus, combined with a more traditional family-friendly marketing angle resulted


Figure 2. Marketing sustainability

in many similar images across the websites examined. The word ‘sustainable’ was
used infrequently and typically referred speciﬁcally to environmental attributes,
rather than to a broader understanding of connections to social equity and
economic vitality. The promoted characteristics of most developments indicated
the popularity of factors that contribute both to the community’s ‘sense of
community’ or ‘greenness’, but could at the same time be marketed as making the
project a more physically attractive place to live.

Focus on Neighbourhood
The most common focus of website marketing for these communities is the idea
that developers are providing a neighbourhood sense of place or sense of
community through physical design characteristics. The communities are sold as
opposing what many see as typical suburban design—homogenous homes spaced
far from each other separated by large lawns, and separated from shopping,
schools, services and other places where residents might interact with neighbours.
Instead, they are shown as places where neighbours can interact, not just across
front lawns, but while shopping, in parks or on sidewalks.


Most communities include the phrase or concept of ‘mixed use’ on their
websites. In particular, developers focus on the idea of having shopping and
restaurants within walking distance of residents’ homes. The concept of a ‘vibrant
community’ is also a phrase that focuses on the importance of neighbourhood
activities. A third of the projects studied include images of outdoor cafes in their
websites, while others show women carrying brand-name shopping bags or
couples drinking wine at indoor restaurants. Most communities feature a town
centre of stores, restaurants and some office space. The amount of space dedicated
to this purpose varies from one or two stores to dozens, with office space above
retail. In some communities, the only jobs offered are in cafes or local schools,
while in Stapleton, outside Denver, an advertisement offers that friends will suffer
from ‘office envy’ of those who live in the community and bike to work.
Less common were communities offering proximity to a larger urban centre.
While many of the communities examined were within municipal boundaries of
large cities, they often lacked connectivity that would allow the ‘live-work-play’
concept to extend to the existing city. Exceptions tended to be redevelopment
projects like Atlantic Station, which focused on residents’ ability to go ‘car-free’,
not just within the community, but through pedestrian and public transit
connections to jobs and amenities in downtown Atlanta.
‘Sense of community’ is another common phrase, which is aimed at
describing the interactions promoted by the design of the communities. Less
common is ‘diversity’, which is used to describe primarily economic, rather than
racial, diversity as an attractive characteristic of the community. In addition to
mixed use, ‘traditional neighbourhood design’ (TND), ‘pedestrian friendly’ and
‘local schools’ also indicate a focus on neighbourhood. For Baldwin Park, in
Orlando, Florida, the concept of TND is used to describe the community’s wide
sidewalks and green common areas, where neighbours can interact with each
other. In the imagery supporting the neighbourhood concept, there is a particular
focus on children: imagery on the websites most commonly pictured children
playing outside, on bicycles, in the community pool or park. Adults are shown
walking on sidewalks with strollers or dogs. The proximity of houses is shown
through photos of several homes clustered together, with adults outside relaxing
on lawns and porches.
Rather than focusing on a decrease in automobile use, many communities
connected the phrase ‘pedestrian-friendly’ to a sense of community among
residents. In Hidden Springs (outside of Boise, Idaho), for example, residents were
encouraged to interact at a neighbourhood mercantile that also served as a cafe, ´
library and central post office. In larger communities, leisurely interaction is the
focus of neighbourhood shops, restaurants and parks. These settings portray an
attractive alternative to residents seeking a home outside of the city, in a small
town atmosphere.
The neighbourhood concept rarely focuses on reduced auto-dependence
even if this was an (un)intended consequence of this type of design. In Maple
Lawn, outside the DC beltway in Maryland, mixed-use is described on the
developer’s website as “a unique mix of boutique shops and high quality
restaurants”. While Maple Lawn does offer medical services and other office
space, its retail focus is higher-end, with no practical stores named among its
offerings. The focus on cafes and wine bars over grocery stores and pharmacies is
common. More focus is placed on marketing the new town centres as weekend
gathering spots than as places for daily chores and interactions with neighbours.


