Nico Larco and Kaarin Knudson on Demystifying Sustainable Urban Design

Kaarin Knudson: That I think is one of the most exciting things about The Sustainable Urban Design Handbook is that it actually shows people how sustainability is possible. And so often planners are in the role of being responsible for explaining not just how we could do something, but also all of the whens and a whole bunch of the whys. Because when you know enough about the way in which your decision might be impacting someone else, you can have a more specific conversation about how the consequences of that might be managed. And that's really the work that cities and planners are doing everywhere.

Meghan Stromberg: Imagine walking down a bustling city street where every building connects seamlessly with everything else that surrounds it. Storefronts spill onto sidewalks, pedestrians linger in inviting public spaces, and the built environment just vibrates with life. How do you create spaces like these? What decisions and considerations can help guide development that meets interrelated and sometimes competing needs, while at the same time delivering a vibrant, integrated sense of place? My guests today have some answers.

Welcome to this episode of People Behind the Plans. I'm your host, Meghan Stromberg, editor in chief at the American Planning Association. Today we delve into the art and science of sustainable urban design with two distinguished guests. Both of them have dedicated their careers to understanding and shaping the way we think about our communities. Joining us is Nico Larco, a professor of architecture at the University of Oregon; a principal of Element Urban Design, a consulting firm; and the co-author of The Sustainable Urban Design Handbook published by Routledge. Nico's work offers planners and others a comprehensive framework for creating urban spaces that are not only sustainable, but also livable and engaging.

We're also joined by co-author Kaarin Knudsen, a licensed architect, urban designer and the mayor-elect of Eugene, Oregon. Kaarin's journey from architecture to public service is deeply rooted in her commitment to equity and sustainability. Her work in community-based design has been instrumental in shaping more inclusive and resilient cities.

In this episode, we'll explore how The Sustainable Urban Design Handbook provides planners with the tools to create dynamic, thoughtful spaces. Hello and welcome to People Behind the Plans.

Nico Larco: Great to be here. Thank you so much for having us.

Kaarin Knudson: Thank you, Meghan.

Meghan Stromberg: My first question is for Nico. Can you tell us what inspired you to create The Sustainable Urban Design Handbook? How did you know there would be an audience for it?

Nico Larco: The story really starts with the sustainable urban design framework, which is what the handbook is based on. That was about 14 years ago. This is really a story of necessity being the mother of invention here. I'd been doing a lot of research on walking and biking and wanted to expand beyond that to start thinking about sustainable urban design. I assumed there'd be a whole lot of different resources and that there'd be something comprehensive. And there's a ton of really great information out there, but it's mostly siloed, and it's pretty complicated. And there was really nothing that put it all together and let us understand: What were the questions that we should be asking? How do things relate to each other?

And so I thought there was this real gap for me in the work that I was doing, but also a gap for planners and designers — a toolbox that they could use to comprehensively understand this. So I started by doing a whole lot of reading, talking to a whole lot of people who had expertise in different parts of this, and creating what was uncomfortably starting to feel like a really endless laundry list of issues to consider, which when you are doing work, that starts to be a problem, right? It's just endless, endless lists. And it was a little bit in that mess of a stew that one night I woke up at 3:00 in the morning — literally woke up at 3:00 in the morning — with this idea of, you could organize this in terms of all these kind of physical urban design elements, these things that you could do based on your desired outcome goals and the scales at which we typically work in urban design. And that was really the birth of this framework, which then took years of research to develop.

And so about 10 years ago, I started working on a book that would take each one of the individual elements and give more depth into each one of those things, was really excited to have Kaarin join me a few years later, and it's been a labor of love, I'll say, to get it done. It's been a ton of work, but we're both so tremendously excited to have this out in the world and really, really hopeful that it's helpful to people.

Meghan Stromberg: It sounds like quite a journey. My next question is for Kaarin. You've talked before about how the book is being used in various real-world situations, and maybe you could give us an example of how this framework that Nico has just described to us has been applied.

