Levin Nock, PhD, PMP

As a Sustainable Building Advisor, Levin has experience in various aspects of creating sustainable neighborhoods. As a project manager and research analyst, he has extensive experience in innovation: relating technical details to human health, computer modeling, translating information among diverse stakeholders, and presenting information in written and spoken formats.

He was a founding board member the Center for a Sustainable Today, and ReCode Oregon, "legalizing sustainability".  He has degrees in physics from Cornell and engineering from Duke, and is certified as a Project Management Professional (PMP). For more details, please see his LinkedIn profile or resume.

Magi Oriah Nock, MA

As the founder of Open to Emergence LLC, Magi designs and facilitates meetings for couragous conversations and innovative action.  She has an MA in Organizational Systems Renewal  from Seattle University, a BA in Geography from Dartmouth College, has studied with Jane Goodall at Schumacher College, and is certified as a SCORE™ assessor.  Her professional experience includes business management consulting, community organization, real estate brokerage, global climate change research, interspecies communication, fish habitats and watershed analysis.  For more details, please see her LinkedIn profile.

Publications

How to create neighborhoods that work for all:  safe, dense and biodiverse.  PDF version of slides presented at the American Planners Association Annual Conference, 2008.

A transportation grid beneficial for all residents: GIC.  PDF version of slides presented at the Rethinking Sustainable Construction Annual Conference, 2006.

Energy Efficiency Retrofits for Commercial and Public Buildings, Pike Research 2009, market research report.

Carbon Cycle 101  1-page model of the dynamics of global carbon emissions and reduction, modeled using a bathtub.

Some Favorite Links Related to GIC

Community Greens led by Kate Herrod is working to catalyze the development of shared green spaces inside residential blocks in cities across the United States.

Transforming Suburbia into Superbia! Dave Wann and Dan Chiras.  This book tells how homeowners can transform their own suburbs into healthier, safer, friendlier neighborhoods.

With this study based on computer models of three development patterns, Cynthia Girling and Ron Kellett highlight the ecological and health advantages of a Village Homes type plan over a New Urban small-block plan.

This article by Clare Cooper Marcus describes design principles for successful shared greenspace, and gives examples of successful developments with aspects of GIC design, such as St. Francis Square built in 1964 in San Francisco.

The Victoria Transport Policy Institute led by Todd Littman develops innovative and practical solutions to transportation problems. The website includes many free reports, to help improve transportation planning and policy analysis.

This article  tells how a connected network of  "ecobelts" can help mend the social and natural fabrics at urban/rural interfaces.

"StreetFilms is a project of the New York City Street Renaissance (NYCSR), a collection of non-profits geared towards re-imagining the city's public spaces and making streets safer for pedestrians, bicycles and non-vehicular modes of transportation."  They have many delightful, short, free videos online, documenting successful innovations.

"Reconciliation Ecology is the science of inventing, establishing, and maintaining new habitats to conserve species diversity in places where people live, work or play." At present, humans live, work or play on more than 90% of the habitable surface of the Earth.  Biodiversity is roughly proportional to area.  Unless today's patterns of human land-use change, more than 90% of  the species that were present before the industrial revolution will become extinct, because there is no place for them.  We can preserve greater biodiversity by learning to create spaces for each species, amongst us.

"The City Repair Project is a group of citizen activists creating public gathering places and helping others to creatively transform the places where they live."  This process has potential to enhance the woonerf-like benefits of existing cul-de-sacs.

ConcreteChange.org promotes "Visitability", updated home construction practices that make a home easier to visit or live in, for anyone who has a temporary or permanent mobility impairment.  More than 90% of new residences can comply for less than $600 (many for only $75 to $300) when requirements are specified before design begins.  These features are included in the local building codes of places such as Pima County and Tucson, AZ.  Even a classic-style bungalow with daylit basement can comply easily, if the dirt excavated from the basement is used to elevate the backdoor entrance to the level of the main floor.

The mission of Sightline is to bring about sustainability--a healthy, lasting prosperity grounded in place in Cascadia (the Pacific Northwest).  Their book "Tax Shift" promotes the idea of taxing the things that we want less of, such as traffic congestion and pollution, and not taxing the things that we want more of, such as dense urban development in city centers.  They also track sustainability indicators with the Cascadia Scorecard project.  If more policies were managed around sustainability indicators, holistic cost-effective solutions such as GIC would be much more popular.

A tax shift has encouraged denser urban development in various places, including New York City in the 1920's, Honolulu in the 1960's, and Pittsburgh in 1980-2000. 

The Local Government Commission is a nonprofit organization working to build livable communities.  It is directed by Judy Corbett, one of the founders of Village Homes. 

Active Living by Design is a national program to increase physical activity through community design, public policies and communications strategies, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The Passive House Institute and the Living Building Challenge promote design principles to create comfortable residences with minimal energy bills.  More than 20,000 Passive Houses have been built in Europe.  In some US markets, Passive House criteria add less than 3% to the cost of new construction--with enough insulation, a furnace is unnecessary.  GIC offers cost-effective opportunities to address the stringent Living Building requirements for stormwater and greywater management.

Art Ludwig has designed sustainable, inexpensive systems to manage water and wastewater for 30 years, and has a website packed with useful information.

The Transition Towns Initiative, the Empowerment Institute, Bright Neighbor and 1 Block Off the Grid offer tools to help neighbors get organized and cooperate around sustainable practices. 

Further reading
Designing Sustainable Communities:  Learning from Village Homes, by Judy Corbett and Michael Corbett.  

Village Homes, A Community by Design by Mark Francis is posted free online at GoogleBooks. 

Wikipedia has some good links for "Village Homes" although some links have expired.

Skinny Streets & Green Neighborhoods: Design for Environment and Community by Cynthia Girling and Ronald Kellett. 

Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, by Richard Louv.

People Places: Design Guidelines for Urban Open Space, by Carolyn Francis and Clare Cooper Marcus.

Green Urbanism: Learning from European Cities, by Timothy Beatley.

Wondering how to incorporate a new GIC neighborhood into the existing suburban fabric?   One option is to revitalize an old  shopping mall, as described in Greyfields into Goldfields: Dead Malls become Living Neighborhoods, by Lee Sobel et al.

The City Repair Project's Placemaking Guidebook, 2nd edition.