Focus on Environment
The second most common focus of the development projects that were analyzed is
on environmentally-friendly design. It is expressed through phrases such as ‘open
space’ and ‘green building’ and images of forest, wetlands and prairie. In design
terms, these communities sought to appeal to residents through construction
standards and the preservation of a portion of the land being developed. Less
common is the promotion of sustainability plans or proximity to public transit or
employment centres.
The phrase ‘open space’ was one of the most frequently used in the projects
analyzed, with approximately three-quarters of the communities noting that they
had preserved open space, although the quantity of this land, and the quality of its
preservation, varied greatly by development. Dewees Island, in South Carolina,
preserved 98% of its open space, which includes beaches, wetlands and some
coastal forest. Residents are required to build around all existing trees. For most
communities, however, open space means clustering homes on a portion of land
and leaving a portion at the edge of the community undeveloped. More
developers market this open space as a neighbourhood attribute than as an
environmental attribute. We found that images of children playing in or adults
using open space for walking or biking for leisure were more common than of
open space free of human presence.
A less common marketing focus was the phrase ‘green building’. The most
common type of green building technique mentioned on community websites was
Energy Star or other certification that measured the energy efficiency of
construction. This type of design both reduces the use of resources through energy
consumption, but also cuts costs for the homeowner. Northwest Crossing in Bend,
Oregon, describes homes as being Earth Advantage Certified, a programme that
considers “energy efficiency, recycling, building materials, landscaping, water
and indoor air quality”. Glenwood Park, outside of Atlanta, Georgia, notes
EarthCraft housing, a certification system created by the Greater Atlanta Home
Builders Association (Schoolcraft, 2003). Other communities promote their homes
as energy-efficient or as using recycled building materials, but do not offer any
specific certification. A few projects include a small number of LEED-certified
buildings. Prairie Crossing features a wind-powered farm, while Civano in
Tucson, Arizona, stands out as community powered in part by solar energy.
Potentially encompassing all environmentally-friendly features is the phrase
‘green living’, which has been applied to a wide variety of communities. Its use is
quite telling of the broad variety of communities being marketed as sustainable.
‘Green’, of course, can mean anything from a green golf course to local farmers
markets to solar power. For Glenwood Park, outside of Atlanta, Georgia, ‘a new
shade of green’ refers to its energy-efficient construction, street tree plantings and
recycling of materials removed from the site. Issaquah Highlands, outside of
Seattle, Washington, offers a long list on its ‘commitment to living green’,
including preserved open space, wetland-friendly construction practices and
natural stormwater filters. Outside of Orlando, Florida, Harmony’s website
describes a wide variety of ‘green’ features, including extensive environmental
education programming and water-efficient landscaping. ‘Living green’ in the
communities studied is equally indicative of enjoying the trails of a nearby
preserved forest, wetland or prairie as it is indicative of reduced resource
consumption.


Focus on Aesthetics
The third most common focus of marketing for the communities is on the
appearance or aesthetics of these communities. In some instances, developers seek
to balance aesthetic attractions with those aimed at the environmentally- or
socially-conscious. However, in others the focus is clearly on the appearance of
the community with little or no connection to sustainability features. Given
that the study examined a visual media aimed at consumers—the communities’
websites— this is not necessarily surprising. What is telling, however, is the
extent to which communities focused on aesthetic qualities in a manner that
overwhelms any contributions toward social, economic or environmental
sustainability.
Advertising the appearance of residential architecture is an important part of
both the words and imagery of the community websites studied. It is the second
most common image in community websites and is mentioned in nearly half of
the web sites. The colourful homes of Daybreak, south of Salt Lake City, are
featured prominently on its website, which offers homes modelled after those in
downtown Salt Lake: “Large front porches. Diverse styles. Vibrant colours.
Abundant grace and charm”. Homes in Prairie Crossing are described as
‘Midwestern vernacular’, and include those constructed in a Frank Lloyd Wright
style. Many developments link ‘sense of community’ and homes of matching
colours that vary in appearance (if not in price).
The discourse of ‘open space’ on many websites is similar to the promotion of
1950s suburbia—proximity to urban amenities in a rural locale. Like many
communities, Ladera Ranch, in Orange County, California, opens its website with a
photo taken out the window of one of its homes toward surrounding hillsides.
Luxury golf courses and manicured gardens are less subtle expressions of the
desire to push the ‘green’ in ‘green living’ toward an aesthetic, rather than
environmental, marketing angle. DC Ranch in Arizona, for example, uses its
website to invite new residents to experience “an exclusive desert lifestyle in
the beautiful golf course community of DC Ranch” (DC Ranch, 2007), while
Mediterra, outside of Naples, Florida, offers “homes from the $700,000s to $7
million” against a backdrop of a large fountain and red-flowered gardens (Bonita
Bay Properties, 2004).
Overall, the highly uneven attention by those marketing these communities
to more practical characteristics associated with achieving sustainability
illustrates the importance of creating a system of indicators that can educate
consumers about the nature of a project’s sustainability goals. For example, the
LEED-ND rating system rewards communities that decrease their impact on
environmental resources, integrate a diverse group of neighbours, and provides
connections to regional employment, residential and recreational centres. The
examination here of communities that have already been constructed indicates a
focus on a select few of these characteristics. Developers in search of a higher
LEED-ND rating would be encouraged by this system to broaden their definition
of environmental, social and economic sustainability. Assuming that consumers
are interested in such ratings, developers would be pressed to move beyond
aesthetic and superficially-green urban design to add features that would have a
greater impact on long-term sustainability.


