Sustainable planning for the development or redevelopment of whole communities
or neighborhoods entails: To ensure social progress through community participation in decision-making on matters that will have significant impact on the community: a. Provide various types of housing to meet community needs, such as cohousing and supervised living situations as well as conventional houses and apartments. b. Reflect the values of the surrounding community by harmonizing with existing buildings in materials, design and density. c. Ensure that infrastructure will exist to serve neighborhood needs: every neighborhood should have a primary school, library, day-care center, and clinic. It should have adequate public transportation, a park, public restrooms, bicycle parking, drinking fountains, and attractive street furniture and light standards; with a lively commercial district with rents low enough (or subsidized) to ensure that there are day-to-day necessities such as a grocery store, hardware store, laundry, postal services and pharmacy, and low-cost space for arts, social-service providers, and religious institutions. d. Plan for safety of pedestrians, cyclists, and children at play outdoors with lighting and traffic calming; place and maintain landscaping so that pedestrians do not feel threatened at night, and design for the types of retail businesses that stay open late (such as cafes) near major transit stops so that people waiting for public transportation won't feel vulnerable. e. Plan open spaces and development opportunities to provide for recreation for people at all stages of life, particularly for children, teenagers and the elderly. f. Maximize green space and make its design appropriate to the community to be served, with a balance between natural areas, landscaped parks, community gardens, and sports fields. Green space can be increased by providing incentives for roof gardens. Streets, walkways and pedestrian gathering-places should be landscaped to increase residents' enjoyment of the shared outdoor space. g. Select public art that reflects the aesthetics, values and talent of the local community. h. Provide indoor public meeting space in which local people can discuss issues of importance to the community. |
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community participation, 