Des Moines Register
05-07-06
Hunter: Architects discuss strategies for making Iowa's cities cool
CAROL HUNTER
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
For much of Iowa's history, city residents could visit most places to satisfy life's
needs — shops, workplaces, schools, churches — by taking a walk. For farmers,
such places were a horse or wagon ride away.
But as the 20th century progressed, Iowans and the rest of America became ever
more dependent on automobiles. Bigger cities and their suburbs grew outward.
Distances lengthened between homes and jobs. In the countryside, productivity
increases and changing economics meant fewer farmsteads to support small
towns.
Gasoline prices nearing $3-a-gallon remind us of the hard costs of such a cardependent lifestyle, let alone the time and stress it adds to daily life and the filth it
pumps into the air.
Experts in planning and architecture think cities in Iowa and around the globe
would be wise to return to their village roots, reinventing themselves as places
where homes, jobs and services would be a walk or a bike ride away. They use
terms like livable and sustainable to describe the most inviting cities of the 21st
century.
Such cities will be the focus of the annual spring conference of the American
Institute of Architects, Iowa Chapter, to be held Friday in Des Moines. The
theme: Designing Cool Communities. Happily, attendees won't have to look far
for examples.
If there's a single criterion that determines livability, it's diversity, according to
Kate Schwennsen, president of the national association, associate dean in
the College of Design at Iowa State University and a keynote speaker. That
includes differences of types of buildings, their uses and scale; transportation
options; and ages and incomes of residents.
Downtown Des Moines is one of the places in Iowa gaining livability,
Schwennsen said. "I think in a decade we're going to see it as a very vibrant
neighborhood."
The conversion of aging buildings to lofts, apartments and luxury condominiums
is adding diversity of housing styles in varied price ranges. Services, like a
grocery store, and more retail will follow the residents, she said.
Iowa City, too, rates high on the livability scale, with its "great old buildings,
interesting new buildings and different-scaled spaces." Dubuque boasts the
advantage of hilly riverside topography and 19th-century buildings, plus the
National Mississippi River Aquarium & Museum, which opened in 2003. Ames
has potential, she said, if it resists putting in another mall and focuses on "the
bones" in place that could become lively retail centers — Campustown, North
Grand Mall and especially Main Street, which has inviting residential areas
nearby.
Beyond livability, the next step is making communities more sustainable — more
considerate of the environment, energy-conscious and resources-stingy. An
example: keeping growth compact in the rapidly growing Des Moines metro area
and Cedar Rapids-Iowa City corridor, rather than consuming more farmland.
Another keynote speaker, Kevin Nordmeyer, partner in RDG Planning and
Design in Des Moines and chair of the U.S. Green Building Council, is a leader of
the movement. His firm is helping build a three-bedroom high-energy-efficiency
home in Fort Dodge for $180,000, including the lot. Using such techniques as
passive solar and geothermal heating and cooling, it's expected to use 65
percent less energy than a typical like-sized home.
Other noteworthy work that he cites: Ladco Development is mixing single-family
homes, townhouses and condominiums in a range of prices, plus restaurants and
a plaza in its Village of Ponderosa project in West Des Moines. Hubbell Realty is
building a handful of residential developments in the metro area using
conservation-design techniques, which minimize hard surfaces such as streets
and driveways and channel water runoff to green spaces. That filters out
contaminants and cuts down on soil erosion.
Plus, there's the Abundance Ecovillage outside of Fairfield, where homes are
being built off the power grid. Energy comes from wind and solar power.
Residents also buy and eat food grown locally.
That sounds like 19th-century Iowa, when necessities of life were close at hand
and traffic jams had not yet been imagined. What's old is new, and it could make
Iowa cities very cool.