Moving Toward a ‘Darker Green’: Advances and Challenges in New
Communities
The examination of 29 communities illustrates the broad range in what
developers market as sustainable (or ‘green’) features of their projects. Closer
inspection reveals many ‘shades of green’ ambitions,2 in terms of whether goals
and outcomes are ‘light’ or ‘dark’ green, as well as varying spatial contexts. This
study examines three communities in some depth, looking beyond marketing
websites to local scholarly articles, media reports and the authors’ own series of
site visits in the field. Hidden Springs, outside Boise, Idaho, illustrates a
greenfield community which aims to be a green suburb, rather than an urban
neighbourhood. Harmony, another greenfield project outside of Orlando,
Florida, focuses on a variety of scales and types of sustainability. Stapleton, in
Denver, Colorado, is a brownfield redevelopment project in an urban area that
advertises its own sustainability plan. These vignettes reveal how these
communities attempted to put sustainability into practice, and the challenges
they faced in doing so. They also suggest some positive aspects that may not be
apparent from any quantitative rating system.

Hidden Springs
The road to Hidden Springs winds past conventional sprawling subdivisions at
Boise, Idaho’s edge. It runs up a series of hills to the relatively undeveloped
Dry Creek Valley 10 miles from the city centre. Hidden Springs was developed
by Frank Martin, who also developed another conservation community, Prairie
Crossing in Grayslake, Illinois. At build-out, Hidden Springs will include 1135
homes on 1844 acres. The community’s plan focuses on two main elements:
community and environment. The project’s website makes clear an emphasis
on sustainability. Although it does not use this particular phrase, it cites the
Urban Land Institute’s development guidelines, offers tips for ‘going green’,
notes its ‘conservation legacy’ and construction of a LEED-certified model
home.
Like many communities that have won awards for sustainable design,
Hidden Springs’ marketing centres on its unique qualities and focus on
community. Its marketing booklet describes the community as ‘The Antidote to
Anywhere, USA’. Life beyond the single-family home in Hidden Springs is
centred on The Mercantile, a two-storey brick building at the town’s entrance that
´
serves as a combination cafe-convenience store-library-post office (Figure 3).
Promotional literature for the community centres around The Mercantile as a
gathering place for residents, noting that there is no home delivery of mail; all
residents must come to The Mercantile to pick up their mail, promoting increased
social interaction. Next to The Mercantile is a pre-school and fire station, and a few
blocks away is a K-9 charter school and pool/clubhouse. A bit further down the
road is a community barn, built next to an historic barn that was part of the land’s
original potato farm. A Hidden Springs real estate agent’s sales pitch focuses on
community togetherness; a concert series in the park, the high test scores of the
charter school and Hidden Springs’ employment of an event co-ordinator to
schedule casino nights.
Another part of the Hidden Springs brochure describes its open space
preservation, noting an ‘800-acre playground’ where residents can hike, mountain


Figure 4. The densely packed homes (and lawns)
of Hidden Springs are contrasted with the
surrounding open space

