In the world of sustainability advocacy, there now exists a triad: new urbanism, green building and smart growth. All share many common convictions about elements that lead to improved quality of life yet each has a unique focus. New urbanism is concerned with town planning. Green building promotes Earth friendly, energy efficient and healthful building design and construction. Smart growth's focus is transportation.

On Monday, October 22, 2007, the Indiana Chapter of the American Planning Association, as part of their on-going Urban Planning Scholar Series, brought Mr. Dom Nozzi to town to speak. Mr. Nozzi is the executive director of Walkable Streets, www.walkablestreets.com, and the author of Road to Ruin and The Car Is The Enemy Of The City.

"Transportation establishes Design!" That was the opening premise of his presentation - a truly powerful notion that he convincingly demonstrated during the course of his two hour presentation. Once the decision is made as to the primary way people will get around, certain patterns of development follow, regardless of the desires and intentions of community planners. Sprawl is the consequence of our reliance on the automobile as the primary (and in our town the only viable) form of transportation. Since the 1950s, we in America have been building spaces that make cars happy: wide multilane highways with high speed limits, huge parking lots, houses with garages as front doors, commercial strip centers surrounded by huge fields of asphalt. . . Spaces that make people happy are intimate and articulated, are pedestrian safe and friendly, are filled with human activity, foster conviviality, provide opportunity for serendipitous encounters. . . "You can create spaces that make cars happy or you can create spaces that make people happy but you cant do both." Happy cars versus Happy people.

Another salient point illuminated in the presentation is the fact that it is impossible to eliminate congestion by widening roads because of the principle of "Triple Convergence." Three inevitable consequences of road widening are more rush hour traffic will converge, more people will choose to travel by car and more people will change their route. Widening a four lane road to six lanes does not eliminate congestion; it simply provides six lanes of congestion instead of four within a relative short period of time after completion.

Mr. Nozzi, who has traveled widely, pointed out, that our commitment to the auto has profoundly influenced our culture. In Europe, people live in much smaller residences and spend a much larger portion of their day out and about. A relatively modest investment in the private realm and a huge investment in the public realm affords a much greater interaction with the other members of the community. This civic interaction is the source of stimulation and great satisfaction which sustains a high quality of life. In our culture, we build large, even palatial, private residences and almost completely disregard the public realm. We end up living isolated, vicarious lives with television characters as our friends.

Mr. Nozzi gave his presentation to a number of groups here and in Bloomington. I had a chance to chat with him after attending a second presentation he delivered at the Bethlehem Lutheran Church, 52nd and Central Ave., the following evening. He was brought to our community by the Meridian Street Foundation as part of their exciting initiative, HARMONI. He brought with him much vital information about the impact transportation has on our lives, how it effects development, relationship of public/private realms, the importance of place making, the paradox of road widening, the nuance of congestion, the benefit of density and how "Quality of Life," while improving life experience for the members of the community, ends up being a powerful economic engine as well. I intend to elaborate further on all these issues in subsequent articles, for the ideas of smart growth are crucial to the understanding of our current dilemma and why initiatives like HARMONI are important strategies for a better tomorrow.