We'll begin our focus on the neighborhood in this Module, and in the next too. This first Module on the neighborhood, looks at the natural context of smart planning for neighborhoods. These are the actions that are taken to protect and celebrate the natural and amenities that exist within community from a natural standpoint includes trees, woodlands high points in their view shared, existing typography, drainage, wetlands, lakes, and so forth. These all contribute to the real estate value while sustaining the environment. Smart growth communities take advantage of these conditions by conserving water at the same time preserving and increasing value of the land where it is developed. This includes the preservation of top soil in the development process, and maintaining large open areas of natural areas. Which includes links to natural corridors and providing easy access of benefit both wildlife and humans. It's a mix of a variety of different things that help to form the neighborhood context that's natural and is very appealing to live in a place like that. Let's look at some of the components, the first being preserving nature. That's retaining and protecting the major natural features or natural assets of the neighborhood. They can range from ponds and streams to hills, trees, particularly specimen trees and these are trees that are particularly large mature species of a particular specimen. By specimen tree it means it's a very unique representation of that particular species. There's often a community tree, a state tree, a county tree for particular specimens. Then also particular significant tree stands may be important. We'll get into that a little bit later. But natural features provide a mature sense of permanent and local character that contributes significantly to the property values in the neighborhood. This has been demonstrated through numerous studies that show that the real estate premiums resulting from preserved natural amenities far outweigh the cost of protecting them. Now some communities have particularly strong natural amenities and these are aspects that should be celebrated and leveraged. Communities that have beachfront or have waterfronts, mountain views, forest views, parks, and even in some cases golf courses can be used to be a central feature of a neighborhood and part of the community. Taking advantage of these natural features can be accomplished in the way the roadways are designed, so that prominent amenities or prominent features are at the end of a roadway. It allows everyone along that road or street to have the opportunity to view the feature, and it makes a more dramatic lead up to the feature. Concept that's used in planning community development. Next, we'll take a little more look at preserving trees in developing smart communities. Take advantage of the existing trees. It takes a lifetime or more to grow mature trees, so preserving those in strategic ways can be a big asset. But the first step in determining what's your options are is conducting a tree survey, and particularly locating specimen trees and significant tree stands. Then looking at how public places, public use can be used to capture and preserve those tree areas. Another aspect of protecting trees is in the area of avoiding root damage. This is sometimes the unseen, or unrecognized the villain for killing trees in key locations particularly related to road and sidewalk construction. Many trees are quite sensitive to having their roots damaged or adversely impacted by digging. That's something that also needs to be considered in the developing the infrastructure around trees that you want to protect. Often there are significant ridge lines or hilltops in the neighborhood. These are areas where you should consider for significant civic buildings or other prominent historical features that would be located on these hilltops. It's generally not a good idea to build residential homes right up to the hilltops, but preserve those key topographic locations for public or civic buildings or public space. Another aspect of locating residential properties, it's keeping the roof lines below the tops of the roofs below the ridge lines of the topography, and also the vistas as you go up to one of these prominent facilities on a hilltop should also not be privatized but kept open so there's a common view of the natural view shed. Another aspect is the reducing the amount of cut and fill that's done in constructing projects, work with the existing topography. Often there's a very creative designs that can be developed that match the topography and minimize the cut and fill. Regarding slopes, generally, if the slope is more than 30 degrees, that area should not be developed. You can allow residential areas to use slopes of 15-30 percent, but not commercial structures. Again, take advantage of the topography and reduce the amount of disturbance. That leads into the next area of protecting and maintaining the soil. The healthiest soils are those that are undisturbed in their natural state. If you're going to avoid disturbing soil, particularly the top soil, that's a big plus, if you do disturb it, you should save it and then replace the top soil once the excavation has been completed. But a particular importance in the area of soils, is not to alter the natural drainage and particularly to not disrupt the groundwater recharge areas in a region and the last area to be concerned about is soil compaction. That really changes the character of the soil, particularly in recharge areas and areas where there maybe subject to erosion. It's harder to re vegetate on heavily compacted soils, so that should be used to a limited degree. That concludes the first part of this module. Just a brief summary, we've looked at preserving natural features in the neighborhoods. In your planning process, celebrate and leverage particularly key natural areas if they're in the neighborhood, it could be a stream with waterfront opportunities, an ocean front, views of mountains and so forth. Another aspect was preserving trees, particularly specimen trees and larger significant stands of trees. Take advantage of using public areas as a way of preserving trees, parks, trails, celebrate high points, high points in the topography, limit their use to civic and public facilities, reduce cuts and fills to minimize the changes to the topography, and then protect and maintain soils, particularly for areas that are groundwater recharge areas.