Figure 3. The Mercantile in Hidden Springs
provides a gathering point for residents, with
´
the community’s cafe, convenience store, library
and post office

bike and ride horses (Figure 4). The land is a conservation easement, maintained
through a 0.25% transfer fee on lot purchases. Hidden Springs has a waste water
reclamation system that uses treated water collected through a central sewer
system to irrigate crops and grass in parks. The community offers residents the
opportunity to participate in a community-supported farm and purchase a
produce share each growing season. Homes in the sixth phase of the community’s
build-out are being built to Energy Star programme standards, according to the
development’s real estate office (2008).
The dilemma of new projects promoting themselves as sustainable is
exemplified by the contradictions of Hidden Springs. The community is being
built on former open space and farmland, and yet is being marketed to those who
appreciate the same open space. It promotes a sense of community, yet residents
must travel at least 20 minutes to get to their jobs. Although the community is
marketed as passing ‘the milk test’ by offering a store that sells convenience items
within walking distance (Hidden Springs promotional literature, 2003) for many
years it offered no other commercial services. A small mixed-use centre called The
Marketplace recently opened, but residents were without additional services for
eight years. The closest shopping centres are commercial strips and big-box stores
on Boise’s fringe: Wal-Mart is about 15 minutes from Hidden Springs, while
downtown Boise is about 30 minutes away.
Celebrated as Best Example of Smart Growth by the National Association of
Home Builders in 2000, Hidden Springs was given a ‘thumbs down’ by the Sierra
Club in 2001. The National Association of Home Builders, in conjunction with
Professional Builder magazine, focused on the development’s contributions to open
space preservation and community-building efforts. The Sierra Club had a
different view of the project, and argued that Hidden Springs contributes to


sprawl in the Boise area, both due to its size and location beyond current
development (Soufrant & O’Toole, 2001).
Despite Hidden Springs’ many sustainability related aspects, it is weighed
down by its size and location. The Boise metropolitan area grew by 46% between
1990 and 2000, and was named by a Seattle-based environmental think tank as the
most sprawling city in the Northwest (Sightline Institute, 2000). Sustainability
guidelines suggest that developments in fast-growing areas should be integrated
with the existing city through brownfield construction or public transit; Hidden
Springs is neither. While it is important to recognize that it is possible to make
strides in sustainability within greenfield developments, these communities need
to be more than just residential enclaves of the upper-middle and middle class. To
meet sustainability goals, they should contribute to socio-economic sustainability
by offering affordable housing and employment for a diverse segment of the
region’s population. The community also needs to move beyond neighbourhood-
level practices to make regional connections and encourage more sustainable
individual choices.

Harmony
Harmony, a conservation community 37 miles from Orlando, Florida, begins to
address some of these issues, as well as incorporating many environmental and
community features, but also retains some of the challenges of Hidden Springs.
Harmony is an 11 000-acre development in central Florida focused on promoting
connections between humans, animals and the environment. Plans for the
community, which has been under construction since 2001, include 7200 homes
and a 30-acre mixed-use town centre. Harmony’s homes are built around an 18-
hole golf course and border on more than 7000 acres of preserved open space
including two natural lakes (Wolch, 2003). The community provides numerous
environmental and community-oriented features that promote sustainability.
Many of these features, including New Urbanist-style design and the preservation
of open space, are similar to Hidden Springs. In terms of socio-economic
sustainability, however, Harmony makes additional contributions to promote
regional well-being. It also places greater emphasis on decisions made at the
individual level than most other communities that were analyzed.
The primary focus of Harmony’s sustainability efforts is environmental. The
community, which has preserved 70% of its land as open space, employs a full-
time conservation manager, and is home to a non-profit institute focused on
conservation and society-animal relations. Harmony’s plans preserve the site’s
regional ecological function in terms of watershed and habitat protection. Homes
in Harmony are all built to Energy Star standards, which reduces energy
consumption by up to 30%. Animal-friendly features include dog parks, windows
designed to prevent bird collisions, and community covenants and restrictions
aimed at protecting both companion animals and wildlife.
Many community-building efforts are also focused on animals (Figure 5). In
addition to providing opportunities for interaction through trails and dog parks,
Harmony offers a number of volunteer and educational programmes centred on
human-animal relations and conservation. Community infrastructure includes a
K-8 and regional high school, with trails connecting the schools to residential
areas, and a town centre with a restaurant and recreation centre, and planned
shopping and employment opportunities.