Kaarin Knudson: Sure. Really what compelled me in this work was that through practice as an architect and leading projects that were looking at urban design and larger-scale comprehensive planning issues, it was really clear that we had a lot of gaps: a lot of gaps in knowledge, and also just a lot of gaps in understanding about the interrelated concerns that different disciplines might have. Professional fields by nature are specialized, and we were just really hoping that by putting together a resource like The Sustainable Urban Design Handbook, that it would help cities to accomplish much more coordinated and sustainable projects every time. And that over time, as we build cities at all the different scales, that every one of those projects could contribute more to our sustainability goals.

On the ground, one example is a project in Bozeman, Montana, where a new architectural project was being planned. But as is the case in many places, this was going to be among the first projects in a new neighborhood center and was also really meant to turn the page to a new era of development and to model a new pattern of development that projects in the future would look to and follow and respond to as context. And so as that project was moving forward through its schematic design process — which is very typical for an architectural process, you know, you get to the end of schematic design and you kind of know what the building is, about what it looks like and what its program is going to be — and at that point, the design team asked me if I would be willing to just workshop and partner with them, using our research to understand how the building could have a stronger urban design response and be a better model for future development.

So, surprisingly, given the timing of that request, the workshop was actually very influential to the massing of the building and some of its fundamental responses to the surrounding context and to what is planned for the future. And it was really instructive to me because it showed how the partnership between design teams and long-range planning is actually incredibly important.

Meghan Stromberg: You went in working on a building, and it ended up being something much, much bigger. And I think that that is a great example of what this framework can do to help, particularly our audience of planners, get that comprehensive view and get in that mindset.

Kaarin Knudson: That is definitely the case. I teach in the planning department at the University of Oregon, so I see the kinds of questions that planners and planning students and young, emergent professional planners have all the time about how they can organize an urban environment when they aren't necessarily coming to that question through a design degree or from a design field. And in that way, I think The Sustainable Urban Design Handbook is a huge resource. I also think it speaks really to the heritage within that school and the place of the Willamette Valley in Eugene. And I think a lot of the strength of that history comes from work related to passive design and understanding passive energy systems.

And there is a lot in urban design and a lot of this framework and a lot of our research that really illuminates the passive opportunities in how we organize and site buildings, how buildings are oriented in relationship to a street or to the public realm. And that's powerful work for our planners, who also are very concerned about reducing CO2 emissions and planning for a future in which we don't have to rely so much on mechanical heating and cooling.

Meghan Stromberg: Absolutely. It's also wonderful to hear you talk about how allied professionals come together and work comprehensively, work together for a shared vision, and learn how to understand each other's point of view, so interrelated but sometimes competing needs are better understood and better met.

Nico Larco: I think one of just the basic realities of urban design is that it takes a lot of different people, a lot of different skills, a lot of different disciplines, and a whole lot of people who are not professionals to make these places happen. And so if you want to create more equitable, more sustainable, more livable communities, it really takes a whole bunch of people pointing in the same direction. And part of the goal, as Kaarin was saying, was to create a tool that would help align all those interests, all those efforts to help create better outcomes.

Meghan Stromberg: The book is really visual, so that makes it a little bit of a challenge to talk about on a podcast, but let me see if I can set it up a little bit. It looks at different scales from the region or city level to a block to individual parcels, and then the images and text help illustrate for readers how various choices impact other areas. So, for instance, how dense and energy-efficient building types are related to a number of other urban design elements, from zoning to parking to urban microclimates. It gives caveats and considerations for each element throughout. And then there are these extensive internal cross-references and guideposts so that you know exactly where you are in the book and where you might want to jump to to understand better. So, Nico, how did you approach the challenge of making these concepts, that are complex and interrelated, both accessible and actionable?

Nico Larco: First, it completely warms my heart to have you talk about the graphic nature of the book because we really worked tremendously hard to make it really accessible to professionals and community members alike. I think, as mentioned before, the overall goal was to try to make a tool or an approach that was going to demystify what we often see as this kind of large, unwieldy, intractable issue of how do we create sustainable, livable, vibrant places? How do you gather all this thinking in one place? And like a simple, understandable kind of translation of that.

