The first portion of the critical comparison of the four developments will be to determine whether or not the implementation of the development’s design has created a community that has met all of the criteria established previously in this report.
A sustainable community should reflect the following qualities:
(1) a compact and consolidated intensity of uses;
(2) a comprehensive and complimentary diversity of uses;
(3) a contained and consistent extent of uses;
(4) a connected and combined system of communication;
(5) a centered, configured and comprehensible sense of place, and
(6) a re-configurable plan that allows for flexibility of uses.
It is through the comparison of the achievements of the developments from which a determination regarding the sustainability of the developments can be reached.
In order to facilitate a simple method for the comparison of the four developments, a chart of the qualities of sustainability has been generated.
The comparative chart will indicate whether or not the developments have met the criteria for sustainability and through this method a score can be applied to each development regarding its level of sustainability.
The scores for each development can then be compared to determine the most-sustainable community that has been described in the body of this report.
While the application of an empirical formula to the analysis of the developments was previously mentioned to be difficult, this system will allow the critical analysis of these developments to be expressed as a preliminary checklist for sustainability.
Sustainability Scores
The four developments analyzed in this report have all achieved some level of sustainability through the implementation of their progressive design strategies.
The developments that can expect a high level of sustainability are The Village of Woodsong in Shallotte, North Carolina and Southern Village in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Both of these developments successfully met all six criteria established to determine their sustainability, giving them an overall score of 6 out of 6.
Carpenter Village in Cary, North Carolina has failed to meet all of the criteria, yet with a score of 4 out of 6 the development can expect to achieve a level of sustainability that is higher than the level of sustainability that sprawl-driven neighborhoods can expect.
I’on Village in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina has failed to meet a majority of the criteria and has received a score of 2 out of 6 with regards to the level of sustainability that the community can expect.
“Most people are on the world, not in it - having no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them - undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.” -John Muir
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