Unlike most other communities recognized for their sustainability efforts,
Harmony seeks to diversify its social character and enhance economic viability. In
addition to the typical ‘mix’ of uses that includes residential, commercial and
office space, Harmony plans to attract light industrial uses, and bring 6000 jobs to
the area. A mix of residential incomes is built into the urban residential design,
and by law the community sets aside 20% of homes as affordable housing.
However, although Harmony’s sustainability efforts provide greater breadth
than other communities, it still falls short in some areas. Harmony’s small job base
and lack of transit service all mean that residents are auto-dependent and
commute long distances to work, fuelling the charge that the community
promotes additional sprawl in greater Orlando. Like Hidden Springs, planned
commercial development is behind schedule, forcing residents to drive beyond
the community for shopping and services until local stores are built. While
making strides in terms of resident awareness of how their everyday practices
relate to sustainability, some residents find community covenants and restrictions
too restrictive (Seymour & Wolch, 2009). In addition, public green space often
includes well-manicured lawns and golf courses, rather than native landscaping
(Figure 6).
The experience of Harmony’s residents suggests the challenges of
implementing sustainability features but it will take decades to fairly judge its
successes and failures. Will its employees live in the community? Will affordable
housing provisions attract a greater diversity of residents? Will affordable housing
stay that way? Will retail opportunities reduce trips to outside grocery stores and
restaurants? Will coexistence values upon which the community is based, survive
as residents come and go? In the meantime, the goals and strategies of Harmony—
to achieve both environmental and socio-economic sustainability—can serve as a
model for other new developments.

Stapleton
Another community that offers sustainable features is Stapleton, a brownfield
development in Denver, Colorado. The community is the result of redevelopment
of the original international airport in Denver (Figure 7). It will have 2,700
residential units on 4,700 acres. Stapleton includes a mix of land uses, including a

Figure 6. Despite calls for environmentally-
Figure 5. Animal-centred events are common in friendly design, most lawns in Harmony are non-
Harmony native grasses


variety of home types, stores, services, educational facilities, light industry, and
parks.
The community was named ‘Model of Sustainability’ by the United Nations
World Conference on Sustainable Development in 2002, and has received
numerous other accolades for its contributions to sustainability and smart growth.
Stapleton’s sustainability plan highlights 11 areas: education, land use design,
open space, lighting, residential buildings, commercial buildings, recycling,
transportation, energy use, water management and healthy living.
Six million tons of concrete runways were recycled during the project and
larger buildings were rehabilitated for the new neighbourhood. Stapleton has
initiated a policy of building only Energy Star homes and offers a farmer’s market,
urban farm and a 1116-acre park system. Numerous bus lines and bicycle routes
run throughout Stapleton to downtown Denver (Stapleton sustainability
programs, 2008).
Equally important to sustainability, Stapleton also serves as an employment
base, allowing residents to live and work in the same neighbourhood. It includes
schools, a police training academy, manufacturing and an airline workers training
facility. Stapleton offers 10 million square feet of office space and 3 million square
feet of retail space (Stapleton statistics, 2008). As a state Enterprise Zone, Stapleton
attracts businesses by offering eight different possibilities for tax credits (City of
Denver Urban Enterprise Zone, 2009). The project includes affordable housing,
community events and a town centre with a grocery store, pharmacy and
restaurants.
Despite its successes and innovations, Stapleton has faced many of the same
dilemmas as the other communities. Even with its commitment to affordable
housing aimed at families and minorities, its homes have not sold quickly to these
demographic segments. In 2005, Denver turned over control of Roslyn Court, an
80-unit affordable housing complex, to Stapleton’s developer after a local
affordable housing firm had defaulted on $4.7 million in loans from the city
(Washington, 2005) after having trouble selling units, marketed toward single
mothers and people of colour, but more expensive and smaller than those
available at other Denver redevelopment projects (Tatum, 2004).
Stapleton also faced financial problems unique to its situation as a brownfield
development funded by the city of Denver. Residential development does not
provide enough municipal revenue to pay for infrastructure costs, so the city had
to rely on bonds that would be repaid through sales tax. While some tax revenues
come from commercial activities within the community, others flow in from big-
box projects at Stapleton’s edge (Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club and a Home Depot; see
Figure 8), as well as a more distant regional mall that includes a Target Superstore
and a movie theatre. Residents complained that the construction of these stores to
fund a ‘sustainable’ neighbourhood development was counter-intuitive,
especially since there is insufficient retail within their neighbourhood. Developers
also had trouble attracting office tenants, thus far less office space had been built
than planned due to low demand (Pristin, 2005).
The experience of Stapleton suggests that roadblocks exist for more ambitious
award-winning communities. Financing can be challenging and reaching target
audiences—whether they are residents in need of affordable housing or
employers seeking environmentally-friendly office space—can be difficult,
especially if costs are higher than neighbouring communities.