The framework overall, I say this all the time, I feel like it's like a magic decoder ring, which relates the outcome goals. Here's the physical, specific urban design elements that you need to work on to get to those outcome goals. And the important thing that I think we kept on asking ourselves as we were working on this is distilling: What's the most important thing that people need to know to be able to make good urban design decisions based on this topic, right? And so the element chapters are pretty much based on that structure. They include, first of all, an overall description. If you've never worked with this type of topic, if you don't know what vertical complexity is in creating habitat, we'll give you a little bit of description of what that thing is.

And then there's this whole section that talks about considerations and caveats, as we've mentioned. It talks about operations issues, maintenance issues, political issues, element interactions, how things relate to each other that we should be keeping in mind.

And then there's a section, which is pretty straightforward design guides. These are specific physical things you should be doing as you're laying this project out to help get to better outcomes. On the one hand, you can use the book as a design guide: “I've got a project. I'm working at a specific scale. Here's a list of things that I should consider and think about how they relate to each other, where there's opportunities for synergy and co-benefits, where there might be trade-offs.”

You can also use it as an evaluation tool to say, “What are my existing conditions? What's really working well in this area? What is going to be difficult but doable, and what's really going to be challenging? What kind of partnerships do I need to develop with people outside of the project, outside of my discipline? What other community members or groups do we need to be reaching out to that we could have co-benefits or maybe even chase funding together?

And then also you can use it as a stakeholder engagement tool. I've often said, you know, stakeholders typically know what they want, what outcome they want, but they might not have the training to understand how that translates into the physical world. So this is a really good tool to help people understand how it is, the things they want, what needs to happen in the built environment to get to those outcomes.

Kaarin Knudson: That I think is one of the most exciting things about The Sustainable Urban Design Handbook is that it actually shows people how sustainability is possible. And so often planners are in the role of being responsible for explaining not just how we could do something, but also all of the whens and a whole bunch of the whys. And it also, I think, supports better process and better engagement, because when you know enough about the way in which your decision might be impacting someone else, you can have a more specific conversation about how the consequences of that might be managed. And that's really the work that cities and planners are doing everywhere — and also in rural communities, are doing to understand how it is that we are going to actually navigate the trade-offs and the hard decisions and get the most sustainable and best possible outcomes with every project that we have an opportunity to work on.

Meghan Stromberg: And I imagine it's also a convenient tool to help explain things to elected officials and decision makers. Kaarin, you're in that world now. You're bridging both worlds. You understand that it does take a planner to help bring all these things about, and getting people on board —

Kaarin Knudson: Absolutely.

Meghan Stromberg: — is a big part of a planner's job.

Kaarin Knudson: Yes. As everyone listening to this podcast well knows, that is the work of community planning: charting a course that responds to all of the data and all of the information, but that also has community will and political will behind it. And so much of the work that we have to do — around sustainability and building cities for the future that are going to be more equitable and more sociable and easier for people to live in, right — that comes down to managing change, navigating change together, and also having a really solid understanding of why it is that that change is going to be beneficial. And to be able to explain that to different audiences and different stakeholder groups is incredibly important.

I have found this research to be very helpful in those conversations because oftentimes people have an idea about a particular tactic that they might understand to be sustainability. One that comes to mind from a recent conversation is green roofs. Of course green roofs are lovely. They're fantastic. But I was asked in a large conference meeting about whether or not green roofs would be a great strategy to expand urban vegetation and support our urban forest performance. And certainly, if that were possible, it would be helpful. That's not likely in any community that has buildings that are 40, 50, 60 years old, buildings that were maybe not built structurally to withstand any kind of retrofitting like that. It's not likely to be a path. So what do you do instead to achieve a similar or even better outcome? And I think that this handbook offers people insight to how it's not just about individual tactics, but about outcomes and values and different scales of work, and that there are many ways to get to a more sustainable outcome.

