Arkansas, United States

The University of Arkansas Community Design Center has planned “A Rural Timberlands Neighborhood” for Hopson Real Estate Holding LLC in the rural timberlands of southwest Arkansas—a new kind of development that addresses social and ecological issues in the region in a more sustainable way.

This neighborhood employs resilient design to mitigate social and ecosystem disturbance regimes (housing deficiencies, wildfire, and erosion) structuring its context.

This neighborhood proposal combines the remediation of ecosystem damage from clear-cut timber harvesting with urbanization that addresses chronic stressors associated with ecological and social fragility.

A Rural Timberlands Neighborhood has been awarded a 2022 Green GOOD DESIGN Sustainability Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Center for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.

The region’s rural economy is driven by low-margin industries, including resource extraction and commodity-based industries like timber.

Forests cover 56 percent of Arkansas, and the state is the third most timber-dependent economy in the United States.

Last year alone, 44,000 wildfires in the US consumed more than 5 million acres—the size of New Jersey—and the cycle is accelerating due to unpredictable weather patterns now common with climate change.

Located in the small community of Rosston, with a population of just 400, this mixed-use neighborhood provides a new town center and housing to serve an “under-housed” regional workforce lacking adequate housing and neighborhood services.

Inclusive neighborhood design addresses the needs of all income groups through a cross-section of landscape morphologies and housing typologies—bungalow courts, pocket neighborhoods, accessory dwelling units on the alley, duplexes, live-work units on the square, and large-format meadow houses.

The 64-unit neighborhood on 27 acres provides both village-like settings for residents who thrive in a high-density communal lifestyle, and meadow clusters for those seeking open rural landscapes.

The neighborhood counters the entropy (homogeneity) of the subdivision and its inability to develop higher orders of social and ecological complexity.

Housing is thus a ladder in which the solution for one market type becomes a platform for solutions in the other types.

The timberlands neighborhood features three planning principles to address the region’s resilience deficits:

1. Cluster housing landscapes for mixed-income populations that accommodate a diversity of lifestyles in one place, overcoming the unhealthy demographic sorting by zip code. A shared street armature connects urbanized housing pockets with ruralized configurations amid meadows. Live work units around a town square fronting the state highway provide swing space for commercial services as market cycles demand.

2. Implement Firewise planning concepts that mitigate the risk of catastrophic loss from wildfires more frequently in timber regions during droughts. New tree stands of mixed species frame neighborhood spaces (shared street, lake, forest block cluster) mitigating the heat island effect while providing the necessary isolation of canopies to prevent fire spread.

3. Develop a neighborhood ecology that delivers the 17 ecosystem services found in all healthy ecosystems. Services like disturbance regulation (flooding, wildfire, and erosion prevention), water treatment, soil regulation, pollination, nutrient recycling (eg, septic), etc. add value to infrastructure delivering traditional urban services (land use, transportation, utilities, and housing ).

Meadows quickly restores soil health and base hydrological functioning after timber harvesting.

Stormwater runoff from impervious surfaces like streets and roofs is managed through a network of bioswales, recharge meadows, infiltration basins, rain gardens, and tree box filters.

Green streets and alleys deliver ecosystem services and create safe social settings for delivering non-traffic services.

Through holistic approaches, resilient—“antifragile”—design rewires complex systems (eg, neighborhoods, cities, forests) to grow stronger.

Project: A Rural Timberlands Neighborhood
Architects: University of Arkansas Community Design Center
Client: Hopson Real Estate Holdings LLC
Images Courtesy of the Architects

DEVELOPERS of poisonous land on the Ravenscraig Hospital public housing site intend to use polluted soil from the poisoned property for a landscaping upgrade project.

Link Group Ltd has filed a planning application with Inverclyde Council to dig contaminated soil from the development site – and transfer it to adjacent land near Pennyfern Road to provide an equipment area.

However, consultants hired by Link have admitted in a letter to the contaminated council land commissioner that the proposal brings with it an accepted way of harming people.

The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) appealed Link’s plan for the soil – which has confirmed dangerous and carcinogenic chemicals have been exceeded on multiple occasions.

Advisors to Link, Fairhurst, stated in a correspondence sent to the Council on Nov. 24th: “It is recognized that the possibility exists that pollutants are entirely due to pollutants within the site-reclaimed soil intended to be reused within the soil Landscaping improvements are associated with human end-users. ‘

Tele can determine that SEPA objected to the proposal in August because “insufficient information” was submitted.

At this point – three months before its “pollutant linkages” were added to the council – Fairhurst was trying to reassure the Environment Agency that the work would meet criteria that “the use of the soil does not cause pollution or harm to humans Health “.

Fairhurst – who said community planners and residents had “given positive feedback” – told SEPA that the soil earmarked for landscaping contained a number of potentially harmful materials, including arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead and mercury.

Link advisors repeatedly stressed that landscaping is necessary because it would offer “significant medium and long-term benefits to the community” and without it the selected area would “remain an unusable wet space”.

Fairhurst also told SEPA that the work would “keep the lines of sight open to prevent anti-social behavior and other criminal activity”.

Link filed planning proposals in May to use excess contaminated soil for landscaping, more than a year after the council approved its plan to build 198 social rental houses on the sprawling 83-acre former hospital site.

As with the main development, Link intends to use a “top layer” as a barrier between people and pollutants.

World-renowned contamination expert Professor Andrew Watterson – an advisor to the World Health Organization – previously stated that top layers will ultimately fail.

Fairhurst told SEPA: “The customer (Link) has found a positive way to use excess material from development that will prevent it from being landfilled and the negative environmental and safety effects of the transfer off-site and associated with disposal. ”

A social housing development strategy document produced by Fairhurst for Link states that “non-inert / hazardous waste will incur higher landfill tax rates” when removed from the site.

Fairhurst told the council last month that an assessment had found the materials “suitable for reuse” but added, “Given local overruns [of pollution] An environmental protection layer with 450 mm of clean soil on top of a geotextile separator would be required. ”

SEPA said yesterday that it has withdrawn its objection to the landscape plan.

An environmental agency spokeswoman said: “Initially, we objected to the proposals to reuse land from the adjacent residential area because the applicant did not provide enough information to demonstrate that reuse was necessary and appropriate in line with waste management license requirements and related Guidelines.

“We needed more information to show that the proposal would produce the results reported and was not a disposal activity.

“After submitting more information and redesigning the proposals, including reducing the volume of materials to be used and the footpaths to be introduced, we withdrew our objection.

“We are waiting for the outcome of the Inverclyde Council’s planning decision and their decision on the redevelopment strategy proposed by the developer.”

An eight-month investigation by the Police Scotland Economic Crime Unit into land problems at the Ravenscraig site has not yet been completed.

MSP Stuart McMillan said he had lost confidence in the housing estate and called for it to be stopped while the police investigation was still ongoing.

Link bought the property in March 2017 for £ 1 in a back-to-back deal involving former owners NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde and the Scottish Government’s More Homes Division.

Just months earlier, the district surveyor estimated the land to be worth £ 850,000.

Link decided in July not to answer any further questions from the Telegraph.

The Scottish Government says the land transfer was carried out “in accordance with all due process”.