Figure 7. The airport tower still stands in Figure 8. Quebec Square, a traditional big-box
Stapleton, which once served as Denver’s airport development complete with sprawling parking
and is now home to a diverse mix of home types lots, is part of Stapleton

The challenges illustrated by these communities suggest that it is important
to consider more than just the design of a community, but also the outcomes of this
design and its regional context. They also highlight how sustainability goals do
not necessarily result in sustainability outcomes. Conversely, a qualitative
examination of these communities ﬁnds several design features that may not be
recognizable through a more quantitative assessment. For example, Stapleton’s
sustainability plan and Harmony’s institute focused on human-animal interaction
highlight the importance of creating a cohesive community vision that connects
urban design to a shift in residents’/consumers’ point of view.

Learning from Awarding-winning New Communities
Overall, the development projects investigated here reveal the importance of
having both breadth and depth in sustainable design. While new sustainable
communities in theory include green buildings and infrastructure, alternative
transportation systems, and a variety of business opportunities, as well as support
social diversity and a vibrant civic culture, on the ground development goals and
outcomes are often more limited. An examination of marketing websites of
communities shows a focus on the appearance of a ‘sense of community’ over
concerns about environmental health, social equity or economic vitality. A closer
look at three of these communities illustrates the challenges of moving from
sustainability goals to outcomes on the ground.
This paper argues that a successful move toward sustainability includes both
breadth and depth of both goals and outcomes. Breadth requires attention toward
multiple aspects of environmental sustainability as well as social equity and
economic vitality. Depth requires goals and outcomes that move beyond
superﬁcial attention to marketable traits (what some have termed ‘light green’), to
a ‘darker green’ that can be empirically monitored and measured with
sustainability indicators long after the development is built out.
In theory, communities that market themselves as broadly sustainable aim to
affect not only the neighbourhood scale, but the individual and regional levels as
well. Most projects in this study advertise urban design that supports
sustainability at the neighbourhood level, seldom acknowledging the potential
impacts of community characteristics on individual decision-making or regional
outcomes. It was rare, for example, for developers to focus on encouraging
residents to incorporate native landscaping or to advertise any interactions with


larger municipalities to co-ordinate regional transportation alternatives. It is
therefore important for guidelines such as LEED-ND to provide for nested
indicators that monitor and evaluate sustainability at multiple scales.
Successful interventions in urban design require recognition of the inherent
connections between environmental, economic and social realms. The communities
studied here marketed primarily environmental features such as green space, and
avoided economic or social aspects of community building, such as incorporating
diverse local employment opportunities or insuring that price points for housing
allows low- as well as high-income households to reside in the community. Clearly,
there were insufﬁcient economic incentives or political requirements in place to
encourage developers to expand the depth of their community designs, especially
as they pertained to social and economic sustainability.
Both depth and breadth are measured to an extent by the LEED-ND rating
system (Figure 9). Communities that focus on only aesthetically-pleasing,
neighbourhood-level sustainability features would likely rate poorly under this
system, while those that offer far-reaching sustainability features at a variety of
scales would rate highly. Golf courses and ﬂower gardens would not earn points
under this system, while communities that offer habitat preservation and
connections to public transit would earn credit for their ecological and municipal
connectivity.
What LEED-ND does not measure are factors beyond urban design, such as
the timing of development and availability of planned sustainability-enhancing
community infrastructure. When the authors visited Prairie Crossing in 2006, for
example, the community had existed for several years without its mixed use
centre, and the closest shopping opportunities were several miles away. This

