Washington considers urban planning district

The CBD process.

A group of Seattle architects and lawyers behind a landmark urban-planning district proposal in Washington state don’t give up easily.

After a bill created by Seattle architecture firm Mithun and Seattle law firm Foster Pepper to create the world’s first community benefit districts (CBD) failed to gain a sponsor in the state Senate in 2009, the group is looking for cities to help get the bill passed during the 2010 legislative session.

“We are looking for opportunities for integrating smart neighborhood development with public investment in transit and ‘green’ infrastructure to set the stage for … complete, connected and compact communities to be the norm rather than the exception,” says Stephen Antupit, Urban Strategies Designer and a senior associate at Mithun.

The bill would place all the tools currently used by cities to plan sustainable neighborhood development into one basket, Antupit says.

The idea for CBDs came on the heels of Washington’s Governor’s Climate Action team which issued a number of recommendations to help the state reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. The ideas “were in traditional silos,” of transit, energy and buildings, Antupit says.

This is about “how to use tools that already exist in a way that could send market signals that support good behavior and dis-incentivize lower performing developments,” Antupit says.

Because almost all of the tools CBDs could access are already available, the financial implications for cities and communities that create them are already understood for the most part, he says. He pointed to increased revenues from higher parking rates, new rate structures to increase the re-use of greywater and other elements that would be used to send price signals rewarding good behavior as examples of these known quantities.

A climate benefit surcharge would allow the governing entity to share increased property values that result from creating a smart urban community with property owners. The entity would pay down debt or make new investments with the returns from these assessments. CBDs can be set up to serve as active participants in carbon markets, which Antupit says he believes would make them “clear targets for federal investments.”