Page 34 - Green Builder Magazine Nov-Dec 2017 Issue

The Common

Sense of Lean

Urbanism CREDIT: MIKE LYDON/STREET PLANS

With the right ideas and What is Lean Urbanism and how does it differ from

planning, building 500 homes New Urbanism?
FALK: Lean Urbanism is community building that requires fewer
resources. It reduces the requirements, complexities and costs
can be as easy as building five. that unfairly burden small-scale developers, entrepreneurs and
homeowners. We’ve put these ideas into practice through initiatives
BY ROBERT STEUTEVILLE like the Project for Lean Urbanism.
DITTMAR: Lean Urbanism was conceived as an effort to deal with
EAN URBANISM IS a multidisciplinary movement a problem that many of us had. It was difficult to get common-
to lower the barriers to community building, to sense ideas through the planning and building process. We observed
make it easier to start businesses, and to provide that it was almost as hard to do five homes as it was 500. And so
more attainable housing and development. Like Lean Urbanism, unlike the New Urbanism, is much more about
New Urbanism, Lean shares the incremental development. It’s about identifying projects in an infill
principles of creating holistic context and short-term opportunism. In British planning, there’s
L communities—but it seeks more- a phrase for things that come along that aren’t in the master plan.
efficient ways to achieve that end to allow small They’re called windfall projects, as in apples that fall from the tree.
operators to take part. Great neighborhoods need to Lean Urbanism recognizes that a lot of what’s great about our cities
be built by multiple hands—including those with are windfall projects.
limited capital. Hank Dittmar,
an urban planner who advises Hank Dittmar What does it have in common with New Urbanism?
governments, companies and communities DITTMAR: First of all, it shares the ideals of the Charter. Lean
worldwide on making cities and towns more Urbanism is part and parcel of the New Urbanism. It sits within it,
livable and resilient, and Brian Falk, director of but it attempts to fill a gap that we saw, in terms of a smaller scale.
the Center for Applied Transect Studies and the As we see it, Lean Urbanism is mixed use, walkable, contextual, and
Project for Lean Urbanism, offer their views on it aims to complete the neighborhood. This is about the missing
Brian Falk the subject of Lean Urbanism. teeth—doing some good dental work.

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