Figure 9. Selected LEED-ND guidelines


raised the question of the extent to which phased construction affects individual
decisions; when planned facilities take years to arrive, what looks sustainable on
plan may be far less so because residents increase their vehicle miles travelled.
LEED-ND is also applied uniformly to 1-acre projects or 10 000-acre projects, and
developers can choose to select only a portion of their project to be assessed, to
allow newer phases of older projects to be certified. Nevertheless, this is a major
loophole. For example, mixed use development or public transit access may
benefit houses close by, but what about residents several miles away in a large
project who must drive? Ensuring that 10% of the housing stock is affordable is a
good start, but if only a portion of the project falls under this criterion, the
affordability of the overall community could be low. Based on the research here, it
is important to distinguish between projects of different sizes and ambitions, as
well as to examine the project as a whole.
Will a rating system motivate developers to build darker green communities?
Not necessarily. Terramor, a neighbourhood in the Ladera Ranch community,
offered homes with a variety of sustainability features. Yet only 28% of those
inquiring about Terramor were interested in its environmental benefits, resulting
in a marketing scheme that did not focus on the sustainable aspects of the
development (Nguyen, 2003). Thus for some communities, proving their
greenness may not be top priority.
Nonetheless, green consumerism is increasingly popular in mainstream
American culture. LEED-ND and similar systems for rating sustainability offer a
method of accounting for sustainability claims prior to construction. They are thus
an important step in bridging theory and practice. While such ratings are a vital
method in gauging communities, they should not be the final word on a
community’s ‘success’ or ‘failure’. Both academics and consumers interested in
sustainability should keep close tabs on individual communities and their ability
to not just mitigate their social and environmental impact, but to prove that new
communities can contribute to neighbouring people and regions, and to
landscapes both distant and near.

Acknowledgements
Support from the National Geographic Society’s Committee on Research and
Exploration is gratefully acknowledged. The authors also appreciate comments
offered by anonymous referees and Michael Dear and Greg Hise on an earlier
version of this paper. The authors alone are responsible for any errors or
omissions.

Notes
1. Finding these communities proved challenging, as there is no one term the communities use to
describe themselves. Through marketing websites, some communities describe their project as a
‘conservation community’, others use the phrase ‘New Urbanist’ to highlight neighbourhood
design features, and some make no mention of sustainability or smart growth. Due to the lack of a
common agreement on what makes a community a ‘sustainable’ one, it is likely that the
communities described in this paper serve only as a representation of many other similar
communities constructed in the United States.
2. The shades of green concept first appeared in the description of consumers’ commitment to
environmentally-friendly purchases (Mintel, 1991). The concept has since broadened to include a
wide variety of decisions that may affect the environment, including political viewpoints (Torgerson,
1999), and businesses’ commitment to sustainable policies (Gunningham et al., 2003).


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Appendix
Community websites

Amelia Park http://www.hometownneighborhoods.com
Atlantic Station http://www.atlanticstation.com
Baldwin Park http://www.baldwinparkﬂ.com
Bonita Bay http://www.bonitabay.com
Civano http://www.civanoneighbors.com/
Coffee Creek Center http://www.coffeecreekcenter.com
Daybreak http://www.daybreakutah.com
DC Ranch http://www.dcranch.com
Del Sur http://www.delsurliving.com
Dewees Island http://www.deweesisland.com/
Fairview Village http://www.fairviewvillage.com
Glenwood Park http://www.glenwoodpark.com
Haile Plantation http://www.haileguide.com
Harmony http://www.harmonyﬂ.com
Hidden Springs http://www.hiddensprings.com
I’On Village http://www.ionvillage.com
Issaquah Highlands http://www.issaquahhighlands.com
Ladera Ranch http://www.laderaranch.com
Lowry Neighborhood http://www.lowry.org
Maple Lawn http://www.maplelawnmd.com
Mediterra http://www.mediterranaples.com
Northwest Crossing http://www.northwestcrossing.com
Orenco Station http://www.orencostation.net/
Otay Ranch http://www.otayranch.com/
Park DuValle http://www.hal1.org/hopevi/index.htm
Prairie Crossing http://www.prairiecrossing.com
Stapleton http://www.stapletondenver.com
Summerlin http://www.summerlin.com
The Pinehills http://www.pinehills.com

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