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Community Guidelines

New Communities, Urban Centers and Neighborhoods

This document when, available in April 2009, will help designers, developers and project teams and assess their projects through the lens of Estidama. A Pilot Project testing process will help further refine the requirements, standards, submission requirements and concepts put forward in these documents.

The nature of land development, and its ultimate sustainability, is heavily influenced by a range of issues. This document currently under construction is meant to address four primary types of land development:

New Communities (NC): Large scale land developments that are seeking a high level of self-sufficiency and are evidenced by significant land area (>250 HA). Typically they are situated in heretofore undeveloped sites (i.e. ‘greenfield’ or exurban) and adjacent land uses are minimal or under development. These may be largely auto dependent areas, with some core focal areas organized around transit stops. They will contain a variety of uses, but will most likely result in jobs to housing ratios of <.75:1

Urban Centers (UC): Are major new developments in terms of program and envisioned total GFA, but may not occupy significant land area. They can be situated in existing urbanized areas (i.e densification of less intense areas) or new sites on the periphery seeking to create a significant focal point for emerging residential developments. They must be mixed use, are located near or on transit stops and will result in jobs to housing ratios in excess of 1:1.

Urban Neighborhoods (UN): Are smaller scale (>2-50 HA) redevelopments, urban infill or densifications, that provide a primarily residential focus, complimented by appropriate community services and daily goods and service provisions. Some level of employment and non residential services may be offered given contextual relationships.

New Neighborhoods (NN): Are smaller scale (>2-50 HA) new, lower density developments, that provide a primarily residential focus, complimented by appropriate community services and daily goods and service provisions. These would tend to occur in largely undeveloped sites, and may in fact occur within a proposed New Community

These distinctions are important because credits available, and their associated rating criteria, will be weighted differently depending on the type of development proposed. Unlike other global programs currently in use or development, this approach recognizes that different scales of land development, in different settings requires varying priorities to achieve a desired level of sustainability. During the Pearls Rating application process it will be important to identify and register your project in one of these four categories