Meghan Stromberg: Kaarin, you mentioned earlier that part of a planner's job is helping to manage change, and you both have talked about climate change and other things that are very much part of our world right now but are definitely going to impact us in the future. How would you like to see this resource and the knowledge behind it impacting urban planning and design in the future?

Kaarin Knudson: I do think that as we move into the future — and when I talk with people about climate change, I've said for years that within this decade we won't be talking about the existential crisis of climate change as much as we are talking about the localized impacts of extreme weather events and emergencies, because they are going to be so frequent.

Meghan Stromberg: They already are.

Nico Larco: They're already happening.

Kaarin Knudson: And I think we're going to see a shift in some of the language in our planning documentation that just reflects resilience, but also mitigation, and that there is a lot that can be done at the local level when we're talking about mitigation, that really is about improving quality of life. Because when you're talking about reducing urban heat island effect, what you're really talking about is giving people access to more green space and more trees and more shade, and likely more pedestrian-friendly streets to walk along, and more beautiful parks to spend time either watching your kids play in or actually being a kid playing in. So I think that those shifts are going to be obvious.

Nico Larco: We're already feeling this enormous need for better urban environments or better environments generally, right? And, you know, because of sustainability issues, energy issues, climate — an enormous one — equity — an enormous one — and just creating great-quality, vibrant places. What's hard is, as we mentioned early on, okay, how do I do this? What do I do? What's the next step? How do I align everyone who needs to be aligned? My hope is that this really will be a tool that planners, designers, developers, elected officials, community stakeholders, everyone will be able to use this to help better understand what kinds of things they need to be doing next.

Meghan Stromberg: It really sounds like a helpful resource for overwhelm.

Nico Larco: Yeah.

Meghan Stromberg: Offer positive solutions to move forward and counter that.

Kaarin Knudson: Meghan, you just hit on something that was one of many hundreds of delightful discoveries in pulling together the research that this book is underpinned by.

So there are thousands of research citations, which is a great resource for planners. When you're digging into, say, the issue of ecology and habitat relative to urbanization, it doesn't take long to find yourself quite deep in sciences that are very technical with very specific language that means very specific things only in certain contexts. And it was quite apparent early on that one of the big challenges in translating knowledge about ecology and habitat to general audiences and the community at large, is just the specificity of language that makes it hard to be a general statement.

Because we were talking about green roofs earlier, maybe they're not possible everywhere, right? Maybe that's not the path, if you really do want to expand green space in service of biodiversity within your city. But the term Nico mentioned earlier, “high vertical complexity,” that's very influential. And if you look around our cities and park spaces, and if you happen to see most of your green spaces being primarily sod or a single species of grass with a collection of lollipop trees, that is certainly a productive natural environment. It has a role and has micro-habitat occurring there, but it could be much more productive with the inclusion of areas of high vertical complexity where you have ground cover plantings and shrubs and a diversity of trees. And that actually for cities looking to invest resources, investing in increasing the vertical complexity and the production of existing open-space areas can be as effective or more effective than expanding open-space networks to address biodiversity.

Nico Larco: And that example really points to there might be a bunch of different ways of trying to get to that outcome goal that you want, right? And some of them might be possible based on economics, culture, political will. And some of them might not. So let's figure out what is possible in this project. How can I move it forward? How can I build support around these things and get to those better outcomes?

Meghan Stromberg: Well, Kaarin, Nico, it's been such a pleasure talking with you, and thank you for sharing your passion and your expertise and your positivity. I really look forward to digging more into the book.

Nico Larco: Thank you so much for having us. This has been absolutely wonderful and appreciate all the great work doing at APA and APA generally. Fantastic organization.

Kaarin Knudson: Thank you, Meghan, and thank you to planners everywhere who are working on making our cities beautiful places. We appreciate you and we hope that this resource is useful in your work.

Meghan Stromberg: Thanks for listening to another episode of People Behind the Plans, an APA podcast. If you want to hear more great conversations with experts from across the planning landscape, subscribe to APA podcasts, so you'll never miss an episode. And if you like what you're hearing, rate us on iTunes. You can find People Behind the Plans on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find our entire library of episodes at planning.org/podcast.